Gathering information through focus groups, postal surveys or census takers can be expensive and won’t always tell you what you want to know. However email marketing offers a cost-effective, accurate and non-intrusive way of conducting customer research says Marc Munier, commercial director at Pure360.
Gently does it
The important thing to remember here is that you should slowly build up a profile of your customers over time. This way, any research you do won’t seem intrusive with too many questions all at once.
You can build an accurate and useful profile of your customers using methods such as:
Survey and polls
Just ask one or two questions in a regular newsletter. Less is more here, as too many questions will deter your customer from participating. Also, you should ensure you ask your customers questions that are relevant to them so you engage them.
Email is a great way of sending out larger surveys to your customers, although keep these to a minimum or they will irritate people or simply be ignored. A good rule of thumb is stick to a yearly interval for large customer surveys.
Relevant content and special offers
You should use offers and content within your emails that link through to your website, you can then monitor which of your links have the highest click-through rates.
This will give you information on what interests your users, both in information terms and your product or services. You can send different versions of emails to test different approaches, such as special offers.
Incentivising responses
It can be tricky to get people to reply to you and answer your questions, so you should offer some form of incentive for responding such as entry into a prize draw. Another good rule of thumb: the larger your survey, the larger the prize should be!
An example…
Online travel company Expedia regularly asks questions in its weekly newsletter to gather information from its customers. Two examples being:
“Getting to know you – These great cities are all close to home and well worth a weekend visit – but which is your favourite?: Edinburgh; Dublin; London; Belfast; York”.
And
“Your opinion counts – Which is your favourite sun destination in Europe? Costa Del Sol; French Riviera; Algarve; Canary Islands; Cyprus; Other:”
What should I do with this information?
Once you have this information you can analyse your customer’s preferences and buying trends. This will enable you to have a more targeted approach with your email marketing, and the products and services they offer. Bingo!
