Vine Program for Amazon Sellers
Launching a new product can be difficult, especially if your Amazon product page doesn’t have any customer reviews yet. Now we have the Vine Program for Amazon Sellers.
Amazon Vine is a program to address this and helps the sellers gain critical reviews early on. This in turn drives broader awareness of your products earlier and it can help sellers increase conversion faster. Amazon invites buyers to become Vine reviewers (called Vine Voices) based on the insightfulness of the reviews they published on their previous purchases.
As we all known; Amazon Vine was available for Vendors only, but it’s available now also for Amazon sellers.
Participating Amazon sellers can provide free units of their products in order for this select group of Vine Voices to post their reviews for the products they submit. Participating in Vine doesn’t only help build awareness of your product, also boosts the sales of your slow and brand new products, and helps customers make informed decisions about new products you offer.
To participate in Vine, you must meet the following criteria:
- BE A BRAND REGISTERED IN AMAZON BRAND REGISTRY
Professional sellers who have registered in Brand Registry and have the Brand Representative role for the product they want to enroll can participate in Vine. However, not all products or offers from eligible sellers can be enrolled in Vine. See “What are the product eligibility criteria?” for more information about the product and offer eligibility.
Important: You don’t need to be the brand owner to register a brand to Amazon. You can be a brand registered owner for brands you don’t own. You only need is Brand Registry Authorization, from the companies/brands you are working with.
- HAVE FEWER THAN 30 REVIEWS ON THE PRODUCT DETAIL PAGE
- HAVE A BUYABLE FBA OFFER IN “NEW” CONDITION
- HAVE AVAILABLE INVENTORY
Offers need to be FBA offers with available inventory and with less than 30 reviews already published on the detail page.
- NOT BE AN ADULT PRODUCT
- HAVE ALREADY LAUNCHED AT THE TIME OF ENROLLMENT
- HAVE AN IMAGE AND A DESCRIPTION
The enrolled products need to have an image, a description, a title, and other ASIN level or offer level attributes properly set up to be eligible for Vine.
Products are excluded from Vine if they:
- Require us to bundle multiple products for delivery/review.
- Require reviewers to separately order another product in order to conduct a review; accessories for widely-owned products are permitted (for example, cases for popular mobile phones can be enrolled) but you should not enroll an ink cartridge that requires a specific printer, or a replacement battery that only works in a particular camera.
- Do not correspond to the exact product listed on the FBA offer.
- Vine Program for Amazon Sellers: How does Amazon Vine work?
Vine Program for Amazon Sellers:
How does Amazon Vine work?
Eligible sellers can access Vine in Seller Central via the Advertising tab. They will be able to enroll and make their eligible offers available to Vine Voices right away. During enrollment, sellers can select the entire family or a limited subset of variations for each enrollment. Vine Voices will immediately be able to request a unit of the enrolled product and to post their review after they receive it.
You enroll in the Amazon Vine Program. Amazon lets our targeted group of highlight ranked reviewers know your product is available to test. These reviewers will try your product and post customer reviews for them.
You can access Vine in Seller Central (under Advertising, click Amazon Vine) to enroll eligible products at any time.
To enroll a product:
- Enter an ASIN in the text box and click “Begin enrollment”.
- Verify your product information else.
Note: You can enroll any eligible variation for a product family.
If you are enrolling a product set, I generally recommend that you chose the option “All product variations in stock are available to reviewers“. This gives the most flexibility to Vine Voices as they will be able to select their favorite variation, optimizing your chances to get insightful reviews. Alternatively, you can select another option if you prefer to specify the variations Vine Voices be able to request.
- Enter the number of units you are enrolling in.
Note: If you have selected either of the two options that allow you to specify which variation you want to enroll in a product set, you will need to specify the number of units you want to make available for each enrolled variation.
- Click Enroll.
Review the enrollment fee and accept the Terms and Conditions of the program.
- Click Enroll to complete the enrollment.
At this point, the items you enrolled will be accessible in the Vine dashboard.
Vine Program for Amazon Sellers:
How to manage your Vine products
The Vine dashboard will give you access to all the products you have enrolled in Vine. Your most recent enrollments are easily accessible on the first page of this dashboard, while older enrollments can be accessed by entering the ASIN or SKU in the dashboard search field. The dashboard is also the place for you to see if your enrollments encounter any blockers. You can also see whether your Vine products have been ordered and reviewed, or cancel your enrollments.
