Blogs

When do you care enough to complete a survey? For me it’s when I believe giving my opinion will impact my life. If I get a survey about a product I don’t use, I wouldn’t think twice about not completing it. The same goes for getting a survey about a newsletter I don’t read or about a company I do very little business with.

The more you know about your audience, the more you can target your surveys and get a better response. Do they come to you for a particular product or service? Are they a regular customer or do they come to you only once in a great while? Maybe you have information on their buying behavior with you. If they only buy in the retail store, don’t bother sending them a survey that deals with their satisfaction for the online buying process. From what you know about your audience, bucket them into groups with similar interests. Then send your surveys only to those who will actually have knowledge and a stake in the survey topic. Take a look at this free online workshop to help you better understand how to segment your audience.

You survey with the hope that you will get a lot of helpful feedback, right? Sure, the more information you have to base your decisions off of the better. So you may be wondering - what kind of a response rate should you expect and how do you get it? These are the two most common questions I get in my survey webinars, so let’s talk about them.

First, a slice of reality. Expect about a 10% response rate. Ten percent is a good response rate across all industries. Get your survey noticed, and you can expect more of a response. Here are two great ways to do that…

1. Use your Website
Too often I see survey links at the bottom of a webpage.         People don’t typically scroll to the bottom of a page. Do you? I know I don’t. So put the link right at the top of multiple landing pages on your website so it gets noticed by visitors. This should increase your response rate.

If the number of visitors to your website is low, drive more traffic to your site by making sure your site is optimized to be found by the major search engines. Research shows 85% of website traffic comes from search engines like Yahoo and Google. If you want to learn more about how to optimize your site, attend a free webinar about Search Engine Optimization.

Remember the McDonald’s signs that said “Billions and Billions Served?” I wonder how many French fries and Happy Meals that amounts to. Constant Contact can make the same claim -- without the deep fryers or toy surprises -- because more than a billion people receive an email on behalf of a Constant Contact customer every month!

Tired of spending money on leads that turn into a whole lot of nothing?  When it comes to getting new business, your existing customers are your best customers. It’s proven they spend more, and are less expensive to keep than gaining new ones. How much did you spend last year acquiring new customers?  Existing customers bring their family and friends – providing free business for you.

So what do you have to do generate the almighty referral? Make your existing customers extremely happy! Go beyond their expectations so that they want to tell others about you.

Okay, sounds great on paper.  But how do you exceed expectations to get those referrals?  It’s just a survey away.  With just a few key questions to your customers you can find out what their expectations are and what you can do to exceed them. Click here to see the key customer satisfaction questions to send to your audience.

If you visit the U.S. Small Business Administration’s website and click on the Most Requested Items link, the #1 question is, “How do I get a small business loan?” In fact, 5 of the top 11 most requested items have to do with finding monetary assistance.

There’s nothing wrong with a little capital infusion when it comes to running a small business, but before you agree to an easy payment plan make sure you have a good answer to the next logical question: “How do I find enough customers who will buy from me so I can pay back my small business loan fast and live the life I want to live?”

Hello readers! Today I am passing the blogging torch on to another. I’ve had an excellent time writing for this blog and sharing insights on email marketing. I’m moving on, but I leave you in the excellent hands of John Arnold.

The September issue of our Hints & Tips Email Marketing newsletter covers two important areas of your email campaigns: subject lines and calls to action (CTA). This month you'll get approaches for both in Gina Watkins' article and learn what words to use and avoid in an interview with professional copywriter Bob Bly.

Read the newsletter here.

Ever wonder what’s on your customers’ minds? I’m sure you do – they’re your bread and butter. But for some reason, you don’t ask them. Well, thanks to a recent survey we conducted here at Constant Contact, I now get why.

Can you guess the number one challenge that’s stopping the majority of small businesses from getting feedback from their customers (besides time of course!)?

Hello! I'm Caroline Shahar from Constant Contact. I'm new to this blog, but if you've taken one of our educational webinars, you may have already heard from me (read my bio to learn more). Anyone who knows me knows I'm passionate about helping small businesses and nonprofits succeed, and I hope you find my posts here helpful. To that end, please let me know what you like and don't like. Any and all feedback is helpful. And that brings me to my first post...

This is a question that we are asked often here at Constant Contact. Understandably, everyone (including myself) is looking for a silver bullet that will result in higher open and click-through rates.

There are reports available that can tell you what has worked for others (eROI put one out each quarter in 2007), but the truth is that it varies—the quarterly reports showed a different day as the winner each month. While there is no absolute, there are some best practices to consider when it comes to when to send.