Campaigns are the foundation of review collection. You can collect reviews using these types of campaigns:

You will receive most reviews while a campaign is in progress, but consumers can still submit reviews after the campaign ends.

Learn how consumers submit reviews.

Review request campaign

Bazaarvoice can send review requests (formerly post-interaction email or PIE) to consumers on your behalf, asking them to review products they purchased. To request and collect reviews using review requests, we need information about your consumers and, ideally, each of their purchases. Purchase information enables us to ask for reviews about the specific products consumers bought, which results in three times more reviews than generic requests for reviews, so include information about consumer purchases when possible.

Bazaarvoice stores all consumer email addresses on secure servers. The email addresses are kept confidential and will not be shared with any third party or sold for marketing or advertising purposes. To protect consumer privacy, we delete email addresses 60 days after you submit them. For more information, read our privacy policy .

Visit the Bazaarvoice Support Community for advice about how often to run an email campaign.

Review request campaign workflow

A typical review request campaign has the following general workflow. Refer to the Start a review request campaign section for details about steps 2 and 3.

  1. A consumer completes a transaction, such as a purchase, on your website or in your brick-and-mortar store. This generates a transaction record in your database.
  2. You include this transaction record in the email campaign form you send Bazaarvoice.
  3. We send a review invitation email to the consumer.
  4. The consumer receives the invitation and submits a review for one or more products included in the message. If the consumer does not submit a review, we send a reminder email seven days after the invitation email.
  5. We send reviews approved by the Bazaarvoice Moderation team to your retailers.
  6. Your retailers publish the reviews on their websites.

Start a review request campaign

Complete the steps under the heading that best describes the consumer information you have.

I have information about purchases

  1. Download the email campaign form .

  2. Complete the form.

    Select the first row under each column on the form for a description of the column. Include the required values. The other values are recommended for faster processing.

    Put each consumer on a separate row and each value in a separate column. If a consumer purchased multiple items, put each purchase on a separate row, as shown in the following example.

    Email address
    (required)    		 Consumer name
    (recommended)    		 Product ID
    (required)    		 Product name
    (recommended)    		 Purchase date
    (recommended)
    dnair@example.com Deepak Nair BV4357875933 Super Widget 2019-04-22
    jgarcia@example.com Janie Garcia CB4313766182 Super Lever 2019-07-07
    ebarnes@example.com Elizabeth Barnes DM0316311409 Small Gadget 2019/10/13
    ebarnes@example.com Elizabeth Barnes DM0316411408 Medium Gadget 2019/10/13

    Product ID is a unique number assigned to the product in your Bazaarvoice product catalog. If you don’t know the product ID, you can look it up in your Product Catalog in the Bazaarvoice Portal .

    Note: If some email addresses don't have associated product IDs, send those email addresses in a separate email campaign form. Refer to the I do not have information about purchases section for more information.
    Tip: Complete these steps to prevent Excel from converting product IDs to scientific notation:
    1. Highlight the column of values.
    2. Right-click inside the column and select Format Cells.
    3. Select the Custom category.
    4. Select 0 from the Types list.
    5. Select OK.

    Purchase date must be in the format YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY/MM/DD. A file can have a combination of these formats.

    Tip: Complete these steps in Excel to convert purchase dates to an accepted format.
    1. Highlight the column of purchase dates.
    2. Right-click inside the column and select Format Cells.
    3. Select the Date category.
    4. Under Type, select an example date with the YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY-MM-DD format. If one isn't listed, select a Locale that has an example date in an accepted format, such as English (United Kingdom).

  3. Send Bazaarvoice Support your file.

    You will receive a confirmation email soon.

I do not have information about purchases

Send us an email campaign form containing the email addresses of known consumers or brand followers. For example, you can send us the email addresses of people who receive your brand newsletter or who registered their products.

Note: When you do not include purchase data in the email campaign form, approximately 1-2% of invited consumers will write a review. When you do include purchase data, 3-6% of invited consumers will write a review. A single review can boost sales of a product by as much as 10%, so even a relatively low review volume can dramatically improve sales.

When will review invitations be sent?

The following table explains when we send the review invitations based on the consumer information you provide.

