Incentivising reviews without breaking platform policy
You can incentivise reviews legally, but only by rewarding the act of reviewing, never the rating, and disclosing it. Get it wrong and you breach FTC, ASA and platform rules at once.
The merchant offered a discount for a review, and Trustpilot pulled the reviews down inside forty-eight hours. Then the merchant's lawyer flagged a second risk nobody had seen coming. The framework below is the one that keeps both Trustpilot and the FTC quiet, with examples of the language that holds up.
In this article
Incentivising reviews is one of the easiest ways for a well-meaning brand to land in trouble. The instinct ("leave a review, get a discount") is reasonable. The execution is where stores quietly cross a line that regulators and review platforms both enforce.
Do incentives for reviews actually work?
An incentive can lift response rates, especially on photo and video reviews. But an incentivised review is, by definition, not a spontaneous one, and that triggers obligations. Get those right and incentives are a legitimate tool. Ignore them and you have manufactured a compliance problem. If you would rather avoid incentives altogether, the timing-and-ask playbook in how to ask customers for reviews lifts volume without any reward attached.
How do I incentivise within the rules?
- 1Offer the incentive to every customer who reviews, with no link to the score they give.
- 2State plainly that an honest negative review earns exactly the same reward.
- 3Disclose the incentive, on the ask, and instruct the reviewer to note it on the review.
- 4Keep the incentive modest, large rewards distort behaviour and draw scrutiny.
- 5Check the specific policy of any third-party review platform you collect on, some restrict incentives further.
What never to do
- Never reward only positive reviews, or reward more for higher ratings.
- Never gate the incentive behind a four- or five-star review.
- Never hide the incentive, or present incentivised reviews as organic.
- Never, ever write or buy fake reviews, that is illegal, not merely against policy.
What does compliant phrasing look like?
The difference between a legal ask and a takedown is usually one clause. The table below sets the wording side by side so you can audit your own emails against it before they go out. Gifted product follows the same logic, which is why seeding and gifting programmes also have to carry a disclosure line.
| What you offer | Compliant phrasing | Breaches policy |
|---|---|---|
| The reward | "Leave a review, get £5, whatever you say." | "Leave a 5-star review, get £5." |
| The condition | Reward tied to the act of reviewing | Reward tied to the rating given |
| Disclosure | "This review was written for a discount." | Incentive hidden, review shown as organic |
| Negative reviews | Same reward for an honest 1-star | Reward withheld unless positive |
Sources & notes
- 1FTC, Endorsement Guides · US rules on incentivised reviews.
- 2UK ASA / CMA, review guidance · UK rules on incentivised and fake reviews.
- 3Bazaarvoice, review collection research · Incentives and review response rates.
- 4Note · Practical guidance, not legal advice, confirm with a qualified lawyer and each platform’s current policy.
0 days
GDPR right-to-erasure SLA
End-to-end inc. CDN purges
0 days
CCPA deletion SLA
CPRA
0%
of brands fail withdrawal SLA on audit
Idukki research Q1 2026
0%
Median rights yes-rate
Idukki dataset
Continue reading
1 piece in this clusterThese long-form pieces on the Idukki blog link back to this article, go deeper on the cluster.
More from Rohin Aggarwal
- Strategy
PDP before and after UGC: what actually changes on the page
Add verified customer photos, video and reviews to the middle scroll of a brand-only PDP and conversion lifts. Here is what moves, scroll by scroll, and where "just add UGC" gets oversold.
- Strategy
A kitchen table in Egham, why I built Idukki
Day job: SAP architect on UK government software. Night job: founder of a UGC platform for DTC brands. The Venn diagram of those two communities is, on a good day, approximately one person. Here is how I ended up running both.
- Strategy
The Death of Impression-Based Pricing: A Finance Director's Case
Impression-based pricing made sense while impressions tracked funnel impact. They stopped. A finance director's argument for outcome-based commercial models in the agentic era.