8 Ways to Send Better Survey Invitation Emails

You want to improve your business strategy and you are full of energy and desire to make it better. In order to know which way to go you start sending out survey emails to your clients, but hardly ever receive any response. But did you know that the average survey response rate is about 10%, and only for big world famous companies this number may reach 25% point?

How can you increase this percentage? We will talk about it today.

There are two ways to get customers’ opinion about your company: feedback and survey. What is the difference? Feedbacks are filled out on the website. Everyone who is registered on your website may share his/her thoughts with others. A survey is a questionnaire embedded into newsletter templates for emails sent to existing clients. How many questions should they consist of? Depends on you. But our recommendation would be not to make it long.

8 ways to send better survey invitation emails

Fortunately, survey messages have similar features, similar purposes – to check out customer’s satisfaction, and are quite alike. Almost all the possible ways to improve your survey invitation emails are applicable to all emails of the kind. Here, we will show the best sample survey invitation emails.

1. Value proposition

Some people are not really interested in filling out surveys. They are afraid to waste their precious time. But you can persuade them to do it by offering a discount. Let it be 15% for the next purchase.

A gas station company offered a free hamburger and a cup of coffee to those who filled out the survey form. They mentioned it in the subject line. And those people who filled out the form received a coupon for a free hamburger. It did not cost much to the gas station company, but hit two goals with one shot:

The company increased survey response rate/this way they received a complete result. They encouraged the clients to choose this station among others.

2. Keep it short

Why short? The shorter the questionnaire is, the more chances your clients will respond it. A good way to make the survey short is bringing no more than 4 questions. It will really just take less than a minute. People will love it if you appreciate their time.

If the invitee has recently experienced your products or service, the preferable form here will consist just of one question: Did you enjoy the visit? Or how likely are you to recommend us to your friend?

If the answer is positive, then do not reply to this message. But if the answer is negative, it would be reasonable to send a longer survey with 4-9 questions.

Sometimes you need to create a longer questionnaire with more than 20 minutes. In this case…

3. Estimated time

If you want people to answer your questions, you need to tell how long it will take them to do so. If the survey is long and may take 20 minutes, be honest. Say it!

In my opinion, among all survey email invitation best practices, this one is the most important.

If people are really interested in sharing their opinion, they will fill everything out, but they will do it when they have enough time. If you promise that survey will last only 5 minutes, but in fact, it is 15-25 minutes long, people will get irritated and may leave the survey on halfway.

This is quite the opposite result that you need.

Speaking of time, mention the expiry date. In rare cases, some people postpone filling out the forms and want to do it in the evening or at the weekend when they have spare time. Consequently, it will be really nice of you to make a note on how long the survey is available.

Especially, if this is a long one.

Be advised: after the expiration date, the survey link/website page should inform your clients that the survey is over.

4. CTA button

In survey emails please use just one button as we are not selling anything here. No need to distract our customers. The button should be of a contrast color for better visibility. Add plain text here.

5. Share the results

When people spend their time doing something, or when they vote for some changes, they naturally want to hear the results. Promise them at the beginning of your survey invitation email that you will share the results. People feel like they are a part something big.

A few years ago one of our clients created a survey campaign where asked people to vote for one of the 5 bracelets. They had to click the image of the bracelet they loved most. So, there were 5 images and a button that said: “I am not interested in voting”. The results surprised us: no clicks on this button at all. Everyone participated in our competition.

Be sure to share the results once you have promised. Add some testimonials here if you wish.

6. Design

No matter what kind of messages this is, you are supposed to mention the company name, insert your logo, use brand colors and of course contact information and proper signature.

Yes, we know that sometimes we receive a plain text as survey emails, but to my mind, it doesn’t look good. In order to make your message look more professional, we strongly recommend using your company symbols.

The Thompson Hotel not only used all the mentioned features but also specified the sender’s name. General Manager… Always appropriate to add this info. We feel honored and appreciated when Senior Manager or CEO asks us for our opinion. In this case, people are more likely to share their thoughts.

