Offering gift cards for reviews
If you’ve struggled to get reviews or testimonials for your business, you may have considered offering gift cards as an incentive. Your customers are busy people like you, and they may need a little push to take that extra step. So how can you make it easy to submit gift cards for review? And what are the rules for gift cards in exchange for reviews?
Please note: This blog post is not intended as, and should not be considered, legal advice. Always consult an attorney if you have questions.
Offering Gift Cards for Reviews:
How to Get Reviews Fast
If you’ve considered offering gift cards for reviews, you may have tried the manual process. Sending out email requests for reviews, pulling a winner out of a hat, and then tracking down your winner and sending or emailing them a gift card. This process was probably quite a time-consuming and, depending on the number of reviews you receive, may or may not be worth it. Automating this process, and gaining insight into how the strategy is working, can make it much easier, and deliver a faster ROI.
Integrate Boost with TangoCard and automate the review and reward process
Gift Cards for Review: Choose Your Strategy
So, how can you offer gift cards for reviews and get reviews fast? While there’s absolutely no guarantee that your customers will respond, gift cards can provide an added incentive. It’s important to plan your strategy in advance, so there are no surprises later.
When you make a plan, consider the following:
- Who gets the gift card? You can offer a small gift card to each person who submits a review (this will likely get you more reviews, but you’ll also need to invest more) or offer a large gift card as a giveaway reward. . Or, you can have a few gift cards up for grabs, and pick a few winners.
- How much are you spending? Consider the value of each review as you decide how much to invest in this strategy. For example, reviews on sales pages increase conversions by an average of 34%. Or, using customer testimonials regularly can lead to about 62% more revenue.
- What is your timeline? When you offer gift cards for reviews, you’ll need to make it clear, so customers know how long they have to claim their card or gift.
- How do you ask for reviews? Will you send review requests via email, in your store, or some other way? Would you like customers to submit reviews directly on the landing page or on a third-party site? Will you be sending your gift cards by email, mail, or another method?
Automate the process and get reviews faster.
To get reviews faster, you can automate your email review requests, review submission landing page, and even your gift card distribution. Boost lets you automatically send review requests to your customers or any subset of your customers. You can write a review request email or choose a template, and specify who to send the email to, and when. Just add a link to your landing page and your customers can submit their reviews. By automating this process, you can collect reviews while you sleep!
Boost also integrates with TangoCard and other gift card services, so you can even automate your gift card distribution. TangoCard lets you send gift cards from over 100 brands. Boost lets you contact your customers with automated settings. By integrating Boost and TangoCard with Zapier, you can send gift cards based on dynamic events, such as when a user clicks a link or provides a testimonial.
With a few minutes of pre-planning and setup, you can automate the entire process, and easily collect reviews.
Offering Gift Cards for Review: How to Keep It Legal
Offering gift cards for reviews can help you collect more reviews faster. However, there are some important rules to consider when using this strategy, so you can use gift cards to incentivize reviews and keep it legit.
Is it legal to offer gift cards in exchange for reviews?
In general, it’s legal to offer gift cards in exchange for reviews, as long as you disclose the gift, and the review is honest. This only applies to reviews you receive directly from customers.
Do other websites allow gift cards in exchange for reviews?
Other websites generally do not allow businesses to offer gift cards in exchange for reviews. Offering money or gifts in exchange for reviews on other websites almost always violates the websites’ user agreements.
Websites that host reviews for other businesses and products, including Google, Amazon, Yelp, and many others, rely on honesty for their reviews. If users visit a site and don’t think the reviews are genuine or trustworthy, the overall value of the site will drop. Therefore, these websites apply strict rules in an effort to make their reviews as genuine as possible.
This means that most third-party review sites do not allow users to give or accept gift cards in exchange for reviews. This includes the largest and most common sites for third-party reviews, such as Google and Amazon, as well as smaller sites with specific interests. Check the site’s policies to see if you can offer gift cards in exchange for reviews.
- Google’s review policies clearly state in their review guidelines: “Do not offer or accept money in exchange for reviews.”
- Amazon’s review policies also clearly state that users cannot exchange products, money, prizes or services in exchange for reviews.
- Yelp takes an even stricter stance, stating: “Don’t solicit or offer to pay for reviews: Please don’t ask your customers to review your business on Yelp. … You should never offer compensation in exchange for reviews (discounts and freebies count too).
