5 Winning Ways to Get Useful Customer Feedback With Email Marketing

Email has come a long way in its nearly 50-year history. In its journey from technical marvel to an essential part of daily life, it’s become a critical component of any successful business strategy.

With the sheer volume of emails a person receives, it can be a serious challenge to get useful feedback from your customers. Challenging but not impossible.

In truth, getting useful customer feedback is just a matter of knowing how to approach the problem. Here are 5 tips on how to get meaningful customer feedback.

1. Know Your Goals

If you’re selling a good or service, your goal might be to see if customers are pleased with the product they’re getting or the service you’re rendering. On the other hand, you might be more interested in knowing what features they’d like to see added.

You can also use customer feedback as part of your CRM efforts. If you just asked yourself, “what is CRM?” it’s customer relationship management. Basically, it’s collecting data that allows you to better manage your relationship with your customers and understand your demographic.

Understanding your demographic is always going to result in better results for your business and a happier customer.

2. Ask Goal-Relevant Questions

Now that you understand your goals, you need to ask questions that will yield the answers you want. Making your questions open-ended leaves too much room for interpretation, and therefore might not get you any useful information.

When asking for feedback, you need to lead your customers in the right direction. If you’re following up on a recent purchase, ask questions that produce direct results about that. For example, try asking, “How likely would you be to recommend our product/service to others?”

Keep your goals at the front of your mind when crafting your questions, and you’ll get the feedback you want.

3. Make it Personal

The last thing your customer once is to feel like another anonymous nobody in an email chain. They want to feel valued and acknowledged, which is why your questions need to feel more personal.

In a way, this is an extension of asking goal-relevant questions. Only this time, you’re asking questions specific to the individuals.

Segment your email lists in such a way that people are getting questions that are actually relevant to them and you’ll get better results.

4. Give Them a Break

This one is simple. You don’t want to bombard your customers with constant emails. That’s a surefire way to make sure they never interact with you.

While you definitely want to consistently ask for feedback, it needs to feel natural. If customers feel like they’re being pestered, they’re more likely to either not give feedback or to give negative feedback.

5. Go Mobile

People use their smartphones for just about everything. This includes email.

With more and more people reading email on their phones, you need to make sure you’re optimizing your emails for that format. This means making sure your emails automatically reformat to fit themselves to any screen. 

Customers can’t interact if they can’t even read your emails, so don’t skip this step.

Customer Feedback You Can Use

If you follow these tips, you’re sure to get customer feedback that’s actually meaningful. Knowing what your customers need can make or break a business, so don’t underestimate the power of listening.

But email isn’t even half the battle. You need a well-rounded strategy. Read on for invaluable tips on how to succeed.