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How to Get Initial Amazon Reviews
You’ll want a bare minimum of five reviews, with a minimum 4.5 star rating, for people to take you seriously enough to click your Amazon ad.
Amazon (rightfully) has a bunch of spam detection in place to make sure people don’t game the review system, but it’s a chicken-and-egg problem. You need reviews for people to buy your product…and leave you more reviews.
So, how do you get your first Amazon reviews?
Tactic #1: Email happy customers (white-hat)
If you already have customers, personally email the happiest ones with a link to your Amazon listing. Mention that you just got listed on Amazon and that early reviews mean a lot.
They do not have to have bought your product on Amazon - it just means their review won’t be marked as an “Amazon Verified Purchase.” This is fine and doesn’t make a material difference.
Tactic #2: Get Family/Friends To Review (black-hat)
Most Amazon sellers ask family and friends for their initial reviews. This is against Amazon’s TOS. But everyone does it.
Amazon is very good at figuring out connections between reviewers and sellers (via shared shipping addresses, IP addresses, etc.). If Amazon suspects even a small number of reviews, they’ll get deleted.
That said, if you space out when you ask people for reviews (say, over the course of a couple weeks), and you make sure they’re not from new Amazon accounts, the accounts weren’t created around the same time, they’re from different names, credit cards, addresses, and IP addresses, Amazon shouldn’t notice.
It’s up to you whether you want to do it.
Tactic #3: Email existing leads/waitlist (whitish-grey-hat)
If you only have a waitlist/emails of people who haven’t bought yet…
Step 1: Set a low starting price on Amazon (at least 40% off the price on your main website).
Amazon removes reviews for products purchased with a discount code greater than 50%.
But, by starting with a low actual price (not a discount code), you can get away with a bigger incentive for your early customers.
Note: Amazon technically is against incentivizing reviews, but they appear to turn a blind eye to initial customers, as long as they’re legit customers; they’re pretty lenient here and it’s in Amazon’s interest to sell more stuff.
Step 2: Set an inventory limit so you limit your losses.
You don’t want current customers gaming the system so you lose tons of money.
Step 3: Email your waitlist and tell them you just listed on Amazon.
Send them a link to the product, mention that you’re doing some introductory pricing at X% off, and you’d really appreciate a review there.
Step 4: Once you have enough reviews (or run out of inventory), raise the price.
Tactic #4: Temporarily point your existing site at Amazon (white-hat)
Even though Amazon will take more of a cut, it’s worth temporarily sending people to Amazon for the early reviews.
- Follow steps 1 and 2 in Tactic 1.
- Change the CTA on your site to point at Amazon.
- People buy on Amazon. Some percentage will review.
- Optionally, enroll in Amazon’s early reviewer program.
- See “How to Sign Up?” in this link. Amazon will offer special vouchers to people who bought your product to leave a review.
Tactic #4a: Email Gating
Even more optionally, require an email in the site CTA before sending visitors to Amazon. This is big, because you can’t see buyer’s emails if they buy on Amazon. So you can’t ask them for reviews.
Fewer people will click the CTA, but a higher % of people will leave you a review. It can be worth it in the short term.
Follow up with an email a week after they click, asking if they bought.
If they didn’t buy, ask them what kept them from buying and treat it as customer development.
If they did buy, ask them for a review. Mention that you just got listed on Amazon, so these early reviews mean a lot.
You could offer them an incentive (gift card, free product, etc.) for leaving a review and taking a screenshot for you, but... it’s very against Amazon’s TOS and you risk getting your account suspended for it.
If your site doesn’t have traffic yet…
- Point a different ad channel at your site.
- Load up your site with social proof.
- Add copy to your site saying that you recently launched on Amazon — to handle the future objection of there being no reviews of the product.
- People buy on Amazon. Some percentage will review.
Don’ts
There are many things you cannot do that Amazon cracks down on:
- Generally, don’t incentivize people to leave reviews. Don’t say, “If you leave a review, we’ll do X for you.”
- Don’t buy reviews through sites like Fiverr
- Don’t use Zombie accounts to get fake reviews
You risk your account being suspended. Forever.
Tools
People often ask us about tools to get Amazon reviews. Here are a few we’ve heard good things about. We haven’t vetted them, so let us know if you try them:
- Amazon Giveaways: give away your product in Amazon-sanctioned sweepstakes
- RebateKey: a discount/rebate club