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Early reviewer program will stop
Recently, Amazon stated: “From March 5, we will no longer allow new registrations for the Early Reviewer Program, and will stop providing this service to sellers who have registered for the program on April 20, 2021.“
The function cancellation will aim at the four markets of the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and India.
What is early reviewer program?
Early reviewer program is a program that encourages buyers who have purchased a product to share their real experience through reviews. The program helps brand owners to get reviews.
- Launch time: 2017.
- For sellers: Third-party sellers who must successfully complete Amazon brand registration.
- Product restriction: Each seller can provide up to 100 parent products (Parent SKUs).
- Charging standard: Each SKU charges $60 USD. If there is a consumption tax, the seller also needs to pay.
- Duration: 1 year or 5 reviews for each parent product, and the plan ends when any conditions are met.
- Method: Amazon will select buyers, and the buyers who successfully participate will receive a gift card of $1-3 dollars provided by Amazon. In addition, Amazon will not disclose in advance who will receive these rewards. In order to ensure the authenticity of the reviews, sellers can judge by whether the buyer has the orange mark of “early reviewer reward”. (Amazon employees, sellers participating in this program, and their relatives and friends are not eligible to participate in this program).
What is the impact of program cancellation on sellers?
Early Reviewer Program is an official method to get reviews for seller’s products. If the program stops, it will be bad news for the seller.
How to get Amazon reviews?
If you want to get more valuable reviews for your Amazon business, you must understand Amazon’s Policies. You can use some methods to get reviews, however, these methods have some limitations. As a result, it is important for sellers to take some time to familiarize with Amazon’s policies and to ensure compliance with these.
Here are types of reviews that Amazon don’t allow and will remove:
- A review by someone who has a direct or indirect financial interest in the product.
- A review by someone perceived to have a close personal relationship with the product’s owner, author, or artist.
- A Review from the product manufacturer, posing as an unbiased shopper.
- Multiple negative reviews for the same product from one customer.
- A review in exchange for monetary reward.
- A review of a game in exchange for bonus in-game credits.
- A negative review from a seller on a competitor’s product.
- A positive review from an artist on a peer’s album in exchange for receiving a positive review from them.
You can still get product reviews by the following ways:
1. Send emails
According to Amazon’s communication guidelines, sellers can actively send emails to request buyers to comment and feedback on products. However, sellers can only ask for reviews in a neutral manner, and cannot exchange rewards for review.
At the same time, sellers can’t repeatedly send in-site letters to ask for comments or feedback. That is to say, sellers can only send an email once.
2. Request a Review
Find the “Request a Review” button on the order details page. Clicking this button will trigger a request to Amazon to send a review message on our behalf.
The message includes pictures of our products, requests for buyers to write reviews and feedback, and will be automatically translated into the buyer’s preferred language. Here we have no way to control the content of the messages sent by Amazon, and there is no risk of violations.
3. Join The Amazon Vine Program
Before you join the Amazon vine program, you must be a professional seller with a registered brand in the Amazon Brand Registry. Then you can join the Amazon vine program easily, you can log in and enroll a product by selecting the ASIN and agreeing to the terms and conditions.
And there are 3 tiers:
The Basic level of service: you can enroll 5 products.
The Plus level: allows you to register 10 products.
The Premium: allows you to register 20 products.
Once you enroll your products, you ship free products to Amazon, which features them in a monthly newsletter for Vine Voices to select, order, and review.
4. Create a contact list
It will take a few times for you to create your contact list, however, once you have a mailing list, you can request reviews from those who’ve purchased from you. Also, you will find your contact list will more and more over time, and it is easier and easier for you to get the reviews.
You can collect email addresses via newsletter and social media. For example, add product inserts into existing products, encouraging people to join your list. Of course, you can obtain the email from your Instagram，Facebook and Youtube.
5. Contact reviewers
From the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought “and “Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed” on the product page, you can find customers who have reviewed products similar to yours.
In this way, you can check their reviews and you can know the reviewers’ details. Some of them have provided contact info, in this way, you can contact them. Of course, if there is no other information except for the name, would you try to contact them on social networks just like Twitter or Facebook?
6. Join Facebook groups
You can join the Facebook reviewer groups, there are a lot of gathered sellers, and buyers. You can promote your products, in this way, if buyers are interested in your products, they will buy the products. Also, if you have provided a great product and customer service, definitely they are willing to share the experience.
7. Launch your products on deals website
It is a common method. You can launch your product on the deals sites, sell your products on these deals sites, and get reviews. However, you must know, sometimes you have to pay for the sites to launch your products.
Further Reading: How to get amazon reviews?