Type of consumer information When we send the review invitation
Email address with a transaction date less than 21 days ago 21 days after the date and time of the transaction
Email address with a transaction date more than 21 days ago 1-2 business days after you send us the email campaign form
Email address with a transaction date more than 180 days ago We will not send the invitation because the consumer may no longer be using the product or remember the purchase.
Email address only 21 days after you send us the email campaign form

Self-run campaigns

You can run your own review collection campaigns through:

  • Social media posts
  • Online newsletters
  • Customized review invitations sent using your own email service provider

Complete the following steps to run your own campaign:

  1. Determine your audience and write campaign copy.

    Before you request reviews, consider the audience for your review collection campaign. Do you want to target people who already purchased your products and can write reviews immediately? Or do you want to give your products away or sell them at a discount in exchange for reviews? Understanding your target audience will help you write compelling copy for your campaign.

    Note: If a consumer receives something of value in exchange for writing a review, Bazaarvoice’s authenticity policy requires that you indicate the review was incentivized. Online shoppers expect this level of transparency, and disclosing incentivized reviews helps build trust between consumers and your company. Possible incentives include sweepstakes entries, coupons or discounts, loyalty reward points, and free products. See step 3 for instructions about labeling incentivized reviews.
    Tip: Visit the Bazaarvoice Support Community for information about running successful sweepstakes promotions.
  2. Make sure your product catalog is up to date.

  3. Generate a review submission link.

    Use the Bazaarvoice Submission Link Generator to create unique review submission links, also called simple submission URLs (ssURLs), for each campaign. When consumers click a submission link, they are led to a review submission form they can use to write reviews about your products. As a best practice, create a separate ssURL for every review collection method, including each social media channel, so you can track which method generated the most reviews. For more information about how to create a ssURL, refer to How to create a ssURL in Support Community.

  4. Test the link.

    Copy the Result URL and paste into your web browser’s address bar to test it.

    Note: You can use URL shorteners to shorten the review submission link.

  5. Launch your campaign.

    Incorporate the review submission link into your campaign text and share with consumers.

    As reviews are approved by Bazaarvoice Moderation, they will display in Workbench under Content > Ratings & Reviews.

  6. Fulfill incentives.

    If you provided an incentive for writing a review, such as a sweepstakes prize, complete these steps to fulfill your incentive.

    1. Sign in to the Bazaarvoice Portal .
    2. From the navigation bar, select Analytics > Custom Reports.
    3. Select New Report.
    4. Under Select Export Template, choose Download reviews.
    5. Under Add Filter, select Content > Campaign ID.
    6. Enter the campaign ID in the text box at the bottom of the list.
    7. Select Apply.
    8. Open the report and choose a winner from the list of email addresses.

Collect reviews before product launches

You may want to collect reviews about a product before it’s available for purchase so that the product will have reviews for its retail launch. Follow these steps to collect reviews prior to a product launch:

  1. Email Bazaarvoice Support information about your products using the product catalog form . Provide the product name, UPC, and a URL to a hosted image of the product. We will let you know when we’ve added the product to your product catalog.
  2. Contact your retailers to establish when they will add the product to their Bazaarvoice product catalogs.
  3. After we confirm the product is in your product catalog, run a review collection campaign containing review submission links.

Bazaarvoice Sampling

Bazaarvoice Sampling is an add-on solution that enables you to offer product samples to a community of consumer advocates in exchange for authentic product reviews. Up to 90% of the samples sent to community members result in reviews. Consider collecting reviews through Sampling when you:

  • Don’t have many consumer touch points, such as a list of people who have purchased your products or a large social media presence.
  • Want to have reviews for a new product when it launches at retail.
  • Want to quickly increase review volume for products that have few reviews.
  • Want to reward your brand advocates.

Follow these general steps to start a Bazaarvoice Sampling campaign. For more information about the steps, view the Sampling program basics.

  1. Make sure your product catalog is up to date.
  2. Secure the inventory you want to give as samples.
  3. Identify a shipping provider.
  4. Create a campaign request.

Bazaarvoice will contact you soon to discuss the campaign timeline and next steps.

Note: Don't have Bazaarvoice Sampling? Visit bazaarvoice.com or contact Bazaarvoice Support for more information.