Amazon Review Policy – Don’t Get Shut Down! with Brenda Crimi

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Hey there, product launchers. Got another great office hours for you. This one is with Brenda Creamy. She is our Amazon seller expert in all things on how to sell on Amazon, how to learn how to know if your products are right. Brenda Creamey is our Amazon selling expert. So let's hear from Brenda. Hey, product launchers. Brenda Creame here with AMZ Alliance. I'm here to give you some helpful tips around the Amazon review policies. So first I want to talk about why reviews are even important because I think there's some misconception as to the value of the reviews on Amazon. So reviews help conversion of a product. They give social proof. I'm sure as you're shopping on Amazon, you're looking at reviews, you're reading what other shoppers are saying about that and that gives you confidence to buy that product. So that helps with the conversion of that customer, that shopper into a sale. Reviews do not help your ranking. So a lot of new sellers are anxious to get reviews because they think that's going to help the ranking. So I wanted to clarify right off the bat that reviews do not help the ranking. Reviews help the conversion of sales and the sales will impact your ranking. So they have a little bit of an impact on your ranking in the long way around it. But reviews are just to provide social proof for your conversion. So that being said, I want to make sure that they're understood, that they're important and what Amazon has in place around the policies and reviews. Why did Amazon put policies around reviews? It seems like, you know, just let us play, let's just get our reviews up there. Well, up until about the fourth quarter of 2016, it was kind of like the wild, wild west with reviews. And there was a strategy to get products ranking by utilizing review clubs. So there were these clubs out there that you could participate as a seller and as a shopper and you could get all kinds of products for five bucks for free, a dollar in exchange for a review. And what happened is the Amazon platform was inundated with reviews that customers weren't trusting. I mean, you imagine if you go onto a product and you have all five star reviews and all those reviews came within the last 30 days, you'd be suspect, too. And so, as Amazon's platform is building out, they want their shoppers to really be able to rely on those customer reviews. So they've started putting some policies into play and made it a critical error to solicit for reviews in exchange for any type of promotion or discount. And I'm going to get into a little bit more nitty gritty around what the parameters of those promotions are and are not available to you. So frankly, the other side of it is it's just illegal. You know, the Federal Trade Commission, they say if somebody has any type of relationship to somebody who's leaving a review, that must be disclosed. When you think about it from the shopper's point of view, put your shopper hat on now. And as you are talking to somebody or reading a review on a product page or a Facebook ad or some type of solicitation, and somebody's going on and on about how fabulous this product is, well, you want to trust that what they're saying is accurate. But imagine if then they disclosed, I happen to be Aunt Sally or I was paid for this review. That changes your perspective on that review. You give it a little bit of different weight, you're a little bit more conscientious of the information that they're sharing, and you may choose to do some more additional vetting on your own. So the Federal Trade Commission has made it illegal to provide reviews without clarifying a relationship if there's one that exists. So Amazon's actually in alignment with those policies. I mean, that's really important. Specifically, in our industry, we use product influencers, bloggers, to promote our product. And it's important, and they should know that they need to disclose that they were given that product to review. And that would be according to the Federal Trade Commission's terms. So some of the product review solicitation practices you'll find on Amazon is asking for a positive review. So Amazon has no problem with you asking for a review and encouraging shoppers to leave reviews. What they have a problem with is you giving any indication as to what that review should look like. So you cannot ask for a positive review. You cannot ask to change or remove a review. So if a shopper puts a review on your page that you don't agree with, you cannot communicate to that shopper that you wish them to remove or change that review or viewpoint. In summary, you just cannot attempt to influence a review in any way. So ways in which they consider an influence of review is including a re gift. So, hey, Mr. Shopper, if you review my product, I'm going to give you this bonus product. You cannot do that. You can't offer a refund or reimbursement for the product after the fact. That's a big no, no. And that's a strategy some people will actually use. I've seen solicitations to the general public and in fact, I actually had a client that did that after me explaining not to be like, please don't do that. One of the things I should say right off the bat, if you do not adhere to these policies, Amazon doesn't ask. They shoot first and ask questions later. So they will shut your account down and then you'll have to beg for forgiveness and hopefully get your selling privileges back up. So even if you eventually do get them back up, you could be looking at a loss of at least 30 days in sales. Because when that happens, the process to get reinstated doesn't move very quickly. They've got other things to deal with and it's kind of a nightmare. It's best to tread on the side of compliance and abide by these terms of service. So back to what you cannot do is solicit for a review in any way. You can't