Non-profit organizations lose around $15k in donations every year due to spam filters blocking fundraising campaigns. A lot of marketing emails go directly to spam despite being legit. What if the same is happening to your Email Surveys? And what if, even after your survey email beat the spam filters, your customers may not open those emails and give feedback?
Getting Customer Feedback is important but what if a large number of your customers do not respond to your Customer Feedback Surveys? This will lead to a biased response and feedback score and make your data inaccurate and unreliable.
But don't fret! We've put together some tips and tricks for you to use to increase your Survey Response Rate. In this article, we cover why you should use Email Surveys, how to send them and some best practices to help you master Email Surveys for your business.
Why Choose Email Surveys?
Despite multiple options to capture Customer Feedback, Email Survey is one of the most popular and commonly used survey channels for remote customers. Email Surveys can cover a large number of customers and can be sent to multiple customers at the same time within a matter of a few clicks.
Whenever a business grows, it is not possible to approach every customer physically and ask them for feedback. On the other hand, Email Surveys give the liberty to the customers to fill the survey at their own time of choice. And email is a mode of communication, which is used by almost everybody nowadays. Most email users do check their emails regularly. 89% of Americans check their email at least once a day.
Over that, smartphones have increased the tendency of people to check their emails regularly. Researches suggest that an average person checks email 15 times a day. Therefore, the mode of email ensures that maximum customers will see your survey and this increases the likelihood of getting a good response from them. Let’s discuss how you can send email surveys.
Must Read: How To Create Email Marketing Campaigns That Convert?
How to Send Email Surveys?
There are two popular ways to send your email surveys. The first is to send an email with the Survey Link and the other one is to send an embedded survey email. Let’s explore what they are:
1. Email Survey Button or Link: In this method, a survey link is sent through email. In the email body, there is a message inviting the customers to go to the link and fill the survey. Clicking on the hyperlink redirects the respondents to the survey page where they can respond to the survey. This method is ideal for long surveys and surveys which include open-ended questions to be answered.
2. Embedded Email Survey: This is the way where the survey is embedded in the email itself and the first question is displayed in the email body. A short message is given in the email body informing about the survey with a request to fill the survey. When the customers answer the first question, it takes them to the full survey where all questions are displayed and the customers can answer all the questions. These surveys are ideal for short surveys like NPS, CES, and CSAT Surveys where the customers have to just answer only one or two questions and the first question is a rating question.
Mastering Email Surveys
The effectiveness of a survey doesn’t only include sending the survey, the key lies in how your survey is presented to the customers that they take the survey seriously and get motivated to answer all the survey questions to the best of their knowledge and experience. You should keep yourself in their shoes to estimate how they will react and respond to a particular question.
You need to focus on things like which customers or potential customers you should target, what questions you need to ask from them, when to send them your surveys and how to convert their feedback data into meaningful information.
Here are some Best Practices that you need to follow while creating and sending surveys to your customers.
Best Practices to Follow while sending Email Surveys
- Prefer Embedded Surveys
- Use an engaging subject line
- Give Importance to the respondent
- Specify the objective of the survey
- Keep the survey short and simple
- Keep the questions clear and concise
- Mention the Estimated time of Survey
- Use mobile-friendly surveys
- Show Gratitude
Let’s learn how by following these best practices, you can motivate and convince the maximum of your potential respondents to take the survey and share their valuable feedback with you.
1. Prefer Embedded Surveys: We know there are two ways of sending surveys, one with the hyperlink and the other with an embedded survey in the email. In the survey with the hyperlink, even if the customers open the email and read it, there are high chances of them not opening the link. Whereas, in an embedded survey email, the customers are directly able to see the first question asked as soon as they open the survey. This prompts them to answer the question. While they answer the first question, it directly takes them to the full survey and eventually they answer the other questions too. So, the most effective among them is the Embedded Survey Email which usually delivers a high response as compared to the hyperlinks one.
