Power Points:

Recently, the FTC sent a warning to over 700 brands and retailers regarding penalties for fake endorsements and reviews.
Content moderation is an essential tool for ensuring that user-generated content — including reviews, photos, videos, and Q&A — is authentic and fraud-free.
Follow these best practices to prevent fake reviews

If you partner with influencers, you’ve likely become aware of the recent announcement the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent to over 700 brands and retailers regarding penalties for fake endorsements and reviews. While this notice primarily references influencer content and testimonials, you may be wondering how it applies to your customer reviews.

Today, nearly all shoppers depend on user generated content (UGC) — including reviews, Q&A, photos and videos — to make informed purchase decisions.

For this reason, every brand and retailer wants to have a positive ratings and reviews footprint. It can therefore be tempting to selectively block negative reviews or manufacture positive review content.

Don’t even think about it. It’s a very bad idea. And again for anyone at the back who didn’t hear: DON’T DO IT. Why? Number one: it’s completely unethical and goes against the whole ethos of why shoppers read reviews in the first place when making purchase decisions. Number two: sooner or later, shoppers will figure it out. And when they do, they won’t be happy.

Ask yourself: Do you really want to jeopardize consumer trust and your brand equity? Artificially manufacturing your review footprint is simply not a long-term strategy for success.

Unfortunately, fake reviews have become more prevalent in recent years. According to research from BrightLocal, four in five shoppers say they’ve encountered a fake review in the last year. One in three have seen multiple.

With the rise in fake reviews — and widespread knowledge of them — it’s essential that brands earn consumer trust by displaying authentic reviews, written by actual customers who have actually purchased and used your products.

But it’s critical to have a solid moderation process in place to ensure this content is, in fact, authentic. The risk is high for brands that don’t, from lost customers to upwards of $43,000 in fines from the FTC.

Does your existing Ratings & Reviews vendor take authenticity seriously?

As we said, authenticity is important. Whichever vendor you work with when it comes to UGC or Ratings and Reviews, you need to be asking questions about how they account for this. (Spoiler alert: At PowerReviews, we take authenticity seriously. Very seriously.)

For example, at PowerReviews, we have an entire Authenticity Policy dedicated to it. There, we state our commitment to collecting, displaying and sharing user-generated content from our clients that is authentic and fraud-free. That means we only publish content that hasn’t been modified, made up, fraudulently collected, or selectively curated.

By screening reviews for authenticity first and foremost, we ensure that any UGC collected and displayed through our platform follows the latest FTC guidelines on endorsements and reviews.

Key questions to ask:

What is your company’s underlying philosophy on authentic reviews and why?
What is your step-by-step process to ensure only authentic content makes it to our site?
What are you doing about the new FTC Guidelines?
Explain how your fraud detection processes work. Why should I have confidence in them?
Is all your content moderation automated? How effective is it?
How is your content moderated? Is there an option to supplement with human moderators or other advanced mechanisms that identify and prevent fake and inauthentic reviews? If not, why not?

So, how do you ensure you promote UGC that’s authentic? And how do you prevent the publishing of fake reviews? It all comes down to content moderation.

A four-step, best practice content moderation process

What does a best-in-class ratings and reviews moderation look like?

First of all, it needs to account for each and every piece of content submitted by your shoppers. Every user-generated review, photo, video, question, or answer — should go through an extensive moderation process to confirm it’s authentic, appropriate, and fraud-free. Each piece of content should also not be altered in any way.

All content that is published should appear as it is originally written, including typos and grammatical errors. This ultimately is critical to authenticity and snuffling out fake reviews.

Step 1: Fraud Detection

Displaying fake reviews directly violates FTC guidelines. So it’s important to keep this content off your website.

To safeguard against this threat, industry-leading fraud technology can analyze the device fingerprint data used to submit a piece of UGC. This data identifies the device ID associated with a review, such as a smartphone or tablet and helps to identify suspicious device or IP information. By using this technology, you’re able to prevent all different types of fraudulent reviews, including spam, duplicate content, and promotional content.

For example, if it detects a large number of reviews coming from a single device, those reviews get flagged for potential fraud. Of course, there is a possibility it’s just a customer who’s particularly zealous about reviewing every single product they bought for Black Friday. Most times, however, this kind of activity indicates fraud. Either way, the tech applies a “fraud” tag to it, flagging it for review – potentially by human moderators (more on them in step 3).

Step 2: Automated Filtering

Beyond fraud, systems can also scan each piece of content through an automated filtering process to catch additional authenticity issues, from profanity to personally identifiable information. When a potential issue is detected, a tag is added to that content so that it can be later reviewed by a human.

Examples of the types of content tagged:

Content about the wrong product or retailer
Contradictory content, e.g. a rave review with a 1-star rating
Duplicate content
Foreign language
Medical advice
Personally identifiable information
Profanity
Violent content
Website URLs

For some tags, such as profanity, the content can be automatically rejected for publication. For others, it can be passed to a human moderation team.

A best-in-class vendor will enable you to add additional words or phrases to the profanity filter. It will also make regular updates to these filters, based on emerging slang terms or political slogans, to ensure nothing profane gets published.

(PowerReviews applies observations tags, which we detail in our Moderation Policy)

Step 3: Human Moderation

For many businesses and Ratings and Reviews vendors, the moderation process stops at step two. But relying solely on technology can leave you vulnerable to some of the exact issues that violate the FTC guideline – like deceptive performance claims, medical advice, and other forms of misrepresentation.

Human moderation adds an additional layer of protection for this very reason. Technology can help prevent fraud and profanity, but humans are better equipped to review for nuance, innuendo, and context.

To meet the high standards for authenticity required to successfully snuff out fake reviews (and not to mention the FTC Guidelines), a moderation process powered by both human and artificial intelligence is ideal.

For example – at PowerReviews, our human moderators review every piece of UGC in our secure portal. All content flagged as an observation by our automatic filtering process will be highlighted, such as profane language or reviews that don’t discuss the products.

Upon reviewing all of the Observations, the moderator will determine whether the review should be published. If a review is rejected for publication, it will not be published and will subsequently not be syndicated (if a brand or retailer using our solution chooses to override this decision, the review will only publish to their site — not to any syndicated retailers).

Also of note: our moderators work on several teams. Some moderators work on all English content, while some review content that needs to follow a specific set of guidelines, such as herbal supplements or financial products (PowerReviews can also facilitate an exclusive moderator to review their content for additional concerns, such as medical advice).

Step 4: Badging and Displaying Content

Once a piece of content passes steps 1-3, it’s ready to be displayed on your website. Woohoo! But remember: it’s important to use accurate badging and disclosure codes that indicate the source of the content.

This added layer of transparency shows details such as:

Where a review came from
Whether or not it has been verified i.e. written by a person who actually purchased the product
If it’s been syndicated from another site
If it was collected via a sampling campaign or was shared as a contest entry
If the review was submitted by a company employee

PowerReviews offers the following options which serve as a best practice example.

Verified buyers

A “Verified Buyer” badge should be assigned to reviews written by someone who has actually purchased the product they are reviewing, as identified through their purchase history. This builds consumer confidence, and it also ensures you don’t run afoul of Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits “misrepresenting an endorser as an actual, current, or recent user” of a product.

Sweepstakes & product sampling

The FTC also frowns upon failing to disclose whether an endorsement is paid. In the world of influencers, the proper way to do this is by clearly stating that a post or endorsement is sponsored, e.g. with a #sponsored or #ad hashtag at the top of a post.

A review might be considered a paid endorsement if the reviewer received the product for free, such as through a sweepstakes or product sampling campaign. Here are some examples of special badges that identify this type of content:

Syndicated reviews

The second example above is also an example of you should badge syndicated reviews. All review content that is syndicated beyond the client’s original website must be badged appropriately (at PowerReviews, we do this by including the name or logo of where the review was originally written – at Too Faced as above, for example).

Staff reviews

Finally, reviews that are written by someone who works for a brand or retailer must also be disclosed, as these people may naturally have a more biased opinion of a brand. For these reviews add a “Staff Reviewer” badge.

It’s important to share as much context as possible about your UGC, as this fosters trust with online shoppers. And in many cases, it’s also required by the FTC (Learn more about PowerReviews Badges).

Preserve the Authenticity of Your UGC Through Moderation

Consumers turn to user-generated content because it’s an authentic, unbiased source of information about products and brands from other people like themselves. Consumers trust UGC.

But simply collecting and displaying UGC isn’t enough. Brands must make it a priority to preserve the authenticity of this content. If you’re relying on a UGC vendor, like most brands and retailers, you need to ensure your UGC vendor has effective and powerful capabilities that prevent fake and inauthentic reviews from sneaking.

Content moderation is an essential tool in this process. By ensuring that every piece of UGC that gets published to your site is authentic, brands and retailers can win the trust of both customers and the FTC.

The multi-step content moderation process at PowerReviews helps retailers publish content that is authentic and meets the FTC’s standards for consumer endorsements. Learn more.

Power Points

The majority of shoppers plan to increase their holiday shopping this year, and 63% plan to do “most” or “all” of their holiday shopping online.
UGC imagery isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a key element of the sales process. 99% of consumers specifically seek out photos and videos submitted from other customers at least sometimes. When visitors interact with UGC media on a product page, the product experiences a 91.4% lift in conversion.
Brands can leverage user-generated social images to provide social proof on product pages, curate shoppable galleries throughout their website, and amplify marketing efforts.

As a consumer, shopping online is easy if you know exactly what you are looking for. But what about when you don’t know? What is the digital equivalent of window shopping or walking the aisles in a store? In other words: what makes shopping fun.

Fortunately, there’s social media.

Social media caters to our desire as shoppers to explore. It allows us to experience the joy of discovery in a digital environment. For brands looking to increase online sales, having a strong social strategy will likely be a large part of your success.

