Sending survey via email: how to get the best results?

Last week I sent two emails to MailerLite’s customers with invitations to complete a survey.

Can you guess which email performed better?

Email A:

Email B:

Email B won!

The difference between results was huge. Email B got 135% more clicks than email A.

Email B got 13,24% clicks and email A 5,63%.

Sure, it’s worth starting a survey in your email rather than including a text and button to go to a survey.

iPad or no iPad?

I have mixed feelings about surveys. Yes, I know it is good to get feedback from your customers. At the same time I feel guilty to ask for a favour.

Thus, I had an idea to sweeten the deal and offer everyone who completed the survey a chance to win an iPad.

Luckily, I’ve changed my mind. I realised that incentives work when you’re soliciting stay at home moms, college students, and the like unless the incentive is insanely generous. I wanted customers to fill in the survey because they do care about MailerLite’s product, not because they want to get an iPad.

Moreover, psychology researches show that if you do someone a favour, you tend to like that person more as a result. The reason is that we justify our actions to ourselves by assuming that we did the person a favour because we like them.

Subject line

The more straight forward you are the better. Clearly state that there is a survey inside the email. You may even add the amount of time the survey will take – right in the subject line. Then deliver what you’ve promised. Respect readers time.

I did A/B testing with subject lines:

• A “Tell us what you think – 2 minute survey” got 30,42% open rate
• B “Need your feedback” got 36,90% open rate

As you see, simple subject line was enough to get the opens.

Take away:

• Be clear in the subject line. Say that you want a feedback.
• Include the first question in your email. It might be simple rating scale that leads to the further survey.
• You don’t need to deliver any incentive to get results. People love being helpful. If they use your product or service, they are interested in improving it no less than you do.

P.S.

Do you want to send a similar survey to the customers? Here is a custom HTML email for you.