Must Read: 5 Empowering Email Marketing Strategies To Consider
2. Use an engaging subject line: The subject line has a great impact on the decision of the reader regarding the opening of the email. This increases the importance of the subject line to be even more than the actual email body. The reason being, if the customers find the subject line interesting, they will open the email. But when your subject line is unable to convince and engage them to answer, they don’t even open the full email, let alone responding to the survey.
Use email subject line strategies to increase the response rate on your surveys. The key is to personalize the subject line. Try to use the first name of the customers and use a one-liner that seems engaging and motivating like, “Peter, we need your help to serve you better”
You can also use the first question in the subject line, this will make it more engaging for the customers.
3. Give Importance to the respondent: In the email body, give importance and respect to the reader. Tell them why they are given due importance for this survey and how their feedback matters to you. You can use lines like this, “As you are a privileged customer, your satisfaction matters to us than anything else.” These types of words will make them feel valued and motivate them to take the survey.
4. Specify the objective of the survey: The objective of the survey is a very important aspect of any survey. You must decide yourself before conducting a survey that what is your objective of the survey. Similarly, tell your customers about the purpose of the survey and how this purpose is beneficial for them too. You can use lines like, “We need the valuable feedback that will help us make our products and services better for you and help us serve you better” or simply a short line like, “Help us to serve you better” will also motivate the customers to respond to a survey.
5. Keep the surveys short and simple: Nobody has time to spend on long surveys. So always try to keep the surveys as short and simple as possible. If you create long surveys, the customers might end up leaving the survey in between which will ultimately affect the response rate of the survey. Therefore, it is always advised to send short and simple surveys that are less time consuming and easy-to-fill for the customers.
6. Keep the questions clear and concise: Questions are the most important part of any survey. When deciding on the questions, first think of the answers you want to receive. Ask straightforward questions that are simple to answer for the respondents. The language of your questions should be clear and easily understandable for the customers, otherwise, you may get inaccurate answers, or maybe a low response rate as the customers can think of leaving the survey in between.
7. Mention the Estimated time of the Survey: We all are busy with our stuff. Nobody has much time to spare. So why not pre-inform the customers about how much time it will take to complete the survey you’re sending! It is very good practice as it showcases that you value the customers’ time. When you create short and simple surveys and tell the estimated time to complete the survey, you can use lines in the survey invitation that will motivate the customers to take the survey. You can use lines like, “This two-minute survey will help us serve you better”. Remember to use the actual estimated time. If you specify two minutes earlier but the survey is taking more than five minutes, the customers may get irritated and can leave it in between.
8. Use mobile-friendly surveys: It is a fact that the use of smartphones has increased to an extent that most people use their phones for many purposes for which they would have bought a desktop. Similar is with the emails. Researches suggest that 81% of people prefer to check their emails through smartphones only. Therefore, always create mobile-friendly surveys that the customers can easily open on their phones at the very moment they check their email. If they are unable to open the survey links on their phones, there is a high chance that your survey stays unanswered as nobody is going to open their desktop just for filling a survey.
9. Show Gratitude: The survey data you are collecting is an important piece of information for you. Always thank the customers for giving their precious time to fill out the survey and providing their valuable feedback. Even in the email message also, do mention that the feedback matters a lot to you and you will be grateful for their responses. Receiving gratitude will give them a positive feeling. This will not only yield you higher response rates but also help you build loyal respondents.
For creating effective email surveys, use Email Survey Software with which you can -
- Create custom Email Surveys
- Send button-based and Embedded Email Surveys
- Schedule and send Surveys to your Customers
- Send Email Surveys to individuals, lists and bulk
- Set reminders for people to fill Email Surveys you get
- Track your Email Survey Sends and Response Rate easily
- View Responses in real-time
- Set notifications and alerts for your team
- Access in-depth analytics
- Take action to close the feedback loop
Conclusion
Using email surveys and making them successful is tricky, and it depends on the response rate. To maximize responses, you need to create and send your surveys in a way that motivates the customers to respond. You should make the surveys simple, clear and concise and use an engaging subject line to engage more customers. Prefer embedded surveys, specify survey objectives, mention completion time and give due importance to the respondents and their time. Always use mobile-friendly surveys and use effective Email Survey Software to create and send your surveys.