It is no secret that for a business to be successful you need customers. Engaging with your customers, through any form of marketing or customer service is essential nowadays. Worldwide, 96% of consumers believe that customer service is an essential factor to maintain brand loyalty.
Making connections with your customers can be very challenging though. How can you overcome that business-to-client communication barrier? One answer to that question is to use the power of surveys. You know you want to get customer feedback on a new design, you want to learn more about your demographic, or you are interested in figuring out what type of content they prefer. The way to find these answers is a quick poll or survey.
Here are three tips on how to put that survey to use to get the maximum amount of participation and client engagement.
1. Customer feedback on websites
Your website is one of the most important ways your customers find you. Websites are hugely significant for your brand’s visibility. Regardless of if what you offer can be found in a physical location, your customers may not always be able to access that location—especially if there is a global pandemic that forces people to stay at home. Websites reach an audience not limited by physical boundaries or circumstances. Businesses without a strong online presence before coronavirus are seeing the result of that now.
Not only can websites help your clients gain helpful information about your business, but you can learn about your client as well. A highly visible method of getting participation is by creating a link to your survey, either as a pop-up window or by embedding it on the website. It is a simple leap to go from having a landing site for your customers to creating a connection with them through a quick survey. Especially if you already have a highly trafficked website, putting to use that traffic with a quick pop-up survey is simple and convenient.
You can learn more about the dos and don’ts behind embedding or creating a pop-up survey for your website with our handy guide: When, Why, and How to Embed a Survey on Your Website. Rule of thumb? Whatever works as the most fluid transition for your website viewer is what you should keep in mind when you build the survey into your website.
2. Email engagement
Marketing emails can be tricky, the hardest part can often be ensuring engagement. With over 293.6 billion emails being sent a day, it can be difficult to ensure that your email stands out.
Statistics from MailChimp show that most industries average a 21.33% open rate for their emails, and the average click rate is only 2.62%. By adding an interactive element for your readers to engage, you can increase your click rates by up to 300% according to Martech Advisor’s 2017 data.
You can change those numbers as well as gain valuable insight into your readers by the simple addition of a survey. Embedding a survey in your newsletter is one way to help. A quick poll to ask your clients what type of content they are interested in learning more about can help increase those future click rates.
You already know that you can embed a question from your survey into an email invitation when you distribute it. Integrating a survey or poll link into your newsletter is the next step to increase participation, both for your email click rates and your survey. This might not be the key to unlocking world domination through emails, but it could get you a little closer.
3. Market research
Perhaps the most obvious method of doing market research is by actually doing market research.
Market research is an almost 50 billion dollar industry. It pays to have a finger on the pulse of your industry—something you can easily do with only a few questions. Using a survey or a questionnaire you can study your own market, learn what resonates with your customers the most, and maximize your business’ effectiveness. You can use research to direct an advertising campaign, gain a holistic view of your market, stay on top of emerging business trends, and more. There are endless subject possibilities to study, all within reach of your survey.
One way to actually accomplish market research is through the use of panel services. This means plugging in your population specifications so that your survey can be filled out directly by your target audience. Take out the guesswork of not just what your consumers want, but how to reach those consumers.
Conclusion
There are certainly many more ways you can creatively use surveys to connect with your audience and improve your business, for example, social media is a wealth of creative communication ideas and hazards. Whatever way you do it: asking questions and allowing your clients an opportunity to provide feedback is essential for your business’s customer experience.
We would love to hear how you are using putting surveys and communications tools to good use in ingenious ways. Maybe you even put a survey asking for reader feedback at the end of your blog post, like this one!
