Customer feedback can be extremely valuable for a business. It gives you a direct insight into customers’ likes and dislikes – an insight you can use to improve your services and boost your sales. However, to collect that useful information, you need customers to take the survey.
The more customers take the survey, you’ll get a clearer picture of what customers think of your business. That’s why you need a compelling survey invitation email.
If you don’t catch the customers’ attention with the email invitation, your email will get lost in the pile of other irrelevant emails. Make your survey invitation stand out with a compelling email invite.
Here is some guidance on how to write survey invitation emails that customers would want to respond to.
Win Them Over with a Subject Line
The subject line can start or end the interaction. A boring or misleading subject line won’t evoke any desire in customers to even open that email.
An effective subject line is:
- Friendly
- Creative
- Clear
- Compelling
- Customer-oriented
- Engaging
Instead of writing a generic and dull subject line, step up your subject line game. Let it represent the brand. Refer to customers in a friendly manner. For example:
- We would love to hear your thoughts
- How are we doing?
- Help us make your experience more enjoyable
- Got a minute?
- Help us make our product X the product you need right now
- Share your thoughts for a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card
Show your appreciation for your customers and get your email off with a great start.
Follow up with a Great Headline
Once you get the customers hooked, the headline needs to draw them further into the story. It’s like when you need to prepare your press release that will captivate the audience. How would you start?
A great headline can win over customers in a heartbeat. It can convince them to take the survey without even reading the rest of the email.
What makes a great headline, you ask?
Innovation, humor, personalization, intrigue, and engagement. That’s what you should aim for.
Address Customers by Their Names
Personalization can never do harm. In fact, 74% of marketers said that email personalization improves customer engagement rates.
Give your emails that custom-made feel by referring to customers by their name. Greet the customer with “Hi [name].” Add some familiarity to the email.
Make the survey invite feel less like a mass outreach and more like a personal email.
Make the Email Customer-Centric
The customer-centric approach shows that you put your customers first. If you just write how the survey will help your business, customers will lack the motivation to take it.
Showing that you value your customers will put you on their good side. As Neil Patel explained it, “customers like to feel like they’re being given special treatment.”
In your email survey invitation, explain how this survey can benefit your customers. Will you use the data to improve customer service? Or to send customers personalized offers?
Imagine that the customer has asked you, “Why should I do this?” Answer this question before they have the time to ask themselves that.
For example, in one of their surveys, Shopify started the email with:
- How can we make Shopify work for you?
What Shopify did is emphasize how the survey aims to improve and personalize the customer experience.
If you are going to reward survey participants with discounts, free products, or other gifts, make sure to specify that in your survey invitation email. It will help you significantly increase your conversions and survey completion rates.
Make It Simple
Fancy words, technical jargon, or lengthy explanations are common survey turn-offs. If you lead in with a complicated or overwhelming email invitation, the customers will expect the same from the survey.
Charm the customers with simplicity. The email invitation should be short and sweet. Here are some tips that should help you create such an email:
- Use everyday language
- Get to the point quickly
- Stay away from the empty talk
- Don’t use technical terms and jargon
Every customer should understand your writing. Dedicating a sentence to the introduction, a few sentences for the explanation, and a sentence including a call-to-action is more than enough.
To illustrate, here is the body of the survey invitation email from Really Good Emails:
“When we started Really Good Emails a few years ago, it was just a simple blog; nothing fancy. Over the years, we’ve rebuilt the site and added thousands of emails, new tools integrations, and snazzy functionality. Is it helping? Do you want more? Are we missing something?
Here is a 5-minute survey to help us decide what to do next.”
Tell Exactly How Long the Survey Will Take
Do a test run on how much time you need to complete the survey. This information can be useful as customers will probably wonder how long the survey will take.
Without knowing how much time they need to invest, customers will hesitate. The customers need to be mentally prepared for the commitment.
Kristin Savage, a content writing specialist and editor at Subjecto, shared that, “When customers don’t see the time info, they can put away taking the survey. They’ll simply pull out the old “I don’t have the time for this now” excuse and forget about it.”
Specifying the time can especially work in your favor if your survey is short. For example, if you write “It will only take 2 minutes of your time,” most customers won’t mind taking the survey. Everyone has a few minutes to spare, right?
Add an Email Signature from a Real Person
Receiving an email from a real person is much more intimate than receiving it from a company. Consider adding a signature block of your company’s representative instead of a general company signature.
When a customer can put a face to the name, they can see a hard-working person who does his/her best to get in touch with the customers. They can’t get that feel from a company’s logo.
If customers receive an email from John Smith, the head of the customer support team, they will more likely agree to take a survey than if they would receive the same email from an unknown sender who works for X company.
Do you share your email account with other team members and are unable to add a personal touch to emails? There is a solution for you. You can use Shared Inbox designed by Helpwise. It will allow you to customize your survey invitation emails and use a personalized signature while sending emails from team accounts like help@, support@, contact@.
Final Thoughts
The survey email invitation has the power to collect a huge amount of precious data –data that can help you transform your business into a customer magnet. Therefore, use these tips wisely and write invitation emails that customers won’t be able to resist. Some personalization, some strategy, and a pinch of friendliness can take you a long way.
Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Create a template for your survey invitation email today and sign up for Helpwise to take advantage of using a shared inbox!
