Best Of
15 Simple Tips to Send NPS Surveys Via Email & When Exactly to Send Them
Article written by Kate Williams
Product Marketing Manager at SurveySparrow
19 min read
30 May 2024
Best Of
Article written by Kate Williams
Product Marketing Manager at SurveySparrow
19 min read
30 May 2024
Looking for some tips to send NPS Surveys via Email as a channel?
Email, based on the findings from various surveys, still remains the king of customer engagement.
So, it’s imperative to understand how organizations use email and NPS surveys to reach out, collect feedback, and increase the engagement ratio.
On top of that, many things were designed to replace it, such as Facebook, Twitter, and RSS Feeds. But email survived the cut-throat competition because of stellar ROI, privacy, and affordability.
In the past decade, companies have pushed customer communication to a new level through email and push messages. Simultaneously, brands use these methods to collect feedback from their customers/consumers.
Unfortunately, all those efforts are ignored as the response rate hardly exceeds 5%. So, what would compel consumers to fill out that survey form and increase the NPS score?
Before diving in, let us look at NPS surveys. Also known as the net promoter score, it is an indicator of how likely your product/service is to be purchased via word of mouth. Simply put, the NPS score is a way of saying whether your consumers will recommend your product/service to their peers!
Is it the design, the copy, or it’s just that most users don’t feel like doing it?
Well, I think it’s the combination of all these. However, we can reduce the impact of a person’s will by focusing on the design aspects. The survey design consists of the survey email’s operational and visual factors.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys are a valuable tool for businesses, offering numerous benefits that can significantly impact customer relationships and business strategies. Here are some of the key benefits of using NPS surveys:
A personalized walkthrough by our experts. No strings attached!
In summary, NPS surveys are a powerful, efficient, and cost-effective tool for understanding customer loyalty and satisfaction, guiding business strategies, improving customer retention, and ultimately driving growth.
The below-mentioned tips have been shown to improve not only the response rate of NPS surveys but also But also improved engagement, brand loyalty, and recognition. So, they make sure to internalize these tips before implementing them. Now, you don’t have to follow all the steps as it is; you can add your own flavor, experiment, and see what works best.
Go with the straightforwardly simple form that asks to rate on a scale of 10.
And then the reason behind that score in a textbox. Such simplicity leads to accuracy and is often actionable.
Minimalistic design has been a widespread practice.
You can keep things clean and brand your assets (in this case, survey email) simultaneously. White label your online surveys with the right balance of colors, logos, fonts, and images; you can adjust the communication style to reflect your brand in the NPS surveys. This would ensure authenticity and increase the chance of receiving inputs.
People prefer informal communication as it lets them know other people better.
You say, which of the following questions would you respond to?
Mary, how likely would you recommend us to a friend or colleague?
OR
How likely would you recommend us to a friend or colleague?
See the difference! Just by adding a name, the whole intention of the statement changed. In fact, by doing so in your NPS surveys, you are giving your consumers a sense of belonging, which increases the trust factor. As a result, 74% of marketers say that targeted personalization boosted their customer engagement numbers massively.
As I mentioned in the first point, ask why your consumer gave you that particular feedback. What did they like about the product? What would have been better? It’s the most obvious one, but surprisingly, brands miss out on this.
NPS scores are vanity metrics that are not actionable, which is why it’s imperative to ask the reason behind their score.
If you ask why, you get reasons that will help you understand customer experience even better. Doing this in NPS surveys is vital for sustainable customer experience management.
Now that I advised asking questions, don’t overdo it and add 20 new questions. The customer won’t spend much time with your form. Instead, try to stick to one question only or, as per the NPS surveys standard, stick to 2 items.
Trust me, just two questions will give you a detailed picture of the whole customer experience without losing the response rate.
Still, if there have to be more than 2 or 3 questions, you can go with MCQ-type ones, which are likely to take less time and won’t require much typing.
For example: How did you like the behavior of the sales executive?
i. Polite ii. Neutral iii. Friendly iv. Rude
Nearly 75% of the people attended the survey using mobile.
Ensure that your survey email is mobile-responsive and well-optimized. Test it yourself because nothing could be more frustrating than a slow-loading email. In order to avoid any road bumps, consider testing your email using an HTML Email Check.
For better validation, send the NPS surveys to the marketing team as a pilot test
to see whether there’s any room for improvement.
This will let you determine whether your email is rendered correctly across all email clients, devices, and browsers.
Let’s take personalization a step ahead. In order to make your customers feel at ease, you need to sound less like a brand and more like a human. Ensure your NPS email survey is sent from an actual employee instead of email addresses [email protected] or [email protected].
This will lower their guard and will make them respond to your NPS surveys more honestly. This is because people think that you actually care for them, and your feedback form is not just a formal procedure.
Understanding the timing to send NPS emails is critical. To better understand, let’s say a customer buys your phone on day 1. Now to get acquainted with the features and functionality, they will need at least a week.
If you send them the NPS survey within that, it might be too soon for them, and the survey won’t be attended. Instead, give them some space and time, say a month or two, and then send the feedback email.
However, the time interval varies with each industry and product/service category. For a restaurant and food delivery brand, you want instant feedback to take proper action for the next delivery. Whereas a mobile or smartphone brand can wait for a month or two before sending out their NPS Survey or a structured series of NPS Surveys.
