With tools for collecting reviews, managing user-generated content, and running loyalty programs, Yotpo has become a go-to solution for many ecommerce businesses when it comes to building customer trust and boosting engagement.
The platform offers a full suite of features designed to help brands grow. But is it the right fit for your business? Whether you're just starting or looking to scale, understanding what Yotpo brings to the table is key if you’re looking for something to help with customer engagement and retention.
Curious to know if Yotpo is worth the investment? Keep reading to find out!
What is Yotpo?
Yotpo is a cloud-based ecommerce marketing platform designed to help businesses improve customer engagement, drive sales, and build brand loyalty. It offers a range of tools to leverage customer feedback including customer reviews, user-generated content (UGC), and loyalty programs, among others.
Yotpo’s goal is to provide businesses with ways to collect and display authentic customer content, enabling the showcasing of social proof that can be used to drive conversions and build trust among potential buyers.
Some of the key features of Yotpo include:
- Review Management: Businesses can collect, moderate, and showcase customer reviews on their websites, building trust and increasing sales.
- User-Generated Content (UGC): Allows brands to gather and showcase customer videos, photos, and other content, turning customer experiences into marketing assets.
- Loyalty and Rewards Programs: Provides customizable loyalty systems that incentivize repeat purchases, referrals, and other customer behaviors.
- SMS & Email Marketing: Yotpo integrates SMS and email marketing, allowing businesses to connect with customers in a personalized way and boost retention through timely messages.
- Referral Programs: Brands can set up and manage referral systems, encouraging existing customers to bring in new ones by offering incentives.
- Easy Integration: Yotpo can seamlessly integrate with numerous ecommerce platforms, like Shopify, BigCommerce, and even social platforms, like Instagram and Facebook.
Who uses Yotpo?
The platform is used by a wide range of businesses that aim to improve their customer engagement and build loyalty. Yotpo’s tools for reviews, user-generated content, and loyalty programs are especially attractive for those looking to leverage social proof and increase sales, such as:
Ecommerce and DTC brands
Yotpo is heavily used by online stores across various segments, including fashion, beauty, electronics, and home goods. Brands in these categories usually make use of Yotpo’s review management and loyalty programs to increase customer trust and drive repeat purchases.
For instance, fashion retailers often incorporate Yotpo’s visual user-generated content features Instagram galleries, and shoppable UGC, to showcase how real customers are wearing or using their products.
Subscription-based businesses
Subscription businesses benefit from Yotpo’s retention tools, such as loyalty and rewards programs. They can encourage customers to stay subscribed or refer others by offering points or rewards.
Yotpo’s review and feedback features also help these businesses improve their services by gathering insights from subscribers, ensuring a stronger customer experience that can lead to higher retention rates.
Any brand focusing on customer loyalty
Companies that aim to build strong, long-term relationships with customers can benefit from Yotp’s loyalty programs. These programs are customizable, allowing brands to create unique point systems, offer promotions, and reward specific behaviors like repeat purchases or referrals.
Emerging and mid-sized businesses
The platform offers features that can help with the growth of smaller and mid-sized ecommerce businesses, such as tiered loyalty programs, automated email requests for reviews, and robust analytics.
Also, Yotpo’s integrations with popular platforms, like Shopify and BigCommerce, make it easy for these businesses to implement and manage any type of operation.
The bottom line? Anyone who sells things online can benefit from Yotpo.
What is Yotpo used for?
As an ecommerce retention marketing platform, Yotpo offers many features that help businesses drive more sales from repeat shoppers. We mentioned some of the platform’s key features, but let's take a deeper look at what the platform has to offer.
Here are the main use cases for Yotpo:
Collecting and managing customer reviews
Yotpo enables businesses to gather, moderate, and display customer reviews on their websites. These reviews build trust and can significantly influence purchasing decisions, especially for new customers. The platform makes it easy to request reviews via automated emails and SMS.
Showcasing user-generated content (UGC)
The platform allows businesses to collect and display user-generated content, such as customer photos and videos, directly on their website or social media channels. This acts as social proof, showing now real customers are using and enjoying products and services provided, improving credibility and, eventually, sales.
Creating and managing loyalty programs
Yotpo offers customizable loyalty rewards programs, helping businesses incentivize repeat purchases. Customers can earn points, membership benefits, and other perks for purchases, referrals, or other interactions, creating more engaging experiences that encourage long-term brand loyalty.
It's also possible to implement advanced segmentation options, targeting customer segments based on program-related data, including number of referrals completed, last purchase date, VIP tier, and more.
You can even run time-sensitive campaigns to keep your loyalty program top of mind and optimize more efficiently by scheduling campaigns in advance.
Running referral programs
Through Yotpo, businesses can set up referral programs where existing customers are rewarded for referring new buyers, seamlessly incorporating a referral program throughout the customer journey, including post-purchase, helping expand the customer base by leveraging loyalty.
With the app your business can incentivize repeat referrals, letting your advocates accrue value to earn better rewards with each additional referral, or create VIP tiers based on the number of successful referrals.
Plus, with integrated dashboards and analytics, it’s also possible to monitor and evaluate the performance of your referral programs.
Running SMS and email marketing campaigns
Yotpo integrates SMS and email marketing to deliver personalized messages to customers, encouraging repeat purchases. It’s an efficient tool to send abandoned cart reminders or promote sales and special offers, improving retention and customer engagement.
Improve your site’s SEO
Displaying verified customer reviews and ratings on product pages improves the overall search engine optimization of websites and listings by increasing fresh, keyword-rich content on your platform. Additionally, reviews and UGC contribute to higher conversion rates as they build trust with potential customers.