Social media is a visual medium. It lives and breathes on images. Consequently, having a library of product and lifestyle photos is now a critical element of success — especially those taken by your customers.

Today, nearly nine in ten shoppers say they are more likely to buy a product when it features user-generated photos and videos.

Clearly, user-generated photos are what the people want. Fortunately for brands, UGC images are easy to source. Curating images from social media is a great way to celebrate your community and to reinforce your customers’ loyalty to your brand. Best of all, you can leverage those social images to sell on non-social channels like your website, emails, in-store , and advertising campaigns.

Read on as we review the power of socially generated UGC, and how brands can leverage UGC imagery to boost sales this holiday season.

3 Reasons Why UGC Imagery is Critical to Ecommerce Success

Let’s start by reviewing the latest stats that demonstrate how UGC imagery drives value, trust, and conversions.

1. Your customers expect to see it.

Today, nearly every consumer (99%) says they specifically seek out photos and videos submitted from other customers at least sometimes. Almost eight in ten shoppers (77%) say they regularly or always seek out UGC images when shopping online.

Why? 80% of consumers find photos from other customers more valuable than photos from brands or retailers. This is a significant increase from 2016, when only 44% indicated they valued user-generated photos more than brand-supplied visual content (almost a 100% increase). 77% regularly or always do.

Types of Photos Consumers Value More

What kind of product photos are more valuable to you: professional photos supplied by the brand/retailer, or those supplied by another customer?

Pro Photos

2016

56%

2021

20%

Customer Photos

2016

44%

2021

80%

Also of note: younger consumers are most likely to value user-generated photos over those provided by brands and retailers. 91% of Gen Z shoppers and 85% of Millennials value user-generated photos more than professional ones.

2. UGC imagery drives conversions.

UGC images aren’t just a nice-to-have; they are proven to drive sales. . When visitors interact with user-generated photos and videos on a product page, the product experiences a 91.4% lift in conversion (based on our recent analysis of 1.5MM online product pages from more than 1,200 brand and retailer sites)

Younger shoppers are especially swayed by visual content. 99% of Gen Z shoppers and 89% of Millennials are more likely to purchase products that have reviews that feature photos and videos.

I’m More Likely to Buy a Product That Has Reviews that Feature Photos and Videos

Boomers

77%

Gen X

83%

Millennials

89%

Gen Z

99%

While the presence of UGC images can lift conversions, their absence can have the opposite effect. In fact, a third of Gen Z consumers and nearly a quarter (21%) of Millennials won’t purchase a product if it doesn’t have photos or videos from other consumers who have purchased it.

3. A (UGC) picture is worth a thousand words.

In the ecommerce world — where customers can’t see, touch, and feel a product — UGC imagery serves a particularly important function. It helps customers confirm that the product looks and works the way it appears in the brand’s photos.

It’s no surprise, then, that the #1 reason why consumers value user-generated media is that it allows them to see what the product looks like in real life.

Top Reasons Consumers Value User-Submitted Photos and Videos

To see what the product looks like in real life

86%

To get a better sense of the size or sizing of the product

75%

It’s more authentic and “real” than standard brand-created imagery

65%

To understand how the product performs

58%

To see if the product fits your own personal need

56%

It creates trust in the product and/or brand

42%

UGC imagery answers important questions about look and feel. It also enables customers to hear from other customers who have similar needs. That’s probably why customers feel UGC visual content provides value for a wide range of product categories — not just obvious ones like clothing and electronics, but also groceries.

Consumers Consider User-Generated Visual Content Helpful for Many Product Types

Clothing

78%

Electronics

70%

Appliances

63%

Home & Garden

62%

Health & Beauty

60%

Shoes

59%

Toys

48%

Computers

48%

Groceries

30%

6 Ways to Leverage Social Curated Images to Drive More Sales Online

Ecommerce has grown steadily year-on-year since pretty much the turn of the century. But Covid gave it a shot in the arm like no other event in history.

After growing 32.4% in 2020, US ecommerce sales are projected to continue to grow by double digits, up 17.9% in 2021 to $933.30 billion. Additionally, penetration of online sales will continue to increase, more than doubling from 2019 to 23.6% in 2025.

With nearly six in ten shoppers reporting that they plan to shop directly from brand websites (as opposed to retailers like Amazon) in 2021, an increase from 2020, it’s especially important for brands to put their best foot forward. Here are six ways you can use social user-generated images this season.

1. Highlight social media images on your product pages.

On your product pages, create galleries highlighting a mix of user-generated images from social media as well as those submitted with a review, like Janie and Jack does:

For those that accompany a review, include a link so customers can click through to read the review.

2. Curate galleries for your home and category pages.

Your homepage can feature a broad selection of customer-generated images from social media, whether it’s your favorite images or the most recent. On your category pages, you can curate a more relevant selection of images.

For example, the UGC gallery on Janie and Jack’s homepage features both boys and girls, while the gallery on their Girls Clothing page features only images of girls:

Power Pro Tip Don’t let supply chain issues hurt your bottom line. Promote the products you do have in-stock by using UGC to drive sales to those products instead of ones that are out-of-stock.

3. Amplify your content marketing.

Let’s face it. Keeping up with the constant demand for new content can be exhausting. Give yourself a break and let your customers do some of the work!

You can repurpose social media images from your customers throughout your content marketing campaigns — on your blog, emails, and social channels. Consider featuring product images in Holiday Gift Guides or Shop the Look posts.

Here’s an example from Milk Makeup, who regrammed one of their customer’s posts to feature in a holiday blog:

4. Convince shoppers to buy online and in-store.

As essential as UGC images are to driving online purchases, they can also be used to influence purchases in-store. 57% of shoppers consult UGC on a brand’s website while shopping in-store.

Social media images can suggest different use cases for your product that may not be mentioned in the product description, thereby encouraging more purchases. Check out these examples from Shure. Customers used their microphones for practicing music, recording radio shows, and online teaching.

Get Inspired! With PowerReviews Social Curation, Shure generated 1,200 images from social media in just a few months. Read the case study.

UGC images from social media can offer styling tips for apparel brands, or recipe inspiration for food brands, like this example from Canyon Bakehouse:

As the Canyon Bakehouse example shows, brands don’t have to offer a transactional ecommerce experience to benefit from using social images and UGC on their website. Even B2B brands enjoy all the benefits (including the ROI boost) of UGC. Read more in our blog.

5. Celebrate the holidays with influencers.

Just like reviews, UGC images are powerful social proof. Make sure to highlight influencer posts in your social media gallery, like Duraflame does:

Power Pro Tip With Social Curation by PowerReviews, you can “safelist” your influencer partners so your social media gallery gets automatically updated as soon as they post about your brand.

6. Make social images shoppable.

Does your brand leverage in-app shopping on Instagram or Pinterest? You can do the same thing with your UGC galleries. On their website, Stuart Weitzman features a Style Gallery composed of images from social media. When customers toggle through the photos, they can see the specific products featured in the photo, and click through to purchase.

Get in the social spirit this holiday season

Your brand can use social media to lift conversions, strengthen customer loyalty, and spread awareness.

Brands and retailers which use PowerReviews Social Curation collect and display 221% more images and videos, and experience up to a 9.6% lift in conversion rate.

Explore our Social Curation solution now.

Let’s face it: modern consumers have A LOT of options. That’s the case whether they’re shopping for clothing, groceries, makeup, toys, or just about anything in between.

So once a brand or retailer earns a customer’s trust (and the initial sale), they’ve got to make it a priority to foster loyalty; it’s well worth the effort. As the business adage goes, it costs five times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. What’s more, according to Microsoft, loyal customers are five times more likely to repurchase, five times more likely to forgive a mistake, and four times more likely to refer a family member or friend.

Many brands and retailers have developed loyalty or rewards programs to foster relationships with customers — and drive repeat purchases. And, when done well, these programs can drive some impressive bottom-line results. Per a Bond report, 79% of consumers indicate that loyalty programs increase their likelihood of doing business with a brand. And 73% say that they’re more likely to recommend a brand with a good loyalty program.

But there’s one (often overlooked) way brands can increase the impact of their loyalty programs. That’s by incorporating user-generated content (UGC) like ratings and reviews, photos and videos into their existing loyalty programs.

Let’s explore why brands should incorporate UGC into their existing loyalty programs — and how to go about doing it.

Loyalty and UGC: A Match Made in Heaven

According to a report from Accenture, more than 90% of companies have some form of customer engagement or loyalty program. For brands and retailers, these loyalty programs are typically based on transactions. For example, Ulta, a beauty retailer, awards one point for every dollar spent. And once the shopper accumulates a certain number of points, they can redeem them to receive a certain number of dollars off a future transaction.

It makes perfect sense to award points for transactions. After all, the ultimate goal of any rewards program is to drive repeat sales. But transactions aren’t the only way to engage with shoppers.

Today, a growing number of brands integrate UGC into their loyalty programs, rewarding consumers for submitting reviews, photos, videos, and other content. Doing so is a great way to engage with shoppers beyond monetary transactions. And these engagements are an effective way to foster authentic relationships with customers — and long-term loyalty.

Incorporating UGC into loyalty programs gives consumers opportunities to engage with a beloved brand in a way that doesn’t involve a purchase. What’s more, these consumers see firsthand that the brand values and appreciates their feedback and UGC contributions — which deepens their emotional connection to it. And of course, getting loyalty points to redeem with a favorite brand is always appreciated.

Of course, rewarding consumers for their contributions of reviews, photos and videos also benefits brands. Perhaps the most obvious benefit is that it helps the brand collect a higher volume of user-generated content. According to a recent survey, over half (59%) of consumers indicated they’d be motivated to write reviews if they received loyalty points in exchange.

Incentives leading to review submission

The user-generated content submitted by loyalty program customers has the power to positively impact the purchase behavior of future shoppers. In fact, our recent research found that ratings and reviews have become the most influential factor impacting purchase decisions — even above price.

