Why high-quality reviews drive success (and how to get more of them)

According to a recent survey, 99% of customers seek out reviews when shopping online — but not all reviews are created equal. In fact, 75% of shoppers admit they’re concerned about inauthentic reviews.

When competition is fierce, brands that garner high-quality, authentic reviews have an edge. Strong reviews — and consistent channels to funnel them to your site and third-party retailers — are critical for building the social proof and customer trust that drives success.

But what makes a review compelling? And how can you generate a large volume of verified reviews to build social proof?

Let’s explore what makes a gold-standard review, how to harness the power of high-quality reviews, and how product sampling campaigns amplify that process.

Understand what makes a high-quality review

In a sea of promotional content and advertising, high-quality reviews give customers a realistic preview of your product. But sometimes, reviews don’t quite offer the clear feedback you need to drive conversions.

These are the factors that lead to a purchase-inspiring review:

• Length: Recent research suggests that consumers tend to view longer reviews as more helpful. Customers often prefer 200- to 500-character reviews — and sometimes longer for more technical products.
• Detail: Detailed reviews help customers fully understand products before they purchase. Comprehensive reviews include clear feedback and give prospective consumers insights into product features, specific use cases, and personal experiences.
• Authenticity: Verified reviews build trust, as they exclude incentivised or otherwise inauthentic feedback. Even better? Verified reviewers are more likely to leave positive feedback than anonymous reviewers.
• Digital user-generated content (UGC): User-generated visuals of a product encourage purchasing, as many customers seek out images and videos of products before buying.  UGC can also build social proof, which contributes to brand loyalty.
• Recency: A 2025 survey suggests that 81% of consumers prefer reviews under 6 months old. Many customers sort reviews from newest to oldest, equating recency to relevancy — so keeping fresh reviews rolling in is critical for conversions.

So, how do you get consumers to write quality reviews? We suggest sampling campaigns. Take it from the luxury fragrance brand Creed — when they needed to boost brand trust for a new fragrance launch, they embarked on a multi-channel sampling campaign. One major campaign goal? Collecting plenty of new reviews to elevate social proof.

After Creed partnered with Sampl to distribute 10,000 samples to their existing audience base, 20.3% of sample recipients left new reviews — nearly double the industry average. The result was a 2X boost in ROI for their CRM database.

Uncover valuable insights with product feedback

Nothing will help you develop products your audience loves faster than paying attention to product feedback — which often comes from customer reviews. Reviews offer a goldmine of customer sentiments about your products, including feature experiences, use cases, expectations, and usability insights.

Listening to customer reviews can also lead to quick product improvements — including customer-inspired updates to flavours, scents, or packaging — that make products land even better with your audience. And your attention to detail won’t go unnoticed. When you take review feedback seriously, brand loyalty is likely to follow.

For example, when outdoor material protection company NikWax was prepared to release their new Wetsuit Refresh product, their internal team had concerns about the unique scent. By partnering up with Sampl, they gathered feedback indicating that 77% of customers enjoyed the scent. With positive reviews and customer feedback, NikWax entered their new product launch with complete confidence.

Skincare brand NIVEA also saw the benefits of customer reviews when they hoped to connect with a new market — Gen Z customers. NIVEA wanted to spark interest within Gen Z and expand their market reach by increasing customer reviews. By strategising with Sampl, they came up with a plan — including targeted outreach and premium sample experiences that would resonate with Gen Z audiences.

It wasn’t long before NIVEA’s efforts paid off — they gained 4,500 new reviews, which clarified how Gen Z perceived and used their NIVEA Soft product. Going forward, these insights will help refine their Gen Z marketing approach.

Make precise, data-driven decisions

Driving quality reviews through sampling starts with knowing your customers. While traditional sampling methods — like in-person demonstrations — offer samples to anyone, targeted efforts use valuable data to pinpoint engaged customers within your ideal audience. These efforts ultimately translate to a responsive audience and maximised ROI.

With Sampl’s digital sampling campaigns, the SamplMatch feature ensures you reach only the most engaged customers — no more duplicate requests, freebie hunters, or unqualified customers. By targeting interested customers, you’ll receive reviews from the people most likely to buy from your brand in the future, reducing data and insights collected from low-intent customers.

Once reviews roll in, analysing the data can feel like a daunting task — but you don’t have to go it alone. Consumer reviews are packed with valuable insights, but it’s easy for details to slip through the cracks when you don’t have a system for extracting meaningful data.

With Sampl AI, your team can quickly extract meaningful data and trends from reviews. Then, the Sampl sentiment analysis widget breaks down frequently mentioned words, while the review summary widget offers an overview of common sentiments across all reviews. From there, you can use data to inform your future marketing decisions.

When dog food brand Royal Canin wanted to increase brand awareness, they reached out to Sampl to build a comprehensive approach. By targeting samples only toward verified first-time puppy and kitten owners, collecting first-party data, and using campaign data to make audience adjustments on the fly, Royal Canin achieved a 24% review response rate. The best part? This result was over 2X their original campaign review goal.

Expand brand and product awareness

The social proof you create through verified reviews helps build your brand credibility while fostering new levels of consumer awareness. While review quality is paramount, quantity is also essential. Why? 70% of customers read between one and six reviews before committing to a purchase — so when the stakes are high, a high volume of strong reviews can give you an advantage.

Sampling campaigns can quickly scale social proof by engaging many customers in a customised campaign journey. Then, direct product experiences and helpful follow-ups encourage recipients to share their experiences. From there, UGC provides valuable details for other shoppers, further enhancing product awareness, social proof, and new purchases.

When snack food company KIND set out to raise awareness and social proof for their new ZEROg Added Sugar Bars, they knew they needed verified reviews on short notice. Their goal was simple — build social proof by harnessing the power of healthy resolutions in the fast-approaching new year.

By sending samples to qualified customers and encouraging recipients to make KIND a part of their healthy new snack habits, the brand drove social proof and awareness with 7,000 new reviews and a 4.56-star average rating — just in time for the new year.

Partner with Sampl to see the power of customer reviews

With Sampl, you can use sampling campaigns to generate customer reviews, brand awareness, and social proof on autopilot. After in-depth conversations between your brand and our team of dedicated professionals, we get to work on building a sampling campaign that matches your unique goals. Using targeted Meta ads, detailed pre-qualification surveys, and SamplMatch, we identify the perfect matches for your samples.

Then, our user-friendly, actionable dashboards offer the insights you need to inform marketing decisions and product development. Need help along the way? No problem — we’ll be ready with end-to-end support.

Finally, with extensive integrations, Sampl reviews sync across retail platforms, creating a robust source of truth to drive awareness and sales.

Want to see for yourself? Book a demo with Sampl today to maximise return on your customer reviews.