do the prize drawings, you can't do a discount on future purchases, nor are you allowed to leave a review on your product yourself or ask your mom or Aunt Sally to leave a product review for your product. Really, you think about back to the summary of what their trade commission is establishing is they want shoppers to be informed and be able to trust that these reviews are honest. So it used to be before Amazon tightened up the review policies, they allowed a little looser guidelines with leaving reviews as long as you disclosed your relationship. Amazon is not even allowing that anymore. So that is not even an option. So just don't do it. And worse than anything else is trying to leave a review on a competitor's product. That's a blatant no, no, don't do that. So any of these types of incentives for review or grounds for getting your account shut down, so it's not even worth it. And if you think that they won't find out, they will. They've got those little Amazon spy bots. I know for a fact that if they suspect a relationship. So let's say you have. Back in the old days, we used to have people in our family in close circles purchase the product and leave a review. If those families and acquaintances that made that purchase raw within a certain area, like, say, all the same city, Amazon would Be like suspicious about that and potentially group you as some type of relationship. So those spy bots are out there, they're looking for that type of stuff. Don't even chance it. What will happen sometimes if they suspect that there's a relationship with that review, Amazon will wipe the review out. They won't even ask, they won't even disclose that they did that. You'll just go in, one day you have 70 some odd reviews and the next day you go in and you only have 60 some odd reviews. And the reason for that is Amazon for some reason deemed that that review is out of compliance or there must have been some type of relationship or something involved with that and they just wiped out that review. The good news is that doesn't necessarily affect your seller account. But you need to be conscious that that does happen and it happens often. And so don't think that they won't find out. It's not even worth taking the risk. So now I just went through all the things that you can't do and I told you that reviews were important. So what are some of the things that you can do to get reviews? Well, first of all, the good news is the product doesn't actually have to have been purchased on Amazon to leave a review. Anybody can leave a review on a product. They simply go to the bottom of the detail page and click on the little link that says leave a product review. Which is good news because as a new listing on Amazon and you're trying to get authentic real reviews on the product, to start establishing that social proof, you can reach out to some of your current customers that actually have purchased the product locally and ask them to leave a review. Now remember my guidelines, you don't ask them to leave a five star review. You don't ask them to leave a great review. You ask them to leave an honest review. So you can establish your initial reviews through your network of sales that you have established locally. Also, you can get those initial reviews because Amazon automatically sends out the request to the customers. The caveat to that though is about a year ago Amazon sent out a option for customers to opt out of receiving any solicitations outside of that individual product sale. So I would say at least 30 to 40% of customers have opted out of receiving those types of solicitations. But Amazon does send them out if they haven't opted out. Another way that you can receive reviews or solicit for review is through some autoresponders. There's a lot of third party software out there that actually will tie into your Amazon account. They're very inexpensive. Some of them or majority of them I think are free for their first hundred units of sales per month. And then you can buy packages and increments up depending on the volume of sales you have on a monthly basis. I'm guessing 15, $20 a month for this type of an autoresponder. Now remember, Amazon doesn't give you an email for your customers. All the communication for the customer is within the email system of Amazon. So it's an encrypted email. But these third party softwares tie into that system and you can set up some type of email that will go out to the shopper or your customer, the purchaser, after certain increments have happened. You could say upon purchase, send this email. You could say five days after confirmation of receipt, send this email. So those type of emails could look like customer service oriented, like you know, hey, we're the best company on earth here and we want to make sure we're always providing golden customer service in those email systems. Do not ever say five star review because Amazon's looking for some languaging in those email systems too. Make sure that you're in compliance. So by saying if this we haven't earned a five star review, then let us know. Amazon would not like that language. So you would say we always want to provide top notch customer service. If you're not happy, we're not happy. And those autoresponders allow for links and you don't have to be techie to use these. They actually are very easy. They're templates. You click a button, say I want to link to the product here. You click a button, I want to link to seller feedback here. So it's really easy for the customer engage within that email. So you can say simply, we want to provide our top notch customer service. It's important to us that you're happy. If you're not happy, you've got our attention. Reply to this email and let us know what the problem is so we can solve it for you. If not, we'd love to hear your feedback on your product so that other shoppers can be confident with their purchase. Click here to leave a product review. So