You want to provide the best customer experience possible, and one of the best ways to do this is to find out how your customers feel about their experience with your company.
A survey is an excellent way to find out if your customer service, products and overall experience are meeting the needs of your customers.
But, what happens when your survey participation rates are low because you aren’t sure how to disseminate your survey?
In this article, we look at how to get links to your survey in front of your customers.
Send an Email
One of the most efficient and commonplace ways to communicate with your customers and get your survey link to them is through your email marketing channel.
Since email is a direct line of communication with your customers, you can easily send them a link to your survey.
Your email lands right in the inner sanctum of their email box, and because you can highly target your email list, you can decide just exactly who to send your surveys to.
For example, you might choose to send a survey to only the people on your list who made a purchase in the last year. Or, perhaps you want to survey customers who haven’t made a purchase in the last year.
You also might segment your lists by demographics. Another option is to survey people who landed on a specific page of your website and not made a purchase.
Finally, perhaps you’d like to survey those on your list who chatted with your customer service staff. The possibilities with email are limitless.
It’s worth noting that your emailed surveys will most likely show the highest response rate because these are people who’ve opted in to your email list and are receptive to communication from you.
As you send your email surveys, here are a few tips to follow for the best results:
- Use a short and specific headline to grab your customers’ attention.
- Make the subject line seem like an exclusive, special invitation.
- Do nothing else in your email other than explain your survey and provide the link to avoid any distractions.
- Be brief in your description.
- Offer your thanks and explain the incentive if you’re offering one.
- Make your call to action button (your link to the survey) big, colorful and visible.
- Send a follow up reminder if you have a low initial response rate.
Host Your Survey on Your Website
Another way to get links to your survey in front of your customers is by hosting the survey on your website.
By placing your survey on your website, you can invite your website visitors to complete your survey.
This can be beneficial to you because while these people may not be your customers yet, you can still gain valuable information from them.
Even though you gain information about your website visitors through your Google Analytics, you can glean even more information by posing specific questions to the people who visit your website.
How might you do this? Here are a few questions for putting surveys to work for you right on your website:
- Create surveys for specific pages of your website. For example, you might include surveys on your product pages or your blog.
- One survey might ask them what brought them to your website or how they learned about you. Another survey might ask them what they think of your brand-new product or what they might think of a proposed product or service.
- In addition, you could ask them if they found your content useful or enjoyable.
- You could also use a survey as a means to gain their contact information. Just be sure to tell them that you are doing it. There are many possibilities.
Where you place your survey is of significant importance. While you might place it right on your pages, you could also put your link in a pop-up box as visitors either land on your site or prepare to depart your site.
You can also use a survey on a follow-up page. For example, you might add a survey on your thank-you page after someone downloads something, makes a purchase or signs up for a beta of your services.
Do be sure to use a strong call to action and a very visible button.
Create a Blog
Another way to get a link out is to write a blog article and add the survey to the article.
This allows you to briefly explain why you want to conduct a survey and what you hope to gain by it. You can also return to update the blog post once you have your results.
Your blog allows you the ability to really connect with participants and encourage them to complete your survey.
Again, you want to use a strong call to action as well as a button link to your survey and text links to your survey within the blog text itself.
Use Social Media
Another premier spot to get your survey links into the hands of your customers is through social media.
While you can link to the blog post that includes your survey link, you can also create posts that share direct links to your survey.
The benefits of social media are many. Namely, social media allows you to start a conversation and encourage feedback in a friendly, low-key manner.
When utilizing social media, include a direct link to your survey. Consider using bitly to shorten the link as a best practice.
You can also use others on social media to share your link as well. Capitalize on your influencers to share your survey link.
You might also add a drawing to your social media link to encourage more survey participation.
Final Thoughts
The value of the survey is quite unsurpassed for finding out what your customers think about your business.
In fact, a survey by the Pew Research Center says that online surveys are one of the most convenient and cost effective ways to collect data from your customers.
Yet, it can be difficult to get responses for your surveys. The best way to combat this is to have an effective plan for distribution, and then to follow up and make sure it’s working.
Use your existing digital channels and brainstorm a few others. Then, promote your survey and distribute it to elicit a higher response rate.
Finally, the most important thing to remember is to make your survey about your customers, not you. You want to learn how they feel, so tailor your questions so your customers know how much you value their opinions.
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