Out of all the technologies that have helped the marketing industry, none have done so much more than email, which provided a platform that is fast, inexpensive, and has data gathering tools already included in the equation. E-mail provides several ways to gather precious client data, the most powerful of which are email marketing surveys and polling.
Surveys and polling are by no means new – even before the Internet existed, marketers were already using snail mail and the telephone to conduct polls and surveys. What email did is provide a means to bypass both snail mail and telephone, thereby removing two methods that many customers deem intrusive and annoying, while at the same time increasing the speed and efficiency of the data gathering activity.
What You Can Do With Data Gathered from a Newsletter
There are a number of benefits that data gathered from a newsletter can bring. These include:
1. The ability to get fast feedback on products and services
2. The opportunity to improve existing products and services based on customer feedback
3. Finding out which products are most popular and which aren’t.
4. Finding out what kind of products that customers want to see from you
5. Finding out if customers are using your product the way you intended or if they are using it in new novel ways.
The benefits listed above are already a good argument for using newsletters to gather data, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. In this day and age, data about your customers and users are invaluable and nowhere can you get them in such frequencies and amounts as a newsletter.
Newsletter Data Gathering Best Practices
The thing about gathering data is that you need to gather it without stepping over people’s toes. Here are some things you can do to avoid this problem from occurring:
1. K.I.S.S. – it may sound cheesy, but Keep It Short and Simple is an excellent approach. Surveys and polls that are so lengthy that they become a chore to answer will not be appreciated by users. So if you have a lot of questions you want to ask your userbase, you should divide it into several parts.
2. Be Honest About the Survey – don’t lie to your users just to get them to complete a survey. If it takes long to complete, don’t tell them that it will only take a minute of their time. If you do that, chances are you’ll get a lot of them to participate, but only a few of them will finish answering. Be upfront, you might not get as many people to participate, but all of those who do will finish what they have started.
3. Provide Incentives – this is a great tip for people who really must conduct lengthy surveys. What that incentive will be is completely up to you, as different users will appreciate different things. Whether it’s discounts, exclusive access to information, or free stuff, give them something to look forward to when they finish answering.
Lastly, it is important to remind users that gathering data is for their benefit, as getting to know them better will allow companies to provide more personal or custom-tailored experiences, instead of the old generic fluff pitches that is beneficial to no one at all.