that is an email solicitation that is absolutely in compliance because you're approaching it from the customer service basis and you're not asking them to leave any type of level of review, you're asking them just to leave a review. So that's absolutely in compliance with Amazon. Again, note that those can also be opted out of. If the customer has chosen not to receive those type of solicitations and they have opted out of it, they won't receive those, but you aren't charged for those. You're only charged for the number of emails that go out. So it may be worth your while. I will say that majority of shoppers don't leave reviews. I mean people who leave reviews for their products, maybe 1 to 2%. So it's a slow and daunting process to gather a lot of reviews. So if you see a product on Amazon that has a lot of reviews, probably they've been in Amazon selling for quite some time. So put your patient's hat on. You want to provide excellent customer service to get those good honest reviews and utilize the systems to support getting them a little bit quicker. So these third party softwares help. Amazon also has an early reviewer program that they just launched over the last year. It's $60 first of all to even enroll. If you think about when you're a brand new listing on Amazon and you're wanting to promote that listing or do some sponsored ads, you want to have that social proof established on your page first before you start paying for ads and things because you want to have your chances of conversion the best that they can be. You want that page solid. So spending $60 before you spend $600 in ads is a good investment. And what Amazon will do, they have an early reviewer program. They will actually themselves solicit to your purchasers. So people who have had to purchase on Amazon your product and Amazon will solicit to them that they will give them a $3 gift card if they leave a review for your product. Now it's kind of funny because I've exactly against the terms of services that we're talking about, but Amazon obviously is in control of it and they can make sure the language is not manipulative and is adhering to all of the policies. So for $60, they'll send and continually send these solicitations for a review in Exchange for a $3Amazon gift card until you get your first five reviews. Once you get the first five reviews, the program stops. They won't do over that. So this is good for those first initial reviews. If you already have five on your listing, this is not a program for you. Also, the product has to be at a price point of $15 or higher. So that's a pretty low threshold. Most people would be able to qualify for that. So that's the Amazon early review program. Amazon also has what they call Amazon vine. And it is a group of reviewers, a pool of reviewers that will review products as well. That particular program is only available to vendors of Amazon. So if you sell your product directly to Amazon, you're a vendor of Amazon and you know what I'm talking about. That program is $1,500 to be part of that review program. So just know that that's available if you qualify for that. But to the general public, you'd probably want to do the early reviewer program for the 60 bucks and also reach out to your current customer base that have purchased the products and ask if they'll leave an honest review on Amazon for you. So those are absol within Amazon's terms of service. So there are a couple different types of reviews that are confusing between sellers. You hear product review and you hear seller feedback. And sometimes people will clump those two together. So I want to clarify that today for you as well. The product review is exactly what it sounds like. It's an actual review of the product and it goes on the detail page of the product. So down at the bottom where reviews happen, that is a product review. The other type of review that Amazon solicits for is seller feedback. And seller feedback is based on you as a seller. How did the sale process go? Was delivery on time? Any communication? Was it professional? All of those type qualifications as to you as a seller fulfilling that order. So when Amazon solicits for both of those, usually it's within the same email and shoppers are a little confused as to what those actually mean and what the difference is between them. So when somebody leaves a product review on your page that is stuck there, it is not going anywhere unless it's out of compliance, in which case we're going to talk a little bit about what to do about that. If somebody leaves a seller feedback that is negative, those are more easily removed. Absolutely removed. If it's about the product. So somebody clicks the lease seller feedback and they say this product isn't what I thought it was going to be. They leave some type of product review. You can go through the automated system contacting Amazon, put in the order number and actually get that removed. If it is an FBA product versus a merchant fulfilled product, There are some other ways in which you can get negative feedback removed. If it is fulfilled by Amazon product and they leave a comment on your seller feedback about it was late delivered or something that was out of your control is Amazon's, those will be wiped out and easily removed. Now, if it is a merchant Fulfilled product and they are disclosing frustration around the order fulfillment. Those will have a harder time being removed. So your seller feedback is where you see the stars next to your store name. That's where the seller feedback is. And the product review again is at the bottom of the page. So let's revisit about the product reviews. What do you do if you get negative product reviews? So I told you that it's almost impossible to get those removed. So at the very least you want to comment on them. If you go into the review and you read the review, which you should be anyway, you should spend once a week, you need to pop onto