Your Reply-To Address Matters!
An essential email survey best practice is this: Use a Reply-To email address that actually works. Too many companies send surveys from a Do-NOT-Reply address which frustrates customers and lowers response rate.
Here’s What NOT to do:
Most companies don’t want to collect customer feedback in all its various forms, so they send their survey from a ‘do-not-reply’ platform. The problem is that a Do-Not-Reply Email signals that customer listening is not a priority.
Instead, Use a Real Email that Customers Can Respond To
At Interaction Metrics, we always include a ‘reply to’ address, and we always hear from some customers who want to give feedback but don’t want to take the survey. Additionally, we help our clients keep their databases fresh by capturing the list of auto-replies showing a customer has changed their email address.
The entire point of your survey is to interact with customers and employees, inviting them to share their thoughts. You want to signal to your customers that you are listening to them and will take their opinions seriously. Listening doesn’t mean that you have to agree with each of your customers’ views, but it does mean that you sincerely want to know how things went and what happened.
Unfortunately, the survey industry is plagued by a ‘worst practice’ that fundamentally undermines surveys as listening vehicles. The worst practice I am referring to is sending surveys directly from a survey platform using a DO-NOT-REPLY email address. While this might be cheap and easy for you, it signals deaf ears that, deep down, don’t value feedback.
Examples of what shows in a DO NOT REPLY email address line are:
- “no reply,” followed by a string of numbers
- (simply) “do-not-reply”
- “no-reply@nameofcompany”
Sometimes, the email address might look like you could reply to it, but then the signature fine print will say, “This is an automatically generated email. Please do not reply.”
Aesthetically, a DO-NOT-REPLY email communicates you don’t want to interact and that your priority is to send surveys, but the listening part is not necessarily your concern.
Functionally, DO-NOT-REPLY means you won’t hear from customers who want to share their opinions outside your survey. With any survey, at least some customers have meaningful things to say but don’t feel that a survey is the best way for them to share what’s at the top of their minds.
Furthermore, if you use a DO-NOT-REPLY address, you’ll fail to capture the list of customers who have a new role with a new address such that the email is automatically returned.
Email Survey Best Practices Have Outsized Impact
At Interaction Metrics, we use a real email address that customers can respond to because that IS the email survey best practice.
How do we do this? The back end of our surveys incorporates engineering logistics to link survey platforms (we use Qualtrics, Alchemer, and others) with an email platform.
Basically, we’ve created a mini-survey software stack that results in the best email practice for our clients.
The benefits are not just that we can do more listening; we’re also able to compile a complete list of incorrect email addresses and recently changed email addresses.
This helps our clients keep their databases fresh.
Plus, it drives a higher response rate because, from the outset, we’re signaling that we care. Screaming at customers with an all-caps DO-NOT-REPLY email address is distancing and impersonal.
Surveys that Stand Out from the Clutter
Email survey best practices may seem like a small thing, but they make a huge difference. Think of it this way.
If you have a door that is ¼ inch off, it’s a pretty small thing. Nevertheless, your door won’t open properly. Same thing with email survey best practices. Small things can have outsized importance that affect your response rate and that influence how customers perceive the authenticity of your customer listening.
================================================
Interaction Metrics builds scientific surveys that result in decisive outputs and actions. Interested in more detail about email survey best practices? Get in touch!
================================================