Yotpo’s pricing
Yotpo's pricing is structured across several product categories, such as “SMS & Email,” “Loyalty & Referrals,” and “Reviews & UGC.” The platform allows businesses to choose between the complete package, with all the services mentioned above, or to build their own bundles with the specific tools that meet their needs.
Every option has its own pricing that may change according to the business’s monthly order volume.
Full Product Suite:
- Pro Plan: Offers a seamless experience and robust customer and performance data. Starting at $548 per month.
- Premium Plan: Offers deeper customization and dedicated strategic support. Starting at $951 per month.
- Enterprise Plan: Offers elite customizable features built for enterprise brands. Pricing may vary.
Loyalty & Referrals:
- Free Plan: Offers a robust program and sophisticated features at zero initial cost.
- Pro Plan: Starting at $199 per month (up to 500 monthly orders).
- Premium Plan: Offers detailed program & behavior analytics and dedicated support. Starting at $749 per month.
SMS & Email Marketing:
- SMS plan: Offers robust segmentation and personalized messages. Starting at $0.0072 each SMS sent, billed monthly.
- Email plan: Usage-Based Pricing: Based on the total number of emails sent (pricing starts at $0.001 per email).
Reviews & UGC
- Starter Plan: Offers tools to drive SEO and brand awareness. Starting at $15 per month.
- Pro Plan: Offers display optimization to collect shopper data and drive conversions. Starting at $169 per month.
- Premium Plan: Tailor UGC strategies with smart data and advice from Yotpo's own team of ecommerce experts. Starting at $699 per month.
Pros and cons of Yotpo
Yotpo brings many benefits, but it has some advantages that make it not actually ideal for every single business. Understanding the pros and cons is important to determine if this program is the right one for your business.
Benefits of Yotpo
Here are the main reasons why Yotpo can be beneficial for your business.
Comprehensive features
Yotpo offers a wide range of tools, including review management, user-generated content, loyalty programs, and referral systems, allowing businesses to exchange customer engagement across multiple fronts.
Integrated with the biggest ecommerce platforms
The platform seamlessly integrates with popular ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce, making it easier for online businesses to adopt the platform without complicated setups.
These integrations also allow brands to add review widgets, UGC galleries, or loyalty programs directly into their online stores without the need for extensive customization.
Customizable and visual tools
Yotpo’s loyalty and rewards systems are highly customizable, allowing businesses to create programs that align with their specific needs and customer base. Also, the platform focuses on visual content for customers (being integrated with social media like Instagram or Facebook), enhancing social proof.
Additionally, these programs scale well as a business grows, with more options and functionalities in more advanced plans.
Advanced analytics and reporting
Yotpo provides detailed analytics and insights that help brands understand customer behavior. With data on review performance, customer sentiment, and loyalty program effectiveness, businesses can make data-driven decisions to enhance marketing strategies.
The analytics tools are especially useful for tracking which campaigns are driving the most customer engagement, such as specific loyalty tiers or UGC content that resonates the most.
Drawbacks of Yotpo
Despite the benefits, Yotpo has some disadvantages that make the platform not ideal for all businesses, such as:
Pricing can be high for advanced features
Yotpo’s advanced features can be quite expensive, particularly for smaller or newer businesses. While some decent features are available for free or on lower-tier plans, access to its most powerful—and useful—tools comes at a premium.
Can be complex for new users
While basic features are easy to integrate, some users may have technical problems setting up Yotpo’s more advanced tools, such as custom loyalty programs or review displays, especially if they don’t have experience with similar platforms.
In these cases, it may even be necessary to hire a specialist to adjust the functions, which becomes quite inconvenient, especially for smaller companies that want to use more advanced tools.
Limited customization on low-tier plans
Despite marketing itself as a highly customizable platform (and it really is on advanced plans), basic plans don’t offer many customization options.
For example, brands using the free version of the “Loyalty & Referral” product may not be able to fully control the design of review widgets or loyalty programs, potentially resulting in a less cohesive brand experience. This could be a drawback, especially if you prioritize consistent brand aesthetics for your business.
Performance issues
Some users report that the moderation of reviews can take longer than expected. Yotpo uses a moderation system to ensure reviews meet certain criteria before being posted, which is generally positive for preventing spam. However, this can result in delays, particularly if businesses are relying on reviews to create a timely marketing push or if they expect immediate feedback loops.
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Why should you trust us?
Joe Niehaus is a senior content writer at Whop with years of expertise in running referral programs for ecommerce brands. His knowledge has also been highlighted in renowned outlets such as Business Insider, GQ, and Travel + Leisure, where he’s contributed insights on online business and affiliate marketing.
FAQs about Yotpo
The frequently asked questions about Yotpo.
How does Yotpo work?
Yotpo works by providing businesses with a suite of tools to collect and display customer reviews, manage loyalty programs, and leverage user-generated content (UGC). The platform integrates with popular ecommerce platforms, allowing brands to automate review collection, among other features. Yotpo also offers detailed analytics to help businesses track customer engagement and optimize their marketing strategies.
What are the benefits of using Yotpo?
Yotpo simplifies the process of gathering and displaying reviews, which boosts customer trust and conversion rates. It has tools for loyalty and referrals helping businesses retain customers, while its analytics provide insights into customer behavior, enabling data-driven decisions. It’s especially helpful for brands looking to enhance social proof and build stronger customer relationships.
How much does Yotpo cost?
Yotpo offers free options with basic features, including review generation and some limited customization options. However, access to premium features like advanced loyalty programs, detailed analytics, and UGC galleries requires paid subscriptions that vary based on business needs.
