Picture this scenario: You’ve created an awesome customer feedback survey, you’re eager to find out what your customers’ thoughts are on your product, you send out the survey via email, and all of this just to get silence in return. At this point, you are quite frustrated and you ask yourself “Where did I go wrong?” Well, one possibility may be that your email itself does not complement your awesome survey. Sending an email out that is just not good enough can result in an unread or an unresponsive message. The email, which you send your customer feedback request with, is just as important as the survey it contains. This post will help you write a winning customer feedback email to avoid having to ever wonder what went wrong again.
What Is A Feedback Email?
Feedback emails are an important asset to any company. They are a common type of transactional email sent in order to obtain comments from customers regarding their experience with your service/product. Feedback request emails allow businesses to familiarize themselves with their strengths and weaknesses from a customers perspective, and encourages improvement in certain areas.
Customer feedback email best practices:
1. Reel them in with a strong email Subject line
The first noticeable component of your email is the subject line, so it must be effective enough to get your customers to open the email. The subject line should clearly reflect your brand’s intentions as well as grab the customers’ attention. It is also recommended that you include a time estimate for the survey to cater to your customers’ convenience.
Examples:
- Hey <customer’s name>, Mailer To Go feedback only takes 2 min
- Liked our <product/service>? We’d love to hear about it!
- 2 minutes of your time will help improve your experience with Mailer To Go
- How can we make <service> work for you?
- We need your feedback on Mailer To Go
- <customer's name>, we’d love to hear your thoughts
- 👋 Mailchimp would like your feedback
- AWS Wants Your Feedback - Receive $100 in AWS Credits
2. Personalization
Address customers by their name: Simple personalization can go a long way in helping customers to understand that they are appreciated.
Include the name of the specific product or service: Let your customer know what it is you are asking them to review. Adding a picture of the product is another great and easy way for the customer to be reminded.
Collect and utilize usage stats as well as demographic information to segment your audience for feedback emails: Contact customers that are relevant specifically to your research (e.g. only people who work in large companies, only people who use a specific feature, or only people who don't use a specific feature).
3. Simplicity: Be Brief and Direct
Do you actually read long emails? Me neither. People’s attention span has dropped over the years so there is no use in writing long and tedious emails. Keep them compact and consumable.
4. Explain the purpose of the email
Inform customers why the feedback request email is necessary and explain what you mean to do with the information you collect.
Examples:
- We take your feedback back to our product and support teams so we can try to improve your Segment experience.
- As part of our efforts to improve our customer offering, we would like to get your view on what works and what doesn't work when you use our platform, by answering a few questions.
- We're interested in hearing from our customers so we can continuously learn how to improve your experience.
- Your responses will help us as we continue to improve our offerings and resources.
5. Incentivize Your Email
Give your customers a reason to give you their feedback that will also benefit them by offering an incentive. Incentives are a fantastic way to show your customers that their feedback is valuable and motivate them to want to respond to your feedback email.
Examples:
- To thank you for your time, those who complete this survey will receive $100 in AWS Credit within 14 business days of receiving your input.
- As a token of our appreciation, once you complete the survey, we will send you a $10 coupon on Amazon.
6. Add a clear call to action
Help customers quickly decide on their next step by adding a clear call-to-action. Your CTA should stand out from the rest of the email, particularly when it is a link to an external survey. Use a CTA button or display your CTA as a URL in order to make things as clear and easy as possible.
7. Time estimation
No one likes their time being wasted, and without knowing how long it will take them to answer your feedback request, people are not likely to respond. Keep your surveys short and to the point while also keeping your customers in the know about how much time they should expect to take filling it out.
Examples:
- Our survey has only 4 questions
- We're hoping that you'll take 5 minutes of your time to share insights regarding your experience using <product name>
- Would you be willing to take our 15 minute survey?
8. Automation: pick the right time to send your email
Allow your customers to get properly acquainted with the product/service before asking for their opinion about it. On the other hand, don’t wait too long until your customers may possibly forget their first impressions with it. The amount of time you wait before sending a feedback email is dependent on the type of product/service you are providing. Online food delivery services may benefit from an immediate feedback review while the purchase of an application or online service may take some time to form an opinion about. Timing is everything, so make sure you are sending the email on business days when people are actually checking their work mail to receive the best possible response rate.
Mailer To Go is a simple, secure, and scalable automated email delivery service that can help you send well-timed transactional emails, including feedback emails. Find out more and give it a try now by clicking on this link.