Enrollments can be classified as concluded, reviews in progress, awaiting reviews, canceled by seller, or action required.
- Concluded: Refers to enrollments that either received all the expected reviews or were enrolled over 90 days ago. At this point, we do not expect additional reviews to be published.
- Reviews in progress: Refers to the state of enrollments for which some of the expected reviews have been posted.
- Awaiting reviews: Refers to enrollments that are yet to receive any review.
- Canceled by the seller: Refers to enrollments you have canceled.
Action required: Refers to blocked enrollments. You will either need to correct the offer/SKU you enrolled in Vine, update some of your product’s catalog attributes, or send more inventory to resolve the block. For some listing errors, such as the enrolled product’s set parent/child relationship not existing anymore, you would need to cancel and re-enroll your product. For more information on the action required status, refer to the Vine errors page.
In the dashboard:
You will be able to see the date you enrolled the product in Vine, the number of units that are still available for Vine Voices to request, the number of units you enrolled, the number of units Vine Voices claimed, and the number of Vine reviews that were published.
After clicking Details:
You will be able to edit specific aspects of your enrollment (for example, cancel the enrollment). To access the Vine reviews, you can go to the product detail page on the Amazon website.
Timeline for enrollments:
- Enrolling an item in Vine is immediate if your ASIN is eligible for the program.
- In most cases, Vine Voices can start ordering units within 24 hours of the enrollment being completed.
- Vine Voices can start leaving reviews immediately after receiving units.
- 25% of reviews received occur within 5 days of the order, while 99% of reviews received occur within 35 days of the order (based on Vine’s worldwide reviewer population as of April 2018).
- Vine Voices are not required to leave a review on the product, but we update our pool of reviewers often in order to ensure only the most active, helpful reviewers are part of Vine.
- If an item arrives defective, damaged, or the reviewer receives the incorrect product due to labeling issues, we will cancel the Vine Voices order if they contact us, and they won’t leave a review.
Amazon Vine Program for Amazon Sellers:
Track your Vine reviews
You can track the Vine reviews for your enrolled products:
- In Seller Central, select Advertising, then click Amazon Vine.
- Search for an SKU or ASIN in the Vine dashboard.
Vine Program for Amazon Sellers:
What About Negative Reviews?
Writing a negative review will not impact a Voice’s reviewer ranking. Vendors / Sellers have no contact with the Vine Voices and have no influence over which Vine Voices will review their products.
On the brand side, in the event you do receive a negative review, it is considered the best practice to publicly reply. Any way that sellers can engage their customers online is only going to help promote your brand. It’s a great way to show customers you care and that you are trying to work through the problem. It can be a little risky, so sellers should make sure that when they do respond to a negative review they shouldn’t be too defensive or let their emotional attachment to the brand get in the way.
The best practice is to sympathize with the customer and show that you genuinely want to address their concerns. Ask lots of questions to show that you are interested in resolving the issue at hand – whether that be because of a delivery issue or a problem with the product itself.
Am I guaranteed a set number of reviews by enrolling in Amazon Vine?
No. By enrolling in Amazon Vine, your ASINs are not guaranteed a specified number of reviews. Some reviewers may not select your product for review. Some important things to note about the Vine Voices reviewers:
If they do write a review, they are not required to write only positive reviews. Amazon welcomes an honest opinion about the product – positive or negative. Of course, Vine reviews must conform to all our posting guidelines.
Vine Voices are not paid to participate in the program and write reviews. Voices are selected to participate based on their helpfulness of reviews voted on by other Amazon customers.
Writing a negative review will not impact a Vine Voice’s reviewer ranking. A reviewer’s ranking is determined by the number of helpful votes from other customers. Customers tend to value substantive, informative, detailed and objective reviews, regardless of whether the review is positive, negative, or neutral.
Vine Program for Amazon Sellers:
Why do you need product reviews?
- 97% of customers consider reviews into their purchase decision
- 92% of Amazon customers won’t make a purchase without customer reviews
- 94% usually read written reviews
- 73% say that value written reviews more than star ratings
- 32% claims that written reviews are the top factor that makes a product page’s reviews helpful and relevant
Visit here to learn more about the Amazon Vine Program