What’s more, an analysis of 1.5MM online product pages from more than 1,200 brand and retailer sites found that there’s a 120.3% increase in conversion when a shopper engages with ratings and reviews on a product page. And there’s a 91.4% lift when a visitor interacts with user-generated photos and videos on a product page.

Combining UGC with a loyalty program also gives brands the opportunity to strengthen relationships with existing customers. This will increase loyalty — and repeat sales.

A Simple Framework for Incorporating UGC Into Your Loyalty Program

Clearly, incorporating UGC with an existing loyalty program is a win-win for consumers and brands alike. But doing so can seem overwhelming when you’re not sure where to start.

Here’s a simple framework for incorporating UGC into your brand’s existing loyalty program to get you started.

Determine Which Types of UGC Will Earn Loyalty Points

You’ve made the decision to incorporate UGC into your loyalty program. The next step is to determine what types of UGC will earn points for customers in your loyalty program. To do this, you’ll need to consider which types of UGC are most valuable for your brand.

For example, let’s say you’re a cosmetics brand. You regularly analyze the impact of UGC on conversion and have noticed that site visitors who interact with the following types of UGC convert at a rate that’s significantly higher than average:

Ratings and reviews
User-submitted photos
User-submitted videos

In order to generate more of this conversion-boosting content, you decide to award points for submission of these types of content.

You also know that beauty shoppers turn to social media sites like Instagram for inspiration. So you decide it also makes sense to reward points to those who post photos and videos of your products (and tag your brand) on Instagram (if you use them in your own marketing).

Specify Quantity of Points Awarded for Each Action

Once you’ve decided which types of UGC submissions will be eligible for loyalty points, you’ve got to determine how many points each submission is worth. In order to determine the appropriate value, you’ll need to consider the value of the type of UGC to your brand as well as the level of effort required from the shopper.

For example, you might decide on the following points structure.

UGC Type	Number of Loyalty Points Awarded
Ratings and review submission	10
Native photo submission	15
Native video submission	15
Instagram post with brand tagged	20
Providing an approved response to a question from a fellow customer	20

It’s important to strike the right balance between offering an incentive that’ll entice customers to submit content — while still ensuring that the resulting content is authentic.

You may also want to consider setting a limit on the number of points a loyalty program member can earn by submitting UGC. For example, you might determine that your customers can earn a maximum of 100 points per calendar year by submitting UGC. That helps ensure customers aren’t submitting a high volume of low quality content just to get points.

Promote Your Enhanced Loyalty Program to Current and Prospective Members

Your loyalty program members probably know that they receive points for purchases — as well as bonuses for things like birthdays and membership anniversaries. Be sure they also know that they have the opportunity to earn points for submitting UGC.

Send out an email communication to your existing loyalty program members to let them know they can now earn points by submitting UGC — as well as how to do so. And when you send post purchase emails to your loyal customers, make it clear that they can earn rewards for their content contributions.

In addition, use the fact that you’ve incorporated UGC into your loyalty program as a selling point to get new members to sign up. You can promote this through a number of different channels, including (but not limited to):

Your website
Email campaigns
Paid and organic social media posts
In-store signage
Your store associates

Collect and Display UGC

The promise of earning loyalty points is enough to make a lot of customers start the UGC submission process. But if they run into any problems while submitting their reviews, photos or videos, they’re likely to abandon the process altogether.

So be sure the entire UGC submission process is quick and easy — and can be completed from any device.

Once you’ve collected content, it’s time to display your UGC front and center. Doing so shows the content submitter that you appreciate and value their feedback and content — which boosts positive sentiment and loyalty. And, it makes it easy for future shoppers to find the content they need to make informed, confident purchase decisions.

Remember: when it comes to incentivized reviews, transparency is key. Be sure to display a badge or some small text (such as “Reviewed in exchange for loyalty points”) so it’s clear that the customer received an incentive for their contributions.

Reward Points to Those Who Submit UGC

Once a shopper has submitted a piece of content (and that content has been displayed), make sure they’re awarded the appropriate number of points. The points they earn from UGC submissions should be reflected in their total points as soon as possible to avoid unnecessary confusion and inquiries.

Streamline the Process with the Right Technology Partners

Incorporating UGC into your loyalty program is an effective way to generate more content and foster loyalty with shoppers. But regularly tracking content submissions and assigning and totalling points for submitting content can be a manual, time consuming process leaving a lot of room for error.

A better approach is to streamline the process by partnering with the right ratings and reviews and loyalty program platforms. Ideally, these two technologies should integrate with each other to make for a simple, seamless program.

For example, our fictitious beauty brand might opt to partner with PowerReviews, a best-in-class UGC platform — with a best-in-class customer loyalty platform like Zinrelo (like our friends at Jelly Belly do), Annex Cloud or Lootly. Because we can integrate these platforms via API, it’s easy to streamline the entire program.

Measure Continuously and Optimize Accordingly

You’ve successfully incorporated UGC into your loyalty program. But that doesn’t mean you should put it on autopilot from here on out. Instead, be sure to regularly measure performance to understand which parts of your program are working well — and which aren’t. Then, use that data to make optimizations to improve performance.

The right UGC and loyalty platforms will provide you with all of the data you need to understand performance — and make meaningful, impactful optimizations that’ll drive business results. So be sure to ask about the capabilities of any providers you’re considering.

Boost the Impact of Your Loyalty Program with UGC

It’s less expensive to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. So fostering loyalty must be a top priority.

Loyalty programs are an important way for brands and retailers to build lasting relationships with shoppers that lead to greater lifetime value. Incorporating UGC into these programs makes them even more effective — and helps drive bottom line results.

PowerReviews

2021 Holiday Gift Guide

We’ve rounded up the best-rated products from our outstanding PowerReviews customers. This gift guide is filled with all of the best Top-Rated, Five-Star, Would-Recommend-To-A-Friend goodies spanning all categories and price ranges.

Categories:

Beauty Aficionado

For the self-care evangelist or the person in your life who has mastered all of the newest makeup trends from TikTok.

Primrose Palette

5

Rated 5 out of 5

$55

It might be the best eyeshadow palette I've ever tried! The colors are so freaking buttery it's unbelievable. I love how there is a mix of natural and glam shades. I get lazy and just leave palettes in my drawer. Yet, I feel like I'll be using this one a lot.

Fouroscope: Earth Angel

5

Rated 5 out of 5

$36

I dont know how long they will carry these but its literally making my routine so much easier. The highlight is BEAUTIFUL. I love the blush too! basically - this is a score and I want 5 more of them lol

GERM FREAK® Kit

4.9

Rated 4.9 out of 5

$23

This was a great kit that had a ton of great things that you can take on the go to stay healthy and safe as you travel. I was really impressed with all that you get and everything in it are things that you will want as you move forward through the pandemic!

Plant Stem Cell and Ceramide Barrier-Defense Moisturizer

4.6

Rated 4.6 out of 5

$42

* LOVE the smell. * LOVE the look/color. * LOVE the way it glides on. * It's cooling and refreshing to the touch. I can definitely feel the "barrier" traits it has.

Curl Quenching Conditioning Wash

4.7

Rated 4.7 out of 5

$56

This co-wash has helped me extend my time between full washes, and my hair has been so much less dry since I've started using this. Excited to have finally found a co-wash that works for my hair!

Apple Cider Vinegar Hair Rinse Lite

4.3

Rated 4.3 out of 5

$35

I have been using this product for the past couple of weeks and I'm so impressed ! I use it between once or twice a week, leaves my hair super shiny which i LOVE! Has helped my oily scalp and with no irritation !

Let's Melt It Off Cleansing Balm

5

Rated 5 out of 5

$18

The texture of this cleansing balm is soft and buttery smooth. A little goes a long way and this literally helps the toughest of makeup to just glide right off. I love it and I would definitely encourage everybody to purchase.

L'Huile De Parfum Fragrance-In-Oil

4.5

Rated 4.5 out of 5

$72

My hair stylist recommended this product and I am in LOVE. I love that it's a lighter weight oil, my hair has never felt softer and shinier and I LOVE the smell. So excited to try the entire line of products.

Master Mattes™ Liquid Eyeliner

4

Rated 4 out of 5

$22

best liquid liner ive ever had. it has double the amount of product inside compared to most of its counterparts. doesnt skip, doesnt tug, doesnt lift color youve already put down and doesnt dry out quick. Love LOVE

GINZING™ Vitamin C & Niacinamide Eye Cream

4.4

Rated 4.4 out of 5

$34

This eye cream is fantastic, it really has helped depuff my eyes and helped with my dark under eye area. It smells really good too. The scent helps you alot in the morning. I love it. It really does at it says it leaves your eyes looking rested and refreshed. 100% recommend you'll love it too.

Lavender Dreams Overnight Lip Mask

4.4

Rated 4.4 out of 5

$12

Love this way more then the expensive lip masks I've purchased. Not sticky but definitely moisturizing. I layer it on every night and have very smoothie lips every morning.

Hobbyist

For those who can't get enough HGTV, are creative, crafty, and always up to learn a new skill.

Chromaflow Pencils, Set of 12

4.9

Rated 4.9 out of 5

$15

The pencil lead itself was soft and easy to work with. You could build up the value of the color and also layer other colors on top of it without too much blur. I really enjoyed using these and I'm looking forward to creating more art with them.

Cordless Combination Kit, 12.0V

4.9

Rated 4.9 out of 5

$357.15 $184

This driver, and the M12 Fuel drill is amazing. It is super small. It has full power. Great battery life. This is a must buy for not only home owners and minor DIY, but for the Pro. In fact, I might get another one just to look at in admiration.

Raspberry Donut Bath Bomb Kit

5

Rated 5 out of 5

$55

This is the first bath bomb that I made. The kit was easy to follow and the donuts look so cute. It was making everyone want a donut!

