When it comes to improving, enhancing, and bettering your small business, there’s easy ways to figure out what to do than asking your customers for feedback. Through customer reviews and testimonials, you’ll be able to see exactly what you’re doing right and what aspects of your business you need to do better, but there’s one fundamental problem with this: getting feedback in the first place.
Whether positive or negative, getting customers to take time out of their day to leave you a review can be a challenging process to inspire. Here’s how you can acquire this feedback through your email lists, thus giving you all the information you need to grow your business in the best possible way.
Requesting feedback
While people will ignore request emails for feedback, if you do this method in a creative and exciting way, there’s no reason why it won’t inspire people to want to leave comments.
While you could email your customers and simply ask for feedback on what they think of your business and then linking out to a survey, it’s a best practice to ask one specific question that will really get your customers thinking and wanting to respond.
For example, if you sell mountain bikes, you could ask a question like ‘So, saddles. Essential. Do you prefer hard or cushioned brands?’
“Even with such a simple question, people are much more likely to want to answer it because they want their opinions heard. Simply ask questions like this every now and then, perhaps once a month, and soon you’ll have a ton of data and a very clear understanding of who your customers are and what they want from you,” explains Jason Duncan, a tech writer at State Of Writing and OXEssays.
Having a Conversation
If surveys feel too formal or too overused, you can also invest in the approach of starting an actual conversation with your customers. This kind of email can be as simple as writing out a text-only email where you ask a question and make it informal (depending on your branding, of course), that it feels like a friend is just reaching out.
If you’re selling razors and want to collect information on your customers, you could say something like;
Hey
Might seem out of the blue, but I was shaving the other day while on holiday using a disposable razor, and damn, I noticed I was getting razor irritation. Surely, I can’t be the only one?
Whether you get ingrown hairs, redness, razor burn, or anything else, I’m on a mission to sort out this problem for good. Let me know what your experiences are, and let’s counter shaving irritation forever!
This is just a basic email but is friendly, informative, and suggestive, and, like a razor selling company, you’ll get a ton of information back from your customers. You’ll know precisely what they suffer from and how you can effectively market your product.
Don’t Forget Segmenting!
The chances are you’ve read enough email marketing blog posts to know that segmenting your email list and then creating custom email content is so important if you want your message to be received effectively, it is simply important.
Let’s take the email above about shaving. You could separate your responses into an email list based on what people reply and what razor symptoms they’re having. You can then create custom emails to each of those customers describing how great and comfortable your razor is.
“This is really easy to set up, especially if you’re using a survey in your email because you can make the answers clickable, and then segmentation can happen automatically thanks to the wonders of modern email marketing technology,” says Martin Gordons, a business writer at Ukservicesreviews and Academized.
Keep Your Emails Short and Sweet
One final point it’s best to remember, but don’t drag your emails out. Since you’re asking for your customers to do something for free (unless using an incentive), you don’t want to waste any more time than you have to, so don’t.
Keep your emails to very short quantities, about 200 words max, and get straight to the point. If you’re beating around the bush by asking for what you want, your subscribers will just click back off the email and won’t bother taking any action.
Don’t forget to make the call to action clear and bold if you’re linking your customer to an off-email website and the sorts. The clearer the CTA or button, the more likely someone is to skim read the email and click straight onto it.
About the Author
Katherine Rundell is an aspiring marketing company owner and business writer at Best Essay Services and Assignment Writing Services Reviews. She has been involved in many daring business projects and helps companies really to get to know their customer base in the most intimate way. Additionally, she is a proofreader at Research paper writing service.
