Creating customer feedback emails that will help you grow

Back in school, the end of the term sparked joy in the coming holidays and anticipation in receiving your report card. Your results let you (and your parents) know how you were coming along.

Customer feedback emails are like school report cards. The difference is that customers, and not teachers, are grading your business. And instead of keeping your parents happy, you’re working to keep your customers satisfied.

You can use feedback request emails to identify how you can improve your products and services, keep your customers happy, and grow your business. Let’s see how!

What is a customer feedback email?

A customer feedback email is a type of transactional email that collects answers to a survey or poll. Unlike review emails that ask people to submit an online review or share a positive review on social media, feedback emails gather opinions and suggestions.

But the work of customer feedback emails doesn’t stop there! The responses are then fed into a customer feedback loop—a process of ongoing improvement to your products and services based on customer insights. This workflow typically involves 4 stages:

1. Gather customer feedback

2. Analyze and categorize feedback

3. Rank feedback and take action

4. Follow up with customers

Here’s a customer feedback email from Decathlon. They make it clear in the email that they collect feedback so they can improve their products and services.

Compare this with a review email from Klook, a travel booking platform. This email is asking the recipient to submit a review to help other potential customers make a decision.

Importance of customer feedback emails

1. Improves your product/service

The number one goal of feedback emails is for you to learn what you’re doing well, and the things that you need to improve on. Happy customers are loyal customers who will contribute to the growth of your business!

Take this feedback email from Forest Adventure, a business that provides treetop adventures. To get regular customers coming back, and to attract new ones, they want to know what they can do to keep delivering a great outdoor experience! 🌴

2. Measures customer satisfaction

Your business growth also depends on the impression your customers have of your brand as a whole. A popular way to measure customer experience is to calculate your Net Promoter Score (NPS) by asking a single question: 

“How likely would you recommend {$brand} to a friend or colleague?”

A score is then calculated that gives you an indication of how many more happy customers you have than unhappy customers. The higher the score the more likely you’ll generate new customers from word-of-mouth positive reviews.

Here’s an example from an ecommerce site, ShopRunner, that sends an NPS survey after every purchase.

3. Makes customers feel valued

Sending a customer feedback email tells recipients that their opinion is important and valued. When you involve people in the decision-making process like IKEA’s email, they feel more attached to your brand as they know their voice can make a difference!

6 best practices for customer feedback emails

Now that you understand the strategies behind feedback emails, here’s how to write and design them to persuade people to participate.

1. Write a captivating subject line

After putting together your perfect survey, there’s one thing between you and your recipients: a great subject line! A compelling subject line stands out from the clutter of the inbox—it’s the key to higher open rates and better survey participation.

The first step in writing a great customer feedback subject line is to make it relevant. Your subject line needs to connect with the recipient by reminding them of something they did or purchased. Mentioning your brand can help to jog their memory!

Take a look at these good examples that put their business name in their subject line:

1. Looking for your feedback regarding Carlton Dublin Airport Hotel

2. Please help us make your next Ninja Van experience GREAT!

3. Help us improve your advertising experience on Facebook!

4. We need your feedback on your recent visit to IKEA!

5. Your previous transfer with Express Airport Transport

6. Thank You For Staying At Angsana Bintan

7. Courts Customer Feedback Survey

8. ShopRunner Feedback

Another way is to personalize the subject line with variables. Make a stronger connection by inserting your customer’s name. Something happens in our brain when we see our name: we sit up, pay attention, and want to know what’s inside it.

1. Dear {$name}, we value your feedback.

2. Dear {$name}, are you satisfied with {$company_name}? It will mean a lot to hear your opinion.

You can also personalize other fields in the subject line, such as using the location or the support team member’s name. The second one may be a bit of a stretch for people to recall but it does help to humanize the brand experience.

1. Thank you for your visit to {$location}

2. How was your experience with {$customer_support_name}?

Finally, strike while the iron is hot. Email the customer immediately after the transaction while the experience is still fresh in their mind. Use exclamation marks for urgency and don’t be afraid to experiment with a call to action in the subject line like these examples.

1. Your Amazon Fresh order has been delivered, now rate your experience

2. Thank you for your Apple Online Store purchase! Tell us what you think.

2. Start with a personalized greeting

When the recipient opens your customer feedback email, keep the engagement going by personalizing the greeting. You can also use a variable in the body of your template—this small touch can give your email a little something extra like The Mom Project.

3. Explain the purpose of the email

Once recipients are hooked with the initial greeting, be honest and explain why you are contacting them. In addition to improving your products and services like SkinCeuticals’ email, there may be other reasons why you want to hear from your customer base:

• What features do customers want to see in a new product?