- Many websites have taken legal action against users who are offering or accepting gifts or money in exchange for reviews. Businesses that violate consumer agreements have paid thousands of dollars in civil lawsuits. Other businesses have been removed from the site entirely.
How do I use Rewards Reviews with gift cards?
Although incentivizing reviews with gift cards violates other websites’ policies, you may still offer gift cards in exchange for reviews you accept directly from customers. As long as you disclose that you offered gift cards in exchange for reviews, you can use those reviews on your homepage, product pages, landing pages, ads, printed materials, etc. This can be especially helpful if you’re developing a new product, opening a new store, or developing a new advertising campaign. Carefully consider where customers may be most influenced by other customers’ reviews. Then, collect your gift cards and start your review campaign.
Take an online survey.
What do we do when we want to share our opinion about a particular product or service? We share it with our friends, but unfortunately, we don’t get paid for it.
Why is this relevant?
Because, if you provide information to interested parties, you can get paid to share your insights. Your insights can be delivered in the form of a survey with 5-100 questions about a particular product, service or experience. For example:
- Where do you shop? how often?
- What is your household income?
- What are your health habits?
- How often do you exercise?
Rewards are often between $0.50 and $2 per survey. But, if you match the company’s target market, they are often willing to pay you up to $50 per survey.
Here are the top 4 platforms used by companies to collect feedback from customers.
Survey junkie
(up to $75/survey)
- Survey Jinki logo
- Summary of Survey Junkie
- $0.50-$3 average earnings per survey
- Extra points if you are out of the survey.
- Additional ways to earn up to $100
- Install the Survey Junkie extension for bonuses.
Classification
- Join for free.
How to Cash in Your Points with Survey Junkie
- Surveys is the largest survey website with over 10 million users. They accept members from the United States, Canada and Australia.
- Some surveys pay as much as $75, but these are rare and may take you several hours to complete. Realistically expect to earn up to $3 per survey.
- Once you reach 1000 Survey Junkie Points, you can cash out via PayPal or get a free gift card.
Swag boxes
(up to $50/survey)
- The swagbucks logo
- Summary of Swagbucks
- 18 Ways to Make Money and E-Gift Cards
- $5 signup bonus
- Up to 10% cashback when shopping online
$1 minimum eGift card cashback
Classification
- Join for free.
- Swagbucks has plenty of surveys to choose from. This reward comes in their native currency called Swagbucks Points (SB).
- Once you earn 300 SB you can trade them in for a $3 Amazon gift card.
- Make sure your answers are genuine and consistent, otherwise you won’t be eligible for many surveys.
Swagbucks doesn’t just pay for surveys. Here are 18 more ways to make money with Swagbucks.
- The inboxdollars logo
- Summary of Inbox Dollars
- $5 signup bonus
- Referral Program – 30% who makes a referral.
- Most surveys pay $0.50 to $1.
- 13 Different Ways to Make Money
Classification
- Join for free.
Read the review
How to Make the Most of Inbox Dollars and Make Money 2
- InboxDollars is a cash rewards site where you can get paid to complete surveys, watch videos, clip coupons, play games, or shop online.
- This site also allows you to earn for participating in their paid email service or for browsing the internet through their rewards search engine.
- With InboxDollars, you can expect to be paid between $0.25-$5.00 per survey, depending on how long it takes you to complete. Other activities on the site will earn you a few cents each.
- After $30 is deposited into your account, you can cash out your rewards via PayPal, Amazon Gift Card, Tango ePayment, or as a check. They even offer a $5 signup bonus just for creating an account.
Get cash back.
- The next way to get free gift cards is to get cashback.
- As you may already know, cashback is the percentage you get for every dollar you spend at stores.
- “Cashback” was invented by credit card companies, but these days most stores offer opportunities to earn cashback when you shop online.
- And the best part about this approach is that you don’t need to subscribe to each brand’s loyalty card. I’ve compiled a list for you of the top rewarding loyalty programs that offer in-store cashback.
- To get the most out of cash back programs, make sure you check out all 3 websites below to determine which one offers the best cash-back rate for your chosen store. Is.