TASCAM TH-300X Studio Headphones

4.1

Rated 4.1 out of 5

$150

These headphones look, feel, and sound like professional gear. They're really comfortable, sound crystal clear with plenty of bass, and with well-produced music, the stereo imaging is just great. Don't know about the 200 model, which looks to be on sale these days, but these 300's are worth every penny

Bluprint Eastival Shawl Knitting Kit

4.7

Rated 4.7 out of 5

$70 $30

It has been 20+ years since I have knitted and I am so grateful that I began again with this kit from WEBS. The yarn, pattern and supplies came in one package and they are excellent. I hope to have the shawl completed within a couple of weeks and have been tempted numerous times to order another project right away!

21" STACCATO RIDE

5

Rated 5 out of 5

$439.95

Rated 4.4 out of 5

$30

The Coronavirus recently forced us to have only a birthday parade due to the Coronavirus. I bought a picture of her sitting and put it inside a car I had bought for her so when they came by my house, she saw herself driving the car. She loved it!!

Ivory With Red Plaid Snowflake Pillow

5

Rated 5 out of 5

$18

Rated 4.8 out of 5

$55

Rated 4.6 out of 5

$165

Excellent Craftsmanship - Excellent Fit !! To be totally honest I did not know what to expect when I ordered this design. It is undoubtedly the best pair of Chukka Boots I have in my arsenal.

Human/Fur Babies

Fur babies, actual babies- whatever "baby" means to you!

Boho Chic Luxe Developmental Gymini

5

Rated 5 out of 5

$120

It's so cute and fits right into our living area, while having tons of activities to do! I love that the milestone cards also explain different activities that best fits their current milestone! He loves the mirror the most, staring at himself is so fun! ❤️

Rock With It Giant 8-Foot Inflatable Dome Rocker

4.6

Rated 4.6 out of 5

$149

Well it doesn't do the dishes but the grandkids that once we're bouncing off the walls..... Now bounce off their giant space ship!!!! (Because it looks like a ufo) can you please make a bigger version for us adults????? PLEASE!!!

Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog

4.7

Rated 4.7 out of 5

$16

My son received this as a gift at about 15 months and instantly was engaged with it. It was so cool to see him slowly learn how to put the pieces in, and which side needed to go in first. We pull this toy out anytime we need him to sit and play for a few solid minutes and he loves it.

3 Sprouts Elephant Toy Storage Box with Handles

4.9

Rated 4.9 out of 5

$30

I bought two of these to store my toddler's toys; they are good sized, fold down with no problem if you want to move them around or store them away, and are safe (the canvas material won't hurt my child if she bumps into it, gets her hand inside of it, etc.). Very cute designs too in attractive colors.

Dog Hydrate 4 Pack

4

Rated 4 out of 5

$11.96

Because the vet said we needed to get him to drink more water, we started feeding him chicken broth throughout the day, but after a few months, he started to tire of it. Then we found Nulo! He loves all four flavors and drinks it faster than he ever drank the broth. I'm so glad we found this stuff!

New Parent Kit

4.9

Rated 4.9 out of 5

$86 $77.50

I bought this set for a a couple who were welcoming their first child and it didn't just meet expectations, it beat them! Every product was safe, easy and reliable. It was worth every penny. Now their second child is due next week. I think it's time to send another set!

PAW Patrol Magnetic Jigsaw Puzzle

4.8

Rated 4.8 out of 5

$9.79

My 5 yr old son loves puzzles but what makes this one even better is that its magnetic. The puzzle pieces won't move around accidentally. I love that it also has more than one puzzle.

8-in-1 Multifunctional Supplement Bites for dogs

4.9

Rated 4.9 out of 5

$26.97

Rated 4.7 out of 5

$55

This fits my iPhone 13 pro max perfectly! I love that it's clear so you still see the pretty blue color! The the glitter gives it a nice subtle shimmer! I highly recommend this case!

Power Points

When collecting and displaying reviews, financial services companies have to be more thoughtful of industry regulations and privacy laws.
Despite these limitations, financial services companies have a number of creative options for collecting, displaying, and leveraging reviews throughout their marketing.
With strategic use of ratings and reviews, financial services brands can boost traffic, increase engagement, and convert more customers.

In financial services, marketers have unique limitations on how they can promote their services to clients and leverage user-generated content while still staying on the right side of privacy laws and industry regulations.

Consider the following:

Customers who interact with ratings and reviews are 120% more likely to convert than those who don’t.
Reviews have the single-highest impact on whether a customer decides to convert, even more so than price and brand.
With more reviews, comes more conversions. Pages with just a single review experience a 52% conversion lift compared to a page with no review. Pages with over 100 reviews experience a 251% conversion lift.

Clearly, reviews are important for driving desired outcomes online and especially in ecommerce— but you already knew that. But how can YOU – as a financial services company – leverage this content?

Read on as we share ideas and best practices for financial services companies to collect, display, and leverage reviews throughout their marketing.

Collecting Reviews

To enjoy the benefits of reviews, you first need to collect them. Here are three proven tactics financial services companies can use to generate reviews.

1. Request reviews via email

Between 60% to 90% of all reviews come from an email request. Email is the singlehanded best way to collect reviews from customers.

All you need is a simple branded email with a CTA to leave a review. Encourage customers to share their experience to help future customers.

Emailing customers a review request can lift your review volumes instantly, and significantly — one PowerReviews customer saw a 1,000% increase in review collection within a month of implementing email requests.

2. Ask for reviews at key customer touchpoints

The feedback people share in a review can provide valuable insights for your company. Send out an email with a link to your review form after customers:

Meet with an account representative
Open a new account or loan
Open a new credit card
Complete an application online
Visit one of your banking centers

Power Pro Tip It’s best to send your review request soon after the customer’s interaction with your website, app, or service while the experience is still fresh in their mind. 77% of people prefer to write a review within a week of their experience.

3. Customize your review form

Reviews are unlikely to be one-size-fits-all. Consider what customizations you can make to the standard review form to make the information more useful for potential customers — and make it easier for people to write a more detailed review. Our research shows longer reviews receive more engagement:

For example, you might ask reviewers to provide ratings for your banking app or customer service team, in addition to an overall rating. You could also ask them to pick their favorite benefit offered by your credit card, banking account, or insurance policy:

Then, on your Review Display front-of-site, this additional information can appear alongside their review, giving site visitors and potential customers more information to consider.

Power Pro Tip Save your review approval team some time and remind customers to leave out any confidential information in their reviews. A quick message like “Before you get started, please remember to leave out any personal details, like your account information or full name.” can do the trick.

Displaying Reviews

Future customers want to know what it’s like to work with your customer service agents, or get approved for a home loan or credit card. Give them the inside scoop with these creative ideas for displaying reviews.

4. Include star ratings on product landing pages

Build consumer trust instantly by featuring overall star ratings and review count at the top of your product landing pages. You can also include a stat of how many people would recommend your product or service to a friend:

Power Pro Tip Reduce hesitation even further. Add star ratings and recommendation stats right next to your CTA buttons.

5. Include a review snapshot

At the bottom of your service landing page, you can display all your reviews. Make the information easy to consume by including a Review Snapshot at the top. This includes:

Overall star rating
Overall review count
Ratings distribution
Pros
Cons
Most liked positive and negative review

This kind of transparency builds trust with consumers. Even the Cons list, which features common customer complaints about credit cards, reassures customers by showing the small number of reviewers who listed it as a con.

6. Add search and filter functionality to your reviews

The Review Snapshot gives customers all the info they need at a glance. But any financial decision, whether it’s opening a new checking account or applying for a car loan, requires careful consideration. Make the research process easier for customers by letting them search and filter to find reviews from people like them, who share similar pain points.

For example, with the PowerReviews Review Display, the tags in the Pros and Cons lists are all searchable, so customers can simply click one to see all the reviews that mention “Great Interest Rates.”

You can also let people enter their own search terms, like “phone support,” to find what they need. Finally, invite customers to filter to see only reviews from those who opened the same credit card or loan product that they’re considering.

7. Include star ratings on category pages

If you offer multiple credit cards or coverage options, consider adding reviews to your category landing pages. These review snippets share a key message instantly: customers can trust your products.

A high star rating, combined with a high review count, conveys to customers that dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people like them have had a positive experience.

8. Create a separate page just for reviews

Want to use reviews in an email or advertising campaign? Set up a dedicated landing page that features your reviews.

Leveraging Reviews

Reviews don’t have to be siloed to your landing pages. Here are seven ways financial services brands can leverage reviews across their website, SEO, social media, and other channels.

9. Use reviews as customer testimonials on your homepage

Adding reviews to your homepage can boost consumer confidence in your service.

You can even curate reviews related to a specific customer pain point. For example, an insurance provider may showcase reviews of their customer service and claims process on the homepage, relieving concerns about the speed of the process:

10. Syndicate your reviews

It’s common for retail brands to syndicate their reviews to all of their third-party sellers. If your insurance agents and partners operate their own websites, you can do the same. Syndicate reviews you collect on your website to those of the individual agents mentioned in the review.

You can also feature review ratings in a provider locator tool, if you collect reviews on individual agents or office locations. Learn more about review syndication here.

11. Boost your SEO

When brands add reviews to their product page, they enjoy an average traffic increase of 108%. By adding reviews to your service landing pages, you (by way of your reviewers) provide Google with a fresh stream of keyword-rich content related to your service.

For example, a car loans page will have reviews that include keywords like “better rate,” “refinancing,” “vehicle,” “online auto loan application,” and more.

You can also enable product schema for these pages, which adds star ratings to your Google results. These stars help your website stand out in the search results, which leads to increased traffic.

12. Highlight reviews on social media

Is your social media team running into writer’s block? Encourage them to use reviews to create custom graphics. They’ll never run out of content again!