your detail page and read what these customers are saying about their product. What do they like about it? What don't they like about it? Because your listing should be an ever evolving content of information. So if somebody's saying they're questioning whether this product has this or that and you don't have that addressed within your page details, that would be a hint to you to then maybe include that in your page details or maybe enhance your images to answer those questions. Those are your opportunities to help conversion. So read those customer reviews on a weekly basis, gather that information and adjust your detail page to accommodate the information and feedback you're getting for customers. But back to if it is a negative review, at the very least you want to go into that review. Right underneath the review is a little box that says comment. You can click on that comment and type a response to that. I will say, in the four and a half years that we've been selling, I have never had anybody comment back on the comment. So I'm not sure if shoppers ever see it. But the shoppers that do see it are the shoppers that come after. So what I will do is often if somebody says something negative about the product or questions something that they weren't happy, I make sure I comment right there. Remember, this is all about great customer service. Your satisfaction is utmost important to us. Please contact us so that we can make this ride something of that sort. And what that does is the next shopper that comes through and reads the reviews and sees that negative review and that there's a comment underneath it, that they'll read the comment from us as the brand and they'll go, oh, well, you know what? That brand really cares. We all know that there's going to be dissatisfied customers, but this brand always makes it right. So they don't give as much weight to those negative reviews. So at the very least, you want to make sure. That you comment on them and provide great customer service. I said that their reviews are almost impossible to have removed. There are guidelines for leaving negative reviews. If you suspect a competitor's kind of sabotaging you and leaving a negative review or the review is somehow out of Amazon's terms of service. There is a little button too that you can click report abuse and that will take you through a process. You can get more information as to why you feel like this review should be taken down, but it will not be taken down just because a customer is frustrated with your product. Shoppers can express what they need to express. As long as they're not abusive and not cussing and you're not suspecting it's a competitor, that review is pretty much going to stay there. Buyers can change their reviews back to that email autoresponder thing that we were talking about. If you make great attempts to provide the customer service and make a situation right for the customer, the customer can go back in there and change the review. Remember, you cannot solicit to that customer to change a review. So if you are providing that great customer service, you might say something like, hopefully your view of us has changed and now that we've provided this great customer service, we would appreciate you telling other shoppers about it or something like that. That would be languaging. That would be okay. Within Amazon's point of view, it's very difficult to find out who that customer is and tie it to an actual order where you could actually communicate to the customer. But if you do some digging, you kind of can figure out who that shopper might be. But never, ever, ever initiate a contact through the email system about that review. Keep it to the comments. Like I was explaining earlier, if that shopper responds back to those comments and actually follows through with contacting you to make it right. Just provide that top notch customer service and work with the customer within those guidelines. So what to do if you get the negative seller feedback? I already told you that it can be removed and you just contact Amazon through the little help porthole where you create tickets and say, you know, there's an actual box that you check that you want to remove seller feedback and then you put the order number in and then you give the information about the product or whatever the parameters are as to why you're wanting it removed. And more times than not, it actually will automatically be removed. Sometimes you'll get the little response that it needs to be reviewed before it's removed, but it's not a very lengthy process. So it's always worth it to at least try to get it removed. I often get product reviews that are positive within my seller feedback and I actually leave those as long as they're a four or five star review. It helps our seller metrics and so I just leave the product reviews in there. Some people will solicit the shopper who left a seller feedback about the product within the seller feedback. Some people will solicit them and follow up, email and say, hey, you left it in the wrong place. Would you mind leaving that feedback on the product page instead? And here's the link. My point of view, that's a little bit gray. I kind of feel like leave the shoppers alone, they left you the feedback kind of a thing and just be patient with that if you want to reach out to a few people. If it's very early on, maybe it's worth that extra effort. But be very select in your languaging and make it all about the customer service and things. So the bottom line is, you know you want to think of your reviews as an opportunity for great customer service and you provide that great customer service and abide by the AMAZ terms of service and you'll be just fine. Thank you for joining me today. I hope that clarified some of the information around reviews and you're always going to stay in compliant until next time.

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