As mentioned in the previous point, figuring out the survey timing is crucial for a good response rate. So, here are some of the basics of survey timing as per the SaaS industry:
For SaaS or a subscription-based model:
As per the Pareto Principle, 20% of your customers bring 80% of your revenues.
For this very reason, put your old customers in that 20% basket and continue the surveys in an informal way. This will also help you pitch new offers or services to them, which have a higher chance of getting close in their case.
Now, a thing to keep in mind here is that the interval varies according to the industry and customer journey. So, draft a strategy before deciding on the time frame for the net promoter score surveys. With that, refrain from sending emails too frequently – customers will get annoyed, impacting your response rate.
After figuring out the right time interval, it’s crucial to know the exact time of the day your consumers are available to read and respond.
The best way to figure that out is to test different times and weekdays with various sets of people, also known as the A/B test. This would give you an idea of when your customers are active. We’ll learn more about the A/B test in a while.
Moreover, as per the study by schedule, the week’s best time to send emails is Tuesday at 10 am. Other than that, Wednesday and Thursday are the second most popular days, with 8 pm, 2 pm, and 6 am time slots. However, take note of time zones before deploying the strategy.
Every day, your consumer receives many emails, which makes your email lifespan utterly short.
This is where follow-up comes in. To ensure that your emails are worth the effort, make a follow-up plan. If you do that, there’s a 21% chance of getting a response to the net promoter score email.
Following up is quite essential if you’re serious about the customer experience. As Damian Thompsom of Leadfuze puts it: “You can’t follow up too much in the earlier part of an engagement.” Also, remember that follow-up email templates vary from the first net promoter score email, so design that accordingly.
Example Template for NPS Surveys:
Hey {{Name}},
We hope our {service name} is proving helpful to you and your organization.
In our last email, we asked for quick feedback regarding the {service name}, but we didn’t receive any response.
Would you consider sharing a little about your experience with our service so far and whether it could help someone else?
{{Net Promoter Survey form}}
If you have any complaints regarding the service, please get in touch with the support expert at [email protected].
Cheers,
{{Your Name}}
A/B tests are more than what marketers or designers use it for. If used wisely, it can give you insights into your audience’s behavior or reaction towards your email or message. This is crucial because what works for one company may not necessarily work for you.
What is the A/B test, and how can you apply it to the emails of your NPS surveys?
A/B testing (or split testing) is an experiment where you divide your audience into different sets and test variations of assets (in this case, email) to see which performs better.
In the case of an email, you could test:
However, it’s imperative to jot down the campaign goals before conducting an A/B test.
Make sure you can process all the feedback you receive. Otherwise, the customer would feel ignored or neglected if their message was not addressed.
To tackle this, limit the number of NPS questions in your NPS surveys. The less it is, the better for the marketing team to process the message and draw conclusions. And you don’t have to do it manually. There are amazing tools available that analyze a massive amount of customer feedback in an instant. This will further ease the process of calculating the NPS score.
If your customers have taken the time to fill out your net promoter score survey, it’s time to thank them for their little effort.
Some popular survey tools allow you to customize the thank you message tailored to each user. With that, make sure to prioritize critical feedback and reach out to the unsatisfied customers first. This shows concern and eagerness to improve.
Even after all the efforts, if you don’t see a rise in your NPS email response rate, offer an incentive.
Humans look for what’s in it for them. To address that, run an incentive program with your NPS campaign, as such campaigns have a high probability of fetching you a good NPS score.
However, you need to be careful with the people who are just there to get incentives instead of leaving honest feedback.
What type of incentives can you run?
Win-win in both cases!
Determining the ideal frequency for sending Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys is crucial for gathering valuable customer feedback without overwhelming them. The NPS survey, a popular tool for measuring customer loyalty and satisfaction, asks respondents to rate how likely they are to recommend your company to others. Here’s a guide on how often you should send NPS surveys:
In summary, the frequency of NPS surveys should be a strategic decision based on customer lifecycle, industry standards, and your specific business needs. It’s about balancing gathering enough feedback for meaningful insights and respecting the customer’s time and experience with your brand.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys are a popular and effective way to gauge customer loyalty and satisfaction. To maximize their effectiveness, it’s important to follow best practices in their design, distribution, and analysis. Here are some key best practices for NPS surveys:
Now that you’re here for this long, there’s a bonus, an incentive for you, too!
Follow Up Strategically – This is more important than individual follow-up. It is even more crucial to catch the customer churn and encourage customer advocacy to increase brand value. Measuring your follow-up against a scale might be an issue if you’re getting a plethora of feedback. This will make things complicated while calculating the NPS score.
Using modern tools to analyze and follow up would greatly improve the quality of follow-up.
It’s Time For us to Wrap up…
Now that you know the value of NPS email, here are tips to improve your response rate and increase the net promoter score. Let me tell you that not all the points are to be implement-worthy.
Which strategy you deploy depends on your industry, customer segment, and budget. In that case, you can compromise on some pointers and find the most affordable method that works.
But remember that in the end, all you need is quality and honest, actionable feedback.
I hope this works for you!
A personalized walkthrough by our experts. No strings attached!
Thousands of brands trust SurveySparrow to turn feedback into growth. Try it free today!
Best Of
15 MINUTES
27 December 2020
Best Of
15 MINUTES
20 June 2021
Best Of
24 MINUTES
10 February 2020
Best Of
13 MINUTES
7 December 2020