Power Pro Tip You can also use review graphics to add visual interest to your website and increase engagement.

13. Use reviews to amplify hiring efforts

Reviews can even help out your HR team. By showcasing positive reviews on your Careers page, you can help job applicants get inspired to work for a company that makes a difference.

14. Feature reviews in your TV commercials and other media

Reviews can also be used to make your television commercials more impactful. Include an overall star rating, approval score, or short phrases from positive reviews.

Analyzing Reviews

Ready to power up your reviews? Analyze them. By analyzing your reviews, you can discover insights that apply to other parts of your business, from marketing operations to customer support.

15. Use reviews as keyword research

With PowerReviews Review Search Reporting, you can see the specific search terms people are looking for in your reviews. These often suggest key customer concerns and pain points, which you can address by including them in the rest of your marketing materials.

For example, if keywords like “roadside” or “roadside assistance” keep coming up for an auto insurance provider, they may want to speak to those benefits in more detail on their product page.

16. Gauge customer sentiment

Ever wonder how customers are feeling about your services? Supplement your surveys with Product Sentiment Analytics from PowerReviews. This data reveals how customers feel about your service offerings, and charts customer sentiment over time. Notice a big drop in your ratings? You can investigate what happened and fix it.

Whether someone is opening a new bank account, applying for a credit card, or purchasing business insurance, ratings and reviews are extremely important to the buyer journey. Use the tips above to get more value from your customer reviews, and convert more customers.

If you’re like us, you’re savoring every last minute of summer. But we all know the holidays are just around the corner, and it’s time to start planning. There are emails to draft, product catalogs to update, and sales to promote.

If you work in ecommerce, you are likely bracing for what’s to come in the rest of the year. Keeping your head above water may be your primary concern.

Clearly, prioritizing your efforts in line with what will have the biggest revenue impact will be critical.

But considering 99.9% read reviews before making an online purchase, those who read them convert at 120.3% of those who don’t and 70% say access to reviews before purchase makes them less likely to return an item, your holiday UGC strategy should undoubtedly be on that list.

UGC in the Holiday Season

And UGC will be even as important as ever this Holiday season.

Our Holiday Survey conclusively backs this up. Nearly all (99%) of consumers will do at least a portion of their holiday shopping digitally this year (50% will do most of their holiday shopping online, and 13% will do all of it online). 41% of consumers plan to do more holiday shopping online this year than last (when we asked the same question last year, the comparative figure was 37% – for context, that was right at the heart of the pandemic pre-vaccine availability).

Bottom line: how you show up online will be crucial to how your Holiday 2021 shakes out.

In this environment, ratings and reviews will be critical to converting browsers to buyers. In fact, our Holiday survey highlights how it’s second only to price in enabling consumers to determine whether to follow through with a purchase – with 71% saying they have an impact when considering gifts for others and 68% when buying Holiday items for themselves.

You need to be ready for this. In order to maximize your share of dollars for the Holiday and thereafter, UGC will be absolutely critical.

But – although this is undoubtedly the case – the Holidays also represent a fantastic opportunity to enhance your existing program. Make sure you’re doing the right things now, and reap the rewards in 2022 and beyond.

Get ready for Holiday 2021

As someone who works with leading brands and retailers on their UGC strategies day-in day-out (and has worked through my fair share of holiday seasons), I wanted to share some helpful recommendations for optimizing your ratings and reviews program at this time of year.

Given you are likely to have a bunch of competing priorities for the Holiday season, we have tried to focus purely on four things you can realistically achieve for this blog.

Consider this a checklist to make sure you are doing the right things. If not, consider making some tweets. Because a few small adjustments can really go a long way.

Pre-Holiday Season

During the Holidays

Post-Holidays

Pre-Holiday Season

Optimize your current review collection methods

The Holidays are a big sales season. Like we very clearly outline above, ratings and reviews are proven to drive conversions. So to be successful this Holiday season, you’ll need a healthy volume of ratings and reviews on your site.

At the time of writing, we are a matter of weeks out so realistically – given time constraints combined with the likely resources you have available – you probably aren’t equipped to significantly alter your own review volumes.

Although – as an aside – there are ways you can do this should you want to: in fact, PowerReviews product sampling and “Receipt. Review. Collect.” programs are designed to enable brands and retailers to generate significant review volumes in short time periods.

Here, though, we wanted to focus on things you can and should do given the likely resources at your disposal.

And this means looking on the Holidays as an awesome opportunity to generate a ton of new review content to convert more shoppers down the line.

But you need to make sure you are best placed to capitalize: now is a good time to audit your review collection processes and consider if there are any improvements you can make.

Review Your Review Form

Take a look at your review form.

Is there some type of feedback you are looking to collect for specific products that you aren’t currently gathering?

The holidays are the perfect time to edit your review form as your review volume will be increasing. Instead of just comments and an overall star rating, ask additional questions specific to your product or consumer to get more detailed feedback.

Are you currently collecting images and videos on your review form?

If visual content strategy is going to be a focus for 2021, you might want to start. After all, our recent consumer survey highlighted the growing importance of this content to shoppers: 99% now actively seek out imagery and video content from other customers (this is up from 88% in 2016). And consumers who interact with user-generated imagery are 91.4% more likely to convert than those who don’t.

Would you like your reviews to be longer?

Based on our own review interaction data (taken from an analysis of 1.5m+ product pages across 1,200+ brand and retail sites), longer reviews are more likely to receive “helpful” ratings by consumers. Consumers who engage with “helpful” reviews convert at higher rates than those who don’t.

Power Pro Tip: Generate longer reviews by adding a character counter beneath the review form. This kind of instant feedback encourages customers to provide more detailed content through gamification.

Consider Your Post-Purchase Email Strategy

Your shoppers’ email inbox is the perfect place to gather new reviews. If you aren’t currently, follow up with customers soon after they receive their purchases, and ask them to write a review.

People can get busy during the holidays. Make your shoppers’ lives easier by inviting them to submit their review right from the email itself. An In-Mail Submission enables customers to provide review content directly within review invitation emails.

What about customers who purchase multiple gifts from you?

You can make their lives easier, too. Invite them to write multiple, shorter reviews all at the same time.

Enable customers to write multiple product reviews on one form through the post-purchase email. These reviews collect the star rating, headline, review comments, and an image or video for multiple products from a single email.

Brands I’ve personally worked with have experienced exceptional results when implementing this capability — in fact, one generated a 54% increase in reviews displaying on site in the first 30 days of it being in use. Quite a shot in the arm for the entire program.

Now that your customers are becoming more comfortable with the idea of shopping in store, consider maximizing your post-purchase email by providing an in-store order feed. We recently surveyed shoppers on their feelings about shopping in store post a vaccination being available.

Over 70% of consumers have no concerns about returning to in-store shopping, a 2.4x increase from our September 2020 holiday data.

Share Reviews Across Channels

To stand out during the Holiday season, you don’t just need to provide compelling validation on your own site. You also need to show up digitally wherever you are selling or people are talking about your products. So consider how you can grow your review coverage across other websites and even social media.

Do you sell your products on Amazon?

Like it or not, it’s the first stop for most shoppers (93% of consumers anticipate doing at least some Holiday shopping there). How are you currently funnelling your customers to write reviews? At PowerReviews, our Share Button makes it very easy for your customers to syndicate their review content to your product page on Amazon and other major retailers. On average, 31% of customers click this button. That’s a lot of reviews!

Syndicate your review content

Review syndication is by now a well-established practice for most brands – and for good reason. If you sell on Target.com – for example – you are competing against a ton of other brands. So you need to stand out.

How do you convince folks to click through from a main listings page – where consumers have the entire Target.com product inventory to choose from – to your product? Reviews are a highly compelling mechanism for driving this action. We offer the full breakdown on syndication here.

How about social media?

81% of people use Instagram to research products and services.

At PowerReviews, our Share to Social button allows your customers to share their review content to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest — ultimately increasing your UGC on social media platforms, driving organic traffic to your product pages, and boosting your conversion rates. We even track clicks and coverage so you can keep an eye on things!

During the Holidays

Get More Out of Your Holiday Reviews

You want to be prepared once the reviews start flowing in. Bring your customer service team up to speed on review moderation best practices. Identify key opportunities to feature top-rated products on your site banners and gift guides during the holidays.

Finally, amplify the impact of your existing reviews content through email marketing and social channels.

Let’s start with moderation best practices.

Respond to Reviews

Always respond to reviews, positive or negative.

This simple task builds credibility with shoppers by demonstrating you care about what they have to say. Check with your Customer Success Manager to ensure that merchant response notifications are enabled.

Remember, negative reviews help to build credibility. Our research shows 96% of consumers specifically seek this content out and 46% are suspicious of products with average 5-star ratings.

Customers know things can happen. Something broke during shipping, or the wrong item was sent. What’s more important to them is how you deal with it. Your review response is the place to share that information. Showing customers that you are there to support them and make it right is just as powerful as the experience with the product.

By responding to your reviews, you have the opportunity to turn a negative experience into a positive. Then, you can ask customers to update their review.

Power Pro Tip: Short on time? If you’re expecting a rushed holiday season, it’s time to triage. Address negative reviews first. With PowerReviews, you can set up alerts so you’re only notified about the reviews that warrant a response. Apply “Low Rated Review,” as a trigger, and you’ll receive an alert for any review that matches.

Leverage Your Review Content

Let’s concentrate on all the positive reviews you collect during the holidays. Think about how you can put them to good use.

You can include star ratings and review quotes in your Instagram posts and stories throughout the holidays.

You can also highlight reviews in your marketing emails as customer testimonials to build credibility.

During the Holidays

Increase Review Volumes

With your review collection methods all in order, it’s time to drum up more reviews — and all the sales that come along with them. Engage your followers on social media and leverage your email list to collect more reviews. Here are a few creative ideas to get you started.

