A Complete Guide to NPS Email Surveys: Examples, Best Practices and Benefits for SaaS Companies

As the old saying goes, - if you don't ask, you'll never know. The same thing applies to your business. If you don't ask your customers what they think about your product, you'll never know from which features your customers are getting the most value.

It's always a good idea to ensure that your customers have a satisfactory experience and identify the causes of customer dissatisfaction - this is where the net promoter score comes in. It is one of the most critical metrics for your organization to track.

In this article, you'll learn what a net promoter score is and the best practices you can implement in an NPS email survey.

Table of Contents

• What is an NPS Email Survey?
• NPS Email Survey Best Practices
• Effective Ways to Boost Your NPS Survey Open Rates
• How to Choose the Right NPS Email Survey Software
• Wrapping Up

What is an NPS Email Survey?

NPS, also known as the net promoter score, is a way of measuring your customers’ loyalty to your brand. A simple question such as: " how likely are you to recommend our brand to others? "- would suffice. The customer would then answer the question by choosing on a scale of 0 to 10.

The survey question helps give you an idea of the customers that would likely churn and remain loyal customers. The net promoter score calculation enables you to segment your customers into three categories based on their responses.

The categories are:

1. Promoters (9-10): the promoters represent your brand’s loyal customers. They enjoy using your product and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend your product to friends and family members. So, they are most likely to engage in word-of-mouth marketing.

2. Passives (7-8): passives represent customers who enjoy using your product but aren’t loyal brand advocates. As they keep using your product, they may end up becoming loyal customers (promoters) or detractors.

3. Detractors (0-6): these customers are unhappy with using your product. They are more likely to churn and would less likely recommend your product to other people. Even worse, they could discourage other people from using your product by sharing their bad experiences with using your product.

The net promoter score survey is an excellent indicator of how customers view your product. While it may seem like a simple task of asking customers to give you an NPS score, creating an NPS email is not easy. A slight mistake can cause a significant error in your overall marketing performance.

For this reason, here are some of the best practices to implement when creating NPS  surveys.

NPS Email Survey Best Practices

If you want your NPS email survey to generate positive results, you need to ensure that you apply the correct email practices. Below you'll find some of the best NPS email practices implemented by great companies.

1. Personalize the NPS Email Survey

The power of personalization can significantly influence your email survey. For example, an email that doesn't address the recipient's name lacks a real connection with the customer and would be less engaging. Besides, 74% of marketers agree that targeted personalization increases customer engagement.

2. Ensure you have the right sample size

When it comes to conducting an NPS survey, the size of your sample size can make a big difference. If your sample size is not large enough, you can't be sure of the accuracy of your survey results. Why? - this is because the number of surveyed customers is entirely dependent on the size of your current customer base, hence determining the accuracy of your NPS survey results.

Survey monkey has a valuable sample size calculator that you can use to determine the sample size of email survey sample size.

3. Leverage a distribution channel that suits your business needs

Before you choose a distribution channel for your email survey, you need to evaluate the nature of your customer base and company. Some businesses may decide to use text messages because it suits the scope of their business and it's the preferred channel by their customers.

While another business may choose to use email because they already have their customer's email addresses, this channel is usually adequate, easy to set up, and easy to reach an audience. Alternatively, you can conduct your NPS surveys through your mobile app or website.

Whatever distribution channel you choose, ensure that you deliver your message clearly and effectively. This way, you can get more responses from most active users, and you'll be able to tailor your messaging to what they prefer.

For example, The Survicate team took advantage of slack to carry out their NPS survey.

4. Send your email from a company staff member

Which email address do you think customers would be more likely to read, [email protected] or [email protected]?

With the first email address, you lose the opportunity to build a real connection with your recipient. On the other hand, the second email address feels more personal and creates a real connection with your customers.

If you don't give your customers a good impression with your mailbox address, it reduces the chances of your customers engaging with your message. Besides, you wouldn't want your customers to ignore your message because of a poor email address.

5. Consider your customer's buying journey

Send your NPS email survey according to your customers' buying journey - this is because customers at different stages of the buying journey usually have different buying preferences, pain points, challenges, and behaviors. For instance, measure how a particular event or purchase affects their buying experience. Then run an NPS survey to follow up on the specific action.

In the case of inactive users, you can send a survey every quarter or twice a year. As a result, you can identify customers at the risk of churning and prevent them from becoming detractors. Active customers who enjoy using your service would give your business a good rating and generate a good NPS score. So, you can't simply ask the same question to customers at different buying stages.

With the Engage Marketing Automation tool, you can track how customers interact with your product and use that information to create unique customer groups or segments.

6. Apply a mobile-friendly approach

Most people engage with emails with mobile devices rather than desktop devices. A study by the customer experience statistics reported that 75% of people complete surveys on mobile devices. An email that is not optimized for mobile could have fewer open and engagement rates.

There's nothing worse than a customer that couldn't engage with your NPS survey because of a bad customer experience. So, ensure that you test and optimize your email survey for mobile.

7. A/B test your NPS email survey

How do you ensure that your surveys are performing well? A/B test is the key. A/B testing is a split testing experiment that involves segmenting your audience into two or more groups and testing variables such as call-to-action, titles, description, etc., to identify the best performing one.

A/B is important in your email marketing strategy because audiences have different behavioral patterns and attributes. What works for one company may not work for another. So you need to test different variables in your NPS email survey.

Here are some variables you can test:

• Frequency of email
• Email subject line
• Style of message
• Call-to-action
• Email sender
• Email copy

Before you begin A/B testing, ensure that you set clear goals for your email campaign so that you don't start your test campaigns with no direction and get confused in the process.

8. Offer an incentive

There may be cases where some customers wouldn't respond to your email surveys. So, offering an incentive seems like a great idea. You can provide your customer with a discount on their next subscription or a coupon code.

