One of the weird things about reviews is how, as an industry, we’ve agreed on their impact, yet limited their functionality: A great review program has often meant a constant flow of fresh reviews covering a high percentage of your catalogue, so every PDP benefits.
But that’s really it. It’s just the PDP.
One of the pieces we’re bullish on at Stamped is the idea that reviews content can be used in multiple channels just like other forms of UGC. The challenge, though, is finding the right ones.
And that challenge is two-fold:
Because reviews aren’t as visual in nature, it takes a lot more time to curate the right reviews—a huge hurdle to rethinking their use cases.
Reviews are prone to human error. The main sorting function for a review—the star rating—can be accidentally misrated, because someone clicked too fast. (This happens way more than you might expect: In a random sampling of all the reviews in our database, we found that 7% of 1-star reviews had content that would suggest the customer meant to provide a 4- or 5-star review.)
If you think about your workflow just for curating reviews, you can see how this starts to hold you back.
But what if those reviews were easier to find? What if you could search your database of reviews based on a specific topic, such that you could spot great content right when you need it?
We’re working on some solutions to this, and wanted to show you a few ways this might work. If you’re interested in exploring this with us, please let me know. It’s early days, but we’d love to have you along for the ride.
Finding Reviews That Fit a Specific Marketing Need
Say you’re a skincare brand, and you’ve launched a product in a trial size to test market reaction. You might be wondering if customers plan to buy more.
Using semantic search, you could quickly query all reviews for the product, searching for reviews with “intent to buy more.” If so, you’d find these types of reviews (they are from one of our brands with the search query mentioned):
I NEED THIS FULL SIZE STAT: This is the ONLY product that has helped my eczema!!! Please make it full size quick pretty please
Amazing : Amazing! I have extremely sensitive skin and struggle with eczema specifically on my face. This felt so good on my skin and provided some relief. Hope to see a full size available soon
Excellent! : Please launch this soon! I am going through my sample quickly and need the full size!!
Love it!: This serum is so good and you don't realize it until you run out! It is really gentle on sensitive skin and so easy to add to a routine. I definitely recommend stocking up when it is on sale.
Sounds like a success.
Spotting The Best Reviews You’re Most Likely to Miss
And what if you wanted to explore a few angles for people who report on your post-purchase survey that they have dry skin?
You could search for that use case by querying “perfect for dry skin” and find reviews like these (again real results):
Dry skin heaven : This is my holy grail. I recommend it to literally anyone who will listen to me. Saved my skin!!!
Best Cleanser Ever : This has to be my absolute favorite cleanser ever. I started using this as my morning and night cleanser. It is so gentle and make my skin feel amazing.
Love, love, love!! : I have very dry skin and I have absolutely loved this cleanser. It leaves my face so clean and soft without stripping my skin. I have been searching for a cleanser that could do this for me. I have gone through many many brands and Baptism has been the best for me by far. The scent is so light and fresh, really lovely!
But say you’re just looking for your best reviews to feature. We mentioned before that star-ratings are error prone. So, if you’re using them to seek out the best content, you might miss a good portion of your best reviews.
Using a predictive model that analyzes the content of the review to “guess” the star rating, we can spot some “diamonds in the rough.”
The following three reviews were all given 1-star ratings by customers, but certainly don’t read like the rating they were given:
Great for lifting and cardio : I was skeptical - I tried it on a long run after little sleep and pushing a 50pd kiddo. This stuff did the trick and helped me really push my levels.
Skeptical, but now I'm a believer: I wasn't so sure how this was going to fix my constant bloating, digestive discomfort and constipation. But I was desperate. Desperate to not feel so awful all the time because of poor digestion. I'm an ICU RN and have been in my profession for over thirty years. I'm fit and active and no one ever guesses that this year I will turn 55. I would have spurts where my digestion seemed okay. Normal, almost. But December of 2023 was my deciding factor to give this supplement a try. There were loads of supplements saturating my news feed on IG and FB and I settled on Inno Cleanse. I'm beyond thrilled with the results! I was worried at first as I started taking them just as I was about to head out on a 7 hour trip to go work with a renowned agility coach with one of my Border Collies. No worries. I had no urgency, no cramping, no sudden need to get to a bathroom. My bloating was gone in 24 hours. 24 hours!!!!! What??? And after just 10 days of taking this supplement my digestion is normal. I have a BM every morning, no bloating, no gas, and the best part is that my energy is returning. My waist is trim as it ever was and I am feeling normal again. What a great product!!!! I really did not think that this was going to work. It did. Faster than I expected and I feel so much better. Thanks, Inno Supps!
Best way to UP the benefits of your oatmeal!: I love oatmeal and to be able to add PEScience's Protein 4oats to my fave breakfast just takes it to the next level! And every flavor tastes fantastic.
Probably an accident, right?
If you’re primarily curating based on star rating, you’re likely missing reviews just like this—whether it be for PDPs, email content or ad copy.
The advantage to better search isn’t just finding more reviews, faster. It’s finding reviews that support specific marketing use cases, meaning your reviews content becomes a library of UGC that can be used in more places, more often.
If that sounds like something you’d like to try, just reply to this email and we’ll set something up.