My Points
- The mypoints logo
- Summary of MyPoints
- $10 signup bonus with your first purchase
- Earn an average of $1 per survey.
- More than 10 different ways to earn money
- Pays by Gift Cards, PayPal and Travel Mail.
Classification
- Join for free.
- Read the review
- What are the options for earning points on the Mypoints site2?
- MyPoints is your one-stop shop for earning cash rewards and gift cards online. On the site, you can take surveys, watch videos, play games, clip coupons, and shop online.
- When you use MyPoints, you earn “Points” for every purchase you make through the online shopping portal. These points can later be redeemed for gift cards or PayPal Cash.
- The value of MyPoints depends on what you want to claim as your reward, but they’re usually around $0.0015 per point, which is faster if you’re a frequent shopper.
BeFrugal
BeFrugal Summary
- Guaranteed to have the highest cashback
- More than 5000 stores to get cashback
- Over 5 different ways to get rewards
- 6 different ways to cash out your earnings
BeFrugal is an online shopping site that offers cashback, coupons, and deals at over 5,000 retailers.
The easiest way to use BeFrugal is to download their browser extension. Then, when you’re shopping at a participating store, the extension will automatically apply coupons and process any cashback rewards.
They also offer an app, where you can scan for coupons when shopping in store.
With BeFrugal, you can claim your cashback earnings through PayPal, check, direct deposit, or gift card as soon as you accrue $25 in your account.
Rakuten
Rakuten Summary
- High cashback potential of up to 40%
- Earn cashback at over 2500 online stores
- 6 different ways to earn cashback
- Get $10 for free just for signing up
I’m pretty sure you will find your favorite brands at Rakuten because they have them all!
Rakuten makes it extremely easy to learn what percentage of cashback is available online through various retailers. Simply install their browser extension to see the current cashback offers available on your chosen website.
What’s more, you can get in-store cashback when you link your Rakuten cashback Visa card with your accounts at popular retailers. If you like to travel and vacation, you can earn cashback for hotels, flights, and car rentals.
Sign up via the DollarBreak unique link to get $10 for free after you make your first purchase.
Ibotta
Ibotta Summary
- 2 ways to earn – app or browser extension
- Earn up to 30% cash back on purchases
- Get a $5 bonus by referring friends
- Over 1500 stores you can earn cash back at
Ibotta is an app where you can earn cashback whenever you shop, either online or in-store.
At major retailers, like Walmart and Sam’s Club, you can even pay directly through the app. After paying, you simply upload your receipt and you’ll have up to 5% cashback in your account within 24 hours.
A unique part of Ibotta is that you can connect the app to your loyalty accounts at many stores. When you do this, you then have access to cashback at these retailers without having to upload a receipt.
Ibotta also allows you to save money when shopping online at sites like Grubhub. Then, when you accumulate at least $20 in rewards, you can claim your gift card or transfer your funds to PayPal.
TopCashback
TopCashback Summary
- Get 100% of all the cash back you earn
- No minimum threshold to cash out
- Earn cash back at over 4400 partner stores
- Earn up to 25% cash back and discountsTopCashback is a cashback rewards program that provides consumers with an easy way to save money on their online purchases.
With TopCashback, you can shop at over 4,000 different retailers in the US, India, Canada, Japan, and Germany. These retailers offer products in a variety of different markets, including electronics, fashion, health, and travel.
To use TopCashback and then be sure to click on the links in their site or app when you’re online shopping to be able to claim your cashback reward.
You can also download their browser extension, which will notify you if items in your shopping cart are eligible for rewards.
These rewards vary from a retailer but can be upwards of 20% of the purchase price. Your rewards are then paid out through direct deposit, gift cards, Amazon credit, or PayPal.
EvoShare
EvoShare Summary
- High cashback – up to 40%
- 700,000+ hotel partners
- 10,000+ retailers
- Intuitive browser extension and app
EvoShare turns your daily purchases into a new source of funds. They have an innovative twist to their process, too. Users can send their earnings toward a 401(k) retirement plan, student loan, or college savings fund.
They offer services to employers which help employees meet their savings goals by shopping online and locally at 10,000 stores, cafes, and restaurants.
The program works by linking your company VISA or Mastercard to your EvoShare account.
Check out the EvoShare website and suggest a partnership to your employer before you ask for your next raise!
