Yup, I felt like a crying baby after Amazon removed the removes I worked so hard for. We’ve dealt with this as have many sellers. Amazon has been throwing down the gauntlet on people who do not follow their guidelines around the collection of reviews. We’ve noticed a number of things that Amazon private label sellers should be aware of when enlisting review service websites and even reaching out to friends and relatives around getting reviews for their products. So read their review guidelines and notice many of the nuances in it: Amazon Customer Review Guidelines. Here are some other guidelines as well.
You should remain calm and understand that getting reviews will always remain the lifeblood of any Amazon business. It is all about social proof in today’s world and it is the core of how Amazon built its own company (creating a review system that builds confidence in people buying on their platform). But at the same time they need to protect the customer in every way possible.
So after losing reviews, getting them back, and seeing the core of how to follow Amazon’s review policies, here are 4 ways Amazon Sellers can increase the chances of their reviews not being removed.
How To Leave A Decent Review (4 Requirements)
This text is taken by verbatim from Amazon’s review guidelines link.
- Include the “why”: The best reviews include not only whether you liked or disliked a product or service, but also why. Feel free to make comparisons with related products or services you’ve experienced.
- Be specific: Your review should be relevant to the product or service you’re reviewing and focus on specific features or your experience. For video and image reviews, we recommend that you write a brief introduction.
- Not too short, not too long: Written reviews should be at least 20 words and are limited to 5,000 words. The ideal length is 75 to 500 words. Video reviews have a 10-minute limit, but we recommend 2 to 5 minutes to keep your audience engaged.
- Be sincere: We welcome your honest opinion about the product or service. We do not remove reviews because they are critical. We believe all helpful information can inform our customers’ buying decisions.
Promotional Giveaways – “Exchange For Honest & Unbiased Review”
This is the process we all go through to get reviews:
- Create Your Promotion on Amazon
- Pick and service or group to give your product away
- Ensure your email sequence through FeedbackGenius or Salesbacker is live
- Wait for your reviews to come in
- If you know the individuals, you may always reach out to them
Promotional giveaways are vital and Amazon knows it. Otherwise they wouldn’t offer it to sellers. Doing promotions in exchange for reviews and people testing out the product are perfectly OK with Amazon. The key difference is whether your reviewers who purchased leave the REQUIRED disclaimer “I received this product in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.” That disclaimer cannot be buried in the text of the review. It must be inconspicuous and easily seen by the searcher/customer. If your reviewers are leaving that disclaimer, 9 times out of 10 you should be fine.
Amazon has data learning engine that is scraping through product reviews and matching up which ones offer huge discounts and when those same individuals left reviews and whether those reviews at least have that language. If your reviewers do not leave it, their review will be removed and the reviewer eventually may get banned from leaving future reviews on products.
Incentivizing Of Reviews (Best Way To Amazon Reviews Deleted)
You cannot pay people to leave you a review nor can you entice them to do so. For example, you cannot offer a contest when prerequisite of that contest is leaving a review for your product. This is something else against Amazon’s terms of service and this is a big one. I would not mess around and get caught if someone wanted to secretly report you for doing so. Amazon will not ask questions and will simply shut down your listing while they investigate…investigations that can take as long as 2 weeks to a month.
Facebook Groups Or Other Groups
Be care of Facebook groups. We’ve heard that Amazon is somehow able to match up those who are part of the same Facebook group but I don’t believe that. You just need to be care and add diversity in the sources in which you get your reviews. There are plenty of obscure Facebook groups that have members who receive a ton a great product in exchange for leaving you a review. We have a post on the multitude of ways for Amazon Sellers to get reviews and Facebook is still a great avenue. But you have to be careful and make sure they are trained to leave good quality reviews.
Organic Reviews From Real Purchasers
This is probably the best way to get reviews. If you have a happy buyer and you’ve developed an effective email sequence that encourages them to leave a review, it will not be removed. That is by far the best way to protect the reviews you’ve built up over time.
Build Your Own List
Building your own list of reviewers is both powerful and smart. Your list becomes accustomed to buying your products at discount and leaving candid feedback (usually positive). Again, if provide a significant discount, the best way to protect that review is to ensure they leave the disclaimer that they received the product in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. Without it, your review will be exposed to being deleted and the reviewer will no longer be able to leave that review again.
Diversity In Amazon Reviewers Will Win The Day
Final note about groups. The reason we don’t believe launching multiple products to the same group matters because Amazon does not know whether that group is part of a Facebook following, customers you built up overtime and collected their emails, or even if they are friends and family (aside from maybe matching up last names which too is questionable on their part if they do that). That is why we stress some level of diversity in the reviews you get. Get them from multiple sources and build up a BIG list of potential brand ambassadors. If you can focus on the many different ways in which you can get review and execute on those while training your reviewers to leave that ever-so-vital disclaimer, 9 times out of 10 your reviews will stick and not get wiped out.
