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5 Steps to Constructing a Successful Email Survey Campaign

Sending a survey to your email list is a cost-effective method of getting valuable data for your business research. Low costs and usually targeted audiences are the advantages of using this survey method. However, surveys have to be carefully constructed to avoid typical setbacks that tend to derail many email survey campaigns. Below you will find five tips to maximize your email survey campaign success.

1. Pump Up the Response

The most common problem is receiving low response rates. These can make your surveys useless. Moreover, an irritating survey can antagonize your email list. This can make your email list unresponsive, and obviously, having unresponsive subscribers can be a major setback for your business. So construct your email survey campaigns carefully.

Start by choosing a test sample well:

  • First, choose your sampling method.
  • Second, consider qualities of the target survey respondents.
  • Third, match the goals of your survey study with characteristics of the survey sample.

2. Build the Survey

After you have chosen and characterized a target sample, you have to construct the survey. You’ll want to balance the number and complexity of the questions with the need to make the experience of filling out the survey easy for the respondent. Also, make sure that important phrases and words stand out and that your incentives and calls to action are clear and visible.

The number one key to encourage good response rates it to construct an eye-grabbing email subject line. Make it stand out, but don’t antagonize your recipients with a pushy or misleading message. Take your time to compose the right message.

3. Get Them to the Right Page

Another important thing to consider for a successful survey campaign is to make sure that your landing page gives the reader a sense of continuity. If there is a disruption between your email and the survey page, then the response rates may be lower, even if your email open rate is high. Make this process as congruent as you can.

4. Make Sure it Works

Next, check all the technical aspects. Failing to make your survey sequence work well is a fatal mistake that should never happen. Test the whole process yourself to be sure that it works well, and determine if there is a need to make the process more user friendly.

5. Collect and Analyze

After the survey campaign, the most important part of the process is to get your data. But don’t just focus on the survey results. Analyze the success of your email survey campaign, too. Start by calculating the number of successfully delivered emails. From this number, you need to determinate the number of fully completed and partially filled surveys and the number of respondents who haven’t taken the survey at all. If you do this, then you‘ll get research data that will help you the next time you want to conduct a survey.

These tips will help you to get satisfactory response rates and collect your response rate data correctly. However, there are other factors that are essential to have a quality email survey. In particular, proper wording of the questions in your survey is something at which you may want to take a closer look. Still, the response rate is a very important metric that will give you an overall picture of the success of your study.

Matthew Toren
 

Matthew Toren is a serial entrepreneur, mentor, investor and co-founder of YoungEntrepreneur.com. He is co-author, with his brother Adam, of Kidpreneurs.org, BizWarriors.com and Small Business, BIG Vision: Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right (Wiley).

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