Today, I want to cover recent news that Trustpilot just announced to all their account holders. If you missed their email, here it is, highlighting the most important part:
The main takeaway is that basic link invitations will likely be even less effective than they are now. Let's break it down to what it means for any company that uses Trustpilot and basic link invitations.
What's the problem with Basic link invitations?
If you go to any Trustpilot profile now and click the Write review button, you will be redirected to a static link like follows - https://www.trustpilot.com/evaluate/dogchef.com
That’s the link that companies use right now to send unlimited invitations regardless of the plan they are on free or paid plan. From talking to more than 200 eCom brands for the last 2 years, I can say that it's being used by most companies. The reason is that it gives more control over who they can invite to leave a review. One could argue if this is a bad or a good thing, but from Trustpilot's perspective, it’s not aligned with their business goals.
Having said that, does this mean that they will altogether remove the ability for anyone to leave a review on any profile? Absolutely not. If they do so, companies will lose the incentive of signing up for the Trustpilot plan if no one can leave an organic negative review that's outranking them on Google. This is the primary incentive that makes companies sign up for their paid plan.
What can Trustpilot do if they still want legitimate organic reviews but prevent companies from using basic link invitations? They give some idea of what will happen in their next paragraph below:
This means that they will make it even more challenging to leave a review when landing on a review from the basic link, but it’s likely to still work. However, if you have been using basic link invitations, this shouldn’t be news for you, as they already have a significantly lower conversion rate than Trustpilot-compatible invitation forms.
Downsides of using basic link invitations
Trustpilot is quite right about the drawbacks of using basic link invitations. Let's see why you want to move away from using them anyway:
- Additional friction for your customers because they need to create a Trustpilot account before leaving a review
- Only possible to collect unverified reviews, meaning you don’t have any information about who left a review
- The increased rejection rate of unverified reviews by Trustpilot platform
- Can’t send accurate follow-ups because you cannot match the review with the person. This means if the person left a review and you send a follow-up, it might look like you are spamming with unnecessary emails.
- Warning banners on your Trustpilot profile like the below:
Even with all the drawbacks mentioned above, this still didn’t stop companies from using this method; just because of its simplicity, even if its effectiveness is low, it still works for now. If I need to guess, I would say that with the upcoming changes, the efficacy of basic link invitations might drop from a 1% review rate to 0.5% or less, making it even harder to use it.
How do you prepare for upcoming changes?
The answer is simple: move away from basic link invitations to other methods. Now, this might sound easier said than done. There are 3 options:
- Use a free plan with automated invitations.
- Pros: Free
- Cons: only works if your monthly volume is below 100 orders.
- Subscribe to Trustpilot paid plan
- Pros: Can use verified invitation methods.
- Cons: It can get very costly for more significant volumes & you have limited control over the invitation process - you can see minimum pricing here: https://business.trustpilot.com/pricing
- Use StackTome
- Pros: More control over your invitation process, leverage for multiple platforms for a lot less than Trustpilot paid plans. You can see the full comparison here - https://stacktome.com/compare/trustpilot
- Cons: If you need Trustpilot branding on your website, you still have to pay for their paid plan as they have a copyright on it.
The other alternative of using basic link invitations with Klaviyo is likely going away, and even if you are using it right now, it’s not giving you the best results. You can see the chart below of one of our customers, who switched from Klaviyo+basic link invitations to StackTome, and they collected more reviews in less than 30 days than they had before in 9 months:
Here is the complete comparison of why using Klaviyo for Trustpilot invitations is not a good idea now: https://stacktome.com/compare/klaviyo
Summary
I hope this article helped you clarify how upcoming Trustpilot updates might impact your invitation process going forward and ways you can prepare it. If you would like to start the transition now and try out StackTome, then you can try it for 14 days for free if you sign up here: https://www.stacktome.com/pricing
