Surveys and quizzes aren't just for teenage magazines anymore. They're powerful marketing tools that have been making waves in the marketing world for quite a few years now, and they aren't showing any signs of slowing down.
However, marketing surveys are still a tool that isn't used to its full potential. Just about anyone with a good background in the marketing industry can put together an effective, elegant survey with the wealth of survey platforms out there. However, many marketing teams aren't taking advantage of that ripe opportunity. In fact, Google reported that less than 40% of marketers were using consumer research to drive their decisions in 2018.
Additionally, email marketing is still going strong in 2021. It remains one of the most popular ways for businesses to communicate with their customers, and research shows that people like receiving emails from their favorite companies.
If you piece this all together, using the power of surveys in your email marketing strategy is an excellent way to diversify and level up your business's marketing approach.
To help you take advantage of this great opportunity, we've outlined five ways you can use surveys in your email marketing strategy here. Keep reading to discover some fresh ideas for your email marketing strategy and how they can make a difference for your business.
1. Get to know your subscribers
Right off the bat, your email marketing strategy can benefit from the use of surveys before leads even become subscribers. When a lead decides to opt-in to your email marketing funnel, it's a great opportunity to get to know them a bit better so you can tailor your communications to their personalities and needs. This helps produce higher open and click rates and less unsubscribes in the long run.
Tellingly, 83% of customers are willing to share their data to enable a personalized experience and 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who recognize, remember, and provide relevant offers and recommendations.
Of course, in order to be compliant with data privacy laws like the General Data Protection Regular (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), it's important to obtain consent, inform your customers of why you're asking for their information, and explain how you'll be using it.
Once you've collected some initial data from your subscribers, you'll be able to individualize their customer experience (CX) by tagging or segmenting them based on factors like interests, age, and preferred communication sequence in your email software of choice.
Some initial topics you can ask your leads about when they opt-in to your mailing list include:
- Geographic location
- Age
- Preferred communication frequency
- Preferred communication topics
- Relevant interests
- How they discovered your product and/or service
2. Collect feedback and discover what resonates best with customers
Another powerful way you can harness the power of surveys in your email marketing strategy is by using them to collect authentic feedback from your customers. This is a great strategy to use when a customer has already bought a product and you want to see how they're enjoying it.
Getting feedback from your customers is extremely valuable because it will help you assess your products or services and create a cycle of continuous improvement.
Customers leave reviews and give feedback for all kinds of reasons, including giving advice to other customers, saying thank you, helping companies improve their products or services, and simply making their opinion heard. If you want to give your customers a little extra motivation to provide feedback, see point four.
It's advisable to make a post-purchase email survey short and sweet. The average survey response rate is about 33% and goes down by about 15% if it takes longer than five minutes to complete. It's also a good idea to limit your email to one topic and call-to-action, make your email copy scannable, and embed your survey within the email itself if possible.
3. Bring in new leads
Having a healthy supply of new leads coming into your email marketing funnel is absolutely essential. New leads are an important part of a healthy business model because they result in higher sales, larger customer bases, and increased organic reach when handled correctly. It's no wonder that 53% of marketers spend at least half their budget on lead generation.
Keep in mind if you're collecting a large amount of leads, it's a good idea to use an email verification tool like Verifalia. They help ensure that the lead emails you have coming in are valid and won't negatively affect your deliverability or the health of your subscriber list.
One of the most popular ways to generate and convert new leads is on social media platforms. They're great tools for determining your target audience, getting marketing inspiration, estimating your potential market size, nurturing customer relationships, and even sizing up the competition.
Surveys make interesting social media content because they're not something people see every day. When done correctly, they catch people's attention, are immediately engaging, and even provide sources of entertainment.
All in all, surveys are great opt-in tools that can be powerful lead generators. They also aren't very difficult to implement with the wealth of online survey platforms out there nowadays, like Attest and Typeform.
4. Exchange customer insights for rewards
In our second point, we talked about using surveys to collect meaningful feedback from customers within broader e-marketing strategies. Now, let's add one more element to the mix.
If you want a lot of people to fill out your survey in order to collect a large amount of data or need to give customers a little extra motivation to do so, you can offer them some sort of reward in exchange.
Offering customers a reward for filling out your survey makes the whole feedback process more balanced. Customers provide their time, experiences, and energy by filling out your survey. You receive valuable insights and data from their responses. It makes sense that they get a little something in return.
Additionally, when more customers are motivated to fill out your survey, you get more engagement in your email marketing funnels and are able to further tailor your communications and strategies to your subscribers.
Here are some incentives you could offer your customer in exchange for them filling out your survey:
- Discount codes or coupons
- Entries into bigger draws or giveaways
- Free access to a resource like an eBook or webinar
- Free membership in your loyalty or membership program
5. Use surveys to create a variety of funnels
As we've discussed above, surveys make great opt-in tools and are often positioned at the top of email marketing funnels. Stemming from this, why stick to just one survey? Creating a variety of surveys that lead to different funnels is a great way to segment and differentiate your customers. This provides yet another way for you to personalize content and customer experiences for different customer profiles.
For example, imagine that you're in charge of the marketing for a company that sells a wide variety of personal care products. If you were implementing an email marketing strategy around surveys, it would make a lot of sense to have a few different surveys leading to different funnels. For example:
- A survey focused on makeup
- A survey focused on skincare
- A survey focused on men's products
- A survey focused on pregnant women and/or new mothers
These potential surveys focus on different products and ultimately, different marketing content. Having your email marketing funnels segmented in this manner provides a great opportunity to build a nurture sequence with powerful conversion potential.
Use the power of surveys to your advantage
All in all, it's completely logical that surveys are great tools to take your email marketing strategy to the next level.
At their core, surveys are powerful marketing tools because they start conversations and allow customers and companies to get to know each other better. In the same vein, the best email marketing strategies are authentic, personalized, and provide customers with information they actually want.
Using the two together is a match made in heaven.
We hope our suggestions have provided you with some ideas as to how you can integrate surveys into your email marketing strategy. Whether you use them to personalize your subscribers' experiences, collect honest feedback, attract new leads, or organize your funnels, we're sure that your business will reap impressive benefits from this marketing approach.