How to Create the perfect Survey Invitation Email?

So you’ve read up on how useful surveys are for increasing your ROI and improving your customer experience and you’ve decided to send out a customer feedback survey or an NPS. You spent days crafting carefully targeted questions and decided on the data you hope to acquire. The question now is, how do you get people to actually respond to the survey you worked so hard on?

The key to getting a good response rate to your survey has a lot to do with crafting the right send out email. An invitation to take a survey may be seem like a small detail, but it is essentially the deciding factor of whether or not someone is going to take your survey or delete the email without even opening it. There are a few things you can do to make your email appeal to your target audience and ensure an increased open rate. We discuss them below:

1- Avoid Spam

First and foremost, if you want a high response rate to your survey, the most essential step is to make sure you email does not end up in a spam folder. Once you’ve lost your email to spam, the chances of getting a good click rate are slim. So what are the best ways to do this?

• Make your subject line interesting, personalised, and as un-spammy as possible by avoiding phrases such as, “Enter to win”, “Great deal”, or anything that suggests “limited time offers.”
• Make your email content free of rubbish – Spam alarms will go off if your email is too long, full of images with no alt text, or full of links to spammy sites.
• Make sure your “from” address is a legitimate email (no “noreply@life.com)

These practices will help you to improve your chances of getting a response by at least having an email that your customer will see and take seriously.

2- Consider what’s in it for them

Moving onto the content of the email, when you’re deciding how to write the “ask”, it’s best to consider what motivation the customer might have for taking the survey and then appeal to that motivation in the paragraph. Here are some common motivations that you can play around with:

• Taking the survey will get them more of what they want. One reason your customer might fill out a survey is if you let them know that by doing so, they will get a chance to influence the future actions of your company, making it work better for them. Example: Give us your feedback on what new products we should carry next year! Your customers will want to take the survey simply because they want their preferences considered in the company’s decisions.
• Taking the survey will make them feel important. Appealing to your customer’s emotions and need to feel needed can help you get survey responses. Simply make a comment along the lines of “As one of our most loyal customers, we need your advice.”
• Taking the survey will give them a reward. Whether you offer reward points or a chance to win an iPod, now is the time to mention it (not in the subject line, again, this can put you in the spam folder.)

3- Do not start your email by announcing how impressive you are

Some companies add a sentence close to the beginning of the invitation that often says something like: “We are the market leader and we provide quality service. We can do even better…”
Resist the urge to do the same. This sentence will not increase the probability of answers and worse, it may bias them. 

If you want to write a sentence about your brand, try to keep your introduction as neutral as possible.

4- Tell them how long the survey will take

In the introduction paragraph (which should probably be the only paragraph, so that the email is not too long) make sure to tell the reader exactly how long the survey should take them. This way they can prepare for the commitment and won’t feel trapped once they start the survey and find it is taking longer than they expected.

 

Discover The ultimate Guide to creating a Customer survey

5- Don’t over-complicate or overstate your email

Another important aspect of getting people to respond to your survey is not to lose their attention before they actually get to the important part: filling out the survey. Hopefully, you already worked hard to make your survey short, sweet, and to the point so that people don’t get bored halfway through and close the window.

By the same token, you don’t want to overcomplicate your “ask” or do any over explaining. Remember: in general, the people reading this are outside of your industry and are probably reading the email when they have a lot of things on their mind. In other words, they don’t want to be bothered with details or unnecessary explanations. If you make anything about taking the survey complex or hard to understand, expect people to click away faster than you can say “lost opportunity.”

6- Show the link to the survey

This sounds obvious, but make sure you include a clear link to the survey and a call to action.
Some companies use an image for the survey link, do not forget that a large number of email clients hide the default images.
If the image is blocked, it will be difficult for customers to respond.
If you use this approach, make sure you provide a simple text link in addition to the image.

Also, make sure the link has a good amount of free space around it, so it does not get lost in the message.
You can also highlight the link and put it in bold to make it stand out.

Example:
• Click here to participate in our survey.
• Participate in the survey
• Share your opinion

7- Add a signature block at the end of the email

An invitation to answer a satisfaction survey should always come from a real person, so make sure that you include the signature block of a real person.

If the invitation is for a large number of clients, you may be able to delete certain items (for example, the mobile phone number).
Apart from this, the signature should be similar or identical to your standard email signature.

8- Comply with the legislation in force regarding the sending of emails

The legislation is different depending on the country and you will have to be aware of the different rules that you will need to comply with.
In general, as part of a customer satisfaction survey, it can be assumed that there is an existing business relationship with the respondent.
This reduces SPAM issues that face many marketing emails.
However, it is always good to comply with the requirements of your country’s email marketing to ensure the respect of the recipients.
It is also recommended to include a mechanism to allow participants to unsubscribe from your mailing list.

9- Here is the result of the invitation email to a perfect survey

All you need to do is gather all these tips to build your invitation email to answer a customer satisfaction survey.

Example:

10- Integrate your first question directly into the email

With Skeepers, it is possible to integrate your first question directly in to the body of your email which allows you to considerably increase the response rate of your surveys.
Indeed, each answer is recorded as soon as you click in the email. The respondent is tempted to answer this first question!
The latter is then redirected to the rest of your survey whose logic is fully preserved.

 

Writing an invitation email for your survey isn’t difficult, but there are a few pitfalls you need to avoid if you want it to be effective. Download your memo and stick to our tips, and you should get a response rate that surpasses your expectations.

 

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