You might have seen Apple’s latest announcement about their updated privacy regulations, which gives users even more power to control which apps and websites are able to collect their personal information. Apple announced it is cracking down, protecting data from third parties, checking up on app privacy, and enhancing internet privacy.
For instance, a new feature in the Mail app, Mail Privacy Protection, stops senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about the user. This helps users prevent senders (like your brand) from knowing when they open an email.
What These Privacy Regulations Mean for Customer Experience
What this means for CX professionals is that soon we won’t be able to see open rates and click through rates for survey invitations from Apple products (just like Gmail). Since you could lose these success metrics for email campaigns, it’s vital to make sure your surveys are operating at best practice. Otherwise, the emails will land straight in the spam folder.
My name is Mohammed Shameer, Implementation Specialist at Pearl-Plaza, and I’ve outlined five ideas for making sure your email invitations are optimised to make sure you are getting the highest possible response rates:
Tip #1: Optimise the Time You Send Out Email Survey Invitations
It’s important to understand your customers’ frame of mind. One way to do this is to keep an eye on what time of day your consumers are typically responding to surveys. COVID-19 has changed what time of day people are opening emails, and the aggregate data shows that these trends are ‘flatter’ than ever. Since fewer people are commuting to and from work, they are using that new-found time to check emails periodically throughout the day.
Be sure to analyse your customer feedback data through your tracking pixels to see if the best time to send post-transaction email invites for your business, whether that’s straight after the transaction, a day later, or another time.
Tip #2: Add a Salutation with a Fallback Option to All Emails
By adding a salutation to your email survey invitations, research shows you will increase your open rates by 29% and your click through rates 41%. If you don’t have a first name for your customer, add a fallback option like “hey there” to make it as personalised as possible.
Tip #3: Get a Pro to Work On Your Coding
Chances are, you know someone in your organisation that can put together an email invitation that will work well enough. But, you might consider a professional’s input to capture even more people. We’re constantly analysing trends here at Pearl-Plaza, so our coders are at the cutting edge of email survey invitation best practices.
Additionally, a professional will catch those pesky small mistakes in your code that aren’t as visible—which spam catchers are sending straight into the junk folder (yikes).
Here are some common mistakes that mean your emails are getting flagged as spam:
- Spelling mistakes
- Sender reputation
- Image only emails (best practice is 70% text and 30% images)
Tip #4: Make Sure All Buttons Are in HTML
You might be tempted to add image-based buttons to your email, which are the easiest option. The drawback to image buttons is that when it’s time to edit them, you need to find the original source file, make an edit, slice, upload, and link. It will take you even more time if you can’t find the source file. Instead, consider HTML buttons—by embedding the buttons in HTML, you won’t get caught in a bind if your linked images become turned off.
Tip #5: Add GIFs to Your Emails
Movement within emails catches the attention of your customers. If GIFs are done right, they can provide an extra layer of context and information to the customer reading your email invitation. This helps improve the sender reputation, and means that more emails will reach more of your customers. And ultimately, you’ll collect more customer feedback.
To learn more about how you can perfect your approach to email surveys, check out this new paper, “The Art and Science of Email Survey Invitations!”
