Requesting permission to feature reviews

A review on your product page is one thing. Putting a customer’s words or photo in a paid ad, an Instagram post, or a marketing email is another — that use needs the customer’s permission. BetterReviews handles this just in time: instead of asking every reviewer up front (which hurts conversion), you ask only the specific reviewers whose content you actually want to feature, at the moment you want to feature it.

When a reviewer says yes, BetterReviews records a dated permission release and marks the review Cleared to use.

The clearance badge

Every review shows a rights badge so you can see at a glance whether you’re allowed to feature it in marketing:

Badge	Meaning
(no badge) / Not cleared	You haven’t asked, or the reviewer hasn’t replied yet — don’t use this in marketing.
Permission requested	You’ve emailed the reviewer and are waiting on their reply.
Cleared to use	The reviewer gave permission — you’re good to feature their review in ads, social, and email.

The badge appears on each review card in the Reviews tab and at the top of each review’s detail page.

The badge is about marketing rights, not moderation. A review can be Approved (visible on your product page) but Not cleared (you can’t put it in an ad yet) — those are separate decisions.

Asking a reviewer for permission

1. Open a review (click a card in the Reviews tab).
2. Click Request permission to feature.
3. Choose what you’d like to feature:
   • Their words and photos (default when the review has photos)
   • Just the review text
   • Just the photos
4. BetterReviews confirms it can reach the reviewer and shows a masked version of their email (e.g. j••@example.com) — we never show or share the full address.
5. Click Send request.

The reviewer gets a short, friendly email quoting their review back to them with one “Yes, you can feature it” button (and a quiet “No thanks” link). One click is all it takes — there’s no account to create.

When you can’t send a request

Occasionally the Send request button is unavailable because we can’t reach the reviewer:

• No contact email — some imported reviews (Loox, Judge.me, Okendo) don’t come with a usable email address.
• Opted out / unsubscribed — the reviewer previously unsubscribed or their email bounced, so we won’t contact them.

In these cases the request screen tells you why, and no email is sent.

Tracking your requests

Go to Collect → Permission requests to see every ask and where it stands:

Status	Meaning
Awaiting reply	The email was sent; the reviewer hasn’t responded yet.
Granted	The reviewer said yes. The review is now Cleared to use.
Declined	The reviewer said no. The review stays on your product page only — don’t feature it.
No response	The link expired without a reply. You can open the review and ask again.

Each row links back to the review so you can act on it.

Before you export marketing photos

The Export marketing photos bulk action packages review photos for your content team. Check that each review is Cleared to use before you put its photo in a campaign — exporting a photo doesn’t grant you the right to publish it. Use the clearance badge to confirm permission first.

What gets recorded

When a reviewer grants permission, BetterReviews stores a permission release: what they agreed to (text, photos, or both), the exact consent wording they saw, and the date. This release is your documentation that you had the right to use the content. It’s kept even if the customer later asks us to erase their personal data — we remove the personal details but keep the proof that permission was given.