Generate Reviews Through Social Media

Have you considered asking for reviews on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter?

You may already have a community of engaged followers across your social channels, so why not ask these customers to write reviews for specific products?

Taking that a step further, do you have customers who are already raving about your products on social? Lucky you!

Rather than simply responding with a generic “Thank you, we’re glad you loved it,” why don’t you point the happy customer directly to your website to write a review? They are clearly impressed with your product, so this is the perfect opportunity to gather a positive review!

Power Pro Tip Focus on products with low review volume, or new holiday packaging. Highlighting these products on social and asking your customers to write a review is a quick way to boost content prior to the holidays.

Ask for Reviews Through Other Emails

Do you plan to highlight specific holiday products within your newsletters or other marketing communications?

If so, we recommend embedding your review form (or link) within these communications. This is especially impactful for non-eCommerce sites that are unable to send a post-purchase email. You could also highlight a product with low review volume to increase coverage prior to the holiday.

Host a Review Contest

We have had many clients find success with creating and promoting a giveaway contest to collect reviews. In this example, Bumble and Bumble offered ten $100 gift cards for customers who wrote a review within a specific time period. All the customer had to do was sign into their account and submit a review on any product that they’ve used.

Once the contest was over, Bumble & Bumble was able to use our reporting to identify customers who had written a review within that time period, and they picked the winner randomly with that data. This specific campaign increased review collection by 1400% month over month.

Post-Holidays

Analyze Your Review Content to Iterate and Improve

Now that you’ve made it through the holidays, I’m sure you are ready for a much needed vacation but don’t head to a tropical beach just yet. We’ve got some essential things for you to consider when planning for the New Year.

Your holiday reviews are chock full of useful customer feedback and sentiment. You want to gather this content so you can share it with your internal teams for product enhancements, marketing, and more.

At a minimum, we recommend thinking about the following:

Rated 4.5 out of 5

4 & 5 star reviews

These can supply your product managers and marketing team with sound bites to leverage in campaigns.

Rated 1.5 out of 5

1 & 2 star reviews

These can alert customer service and product development teams about common issues and complaints.

The Impact of Your Review Displays

Understand how visitors interacted with UGC on your site and how that impacted conversion. This should then be factored into any site redesign planning.

Take notice of the main trends you see in your reviews. Which products get the best (or the worst) reviews? Are any products having a harder time generating reviews, despite having similar sales numbers to other, more-reviewed products? If you made changes to a product during the holiday season, did it affect the reviews positively or negatively?

Don’t forget your competition. Take time to review your competitors’ reviews, too. For similar products, how do your reviews match up against the competition? Is there anything you can learn from how your competitors respond to their reviews?

When you’ve got thousands, hundreds — or heck, even dozens — of products, it can be tough to answer these questions without turning it into a full-time job. As you head into the next year, it might be time to consider looking into reviews analytics software. These platforms use AI to analyze reviews at scale, surface the most impactful trends, deliver competitive insights, and spin up smart, actionable reports for you to use when crafting your UGC success plan for 2021.

If you’re a PowerReviews customer, talk to your Customer Success Manager about your goals and objectives for UGC in 2021. We can be a partner throughout this process.

Wrapping Up

We hope that these UGC best practices were informative and will help you to prepare for the holidays. Start by reviewing your review collection methods now. Then work on generating reviews before and throughout the holiday sales season. Finally, gather actionable insights you can apply to next year’s goals.

Good luck this holiday season. We wish you happy holidays, and lots of positive reviews!

Power Points:

Fresh UGC is essential to SEO. From reviews and Q&A to user-submitted images and video, UGC provides Google with a steady stream of fresh, keyword-rich content
Keywords are the foundation of product page SEO. If you want to improve your product’s rank, you need to include keywords in your title tag, meta description, H1 tag, and product description.
Additional product page SEO best practices include marking up images with alt text, using a clear URL structure, and implementing schema markup.

As any marketer will tell you, there’s an art to crafting the perfect product page. You need to design with all the best practice acronyms in mind — CRO (conversion rate optimization), UX (user experience), and SEO (search engine optimization) — and then you need to account for the unique needs of your users and your brand.

Today, we’re focusing on the third of those acronyms: SEO (search engine optimization).

Here are the 5 essential SEO elements to include on your product pages for improved rankings, traffic, and conversions.

1. UGC is good for SEO

First off, we’re a Ratings and Reviews company and we know all about the importance of UGC from an SEO perspective.

The top search results always feature product pages with lots of reviews and a good rating. That’s because Google knows people are looking for the best product, and reviews and ratings help Google determine that.

But reviews are just one aspect of user-generated content, or UGC. There’s also Q&A and user-submitted images and videos. Together, all three forms of UGC are essential to product SEO for a few key reasons:

UGC provides additional content for the search engines to gobble up. The more content Google has, the better their understanding of your site.
That content is often keyword-rich. Customers include all sorts of key phrases in their reviews, more than you could ever include in a snappy product description.
The content is being generated on a regular basis, signaling to Google that your page is still relevant to people searching for these keywords.

Did You Know? PowerReviews is an approved third-party Google Partner and we share all of the reviews for our clients with Google weekly. Our Review Displays, Q&A, and Image Galleries are all rendered via JavaScript, which Google can crawl. Every time one of your customers writes a review, submits a question or answer, or uploads a photo, that provides Google with a rich stream of fresh, SEO-boosting content, full of long-tail keywords.

Plus, people WANT to see UGC. 88% of shoppers specifically look for images and videos provided by other consumers before making a purchase, and after interacting with UGC, they become twice as likely to convert.

The takeaway? Give the shoppers what they want!

Crocs features all three UGC elements on their product pages, with an interactive photo gallery, and a searchable Q&A and Reviews section.

Ulta Beauty’s Reviews section includes clickable filters that make it easy for shoppers to hone in on reviews from people like them.These filters also highlight keywords that are relevant to Google, helping Google connect the dots that this product is good for someone with “sensitive eyes” or anyone looking for a “long lasting” eyebrow pencil.

If you dig into the reviews, you’ll notice plenty more keywords. Take a look at how many we highlighted in this one:

It’s no wonder a recent study found that having keywords in your reviews is one of the top ranking factors for product pages!

Power Pro Tip Having more reviews isn’t just good for SEO; it’s good for your conversion rates, too. Learn more here.

2. Use keywords in all the right places

Keywords are the foundation of SEO. Whether it’s “waterproof hiking jacket” or “color safe shampoo,” keywords are the words people use during discovery and it’s important to use them when describing your products.

If you want to increase your visibility in search engines, you’ve got to include keywords in all the key places (see what we did there?) on your product page. Your customers will already take care of keywords for you in your product reviews. Where else can you include them?

Your title tag
Your meta description
Your H1
Product description

Title tag

Your title tag appears alongside your Google search result in Google. It lives in your site code, so you’ll never see it unless you go to Google. You can fit about 55-60 characters of text in your title tag.

Many retailers simply copy and paste their product name, but this is a chance to speak directly to what searchers are looking for. iRobot does it best, with a combination of their product name, and the keyword “best robot mop”:

Meta description

Your meta description is the two lines of text that appear beneath your title tag in the Google search results. Like your title tag, it lives in your site code, not on the front-end of your product page.

Together, these two elements serve as a virtual billboard — advertising your product to people in the search results. Will your billboard encourage people to click, or to scroll on by? Add keywords, and they’re more likely to click.

It’s common for Google to auto-generate their own meta description using text on the page. Still, it’s a best practice to write your own so you have more control over how your brand appears in the search results. You can include up to 160 characters.

Vistaprint knows that people use a variety of keywords to describe their products, from “custom address stickers” to “return address labels.” They include them all in their title tag and meta description:

H1 tag

On the page itself, you probably have a big bold heading that puts your product name in bold. This is your h1 tag, and it’s one more area where you can incorporate a keyword.

For example, by adding the word “golf,” Bonobos is able to help Google differentiate between this performance polo and their other performance polos when people are searching for golf polo shirts.

Product description

Finally, you can include keywords in the biggest piece of text on your product page: the product description. When writing your product descriptions, keep in mind the pain points people are looking for your product to solve. They may be searching for those very same things in Google!

In their product description, Canyon Bakehouse makes sure to include important keywords a person on a gluten-free diet may be looking for, like “certified gluten-free” and “100% whole grains,” or a bread they can use to make “toast” or “sandwiches.”

Power Pro Tip Discover the keywords your customers are using. Your marketing team may already have access to paid SEO tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs, or Moz. You can also find the keywords your product pages are ranking for — completely for free — in Google Search Console.

Finding Keywords in Google Search Console

Open up Google Search Console, and navigate to the Performance report. By default, the report is set to “Queries” at the bottom.
Toggle over to the Pages tab, and click on an individual page.
Then, you can toggle back to Queries to view the specific keywords that page is ranking for.

Of course, the Google Search Console report only tells you the keywords you’re currently ranking for. To discover keywords before they start trending in Google, you can look to your review analytics!

All PowerReviews customers using our Ratings & Reviews product with the Review Search feature enabled,now have access to Review Search Reporting. With this tool, you can see the specific keywords customers are entering in when they search through your reviews.

For the clothing retailer below, it’s clear that their customers seriously want to know whether this product is waterproof. Search terms like “waterproof,” “water,” “rain,” and “water resistant” dominate the top search results:

The fact that customers are typing these words into the review search box may indicate that they’re not adequately addressed in the rest of the product page. Thanks to these insights, the retailer can now take action to incorporate waterproof-related keywords into the product page for a SEO boost.

3. Mark up your images

Images speak louder than words. Nowhere is that statement more true than in the world of eCommerce. In fact, according to our recent study 80% of consumers find photos from other customers more valuable than photos from brands or retailers. Shoppers want to see photos of your product from all angles, in action, and in a lifestyle setting.