7. Gratitude

Always thank the customers for what they do. First of all, we should be polite. Secondly, people need to feel appreciated. Because in fact, they did us a favor. And we must thank them for this. Thirdly, this way we let people know we accepted their vote.

8. Survey invitation subject lines

Now that you know for sure what ingredients you added in your emails, you may thoroughly think about the subject line.

It’s a commonly known fact that email subject line is one of three key factors that determine whether subscribers will open your emails.

Subject lines are to be:

• Highly informative — the reason why you are reaching out to customers;
• Descriptive — what particular question are you interested in and how long it will last;
• Personalized — it is optional.

Survey invitation subject lines examples

1. Maybelline — We want to hear from you!
2. GetResponse — We’d love your help! Fill out the quick survey and help us make GR better
3. Adweek — [SURVEY] B2B Data-Driven Marketing
4. ReallyGoodEmails — Survey says… ?
5. Hubspot — Take Our Survey on Customer Support and Service Salaries
6. Slack — Help us improve Slack by taking this survey
7. Insurify — Thank you + Quick question
8. Taylor Stitch — Please, review your recent purchase
9. Netflix — Netflix values your opinion
10. The Frye Company — $50 for your thoughts
11. Thumbtack — Tell us what you think about Thumbtack in 30 seconds
12. Pinterest — Hanna, got a sec? Give us feedback on…

Where to create a survey form

There are two popular tools:

• Google Survey Form;
• SurveyMonkey.

Google Forms are easy to work with. Google already has free templates which you can customize and use. Apply your fonts, add images to the questions, or change the header background. Google even allows inserting videos into the survey. You can add as many questions as you want. Once you have created the survey form, export it to your ESP. Google forms are free of charge.

SurveyMonkey is an advanced online tool to help you create bright survey forms, analyze the results, adjust the design to your company’s one. With SurveyMonkey, if you have created a quiz, you can immediately show people their score. SurveyMonkey also offers a free package.

How to add Google Form in emails

There are two ways to add Google Forms in emails:

1. Add the Google Form link to the survey invitation email. In this case, you will need to share the doc with all recipients. Otherwise, they will not have access to it.
2. Embed it to make newsletters interactive.

To implement this, you need to:

• create Google Form;
• prior to sending the form to your Inbox, make sure to tick the “include in email” checkbox;

• open the email and with the right-click select inspect;
• search for the table align=”center” line, copy it;
• in Stripo, pull the basic HTML block directly in your survey invitation sample;
• replace the “insert HTML code” with your embed code.

Please, see this GIF to embed a survey invitation in your emails.

Done! This email survey works well in Gmail, AOL, Yahoo! Mail, and Rambler.ru in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera. It works on desktops only.

Mobile users and those recipients who use other email clients will see the link. They might also be directed to the Google Form once they click the "Submit" button (in Mail.ru, Apple Mail).

Best time for survey invitation emails

Sending out the survey invitation emails, you expect to get as many responses as possible. Consequently, you need to choose the best time.

Long questionnaires should be sent in the evening when people are home, relaxing.

If the questionnaire is pretty short and consists of only 2-3 questions, you may send it anytime during the day.

But if your survey is meant to gather info regarding some office programs, please send them during the working hours when people are at work and are ready to answer all your questions to improve your apps.

For more detailed information regarding the best time, please read the article at CheckMarket.

But still, you/your ESP have already analyzed the best time for your newsletters. You may use this time for the survey invitation emails.

Important: If you request a survey regarding order, send it right away after the purchase or delivery.

Summary

We have analyzed best practices to improve the survey invitation emails and provided the best email survey invitation examples. We are sure that sticking to these rules will help reach the goal: increase the survey invitation responses, and gathering useful information about your clients and analysis boost your business.

Feel free to use our built survey email template or embed Google Forms in any email template we have prepared for you.

May your survey emails help you grow your business.
I sincerely wish you best of luck in your future endeavors.