If a consumer receives an incentive for submitting a review, that review is called an incentivized review. An incentive might include:

  • Entry into a sweepstake
  • Coupons or discounts
  • Loyalty reward points
  • Free products as a “Thank you” gift

Why use an “incentivized review” badge?

You must inform consumers when reviews are incentivized. Disclosing incentivized reviews (using an incentivized review badge) helps build trust between consumers and your company.

In addition, Bazaarvoice is committed to content authenticity. Consumers have a right to trust the reviews they read, and businesses have a responsibility to ensure that the product reviews they publish are legitimate.

Refer to the Bazaarvoice Authenticity Policy for more information about content authenticity guidelines.

Implement incentivized reviews and badges

Collect reviews using review requests (formerly post-interaction email or PIE). Review requests invite a contributor to click a “Write a review” link. Behind the “Write a review” link or button is a simple submission URL (ssURL) which directs the contributor to a review submission form.

Badge credentials are associated with the default “Received free product” question on a review submission form. This default “Received free product” question can be customized to suit your needs.

Include two critical components in the ssURL:

  • An encrypted user token which contains the key-value pair IncentivizedReview=True. This passes the contributor’s answer to the “Received free product” incentivized question back to Bazaarvoice.
Note: If you are unable to pass the data in a user token, then you will need to expose the incentive question on the form for the user to answer.
  • A campaign ID to indicate the source of the review and the offer that was made, e.g., “Sweepstakes”, “10pctCoupon”, etc.
Note: You should use a specific campaign ID each time you solicit incentivized reviews to make it easy to identify this content in Portal reports. This is useful if you want to monitor review volume through incentivized review campaigns.

Configure incentivized review badges

To implement incentivized review badges on website (Ratings & Reviews or Questions & Answers), follow these steps:

  1. Contact Bazaarvoice Support to request that “Incentivized Review badging” is enabled. The case should specify whether a graphic badge is used for display or if you want to display the context data value (CDV).
  2. Your Support representative will set expectations and route your case to the client delivery team for scoping.
  3. The Bazaarvoice implementation team will enable the incentivized review question on a submission form and set up the badge if it’s required.
  4. They will also provide guidance on how to properly request reviews (in the form of a simple submission URL) so that they are flagged as an incentivized review.
  5. Test against your staging environment.
  6. Launch your review collection campaign.

Once reviews start to come in, confirm that the incentivized question is being answered and displayed correctly on your website.

Note: Once syndication is set up and the product is matched, you should also confirm that the incentivized notation is displaying properly against reviews on retailer sites.