However, you need to beware that your incentive could attract customers who may only be interested in your incentive and not your email survey. As a result, they could still deal with a low response rate. So, it would help if you considered your audience's buying journey and preferences.

9. Leverage NPS data in your company

NPS data can help your team navigate through marketing and sales processes. As you gather more data from your NPS surveys, the feedback from your respondents will give you valuable insight into how to manage communications with customers.

For example,

• Data from detractors can help customer support teams identify customers that are most likely to churn and figure out ways to satisfy their needs.
• The marketing team can learn from passives and promoter's feedback to create better campaigns that highlight core customer preferences. They can also determine the preferred channels that customers engage with and direct their campaigns towards these channels.
• Sales teams can leverage NPS data to identify the best customers and understand their business needs, buying preferences, and the selling points that attract them.
• Product teams can use NPS data to identify features that customers have issues with and solve the problem to reduce barriers to using the product.

10. Let your customers give reasons for their feedback

Some businesses make the mistake of requesting a score without asking customers the reasons behind the rating. If you don't obtain the reason behind your customer's feedback, how do you plan to improve your customer experience? A simple question such as "what's the reason for your answer?" can make a big difference in your survey results. So, don't hesitate to ask; your customers wouldn't mind expressing their thoughts and concerns.

11. Ensure your email is short and crisp

Ensure your emails are concise and straight to the point. You don't want your customers spending more time than is required reading your email. If your email is longer than necessary, then your customers would spend more time reading it. As a result, they may end up not answering your survey questions. It would help if you used the short opportunity to capture their attention and interest.

12. Incorporate your brand personality in your email survey

Your customer should be able to recognize your brand at any time. So, you should adjust your communication style to your brand style. Include your company logo, brand color, and font. Lyft shows a great example of showcasing brand color and logo in its email survey.

13. Ask for only what you can process

It won't be a great idea if you ignore your customers after they take the time to answer their survey questions. Some businesses make the mistake of requesting customer feedback without even going through it. Customers expect that you will read their feedback. There's no point asking for feedback if you're not going to go through the results.

However, following up on customer feedback on scale may become a problem if you receive up to 10000+ comments. So, you need to make time to reply to your customers' answers, thanking them for their support. Some companies even spend more time manually reading, translating, and tagging comments.

This process is time-consuming and can even be stressful. The best way to manage this process is to use text analytics to analyze your feedback and break down each topic involved.

14. Send a follow-up email when necessary

In some cases, customers may not respond to your first NPS survey email due to various reasons. Most emails get lost in the inbox after 24 hours, and if you didn't get a response from your customers, you could still send a follow-up email to reach them at another time. However, you should know when to draw the line when it comes to sending emails.

15. Identify the right time to send your emails

As the popular saying goes - timing is everything. The same applies to your NPS Email Survey. You need to identify when your customers would be most active and send your emails at that time. Some studies have reported that the best time to send an email is Tuesday at 10 am. Be willing to test different times and weekdays so you can know what works best. Remember to consider time zones and schedule your messages based on each customer's time zones.

Effective Ways to Boost Your NPS Survey Open Rates

Your subject line is a determining factor in the performance of your NPS email survey. Let's go through some ways you can create compelling subject lines.

1.  Include the recipient's name

As we mentioned earlier, you need to apply personalization to make your email more friendly and more likely to capture your recipient's attention.

For example, "David, we've got a favor to ask you."

2. Keep your subject line short

Ensure you keep your email subject lines to a maximum of 50 characters, so they are displayed clearly - this is because long subject lines tend to get cut off in the inbox display.

3. Create a sense of urgency

NPS surveys are usually conducted every few months for a limited number of days. So, it would be best if you captured your customer's reaction by creating a sense of urgency.  Trigger your customer's interest with a subject line that powerfully indicates a limited time for survey.

For example, "only 3 days left to participate in our NPS survey".

This way, recipients would engage with your email without delay.

4. Ensure that your email subject lines are clear

Nothing beats a clear subject line. Customers need to understand your offer immediately so that they don't spend too much time figuring out what your message means.

A vague headline usually results in fewer open rates. Here's an example of applying clarity in a subject line:

• Vague subject line: Hi Chris, we need your feedback
• Clear subject line: Hi Chris, can you fill out a 5 min survey?

So it would be best if you made your subject lines clear without confusing your recipients.

How to Choose the Right NPS Survey Software

NPS data is an excellent indicator of how your customers view your product and how well you're delivering on your customer's experience. An essential part of your NPS email survey is the software you use. You need to choose software that enables you to import your contacts and create a survey to generate great results.

The Marketing Automation Software you use to send NPS surveys should also enable you to send, schedule, and scale the number of emails you send.

Wrapping up

The net promoter score can help you gain insights into your customer base and how they perceive your brand.

Let's go through a quick recap and overview of our key points.

• Ensure your subject line is compelling so that it captures your audience's attention, hence resulting in increased open rates.
• Survey your customers after they've had time to use your product. This way, you can get honest feedback from your customers.
• Timing is everything. Send your emails when your customers are active and would more likely engage with your message.

To understand your target audience and send NPS survey emails, you need to power your entire marketing campaign with a marketing automation tool.

Engage is an Email and SMS Marketing automation solution that will empower your growth team and increase your monthly recurring revenue.

With Engage, you can:

• Keep track of how customers interact with your product (platform or app),
• Create unique customer segments from this data,
• Send personalized messages to your customers via email, SMS, push Notification and in-app messages, and
• Create automated messaging sequences and power your entire email marketing strategy.

Companies like Crop2Cash, IndieCampers, RelianceHMO and ExtraGas currently trust us to help with personalized customer messaging and engagement.

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