7 steps to creating survey invitation emails that get responses (plus examples and templates)

Your email list is a customer goldmine. Instead of posting a survey on social media or your website, sending survey invitation emails allows you to send your questions to specific groups of respondents who are already invested in your business.

By the end of this article, you will have the best practices and tools you need to survey customers and get responses that will improve your business.

The customers on your email list have opted in to interact with you on a regular basis. These subscribers are going to have valuable feedback that will benefit your business.

By asking and displaying the right survey questions correctly in your embedded survey you can get to know what your target audience thinks—while increasing your subscriber engagement.

We conducted our own research to find out just how effective surveys can be for your engagement and came back with some pretty insightful data.

• Email campaigns with an embedded survey had an average click-to-open rate (CTOR) of 31.7%

• The most popular question type among marketers is ‘Multiple choice’ (30.2%) followed by ‘Open question’ (19.4%)

• Embedded surveys get 135% more clicks than links to external online surveys (more on this later)

• The average survey participation rate of subscribers who opened a campaign containing an embedded survey is 21.3% 

• The question type that receives the most engagement is, our favorite, ‘Multiple choice’ (22.4%)

When done right, survey emails can be a powerful tool. So let’s talk about how you can craft surveys that will engage and deliver results.

Survey invitation emails can go in many different directions. Follow these 7 steps to stay on track and create effective messages. We’ve also included plenty of examples to get your creative juices flowing.

The hardest thing to do when putting your first survey together is to keep it focused on one thing. You have so many questions to ask, but the reality is that your respondents are only willing to give you a tiny bit of their time.

People are busy. Respect their time and they’ll be more willing to work with you.

Instead of listing a bunch of questions, identify different categories and create separate surveys for each one. For example, if you are conducting a customer satisfaction survey, you don’t need to ask detailed questions about your products. Save those questions for a product feedback survey.

Insurify adeptly creates an entire email around one question. By keeping it simple with a short survey, they can jazz it up with colors and graphics and drive engagement.

When you narrow down the scope of your survey, you’ll be able to write a survey request email that is single-minded and reassures your subscribers that you aren’t asking for too much of their time.

The advantage of using email marketing for your surveys is that you can segment your respondents into smaller groups for optimal targeting.

If you want quality survey responses, you should send your survey emails to the people on your list who are most likely to respond to your questions.

By breaking up your audience into smaller groups, you can:

• Get very specific about the kinds of questions you ask, which in turn provides better survey data to make decisions.

• Personalize your emails to improve open rates, click rates and survey response rates. More people will complete the survey if it is targeted to their interests.

• Avoid blasting your entire list with surveys that will annoy people who aren’t involved.

For example, if you want to know why subscribers are buying certain products, check their purchasing history. If you're curious about the type of content they'd be interested in, add links to specific blogs and set up an automation for when that link is triggered. The same goes for finding out what services customers would be interested in.

If you're not sure where to start, you can also start segmenting subscribers in your welcome email.

Sleeknote sends an automated email survey to new blog subscribers to determine who their readers are.

Traditionally, email surveys invite people to take part and then provide a survey link or button to send them to the survey landing page. The problem is that you need to rely on a click-through before the subscriber gets to see the survey. 

What if you conducted the survey directly within the newsletter?

Embedded survey blocks give you the ability to start the survey directly from the newsletter. The embedded survey launches in the browser so subscribers can complete all the survey questions in one seamless step. 

To find out if an embedded survey was more effective, we ran an experiment.

We created two emails:

• Email A allowed users to answer the survey in the newsletter itself.

• Email B had a CTA button that took readers to a survey page.

Email A

Email B

The results? Email A won. By a lot. It got 135% more clicks than Email B.
It was based on this insight, that we decided to build the survey email block that enables you to conduct different types of surveys directly from your email.

How to create email surveys in MailerLite 👇

You can easily create email surveys in MailerLite using the survey block in our email builder. Just choose the block and drag it into the correct position in your email.

Once the block is in place, you can add questions to the survey. Choose from 7 question types, including:

1. Intro: Explain and invite subscribers to participate.

2. Satisfaction score: Take a temperature read of overall happiness.

3. Net Promoter Score: Measure your customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty.

4. Multiple choice: Ask a question with multiple answers.

5. Open survey question: Open-ended questions with write-in answers.

6. Like/Dislike: Subscribers answer with just one click.

7. Outro: Finish your survey with a thank you message & next steps.

When you send the email, the survey will load within the content. Recipients can easily complete the survey without leaving their email client.

Watch the video below to learn more about adding surveys to your emails.

You can easily test our embedded survey feature by signing up for MailerLite. We have a free plan that lets you create and send up to 12,000 emails to 1,000 subscribers. 

Asking someone to take a quick survey is like asking a friend for a favor. Except your subscribers are not your friends, so you need to go above and beyond to let them know how important their participation is to you.

Here are 4 guiding principles to keep in mind when writing your invitation. We've also included examples to highlight each point.

1. Show how the survey benefits the reader

You need to show how the survey benefits the recipient. This could be through a gift, entry into a prize draw, or simply the chance to improve the product.

Shopify makes this survey all about the reader by explaining how feedback helps the product improve. The company sweetens the deal by giving each participant a chance to win an $800 Apple voucher.

