The ultimate Amazon review strategy: Proven ways to get more and how to deal with negative ones.

Amazon's Review.

In 1994, the billionaire Jeff Bezos began to build his model for one of the most used platforms for e-commerce, Amazon. At this time, experts predicted that with the growth of the internet, e-commerce would grow by 2,300% in the coming years and although this number is undoubtedly high, little would they imagine how basic e-commerce would become for world trade.

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When Covid arrived in 2020, the only option customers had was e-commerce, which became the most popular and only option for companies to exist during this troubled time. By 2022, 48% of consumers shopped on Amazon at least once a week, and by today's standards, almost every business has a delivery or online channel to reach customers online. CodeDesign is a leading digital marketing agency ranked #1 in Lisbon, Portugal. You could work with us to accelerate your business growth.

But more than offering good products, your customers focus more on something else, that is, your reviews. In fact, according to a JungleScout consumer behavior article, 61% of consumers say the product influences them with the best ratings and reviews. And this isn't a new trend since a  G2, and Heinz Marketing in 2017 showed that 92% of consumers will be more likely to purchase from you if they see a good review. It's easy-math; you aren't going to buy something blindfolded. You need to make sure someone or many people prove their value.

Nevertheless, in another article, we see that 57% of sellers say that getting reviews is getting more challenging every day, but no need to worry, dear reader, as we have some solutions for you.

There are effective ways to get these good reviews for your Amazon Seller account, and you won't look needy or annoying to your audience. But then, there's something else we want to address, and that's how you can deal with negative reviews. Good reviews are gold for your Amazon business, but the bad ones don't have to be the end of your career on the platform. If you want to learn how to manage both of these influencers for your Amazon's success, take a deep look into this article that Codedesign brings you. Read this guide on Amazon SEO.

Pay attention and keep scrolling!

Enroll your product in the Amazon Vine Program.

The Vine Program is available for all Amazon brand-registered products with less than 30 reviews.

This program consists in submitting 30 units of your inventory to vine reviewers. They get the product for free and then test the product to give you a review.

While in 2016, there was a banned programmed to incentivize reviews. In this case, reviewers are betted by Amazon. The e-commerce platform explains, "25% of reviews received occur within five days of the order, while 99% of reviews received occur within 35 days of the order." This strategy is especially effective for newly registered products so they can get reviews quicker. Have a proper digital marketing funnel in place.

The Vine program is free for third-party sellers, although some professionals expect it to start charging fees to enroll or participate at some point.

Source: YouTube.

Use the Request a Review Button

With this button, you can increase your review rate to 10% or 20%, and the idea is to take advantage of existing customers to leave a review. Some details on what orders you can use it or what happens when you use it are:

• Use it within 4 to 30 after you deliver the product.
• The feedback request will be sent in the same email.
• You can't customize messages.
• When using it, you can still request independent reviews.
• You can click the button within your Manage Orders page in seller central.

Knowing when to send an Amazon review request is crucial for your strategy, and believe it or not, it can depend too much on what you sell. Every kind of product is different, so there's a certain margin you should consider to make a smooth request and not a desperate one (remember, you don't want to look needy). The same goes for sending requests too late, as customers can forget about it. Read this complete guide on e-commerce business development.

You want to take advantage of the momentum, that few days when the product is new and they are all eyes on it, but when is the right time for it? 

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There's a reference for each type of product, for example:

• Small consumable products: 5 to 7 days.
• Outdoor or sports items: 8 to 10 days; these tend to take time to enjoy or try fully.
• Longer lasting items: 14 to 21 days; these include things like electronics, shoes or furniture. The reason behind this time frame is that they take more time for users to become familiar with it.
• Vitamins, beauty care and health products: These should be checked after 30 days as they tend to have effects after a long time taking it.

Then, one extra factor you should consider when sending review requests is seasonality. For example, if you sold Halloween or Christmas decorations, the best time to send the review request should be right after these holidays, so customers have the rush of these days and can fully share their experience with you. Read this guide on branding strategy.

Amazon's review strategy.

Use third-party automated email responders.

While Amazon's internal automated responder could be helpful, it has too many restrictions to keep in touch with customers, which is why many sellers use third-party responders to send messages through Amazon's seller messaging system. According to Amazon: 

"You may send proactive Permitted Messages for the following reasons: resolving an issue with order fulfillment, requesting additional information required to complete the order, asking a return-related question, sending an invoice, requesting product review or seller feedback or both, scheduling the delivery of a heavy or bulky item, scheduling a Home Services appointment, verifying a custom design, or any other reason where the contact is required for the buyer to receive their purchase."

