Ah, the elusive Amazon product review.
Product reviews are the element of Amazon selling businesses that are cited as the most troublesome.
There are different methods you can follow to obtain those lovely reviews, and we will cover a couple in this article.
- Amazon Feedback Request Template
- Amazon Early Reviewer Scheme
The second method only applies for brand new products with fewer than 5 reviews, and IO Scout will get to that scheme in a moment. For now, let’s look at some feedback request ideas you can send via email to your happy customers!
Amazon Feedback Requests
Amazon Sellers can investigate an automated email campaign post product sale to encourage customers to leave that all-important review. And this really does not take too long to set up, so its worthwhile following this method.
This email encouragement has another benefit: you can check any problems with the review before it is posted! Just bear in mind not to incentivize your consumers into leaving you a good review, as that is behaviour which is banned from Amazon.
When is the right time to ask for a product review?
Strike while the iron is hot, as the old saying goes.
2 days post-product delivery is a nice window. The product is still very relevant in your buyers’ mind, and hopefully, the level of enjoyment is still nice and high!
You can then send an additional email template approximately 1 week post-delivery if you are yet to obtain a product review generated from the first email you sent out. This email serves as a gentle nudge to your customer, and remind them to (pretty please with a cherry on top) leave a product review and feedback. The second email is usually less successful than the first, due to the fact that a week has passed since they took delivery of the product in question, and therefore are potentially experiencing a reduction in the emotive investment of the product!
Product Review Templates
We have covered the when, now onto the what.
What do we say in our emails to ask for product reviews and feedback?
Product Review Template #1
This template goes out to your customers via email before they have even received the product! This works well when you are running a FBA business, and so you definitely know when the delivery date is going to be.
The purpose behind this email template is to a) let them know the delivery is en-route to build the anticipation, and b) arm yourself against any potential negative feedback or reviews.
This email template can go something like
Once the order has been received, you can move on to:
Product Review Template #2
Both of these email templates are building up rapport with your customers, and establishing a trusted relationship; one which they feel they can reach out to you with any queries (without leaving a negative review!).
If you are battling in your quest to obtain more product reviews, this agenda can assist you to appreciate the fundamentals of buyer-seller communications, in accordance with Amazon compliance standards:
- Avoid offering customers a discount, a free or discounted product, or other incentives for a review.
- Avoid offering a refund or compensation after the buyer writes a review.
- Avoid linking to other websites.
- Avoid offering a discount code for a sale in the future.
- Avoid actively asking for positive reviews.
- Avoid using words such as “if or then” to send displeased consumers to customer service, and pleased buyers to the review page.
- Avoid just asking for reviews from shoppers who have had a good experience.
Organizing and sending out follow-up emails asking for feedback or reviews for every single order you receive and dispatch will take hours upon hours! To avoid this tedious chore, it is simple enough to set up an automated email to send personalized email messages.
For brand new products, obtaining reviews are a veritable minefield. The initial, opening product reviews. The bane of every Amazon seller’s life. But, with adherence to the rules, reviews can be your best friend.
There's also software available that will be able to help you with getting the reviews. For instance, AMZFinder has a combination of Feedback Request and Review Management that can assist you in automatically sending review request emails to get more positive reviews. Moreover, it tracks all your product reviews and store feedback, so you can easily find those unhappy customers and reply to them for negative review handling, thus raising your store’s credibility and ratings. AMZFinder offers a 30-day free trial so you can always try it first without any obligation.
Here’s where the Amazon Early Reviewer Program steps in. And we are here to explain all about it.
What is the Amazon Early Reviewer Program?
The Amazon Early Reviewer Program is a method to gather product reviews which are genuine, based on new products launched on Amazon’s Marketplace. The idea behind this scheme is for Amazon branded merchants to receive product reviews earlier than they would usually be able to, leading to:
- Improved customer experiences
- Page View Increases
- Product Sales Increases
- CTR Increases
A great idea is the Amazon Early Reviewer Program, as the result is two-fold: Amazon Merchants receive more product interaction and interest, and Amazon shoppers are compensated for their genuine product reviews.
There are, as with any scheme, a few caveats to be aware of:
- Currently, the Amazon Early Reviewer Program is just running in the U.S.
