You’ve probably heard of the terms “white hat” and “black hat.” These terms refer to two different approaches – one that follows the rules (white hat) and one that doesn’t (black hat).

With the rise of Amazon review scams over the last few years, you’ve no doubt seen some of these black hat techniques. Some examples include:

• Writing fake reviews for products or services that don’t exist
• Adding false information to existing reviews in an attempt to boost their ratings
• Buying positive reviews from third parties, often using bots or other automated tools

One of the quickest ways to get an Amazon suspension is to use these black hat techniques, or hire an agency that uses them. Amazon is cracking down on all of these techniques and encouraging sellers to report fake reviews immediately.

In this article we’ll outline some specific white hat and black hat techniques to getting more reviews on Amazon, and we’ll also outline what to do to be successful.

White Hat Techniques to Get Product Reviews on Amazon

As of the publish date of this article, these techniques all conform to Amazon’s seller policies and code of conduct. These Amazon review techniques are considered white hat as they follow Amazon’s rules.

Technique 1: Product Inserts

Product inserts are a simple, yet efficient way for sellers to get reviews from Amazon customers. A product insert card that is well made contains all the relevant information like brand name, logo, thank you message, and also a request for a review. Like everything else there are dos and don’ts to follow when deciding on copy for your product inserts.

Pro Tip: If you offer an extended warranty or other service after the sale, a product insert is a great way to inform your customers of these opportunities. You might include a landing page where customers can sign up with their email. Now that you have their email, you can ask for a review after the sale.

On a very serious note, it is important that your product insert is Amazon compliant no matter what. Amazon has a detailed Selling Policies and Seller Code of Conduct that all sellers must adhere to.

Technique 2: Email Review Follow-up

Amazon exclusive sales funnels like Discount Coupon Sender will substantially increase your sales by organically boosting your product rankings and reviews. By using a sales funnel, you can create a landing page that acts as an intermediate page between your advertisement and your Amazon product listing. These landing pages can be a platform to provide more information about your product and to gather customer emails before they’re redirected to Amazon to make their purchase.

Two big reasons why landing pages work

1. You can collect customers’ emails prior to your customers making a purchase from you on Amazon. Doing so is not legal after they become Amazon customers.
2. It’s statistically proven that the chances of conversion on Amazon are higher than those customers who directly visit your product page.

Once you capture and send your coupon via your landing page using Discount Coupon Sender’s URL Builder, chances are you’ll see maximum conversion and a significant increase in product rankings and reviews by using two-step URLs and an email follow up.

With the Email Review Follow-up feature, you can follow up and send emails to your customer’s real email – thereby reminding them to leave a review. These emails are completely customizable which gives your end customer a feeling of importance.

Email marketing Follow-up is cost-efficient, but the open rates can be quite low (10-30%) in comparison to the (70-90%) open rates on Facebook Messenger. This brings us to the next technique.

Technique 3: Use Facebook Messenger

The high open rates on Facebook Messenger lead to higher engagement rates (44%) which significantly increases your chances of obtaining more reviews.

In compliance with Amazon’s terms and conditions, you will not be able to collect a customer’s email address after they convert on Amazon. So, the best method of collecting emails from customers is by using a landing page that delivers coupons via Facebook Chatbot.

Note that Facebook Messenger has removed the extra follow-up, so we need to find ways that are completely compliant to collect our reviews.

Luckily, there’s a solid sequence of messages which are totally customizable.

These emails are in turn used to trigger the email follow sequence to collect reviews via an email which is compliant.

Technique 4: Retarget Customers via Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads are more expensive, but they give you even more visibility than Facebook Messenger. A landing page tool will help you capture a customer’s email in the collected leads option.

Once you obtain your leads, you can upload them on Facebook. The leads are obtained by using your landing page and are captured in the “Collected Leads” specific to your campaigns so you can personalize your target customers. When you integrate your Facebook pixel to your landing page, you will be able to track a list of people who claimed your coupon and those who are redirected to Amazon.

Technique 5: Convert Seller Feedback to Product Reviews

Amazon allows customers to leave a review for both products and sellers. But, what if they get confused and leave your product reviews in the wrong place?

In this instance it can be appropriate to reach out to your customers via Amazon thanking them for their seller review and gently request them to add a product review on the actual product listing to help future customers.

Black Hat Techniques to Get Product Reviews on Amazon – Stay Away From These Review Strategies!