Nevertheless, within the permitted messages, we see that there aren't some critical message types that could enhance your customer relationship like:

• "Thank you" messages.
• Support messages with any inconvenient customers may have
• Marketing or promotional messages
• Feedback
• Requests to remove or update any review of an existing product

In this case, we recommend using any software email to help you automate these messages to each customer's group. 

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Reach out to users who reviewed similar products. 

When you visit your product page, you can find users that reviewed similar products and reach out to try yours.

Now, this idea goes a little bit deeper as you'll also do a competitor's study as you perform it.

While on your product's page, go to "Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed" in this section, and you'll see all your competitor's reviews. Pay attention to what all the recent reviews say about those products, then take advantage of all the things they have failed in and try to upgrade the ones where you think you may need to catch up.

After this study process, stalk into the reviewer's profiles and if you're lucky to find their emails there, send a friendly email inviting them to try and review your products. Suppose they don't have their emails but their social networks, even better as you can try to reach them through social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook.

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Contact the top Amazon reviewers. 

These reviewers are like authorities in Amazon's eyes, and getting one from them could increase your seller's attractiveness within the platform. These reviewers can hold the title "Top Ten Reviewer" or "Hall of Fame Reviewer," displayed alongside their reviews, making their studies ultra-valuable.

These reviewers do this full-time, making up to 100 reviews a month and living out of it. The idea with these is to offer a free product in exchange for an appraisal from a trusted source. You'll have to evaluate if the investment is or isn't worth it. 

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Look at reviewers that share tags similar to your selling niche and try to reach them through e-mail or any other channel.

Get Amazon reviews with a product insert.

We already mentioned e-mails as a friendly and not-so-disruptive reminder to get reviews, but what if you put them casually in your packaging? It can be effective too.

Packaging is part of the product's experience, and if yours have a great design, customers will love it when they receive it. But there's something else you can add: expressing your gratitude within your packaging. After this, you can tell them how reviews can help your business and guide them on how they can write their thoughts on Amazon. Include your customer service info so they can contact you if they need to. 

Check this article on how e-commerce influences supply chain management.

When designing your product insert, don't ask them to leave "only positive reviews," as this "suggestion" goes against Amazon's review policy. 

How to deal with Bad Amazon Reviews?

Bad reviews are part of the internet's life. Most of the internet's community is full of hate and bad comments, and if you don't believe us, take a quick look at Twitter; you'll see what we mean.

Regardless of your good intentions or product quality, Amazon users can be mean when they review or, in some cases, have really good motives to complain.

Whatever the case, it isn't the end of the world when you get a bad review, you have to figure out how to handle it most proactively.

So before taking your frustration out of those bad reviews...

Bad Amazon reviews.

Take a cool down.

Getting the first reaction out of frustration isn't the best thing for sellers. Look at this, buyers don't have a reputation for taking care of; you do. This is why you can't write down the first thing that comes to mind when you read a bad or mean review. Instead, we recommend letting your feelings calm down and then analyzing things with a cold mind. Read this guide on what’s a good CPC.

At this moment, ask yourself: Is there anything you did wrong? 

When you answer this, you can either have two conclusions. The first is that the user may be just angry or trolling you, so this doesn't deserve to take time to respond. But the second one is more valuable. What if there's merit to this lousy review?

In this case, the user found a glitch in your products, something you may have missed and didn't know about. In this case, the best thing to do is to stay humble as a business, and instead of attacking them, thank them for their observation. 

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Approach with caution. 

In this part, you can decide whether to respond or not. Nevertheless, this part can get tricky as it can change depending if you are a seller with a bad review of their products or a reseller dealing with negative seller feedback. In any case, how do you do?:

• For Amazon resellers: Evaluate buyer's issue. If it can be fixed, consider offering a replacement or refund. If you handle it gracefully, they can eliminate the review, as feedback can be removed up to 60 days after it is posted.
• For Bad Amazon product reviews: In this case, we don't recommend responding publically, as this can cause more damage, even more, if new reviewers take the "victim's side." In this case, the best you can do is to try your best and gather as many good reviews as possible. Ultimately, the platform will remove a review in specific cases 
  involving privacy violations or obscene language, although this is very strange.

Final thoughts

"You won't buy a product without hearing something good about it."

This is what any Amazon shopper thinks of when hunting for products on the platform.

That is why you, as a seller, must apply the reverse method and "hunt down your buyers" so that they leave you good reviews or feedback about your business.

After all, maintaining a reasonable rate of reviews goes hand in hand with customer relationship management techniques, so keeping in touch through all our communication channels will be the most effective way to remind you to leave a thumbs up within our comments. 

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