- In order to be involved with the Program, as an Amazon Merchant your online selling business is required to be registered with the Amazon Brand Registry Scheme.
- Eligible products for the Amazon Early Reviewer Program must retail for over $15.
- Eligible products for the Amazon Early Reviewer Program need to have less than 5 reviews currently.
- Amazon Merchants are able to select ASINs to register in the Amazon Early Reviewer Program, however no sway of content or star rankings are permitted.
- The reviews generated by the Amazon Early Reviewer Program are not modified or altered in any way by Amazon, except in cases whereby the received reviews do not meet Amazon’s review guidelines.
How does the Amazon Early Reviewer Program Operate?
- Amazon Merchants are charged $60 per SKU post initial review that was generated via the Amazon Early Reviewer Program.
- Each SKU in the Program will be solicited for reviews for a time period of a year, or five reviews obtained as a result of being registered in the Amazon Early Reviewer Program.
- The Amazon Early Reviewer Program chooses at random consumers who are registered with the Program to be asked for product reviews. Amazon do check however that these consumers have not left incorrect or insulting reviews in their past history before they are selected to obtain incentives as part of this Program.
- The consumers who are selected at random for product reviews are granted a token gesture as appreciation, and this can be something like a gift card of a few dollars.
How do I Register with the Amazon Early Reviewer Program?
- Join the Amazon Brand Registry Scheme (see above).
- After registering with the Amazon Brand Registry Scheme, bear in mind it can take approximately 3 days’ before accessing the Early Reviewer Program portal.
- Complete the Excel spreadsheet provided by Amazon with your SKU information (100 can be added at one time).
- Verify that the SKUs you are uploading have less than five reviews on the current listing
- Bear in mind that only stand-alone SKUs can be uploaded, with no variants allowed.
- Verify that your product cost is over $15.
- Once you are happy, go ahead and upload your template to the Program. The fee of $60 is payable per SKU uploaded to the Program.
- At such a time after one year or 5 intitial reviews are obtained, that particular SKU is removed from the Program.
In essence, the Amazon Early Reviewer Program exists to assist Amazon sellers in those early product days, and to reach more potential customers. It is very difficult indeed to get that very first product review, so this does offer this as a viable option.
In the process of gaining these crucial early reviews, you are also gaining customer trust, and it has been monitored time and time again that customer reviews are such a pivotal factor in driving customer engagement and sales, as consumers rely very heavily on like-minded consumers to offer their opinions on products.
Be forewarned, however, that enrolling in the Amazon Early Reviewer Program does not mean that your first reviews are going to come flooding in after a day! It can take a fair amount of time for them to be received, according to fellow Amazon merchants. In some cases, it can take two to three months to receive that initial product review from a customer.
Also, there is no guarantee that the very first product review you receive for your brand-new product is going to be a positive one! If its negative, then this is surely a bad start to the life of your new product.
And all this is a moot point if your product listings are not top-notch. You really do not want your prospective customers to all flock to your new product pages, only to have them let down as they didn’t find what they expected to find. Ensure your product titles, descriptions and features include your relevant, important, keywords, and then make sure that you satisfy that description, so you are giving your customers what they want.
Amazon’s focus is to match prospective buyers with the items that they are interested in purchasing, so make it super simple for Amazon to do this by matching up what you are selling with the product descriptions.
Ensure that your detailed product listings include:
- Related words to their keyword search
- Valuable features for your potential buyer
- Text and content which encourages and tempts your buyer into, ahem, buying!
A product listing which converts, and converts astoundingly well, looks like this:
- A thorough explanation of the item
- Item pictures which are high-quality and professional (this includes videos, too)
- Qualified for Amazon Prime and all its elements
- An appealing title, which is also accurate and relevant to the item in the listing
By incorporating this invaluable content on your item pages on your Amazon Store, you will be compensated by Amazon, as the result of this will be buyers who are networking with your page, and experiencing lower bounce rates.
Once Amazon appreciates that your merchandise page description is correct, and reflective of the product, and the price is appropriate, conversions will happen.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, if your product ticks all the boxes in terms of a wonderful product, a product listing which is completely optimized, great product images, and you are a responsive and polite Amazon Sellers, chance are you will get those elusive initial reviews from your shoppers.