Now, search engines like Google can’t “see” images (yet), but you can tell them what’s in your image, via a little thing called alt text. Like your title tag and meta description, alt text lives in your site code, where search engines can read it to gather more context. (People who are visually impaired also rely on alt text, as their screen readers read it aloud to describe what’s in an image.)

It’s easy to copy and paste the product name or SKU into the alt text field. It’s also a serious waste of a SEO opportunity. By adding descriptive alt text, you not only make your site more accessible to more people, but you also increase your chances of ranking for the right keywords — and for showing up in Google image search!

Where can you find the keywords to add to your image alt text? Look at your reviews! Your customers do a fantastic job describing your products using the words other customers use. What phrases come up again and again? Things like “desk chair for kitchen office” or “favorite hot yoga shorts” would be perfect additions for your alt text. PowerReviews customers using our UGC Analytics solution can see the tops words and phrases customers use in their reviews.

Search engines read captions, too. If it makes sense, consider adding them to your images like Room & Board does:

Remember to markup other images on your page beyond the product gallery. For example, The North Face has alt text for the two icons on their product page: “our most sustainable product” and “recycled content.” Adding alt text to these images may encourage Google to show their product when people are searching for sustainable clothing.

4. Use a clear URL structure

There’s one more thing that shows up in the search results: your URL.

URL structure is an afterthought for many brands, with the developers left to do whatever feels most logical to them. However, a clean, clear URL structure can make the difference between Google crawling your web pages with ease… or getting lost somewhere along the way.

You want to avoid URLs that look like this:

www.yourbrand.com/us/shop/products/123/product-catalog/xty-1222

Whew, that’s stressful Looking at that URL, I have no idea what the page is offering. I can tell that it’s an ecommerce site, but that’s about it.

SEO-friendly URL structures, on the other hand, look something like this:

www.yourbrand.com/products/category-name
www.yourbrand.com/products/category-name/sub-category-name
www.yourbrand.com/products/category-name/sub-category-name/product-name

As you can see, there’s a clear hierarchy to this hypothetical website. These URLs say, “Hey, Google. We are a retailer and we list products on our website. You can find them via these category, sub-category, or individual product pages.”

Depending on the size of your catalog, you may not need multiple levels to your URL structure. For example, Clif Bar has one level. Look at these simple, keyword-rich URLs:

When you have a large product catalog, though, it becomes really helpful to have the different levels, as you can see in this example from Ace Hardware:

When you have a clear URL structure like this, Google will often display breadcrumbs with your search result. In the Ace Hardware example, that’s the “hard-sided-coolers” above the title tag. That breadcrumb information confirms to potential customers that they a) have the type of cooler they’re looking for and b) have enough of a selection for it to warrant its own category. That’s the kind of information that encourages more clicks and better SEO!

Beyond having a clear structure, you can boost your product page SEO with a SEO-first internal linking strategy. Link to your bestsellers in blog posts, and link to related items or product categories in carousels on your product pages. This improves the discoverability of these products, and gives Google additional semantic meaning about the relationship between these products.

For example, on the product page for their Advanced Night Repair Serum, Estee Lauder links to related products that speak to the same pain points, like their Advanced Night Repair Eye cream.

Also keep an eye out for what other products customers mention in their reviews. For example, let’s say you’re an outdoor clothing retailer. Do reviewers regularly mention one of your jackets in their reviews of your hiking boots or hiking pants? Feature that jacket in your Related Products carousel.

5. Implement schema markup

Think back to the last time you were shopping online. Have you ever noticed how the search results for products look different than normal results? For example, they often display star ratings, price, and in-stock information.

Once you start to look for them, you’ll notice these stars show up all over Google:

This extra information, especially the stars, is called rich snippets. Rich snippets stand out to shoppers browsing the Google search results. Rich snippets also expand the size of your search result. Either way, searchers are more likely to click through when they see them.

To enable rich snippets, you need to add schema markup to your website. Schema is code that speaks the search engine’s language and tells them key information about your product, like its price, availability, ratings, and more. To improve your product page SEO, consider adding these schemas to your product pages:

If you’re a PowerReviews customer, good news! We already take care of this for you. Our Review Display comes with schema markup built in.

Psst… Speaking of our Review Display, we just released our 4.1 update which is packed with even more SEO goodness. Display 4.1 boasts a smaller JavaScript bundle size and faster load times. With Google’s recent Page Experience update and continued focus on site speed, these improvements will make our Review Display load even zippier than before. Google will love it, and your users will, too.

From SEO to sales

If you want more conversions, you need more traffic — and that’s where SEO becomes critical. Implement the five best practices above, and see what it does for your rankings, your traffic, and your sales!

Consumers depend on reviews, regardless of what they’re shopping for.

And the importance of this content is only growing. Recent research found that 99.9% (yes, you read that right) of consumers read reviews when shopping online at least sometimes, compared to 97% who said this was the case in 2018.

What’s more, shoppers seem to have a nearly insatiable appetite for review content. 68% of consumers say that ideally, a product should have 26 or more reviews. And nearly a third feel that a given product should have 100 or more reviews!

The Ideal Number of Reviews a Product Should Have, According to Shoppers

Brands and retailers that don’t collect this content aren’t meeting customer expectations — and are quite literally leaving money on the table.

Not convinced? Our analysis of 1.5MM product pages from more than 1,200 brand and retailer sites during 2020 found that there’s a 120.3% lift in conversion among those who interacted with ratings and reviews.

That means brands that don’t provide this content are missing out on a simple, yet impactful way to grow sales.

The Impact of Reviews on Conversion

Ecommerce UGC Page Visitor Overall

3.4%

Conversion for Those Who Interact with Reviews

7.6%

120.3% conversion lift when visitors interact with reviews

Cleary, the onus is on brands and retailers to collect reviews — and plenty of them.

How Incentives Motivate Shoppers to Contribute Reviews

Ideally, every customer would write glowing reviews about every product they purchased. But that’s just not how the world works, sadly.

Our research found that about half of consumers (52% to be exact) write reviews multiple times per month. The other half submit this content far less frequently –and 2% never do.

Review Submission Frequency

Fortunately, there are several strategies that are proven to increase review volume for brands and retailers. One particularly impactful way to generate more content is to offer an incentive in exchange for a review.

Frankly, incentives are the single most effective way to generate a ton of reviews fast.

Overall, nearly three-quarters (73%) of consumers say they’d be motivated to write a review if they were offered an incentive. And (perhaps not surprisingly), incentives motivate shoppers of all generations.

Incentives Motivate Reviewers Across Generations

Boomers

73%

Gen X

74%

Millennials

73%

Gen Z

73%

Four Impactful Types of Incentives for Generating Reviews, According to 10,000+ Consumers

We know incentives are enough to motivate 73% of consumers to write reviews. But what incentives actually work?

The short answer is that it depends. An incentive that works well for one brand might not be as successful for another.

However, we recently surveyed more than 10,000 consumers to understand what motivates them to write reviews — and there were four incentives that rose to the top. Let’s dig into each of them so you can determine which might be a good fit for your brand.

Incentives Leading to Review Submissions

Receiving the Product Free of Charge

91%

Receiving a Product Before It's Available to the Public

85%

Discounts with Store or Brand

67%

Loyalty Points with Store or Brand

59%

1. Free Products

Let’s face it: people like getting free stuff. So it’s probably not terribly surprising that receiving a free product is the most effective incentive for getting more reviews. 91% of consumers said they’d be motivated to write a review if they received a product free of charge.

So if you’re looking to generate a high volume of reviews fast, product sampling might be just the ticket.

The concept is simple: send free samples to consumers — and then ask them to write a review. But it’s incredibly effective. At PowerReviews, the average submission rate for product sampling campaigns is 85%. That means 85% of those who receive a free sample go on to write a review.

Reviews that result from product sampling campaigns are also high quality. We’ve found that reviews generated through a sampling campaign are 83% longer, compared to those captured via other methodologies.

This is great news, as 56% of consumers say that the length, depth, and detail of review content are factors that matter to them.

2. Receiving a Product Before It’s Sold to the General Public

Getting early access to a product can make a customer feel valued, special, and, quite frankly, a bit like a rock star. It’s a pretty cool feeling to know you have something that hasn’t officially hit the shelves.

Early access to a product can also motivate consumers to write reviews. 85% of consumers say that receiving a product before it’s sold to the general public would motivate them to write a review.

If you’re releasing new products, consider doing a pre-launch product sampling campaign. The consumers who receive early access are likely to write reviews — and that means you can officially launch the product with plenty of reviews already in place!

What’s more, the feedback you get in those pre-launch reviews can help you understand where your product shines — and where it falls flat. Then, you can use the insights you uncover to tweak the product before it officially hits store (and digital) shelves.

3. Discounts with the Store or Brand

Consumers are constantly on the hunt for great deals and discounts. According to a survey from Valassis, 72% of consumers make it a priority to save money by using coupons and discounts.

Who wants to pay full price when they don’t have to? No one!

Offering a coupon or discount can also increase the likelihood that a shopper will write a review. 67% of consumers say they’d be motivated to write a review in exchange for a discount for the store or brand.

So if you’re looking to increase your review volume, consider offering shoppers some sort of deal in exchange for writing a review. For example, you might provide a code for a percentage off a future purchase or free shipping percentage off a future purchase that’s “unlocked” after the customer has submitted a review.

The right discount or deal will help you generate more reviews, and as an added bonus, it’ll give your customers an excuse to shop with you again. The same survey from Valassis found that 54% of consumers said that receiving a coupon or discount has caused them to make an impulse purchase.

4. Loyalty Points with the Store or Brand

Consumers are loyal to the brands they love. According to Motista, customers that feel emotionally connected to a brand stick around for an average of 5.1 years, compared to 3.4 years for customers who aren’t emotionally connected. What’s more, the lifetime value of emotionally connected customers is 306% higher.

