How to boost your response rate

The higher the response rate the better but getting a high response rate is not always easy, here you can find some tips to help boost your response rate. 

IN THIS ARTICLE:

1. Create trust to make your customers feel home
2. Raise interest to increase your open rate
3. Trigger an emotional reaction to increase your response rate
4. Keep your customers engaged

1. Create trust to make your customers feel home

Tip #1 : Send your emails from a custom domain
Sometimes, and because this is the basic offer you pick or have been offered, emails will be sent from a default domain from your service provider with whom your own customers never interacted with. 

One of the first questions a recipient asks himself/herself is:  "Who is it coming from?" And if they don't recognize the sender's identity, chances to be dismissed and ignored are high. Investing in a custom domain that will create trust right off the bat will make this a no brainer.

Tip #2 :  Change the ‘From’ name in the email invitation
Participants want to see that the survey is coming from a reputable, trustworthy brand or person. Even when you have a custom domain, this can still help gaining even more trust.

Tip #3 : Show your logo
That seems pretty obvious, and everyone is doing it already. Just make sure that dimensions and quality are impeccable. You can even adapt logo's based on certain characteristics of the customer you want to survey, for example adapt your logo according to the language of the respondent. A guide to do this, can be found here.

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2. Raise interest to increase your open rate

Tip #4 : Go straight to the point, be clear 
As customers ourselves, we also receive many emails per day. 
Think like your customers, and put yourself in their shoes for a minute. Ask yourself these questions:

• What do you want to achieve?
• Invite customers to leave their feedback with a question or an action verb. Think call-to-action. Your title is your purpose.

Tip #5 : Make it short
We want customers to be able to read the whole email title to grasp the essence of your request.

• B2C customers receive emails in their personal email box, and are likely to receive notifications on their phones. Depending on the phone screen size, that gives you approximatively 5 to 6 words on display. Customers must be able to either read the whole sentence, either naturally guess the end of your title.
• B2B customers receive emails in their business email box (most likely Outlook) and are likely to receive notifications on their phones too, but most of the time they will check their emails from their laptop. That gives you an average of 8 to 10 visible words.  

Tip #6 : Make it catchy
You want to stand out in this ocean of emails. Ask yourself :

• What is my company's branding communication tone of voice?
• What's the most appropriate way to address my customers? Friendly or formal?
• What are my customers sensitive about? How can I trigger an emotional reaction?

Tip #7 : Use a color scale 

At Hello Customer, our stats based on a wide array of industries, company sizes, and company geographical spans (local, regional, national, global), show two things:

• A color scale increases chances to get more feedback - Colors make your content catchy and contribute to your call-to-action. With respect to your branding guidelines, you can also pick bright colors rather than dark ones to make it more appealing.
• A vertical scale for mobile display helps to increase your response rate.

How to configure this can be found in this article.

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3. Trigger an emotional reaction to increase your response rate

Tip #8 : Show you care and value your customers' feedback
Very briefly. It could be as simple as   "We value your feedback", "We value your opinion", "We care about what you have to say", "We care about what you have to tell us".

Tip #9 : Personalize your message
If your branding communications policy allows you to do so, address your emails with your customers' identity data like their first name   "Hello John", "Dear John", "John, got a minute?", "John, we need your help", "John, we'd like to hear your opinion". This applies to B2C customers. In B2B environments, you will likely be challenged by your CRM data consistency and quality. Most of the time, B2B records show either no specific names, either incorrect ones. In that case, your customers data will need to be cleaned up first and looked after.

With Hello Customer, you can also easily leverage your customers metadata (aka participant attributes) to give more context and personalization. 

Examples:

• You've recently visited our store in [City Name].
• You've recently been in contact with [Agent Name] from our Customer Care Team.
• You've recently subscribed to our [Product Name] product/service.

However, your data will need to be on point to ensure this contextual data is correct in order for your customers to relate. If it is not the case (yet), or if you're not sure, don't spend time on this, as this can create the opposite result. Imagine you purchased from a store in Paris, and the email says you purchased from a store in Rome, that will make your recipient dubious. 

Find out how to personalize your message (and even your subject line) in the platform in this article!

Tip #10 : Make it short (again!), and simple
Your message should be crystal clear. You've only got a fraction of attention time from your customers once they agreed to open your email. The shorter and the simpler your message is, the higher the chances are to convert your audience into an active one!

• Limit the number of lines, and make your text "breathable" by creating space. This will facilitate reading, therefore understanding.
• Keep in mind that phone notifications display the first 3 to 4 lines of your message: be as much impactful as you can.

Shorten your survey. Keep the goal of your survey in mind when creating your questions. Don’t overload the survey with unnecessary questions: ISAAC will do the work!
Check the wording of your question. Is every question easy to comprehend? Use the Hello Customer preset metric questions

Tip #11 : Provide context
Shortly explain why you are surveying them:

• improve your customer experience, and which specific moment
• measure the success of a new product,
• measure and improve a process etc.

Relate the survey to a specific event. Is it because they've just:

• subscribed to one of your services?
• purchased from one your stores? your e-commerce platform?
• received a delivery?
• had an interaction with customer care? 
• used your new app, and you want to know what they thought about the experience?
• followed a training with your company? etc.

Tip #12 :  Give perspective

Make a commitment to your customers. Convince them to contribute. Briefly explain one of these:

• What is your purpose? What are your intentions? What does your organization want to achieve?
• How will your organization achieve its goal?
• And if possible, when can your customers expect to see results.

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4. Keep your customers engaged

Tip #13 : Set quarantine periods
How many times do we ask for feedback per month, per quarter, per semester, per year?

Time and willingness to provide feedback are precious. And limited. Your customers already receive feedback requests from many companies through various channels. Be reasonable and respectful of their time, and avoid abusing your customers' generosity. You would only put yourself at risk by becoming a source of survey fatigue. As a result, this will prevent your customers from unsubscribing. You do want to keep this communication channel open and trustworthy. 

Limit the number of emails you send to a given customer according to :

• the customer segment they belong to
• a reasonable frequency 
• the nature of the interaction with your company in the overall

You can set up a quarantine period within one touchpoint, but even across email touchpoint you can make sure your customers do not receive to many surveys by using quarantine groups.

Remember that with Hello Customer, you have the possibility to diversify your feedback channels to mitigate the risk of survey fatigue, but also to capture feedback at the best moment along your customer journey. Have you ever thought about setting up a website touchpoint or an in-app touchpoint with us?

Tip #14: Set a reminder period
Emails can easily get lost in a mailbox where dozens of emails arrive every day. Therefore, it is not a bad idea to remind your customers after 2-3 days: not too early/not too late. Find out how to set this up here.

Tip #15: Timing is very important
When did you send out your survey? Maybe a certain project is still ongoing or the contact has taken place 3 weeks ago? People will be less willing to answer in that case. 
The best timing is always as soon as possible right after the contact.

Also the moment you send the email is important. The email stats page, where you can find in which time frame most of your emails are opened, can really help to define a good time frame to boost your response rate.

This information can be useful to improve your direct marketing campaign for example.

Tip #16: Stick to your commitment
Stick to the commitment you shared in your survey, and close the loop with customers  After you engaged, and implemented changes within your organization, customers will appreciate you keep them posted. This is how you show them you do care, and listened to them. 

At Hello Customer, we happily provide you with a dedicated toolkit to design and follow-up on how to close the loop with your customers.

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