An email marketing campaign that features a survey is a great way to collect data and learn more about your audience while encouraging participation from them.
Before you hit send on your next marketing email, consider these best practices for creating a successful survey campaign.
5 Tips for Survey Development
A survey is more apt to be completed if the questions are applicable to the recipients, easy to understand and don’t take a lot of time to complete. Keep the following tips in mind when developing your survey.
1. Ask Simple Questions
Craft questions that are clear and concise. Avoid using complicated language or industry jargon. It often helps to read the questions out loud to ensure they make sense.
2. Keep the Survey Short
Limit the number of questions. The longer your survey, the lower your completion rate. As survey completion rates dwindle, so does data quality.
Try to ask only essential questions. Survey personalization tools such as “skip logic,” which changes what question a survey respondent sees next based on how they answer the current question, is a helpful way to cut down on irrelevant questions and direct survey takers down the right path.
3. Minimize Answer Options
If you find yourself offering more than five answer choices for one question, try turning it into two questions or providing an “Other” option. A high number of choices could frustrate or confuse the respondent and cause them to overthink their answer.
4. Randomize Questions
If your questions and answers don’t need to appear in a specific order, you should consider randomizing them to decrease bias. However, as a rule of thumb, you should always put your most important questions first since survey takers will be the most engaged at the beginning.
5. Format Your Survey
A professional looking survey will go a long way toward building credibility and potentially raising the number of people who fill it out. Follow brand guidelines to ensure the font, colors and tone are consistent with brand standards. Make the text easy to read and the background images engaging while not being too busy.
3 Tips for Effective Survey Distribution
When it comes time to share your survey, there are various ways to intrigue your recipients. Take the time to set up your email in a way that will encourage email opens and survey clicks.
1. Entice Email Opens
Before your recipient even reaches the survey, they must be interested enough to open the email in the first place. A compelling email subject line can help catch their attention.
Try sending the email prior to work hours (between 6:30-8:00 am) as many employees check their email before going to work. It’s a good way to catch them before inboxes start to fill up.
2. Provide Context in Your Message
Provide a brief explanation for the purpose of the survey and why your recipient should care. People enjoy having a reason why they are completing something outside of their normal tasks. It provides more transparency and willingness for them to complete the survey.
Specify how long it will take to complete the survey as they will be more likely to take it when they know how much time to carve out of their day. If you have a deadline for when the survey will close, be sure to include that in your initial message.
3. Follow Up
Send automatic survey invitation reminders to increase submission rates. Many people may open the initial email and get interrupted or sidetracked with other things. Sharing a quick reminder email is helpful to the person filling it out and will likely end in more results.
Survey Tools We Recommend
There are many different survey tools available. Here are three we recommend:
Mailchimp
Offers pre-designed survey templates, the ability to personalize the email and tracking options to see who opened the mail.
Campaign Monitor
Offers pre-designed survey templates, drag-and-drop editing features, the ability to personalize the email and mobile device optimization.
Zoho Campaigns
Offers pre-designed survey templates, drag-and-drop editing features, the ability to personalize the email and track open and click rates.
When it comes to successful email marketing, creating a campaign with a clear call to action is the best way to engage your audience. Consider including a survey in your next email campaign for added interaction and engagement.
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