A great loyalty program can help you further engage your happy customers — and keep them coming back for more. And if you have a loyalty program, offering points in exchange for reviews can be a great way to generate more of this conversion-boosting content.

After all, 59% of consumers indicate they’d be motivated to write a review if they had the chance to earn loyalty points with the store or brand.

So if you have an established loyalty or rewards program, consider leveraging it to generate more reviews. For example, a customer might earn 10 loyalty points for each review they write.

And once they accumulate a certain number of points, they can redeem them for a coupon or some sort of promotion — such as a dollar amount off their next purchase.

How to Promote Your Chosen Incentive

You’ve chosen the incentive you plan to offer to customers in exchange for reviews. That’s great! Now it’s time to make sure your customers know about it.

Sometimes, a consumer will write a review without being prompted. But in most cases, they need a gentle reminder in the form of a post purchase email. Here at PowerReviews, we’ve found that about 80% of reviews are written as the result of a post purchase email.

So if you’re offering an incentive in exchange for reviews, be sure to prominently promote it in your post purchase emails. When possible, include the incentive in the top portion of the email so your shoppers will see if — even if they don’t scroll through the entire email. For example, this one from Bissell makes it clear that those who write reviews will be entered in a sweepstakes to win a prize.

You can also include these promotions in your packaging like this insert from Derma E.

How to Maintain Transparency (and Preserve Trust) When Incentivizing Reviewers

Consumers value reviews because this content is provided by fellow shoppers sharing their real experiences, rather than a brand trying to sell a product. In order to preserve consumer trust, transparency is a must.

When you display reviews, be sure to include fine print or a badge that indicates when a consumer received an incentive in exchange for a review. That way, future shoppers will have a clear idea of who wrote each review.

For example, it’s clear that the person who wrote this review for Wander Beauty is a verified buyer who received a free sample in exchange for their review.

Start Generating More Conversion-Boosting Reviews with the Right Incentive

Reviews are more important than ever before, regardless of what a consumer is shopping for. Brands and retailers must make it a priority to collect plenty of this content — or risk losing customers to a competitor. Offering the right incentive can be a great way to supercharge your review collection — and boost conversion across your website.

Power Points:

Emails are a key medium for review collection. Between 60% to 90% of all reviews originate from an email request.
PowerReviews review request emails have an average open rate 59% higher than ecommerce benchmarks.
Retailers can optimize email open rates with stronger subject lines. Pro tips include personalizing subject lines, offering an incentive, and A/B testing.

There’s a direct relationship between review collection and sales. When retailers add reviews to their product pages, they see an instant bump in traffic and sales. In fact, consumers who interact with ratings and reviews convert at 108.4% the rate of those who don’t. This probably isn’t surprising given reviews are such an important part of the purchase consideration process – with 99.9% of consumers now claiming they read them.

There are a number of ways retailers can boost their review collection efforts, but none are more powerful, impactful and widely-used as email.

Emails are a key medium for review collection. According to our data, between 60% to 90% of all reviews originate from an email request. After implementing review request emails, one of our customers in the home improvement space saw over a 1,000% increase in review volumes the very next month!

If the data tells us anything, it’s that if you send a post-purchase email, a review is good as collected. There’s only one thing standing in your way. Customers have to actually open your email.

A Quick Review of Email Open Rates

According to Mailchimp’s latest benchmarks for 2021, the average email open rate is 21.33% across industries. For ecommerce, it’s 15.68%, and for retail, it’s 18.39%.

There’s good news here. At PowerReviews, our open rates for post-purchase review collection emails are all either in-line, or above, Mailchimp’s benchmarks — suggesting that consumers are even more interested in opening emails that request they share their feedback with a retailer.

Our overall unique open rate is approximately 25% (which is 17% higher than the average from Mailchimp’s data). Our open rates are 59% higher than Mailchimp’s for ecommerce, and 35% higher for retail. (These figures are based on nearly 175 million emails sent from 600+ merchants, as of June 22, 2021.)

PowerReviews Lift vs. Average Open Rates in Key Business Areas

Any Email
(data from Mailchimp)

Percentage Lift of PowerReviews Benchmarks*

All Industries

1 %

+ 1 %

Ecommerce

1 %

+ 1 %

Retail

1 %

+ 1 %

*Calculated on average open rate of 25% across all emailed review requests sent via PowerReviews technology

The data tells us consumers want to write reviews. Earlier this year, we surveyed more than 10,000 active shoppers in the U.S. and nine out of ten reported that they write a review at least once every six months. The better news? 91% of those who do, are motivated by a desire to share a particularly positive experience. All retailers need to do is get them to open their email so they have a chance to.

If you want to increase your email open rates, it all comes down to your subject line. It follows, then, that if you want more reviews, you need to optimize your email subject lines. Here are eight dos and don’ts to help you do just that.

5 Email Subject Line Dos

Follow these five email subject line tips to boost your review collection efforts.

1. DO personalize your subject lines when possible

Personalization is the holy grail of retail marketing. Why? Because consumers are much more likely to respond to something that is highly relevant to them. Customers are 29% more likely to open an email personalized to them, according to Mailchimp.

Plus, adding the recipient’s name to your subject line helps your email bypass spam filters (since you’re using their name). Next time, try an email subject line like “We want details! How would you rate your recent purchase, [Name]?”

2. DO be descriptive, but keep it short

Shorter is always better in today’s world of short attention spans. No one wants to read a paragraph. Write shorter email subject lines, and you don’t have to worry about your subject line getting cut off. Aim for around 40 characters, or 7 words.

This best practice is especially important if the majority of your customers read email on a mobile device (as most people do nowadays).

3. DO include a promotion or contest

Predictably, incentive-based emails get the best open rates (who doesn’t want a chance to win free swag?). However, we’d recommend exercising caution when running a review promotion because ISPs sometimes identify these emails as spam. To avoid your email getting marked as spam, try:

Testing your email with a smaller set of customers before launching the campaign to everyone.
Including the contest language in the email header so it shows up in the preview instead of the subject line.

Don’t worry too much about sounding spammy. If you’ve emailed these shoppers before (which you probably have when you sent their order confirmation emails), their ISP may already recognize you as a trusted sender and send you straight to their inbox anyway.

Here are some of the top-performing email subject lines we’ve seen:

Your review is worth $1000!

Review and Earn at [your brand]

Review and Win!

Rate your purchase for a chance to win!

Tell us what you think!

If you loved it, let us know!

Review Your Purchase and Receive $10 off Your Next Purchase

According to our data, emails with subject lines mentioning a contest or gift also consistently top the list for review completion rate (meaning that customers actually click through and submit a review after opening the email). One of our apparel clients implemented a review sweepstakes for 45 days and saw a 290% increase in collection rates during that time! They now run it sporadically throughout the year and have more than doubled the amount of user-generated content they collect in a year.

Power Tip Incentivize customers to write a review by managing your own branded promotion. All PowerReviews accounts based in the U.S. that regularly send a follow up email are eligible for a PowerReviews Sweepstakes.

4. DO send at the right times

You can craft the most fantastic, intriguing, ultra-optimized email subject line — but your effort will be completely wasted if your customers never see it. Make sure to send your emails at the prime time to optimize both open rates and review completion rates.

When should you send your review request email?

You want to give your customers sufficient time to use the product so they feel comfortable leaving a review, without waiting so long that you’re no longer top of mind. We recommend sending your review request email between 1 to 3 weeks after the customer purchased the product. Here are the benchmarks we found work best for different types of products:

Seasonal items: 7 days
Soft goods: 14 Days
Perishables: 14 Days
Hard goods: 21 Days

If customers don’t open your first email, send them a follow up email 6 to 8 days later.

The best time of day to send emails is around 10am, 1pm, and 6pm, according to Hubspot. Those are averages across industries, and across email content. To find the best time to send review request emails for your brand, you can perform A/B testing, which brings us to our last tip.

5. DO consider A/B testing

Remember that your customers are unique. The “average” best practice may not apply to them. In addition to testing different send times, test a couple variations of your email subject lines. Track which subject line drives the best results, and iterate from there.

Get inspired! Room & Board regularly tests the design, timing and cadence of their review request emails. One round of optimizations enabled them to increase their review completion rate by 80%!

3 Email Subject Line Don’ts

Avoid these three email subject line mistakes when sending your post-purchase emails.

1. DON'T send from “do-not-reply” email accounts

No-reply email can be a death knell for your email delivery rates. Many ISPs filter emails sent from no-reply addresses as spam. Plus, it provides a frustrating experience for users — and for you. If there’s a problem with your review collection emails, but customers can’t reply, you’ll never know.

Instead, set up a dedicated email address for your review collection efforts, and ensure it’s monitored in case your customers reply.

2. DON'T include other marketing or sales calls-to-action

You know how they say, “Keep it simple, stupid”? The same goes for your emails. Don’t confuse your customers. Keep the call-to-action focused on review collection, and review collection alone — in both your subject lines and the email copy itself.

3. DON'T go crazy with hashtags and punctuation

Too much punctuation can make your subject line look spammy, especially if you use a lot of special characters (e.g. !!! or $). Hashtags (#) can also be flagged by spam. Stick to normal punctuation, and your email will appeal to customers and ISPs alike.

Get inspired with these top-performing email subject lines

Suffering from email writer’s block? When in doubt, rely on what works. These four examples have driven open rates above 40% (that’s a 61% increase over our average open rate) and review completion rates as high as 10% for brands and retailers we work with.

“Please review your [brandname.com] purchase”

“We’d love to hear what you think”

“Review your recent order!”

“Tell us about your new [brand name]”

If we could leave you with one last tip, it’s this. Make the ‘write a review’ action stand out. Make it clear to customers what you’re asking for, and you shall receive!