2. Clarify the survey's purpose

Clarifying the survey’s purpose ensures recipients know why they should participate and the types of answers to provide.

This email from Cigna explains how feedback allows the company to provide better service to the recipient and their family. Cigna also encourages responses by making the email simple, empathetic and personal.

3. Make the survey participant feel important

Explain why you chose the person to complete the survey. Also consider personalizing the email with elements like the recipient’s name to make them feel special.

Slack treats the subscriber like a VIP by calling out how the reader is just one of the few to get the survey. They also let subscribers know how much time they need to complete the survey—setting reasonable expectations for respondents.

4. Show the survey won't take long

No one wants to spend a long time on a survey. Letting recipients know how little time it takes to complete your survey can encourage participation.

This email survey example from Headspace highlights the simplicity and shortness of their survey email invitation. They use a clever headline acknowledging a common truth (surveys can be boring) and reassure people that this brief and engaging Headspace survey is worth their while.

If you are in a rush or unsure how to format your survey email, use one of our pre-designed survey email templates! Simply create a new campaign, navigate to the template gallery and use the dropdown menu to select “Survey” to find our collection of survey templates.

Templates are awesome for helping you with the layout of your survey email invitation. And each one contains example email copy you can use to encourage participation. You’ll start sending survey emails in no time.

You worked super hard to create the survey and the email invitation. Don’t forget to seal the deal with a great survey invitation email subject line.

Subject lines are often the reason emails get opened. If you put something generic like “Customer Feedback Survey”, you are doomed. Show your recipients the importance of the survey by leading with a subject line that makes it hard not to open the email.

These subject line best practices still apply to email surveys. Below we'll go into some more survey invite email subject lines and best practices.

When you send a survey email to subscribers, you’re not just learning about your business from the customer’s perspective—you’re also learning about your subscribers. It’s an amazing opportunity to segment subscribers based on their preferences so you can further personalize your email marketing.

For example, if you’re a digital marketing agency, you might send out a survey asking subscribers what their marketing budgets are for the coming year. Then you’ll be able to send each segment specific marketing recommendations based on realistic budgets. By adding rules to your survey questions that segment subscribers based on their answers, your email content will be more relevant and valuable to each group.

There are multiple segmentation options when it comes to survey rules, including:

• Moving subscribers from one group to another

• Copying subscribers to a specific group

• Updating a specific field with a custom value

• Updating a specific field with the subscriber's answer

In this sample survey invitation email, a bookseller asks subscribers to select their favorite genres. The bookseller applied rules to the survey so that subscribers who answer are added to groups that correspond with their selected genres.

Sending your survey invitation email and getting feedback is just the beginning. Beyond using the survey answers to improve your business, you can also use the feedback to strengthen your relationship with subscribers.

For example, if you send a survey to gauge customer satisfaction, you can set up email automation to send people follow-up messages to address their current level of happiness.

At MailerLite, we tried this with our NPS email survey, where we gathered feedback and then used customer segmentation to collect more public reviews and points of improvement. 

An alternative option is to include these follow-up messages within the survey. You can show different survey-completion messages depending on the answer given within the survey. 

For example, in the Mailercheck NPS survey, we ask anyone who gives a positive answer to provide a review as soon as they finish the survey.

Likewise, we ask people who give a negative or neutral review how we can improve. This allows people to share their opinions straight after providing a negative score, which increases the chances of a follow-up.

It’s easy to create a survey with multiple completion pages that change depending on the customer’s answer within MailerLite. 

Using the dynamic survey rules feature, you can send customers to different slides depending on their previous responses. Check out the gif below to see this in action.

You can create these surveys and embed them in your email so customers don’t have to leave their email client. Or you can use our page builder to create a survey on an external landing page and then link to this page from within the email.

Before we wrap up, here are 4 nicely designed survey email invitation emails to inspire your own email campaign.

✈️ Post-travel survey

Travel insurance firm World Nomads sends this survey email to customers the day after their insurance runs out. The timing means customers can give their opinion on the service while it is fresh in their mind. The email also includes offers for customers to extend their insurance, which could lead to repeat buys.

📢 Feature feedback survey

This survey email example from Moz is good because it asks for feedback on two specific product features. Anyone who uses these tools and has an opinion about them can complete the survey to share their thoughts. The chance to win an Amazon gift card increases the chances that people will participate.

📧 In-content CSAT survey email

EasyJet makes it super easy to start this CSAT survey by including the survey in the email content. Clicking the link leads customers to a longer survey that allows them to provide more detailed feedback. The email is personalized with the customer's name, booking number, and flight details.

‍💻 Product changes feedback survey email

Making changes to a product is never easy, especially one as loved as KFC. The company created this email to gather feedback on product changes to see if the company is moving in the right direction. The copy and design of this email is very on-brand and will appeal to KFC fans.

Embedded email surveys allow you to dig for customer feedback that will improve your business. More responses mean more opportunities to learn and evolve. 

Just remember to:

• Keep it simple

• Respect your subscriber’s time

• Make it easy

• And be grateful

What kind of questions do you ask your subscribers using embedded surveys? Let us know in the comments below!

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2021, but has been updated with new tips and email survey examples.