Like your UX, support, QA, and product teams, a marketing team spends a lot of time trying to think like customers. We’re obsessed with discovering what attracts them, what engages them, and how to speak their language. So when it comes to creating the perfect survey invitation, taking on a marketing mindset is your best asset.
Give these four easy marketing tactics a try the next time you’re promoting your survey with an email to your customers.
Write a Solid Subject Line
Your subject line is the first interaction people will have with your survey — and if it’s not written effectively, it might be their only interaction with it. There’s a lot of competition in the inbox, after all. In order to encourage people to open your email, your survey invitation should have a clear, direct, and short subject line.
Tips for Writing Subject Lines
- Keep it short. Web browsers and email clients will vary, but keeping your subject line to 50 characters or less is a safe bet.
- Say what’s inside. Telling people what’s inside and (briefly) communicating the benefits increases both the open and click-through rates.
- Avoid all-caps and excessive exclamations. IT’S IMPOLITE TO YELL!!!
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Best Practices for Email Subject Lines
Make It Personal(ized)
When it comes to marketing (or applying marketing techniques to your survey invitation), being relevant is your secret weapon. Personalizing your survey invitations with names, companies, and industry-specific details is a very effective tactic for increasing engagement.
According to Campaign Monitor, personalizing subject lines increases open rates by 26%.
Tips for Personalizing Your Survey Invitations
- Say their name. It’s a simple trick, but using dynamic tags to include their first name or company in the survey invitation is a subtle but effective attention-grabber.
- Show ’em you know ’em. Personalizing your survey invitation for your audience with references to their role or industry encourages them to engage with the content.
Recommended Reading
7 Must-Know Email Personalization Tactics
Take Care of Your Body (Copy)
OK, they’ve opened the email — what’s next? The second task is crafting a message that will make them want to click on your survey. As a rule of thumb, be clear, conversational, and concise. In other words: tell them what you need them to do, ask nicely, and get straight to the point.
Tips for Sexier Body Copy (OK, I’ll stop.)
- Use a call-to-action. A simple and direct call-to-action (CTA) leads people to your end goal. Start with a verb and mention a specific benefit. For example, sign up for our survey-crafting webinar and learn scary good tricks for increased tester engagement. (See what I did there?)
- Speaking of CTAs, stick to one. Multiple calls-to-action (“Please take this survey. Also, follow us on Twitter. And if you have time, leave us a review on Google.”) distract from what you actually need them to do.
- Break it up. Nothing overwhelms a reader like a solid wall of text. Using paragraph breaks or bullets as signposts will lead the eye to what’s most important.
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8 Incredibly Simple Ways to Get More People to Read Your Content
Nail the Timing
Timing is a critical component of email marketing, and it applies to your survey invitation as well. After all, your survey won’t get much action if you can’t get it in front of prospective survey-takers. The “perfect” time to send out a survey invitation will depend on your target audience. But with research and experimentation (and perhaps a well-timed email, asking your marketing team for their insights), you’ll soon figure out what works best.
Tips for Getting the Timing Right
- Know your audience. Surveying 9-to-5ers? Consider their office hours. College students? Maybe weekday evenings are best. Research your target market and go from there.
- Send reminders, but don’t get crazy. A reminder or two is an effective way to keep your survey top-of-mind. But don’t push too hard; too many reminders and you’ll end up on a spam list.
- Test, test, 1, 2. Sending a reminder is also a great opportunity to experiment with the best time to send a survey invitation. Monitor your open and click-through rates. When you hit on something that works, make a note of it for next time.
- Use your social networks. Remember that email isn’t the end-all-be-all of survey invitations. Using your social networks (when it makes sense for your target audience) is also a great way to spread the word.
Recommended Reading
Email Cadence 101: When and How Often You Should Send Email
You don’t need to be in marketing to market your survey invitation like a pro. And you don’t need a background in research to pull in high-quality survey results — though advice from an expert really helps. Dive into professional research methods, as well as techniques from fields like marketing and psychology, in our on-demand webinar with Centercode Research Analyst Sabrina Solis.
