Hi, Friend!

One of the best things about having an audience in email is how easy it is to get feedback. People have the expectation that email is a two way street and I’ll routinely get folks replying to my newsletters when they read something interesting (or when I mess something up!).

Related: See why you should allow people to respond to your emails

It’s no surprise that many people survey their audience to learn more about them, what they like and dislike, and how to better serve them. Heck, we survey our own audience - you’ve probably gotten one of those survey emails from us in the past.

Related: Learn the 7 survey emails that will upgrade your marketing

One of the questions I always ask myself before sending a survey is, “how can we make it as easy as possible for someone to respond to this survey?” Two weeks ago, I ran an experiment that completely blew me away and doubled the response rate to my survey.

In the past I would send these types of survey emails with a link or button that took people to the survey. 

Here’s an example of one:

I had the hypothesis that if we let people answer the first question of a survey directly from the email more people would end up submitting the survey. I thought this would happen for two reasons:

1. Letting people answer the first question creates momentum and buy-in. They've already seen some progress on the survey so the idea of finishing it doesn’t seem like as large a lift. 
2. "Take the survey" buttons or links imply a level of effort that is off putting.

To test this, I set up a simple Typeform survey (see how to integrate Typeform with an AWeber account) and embedded the answers to the first question (it has to be multiple choice for this to work) as links in my email. When a reader clicked on one of the links, they were directed to the survey with their answer selected. 

Here’s what my email looked like:

I tested this against the same email with a button linking to the survey.

What I Learned

Let’s break this down and see if my hypothesis was correct.

✅ If we let people answer the first question of a survey directly from the email more people would end up submitting the survey
This one is pretty straightforward. We had a significantly higher completion rate.

✅ Embedding Answers Creates a Feeling of Momentum
I can't say for certain, but I believe this is happening. Folks hit the survey on the web having already made progress, so they are not "starting" the survey, they are continuing it.

⛔ "Take the Survey" Buttons Imply Too Much Effort
I was wrong here. I saw an equal amount of people click through to take the survey, so it does not appear that people expected the survey to be a heavier lift to the point that they did not click through to start the survey.

As an added benefit, by embedding the survey answers, I was able to tag people based on their choices so I can email them directly in the future (more on that below).

Related: Learn how tagging can boost your email performance

Try this out the next time you survey your audience and let me know how it works. Hopefully you’ll see significantly more responses!

Segment your audience based on their interests

Like I mentioned, you could set up your email to tag readers based on the survey answer they clicked (learn how). In my experiment, I know which features our customers were most interested in, so I can talk to them in an even more personalized way. 

You can also create segments of people based on tags (discover how) so you can send broadcast emails that speak specifically to their interests. 

If you want to get really clever, you can use dynamic content (see how) to show different content to people based on their tags in a single email! 

Tags can also be used to trigger automated campaigns so people could automatically get follow up emails based on their interests. These very personalized campaigns can give your subscribers content or products they’re actually interested in, that speak to their specific needs.

“The ease of automation has been a game-changer for our business. For us to have so many people that are coming to our site and interacting, and to be able to just stay in touch with them in such an easy way. And to have that be automated is everything. It's a really big deal."
 

-Corrin Madden, Little Love Jar

on using tags and automations in AWeber

More from our blog

Did you know you can add this same ⬆️ dynamic feed element to your newsletter? And it only takes 10 seconds. 

👉 See how easy it is to set up this dynamic feed in an AWeber account

As always, thanks for reading!

- Chris and the team