These are commonly used black hat techniques to try and get more product reviews. These techniques are black hat because they are against Amazon’s code of conduct. As above we outlined the white hat strategies you can use to get more product reviews, explicitly stating these black hat “techniques” can help you to stay away from these. Do not do these.

Loophole 1: Friends and Family

Amazon closely monitors the IP address, credit card billing info, and shipping addresses of customers. Why? To make sure your reviews are unbiased and written by real customers, not accumulated from your loved ones. Amazon’s terms and conditions are strictly against getting reviewed this way.

Loophole 2: Finding out who the Customer is via Amazon Shipment Reports

By collecting a customer’s address and looking them up in big data databases, chances are you can track their email and market to your customers via social media. This is totally against Amazon’s rules.

Loophole 3: Review Trading Websites, Facebook Groups, and Forums

One of the other ways to try and stack up reviews is by using websites that offer Amazon deals. However, this is quite risky. These sites might seem like an effective way of acquiring reviews fast, but you also run the risk of acquiring lots of negative reviews.

While it’s perfectly fine to promote a product in large forums, DO NOT incentivize for reviews.

Loophole 4: Fake Accounts, Fake Reviews

Fake accounts (zombie accounts that are not used by real customers) are used by Amazon sellers to purchase their own products and leave positive reviews. If you do this, chances are you will be found by Amazon’s constant ever-changing algorithms which are being significantly improved over time.

Loophole 5: Negative Review Deletion with Overseas Employees

There have been reports that Amazon employees from countries like China and India have been bribed for the deletion of negative reviews. This predominantly occurs on a large scale and could result in a total account suspension. It’s really expensive as well and it is not something you should ever attempt.

The Dos – This is What you Should be Doing!

Tip 1: Understand all of Amazon’s Guidelines

As a seller, you must completely be aware of Amazon’s terms of service in order to always remain compliant. It is a good idea to read the monthly Amazon Seller Newsletter, and also proactively check Amazon’s terms of service to stay informed.

Tip 2: Spread the word

Don’t spam your posts everywhere in the name of marketing. Target the right relevant crowd for your products. Once you’ve targeted the right people in an interesting way, the traffic will follow.

Running more promotions and discounts will also significantly increase your sales, thereby increasing the chance of you getting reviews from verified purchasers

Tip 3: Be the Seller of a Top-Notch Product

You can’t hide behind a bad product. Good reviews start with sourcing great products. Consumers today are too smart and can see through fake reviews. They’re also fast to leave bad reviews if the product is genuinely bad or not as expected. Offering a product that is high quality will increase the customer satisfaction rate. Selling a low quality product will work against you as the customer might be more likely to leave a negative review.

Speaking about reviews, it’s a good idea to keep your eyes peeled on competitors who sell similar products to always check for their customer’s feedback to stay on top of your game and figure out room for improvements.

Tip 4: Have Open Communication Channels, but Don’t Pester Your Customers

As an Amazon seller, you need to provide maximum support to your customers. But, also remember not to go overboard by annoying them. If things go bad, you’ll never be cross-selling to them in the future, chances are, they might even leave a negative review which totally works against you.

Tip 5: Make Customers Feel Special with Premium Product Packaging

Make your customers feel special by giving them top-notch packaging. This will give them a feeling of bliss even if the product they’ve bought from you is not so high end.

It’s only human to have an adrenaline rush to open a product especially when it’s a product they’re using for the first time or a niche product, so take advantage of this opportunity to give your customers a “wow moment”.

Once your customer is happy, all you need to do is plan wisely and that positive review is definitely yours. It goes without saying, a high-quality product should tag along with the perfect packaging.

Tip 6: Enroll in the Amazon Vine program

Amazon’s Vine Program is an invite-only group of reviewers that receive products for free in exchange for impartial reviews. They will often receive products before they are released. Anyone who is a member of the Vine Program will have a badge on all the reviews they leave as Amazon distinguishes them as Vine Voices.

Amazon banned all forms of incentivized reviews, whether paying customers for reviews or sending free products to customers to review. The only legit way to get early reviews is to enroll in the Amazon Vine Program.

Trying to game the Amazon review system will not work. You will get suspended from Amazon or even banned from selling altogether.

We hope this guide was helpful in your pursuit of high quality reviews. Amazon’s terms of service are always changing so be sure to stay up-to-date on the latest updates and reshape your review strategy accordingly. To start creating landing pages that convert more customers, check out Discount Coupon Sender.

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