• Are people satisfied with the level of customer service you’re providing?

• How can you convince free users to sign up for a premium plan?

The goal of your feedback email is to get a response to a specific question like customer support satisfaction, for example. You’ll get a better response rate with a direct question rather than an open-ended question like, “How are we doing?”.

4. Describe how it will benefit them

In addition to why they received your email, tell customers what’s in it for them if they participate. This isn’t necessarily incentives in the form of points or freebies, but how the survey results will build a better customer experience for them like Honey Gold’s example.

Other reasons to persuade customers to participate can include:

• A new user interface to work faster

• A better last-mile delivery experience

• An easier to understand pricing structure

5. Estimate how long it will take

As recipients are reading your email, one question is flashing through their minds: “How long is this going to take?”. Remove any friction to participation by keeping your survey short and sweet like the example below: 1-2 minutes or about 3 questions in total.

This is a rough gauge to start with of course. If you’re embarking on a 10-minute questionnaire, you’ll probably want to back it up with something tangible in return for people’s valuable time: discount vouchers, gift cards, surprise in the mail, etc.

6. Include a clear call to action

Like other emails that require recipients to take a specific action, make it clear to them what they need to do next with a single call to action. It should be prominently displayed as a URL or a call-to-action button like the example below.

Pay attention to the call-to-action button text as well. It should inspire people to take action now rather than move on to reading the next email in their inbox! Here are some CTA button labels to inspire you:

• Start Survey

• Review Now

• Click here to start!

• Take our quick survey

• Click here to enter the survey

How to send customer feedback emails

It’s now time to apply all these best practices and create a customer feedback email template with MailerSend! First, you need to have a MailerSend account and a verified sending domain.

Ready to go? Let’s start by creating a new template.

1. Navigate to the Templates page and click on Create template.

2. Choose to use the Drag & drop editor to create your first template.

3. Pick the Feedback template in the gallery and click on the Choose button.

4. You can drag and drop content blocks to customize the template to match your brand identity. Go on, let your creativity run wild!

5. Once you’re done with your template design, click on the Save and publish button.

6. You’ll be prompted to give your new feedback template a name.

On the same screen, you will also see a unique Template ID for your template (pr9084zo1jlw63dn in this example) as well as sending instructions below for cURL, PHP, Laravel, Node.js, Go and Python.

7. Remember to click the Save changes button before you leave.

8. To send an email you’ll need the Template ID which you can also find on the Templates page under the template’s name.

9. Follow the sending instructions for your programming language. For example, for cURL, insert your Template ID at "template_id". Add a subject under the template’s default settings or add it as a parameter within your API call.

curl -X POST \
https://api.mailersend.com/v1/email \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-H 'X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest' \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer {place your token here without brackets}' \
-d '{
    "from": {
        "email": "your@email.com"
    },
    "to": [
        {
            "email": "your@email.com"
        }
    ],
    "subject": "{$name}, do you have 2 minutes?",
    "template_id": "pr9084zo1jlw63dn"
}'

10. Check the status of your email message on the Activity page of your dashboard.

All good? Congratulations, you just sent your first customer feedback email using MailerSend! 🎉

Automate customer feedback emails

After learning how to send feedback emails using MailerSend, it’s time to automate them so the right recipients receive them at the right time. The easiest way to do this is to use a tool like Zapier that automates your customer feedback workflows.

Ask about the shopping experience

Using the following ready-made Zaps, you could send a feedback email 7 days after a new order is placed in Shopify or WooCommerce, for example. The goods should be delivered during this time, allowing the recipient to rate the customer experience.

Ask about reasons for a plan change

Or if you’re using an online subscription billing software like Zoho Subscriptions, you could immediately send a feedback email after a customer downgrades their plan. This would be perfectly timed to ask them for reasons why they decided to downgrade.

Using web automation tools, the possibilities to capture feedback after every major customer interaction are endless! Set them up once, test them, and then let them run to provide you with automated report cards during the entire customer journey.

Close the customer feedback loop

The final step in collecting customer feedback is to close the feedback loop. This means sending follow-up emails with people who shared valuable feedback, letting them know that their voices have been heard, and that you’re taking firm action.

MailerSend, for example, sent an email survey asking what product features customers would love to see next. The responses were categorized, shared with the team, and prioritized. The final results were then published in a newsletter and roadmap page!

It’s time to start collecting positive feedback

You have learned how to create a powerful customer feedback system by pairing MailerSend together with a web automation tool. Now use this workflow to listen to your customers, continually improve your products and services, and aim for a perfect report card!