Survey Email Template: Expert Engagement Tips

2.4.2024
Read time: 13 min
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Survey Email Template: Expert Engagement Tips
Try Publicate For Free Today
02.03.2022
Read time: 13 min

Your customers are busy people who don’t always have the time to respond to feedback requests. However, insights from customers shape a stronger future for brands.

Here’s the good news: With the right survey email template, you can entice your target market to complete your short survey, to round up a bulk of honest, actionable feedback.

Guide Index

What is a Survey Email?

A survey email is an email sent out to a group of people to gather feedback or opinions.

Companies and market researchers often use these emails to get insights about certain products and services, directly from the mouths of their target customers. They can use their findings to shape and improve their offerings, which goes on to benefit the customer. It’s a win-win.

Picture from Unsplash

Why are Email Surveys Important?

Understanding customer satisfaction is key to business growth. Simply guessing what works is never a good tactic, and asking customers for their feedback one-on-one takes time. Getting real insights, starting with a survey email, is usually the best approach.

1. Make informed decisions

Use the insights you find to make informed decisions about your products, services and strategies.

2. Save time

Pre-built newsletter templates make the whole process a breeze. Use a survey email template to save time designing the email, while still being confident you’re sending engaging content.

An email builder makes this possible. With the templates you need to create beautiful emails fast, businesses can save time and money on outsourcing the job to a designer.

Choose from a library of modules and content to create on-brand emails effortlessly, with drag-and-drop functionality and integration with your chosen service provider like Gmail or Outlook.

3. Wide reach

Send emails out in bulk to collect many responses in one session. Since email surveys go directly to a customer’s inbox, you can easily collect data from a large customer base, regardless of their location.

Trying to grab the attention of passersby in the grocery store to get their feedback is an old-school, time-consuming tactic!

3. Get honest answers

Surveys are anonymous so customers can feel comfortable sharing their true thoughts and feelings. This can lead to golden insights for a business.

5. Get fast responses

When surveys are quick and easy to complete, recipients are usually happy to do them. Make yours as streamlined as possible to increase response rate and enable customers to fire off their answers in a few minutes.

6. Set-up is simple

There’s no learning curve involved with sending survey requests. In other words, you won’t need to get your head around new software or complex analytics dashboards to get started.

What are the Key Elements of Survey Emails?

Your survey invitation email is all you have to convince readers to part with their time. Make yours as effective as possible by maximizing every element.

1. A strong subject line

Write an attention-grabbing subject line that convinces recipients to open the email. Be clear about the email’s purpose but use personality so it doesn’t get lost in a busy inbox.

If this element doesn’t do its job, no one will open the email and the hard work you’ve already put into the survey will be wasted.

2. Email pre-header

Use the supporting preview text to reiterate the importance of your email. It’s a good idea to use this space to build more intrigue or offer a benefit.

3. Concise, engaging body text

Send the right message to readers. Using a feedback survey email template can help guide your body text.

The body of the email should introduce the survey and give readers a reason to take it - what’s in it for them? Often, just mentioning that this is an opportunity for customers to say how they feel and in turn, receive a better product or service is enough.

Keep the email body brief and interesting, and don’t forget to thank them for being a valued customer.

4. Images

Follow newsletter design best practices to make emails engaging. Relevant images break up walls of text, making the email more interesting and enjoyable to read.

5. A link to the survey

This is essentially your call to action: What do you want the reader to do? In this case, we want them to take the survey.Avoid cluttering your emails with multiple CTAs. Keep them focused on the single final goal: Take our survey.You can use an email builder to maximize engagement through clean, engaging designs. Design stunning newsletters that simplify the user journey, leading them straight to your survey link, and track email performance with detailed analytics. These insights can guide you toward more effective emails every time.

What are the Best Practices for Survey Emails?

Get the most out of your survey request email template by following best practices to maximize the response rate.

1. Offer an incentive

Why should the customer take your survey? If possible, offer a voucher or discount code to use toward their next purchase.

2. Keep it short and sweet

People are busy. Keep the number of questions to a minimum (need-to-have questions only!) and aim for a survey that takes less than five minutes to complete.

To make sure questions are focused you can ask yourself, “Why do I need to know the answer to this question?” If you don’t really know why you are asking it, you can probably remove it.

3. Tell readers what’s involved

Be upfront about how many questions are involved and/or the time the survey will take to complete. Share any other relevant details, such as letting readers know the survey is anonymous (as long as yours is anonymous, of course).

4. Explain why you’re asking for their opinions

People like to know their time is being well-spent, so cover the purpose of the survey in your invitation email. Focus on the benefits to the customer. Let them know you’ll be using the feedback to improve your product or service.

5. Show gratitude

Write a simple “thank you” message that is automatically sent on completion of the survey. You’ll be able to set this up through your sending platform, whether you use Mailchimp or internal newsletter software.

6. Personalize the email

Personalizing emails helps customers feel more valued. Use their name and remind them of previous experiences with your business to show you appreciate them.

7. Use an Email Template Builder

Remove the hold-ups and headaches of sending emails at scale. Use an email template builder to create beautiful emails from pre-built drag-and-drop modules, export to your current email service provider such as Gmail or Outlook, then analyze and improve engagement.

What are Email Subject Line Examples?

People are bombarded with emails every day. So, your subject needs to cut through enough to stop the scroll and entice recipients to open your email.

Coming up with solid subject lines takes time, so we’ve created some for you:

  • [Name], could we do better?
  • Complete our short survey for 10% off!
  • [Name], got a minute? We’d love to pick your brains
  • Help us improve our services
  • Tell us what you REALLY think, [Name]
  • Answer our quick survey for a freebie!
  • Help us improve our [product/service] with a 2-minute survey

What are Examples of Survey Email Templates?

Explore different ways to add polls or surveys to your newsletter - from emoticon-based ratings to questionnaire links.

To get you started, we’ve written some survey invitation message examples. Just click on the template you want and you can edit it directly in the Publicate email builder.

Choose from hundreds of professional templates to create high-performing emails without coding or design knowledge. With these tools at your fingertips, you can collaborate with your team, and send beautiful emails in minutes.

1. Quick survey email template

If you’re unable to offer a financial incentive, such as a discount or freebie, a simple “thank you” and explanation of the benefits of the survey will work well.

2. Discount template

A discount or voucher will always catch the eye of your customers. Use the following survey request email template and substitute your incentive into the copy.

3. Giveaway template

Everyone loves a giveaway. This survey email outlines the possibility that the recipient will win a prize if they take part. Be sure to include what that prize is to build excitement and boost responses.

4. One question embedded in the email copy

Make the journey to survey completion as simple as possible by asking the question right there in the email body. You’re limited to asking one important question with this approach, but it means users don’t have to click away from the email.

Wrapping Up

Framing your customer survey well means the difference between ignored emails and actionable insights for your business. To get started, grab the most suitable survey email template and customize the copy and images.

And, with email design software, you can send well-designed HTML emails in Gmail, even without coding skills.