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How to collect user feedback with email signature surveys

Email signature surveys, if done right, are one of the best ways to gather customer feedback. And for contemporary businesses, customer feedback is extremely valuable. Fresh opinions give organizations cues whether the path they’ve taken is OK or not. Positive feedback helps you both retain your customer base and win new fans of your brand. On the other hand, negative opinions give you insights into what’s wrong and how you can improve. Interested in collecting email feedback from your customers? Let’s see how to do it right.

Why use email signature surveys?

To effectively collect feedback, you need to choose a channel that is both trusted by target recipients and lets you reach the largest audience possible. And email has it all.

It’s quite possible that you already use email to handle many different matters from support requests, through products sales and marketing campaigns, to complaints. Consequently, your customers are used to this channel and trust it. You could abuse this trust by mass emailing links to old-fashioned customer satisfaction surveys:

Or you could be smart about it. Below, I’ll show you how to do it right.

Which surveying method should I choose for emails?

Nowadays, collecting feedback isn’t easy. People are usually preoccupied with multiple tasks & in a constant hurry. Most of the time, they don’t care about giving feedback, unless you drive them really mad or offer them some kind of incentive to thank them for their time. Taking those into account, you are most likely to succeed in collecting feedback only if you choose the method that’s the least of a nuisance & time-consuming to your customers – just have a look at this short video:

As you can see, one-click surveys are one of the best ways to go because they are really quick and simple. Apart from that, there are NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys that also let your customer express their opinion in a matter of seconds, but in a slightly different way. Here, a brief explanation is needed.

With one-click surveys, an email recipient needs to simply click one of the options, usually represented by ‘faces’ or other icons that they can easily relate to their attitude or feelings. A sample survey looks something like this:

An example of one-click (CSAT) survey to include in email communication

An NPS (Net Promoter Score) survey is similar – one click is enough to share your opinion. The difference is that there’s a numeric scale (usually from 0 to 10) to choose from. An NPS design is usually based on numerals, but can also include icons – just like in case of one-click surveys. Here’s an example of an NPS:

An example of NPS survey to include in email messages

How to practically approach email signature feedback?

When talking about email contents (or body), there are essentially 2 main parts of an email: your message and your signature. In most cases, the message should stay intact to make it easy to focus on. The email signature, on the other hand, is a perfect place to include a one-click survey.

You can approach email signature feedback in two ways:

Include a one-click survey in your basic email signature – that way, your customers will have a chance to give their opinion in each email they receive from you.
Prepare a separate email signature with a one-click survey – that way, you will be able to use the signature only when you actually need to collect feedback. For example, after you sell a product, close a support case, and so on. There are certain advantages that come with this approach. Firstly, you won’t overwhelm your customers with repetitive feedback requests that might push them to ignore your survey in a longer term. Secondly, your email threads will be shorter and easier to follow if your email signature is simpler.

Email signature survey inspirations

A sample email signature with the simplest, two-option one-click (CSAT) survey.

Here you’ve got an email signature with the simplest form of a one-click survey. Your user doesn’t have to extensively figure out the possible options, but just choose if they ‘like’ or ‘not like’ your service, product, etc. Use this two-option design to provide the easiest experience possible to users and collect only the basic data on the extreme ends of the scale.

A sample email signature with a five-option one-click (CSAT) survey.

This five-option survey added to your email signature might be a good source of more differentiated feedback. In contrast to the previous example, it lets you learn about more moderate as well as neutral feelings of your customers, while still being relatively easy for the email recipients. Use it to get more comprehensive dataset for analysis.

A sample email signature that includes an NPS survey.

While an NPS survey requires a little bit more engagement on your customers’ part, it gives you even more precise data on the customers’ attitudes. NPS surveying is closely related to measuring customers’ loyalty and should be used for this very purpose.

When you configure a one-click survey or an NPS survey, you might also decide to design a special feedback form customers will see after they click a survey option. Using the form, a customer can optionally share comments about your service, product, organization, etc. Not everyone will add their comments, but those who do, will probably give you precious insights, highlighting the areas for improvement.

One-click surveys with CodeTwo Email Signatures 365

While there are a lot of solutions that let you design one-click or NPS surveys, you might be interested in testing a tool that combines top-notch email signature management with email surveying & analytics. CodeTwo Email Signatures 365 is definitely a ‘kill two birds with one stone’ solution that lets you:

Create customizable one-click surveys for multiple scenarios.
Prepare a thank-you page to share optional comments after taking a survey.
Seamlessly integrate the surveys with an email signature or multiple signatures, depending on your scenario and approach.
Review and analyze the results with a powerful CodeTwo Insights analytics dashboard.
Centrally manage both email signatures and email signature surveys for all users in your organization.

You can start testing CodeTwo One-click surveys (and Insights) right now by signing up for a free 14-day trial (no credit card required). With CodeTwo Email Signatures 365, you can manage email signatures, one-click surveys, automatic replies, and more. To learn about all the possibilities, visit the program’s website.

Why use signatures in internal company emails

First, some numbers:

According to The State of Business Communication report from Grammarly and The Harris Poll, in 2023, the time spent on written communication has grown by 18% since last year. Email returned to grace, since it allows to get things done asynchronously, without losing your whole day on attending meetings. At the same time, the same report shows decline in effectiveness and productivity of written communication.

Conclusion? Internal email communication can be much more productive. One of the ways to boost it is the correct use of email signatures. This article should explain what “the correct use of email signatures” is.

Essential internal email signature elements

We’ve already written a bit on what to include in an internal email signature. It includes the intra-company email signature essentials; you should take a look at it for a quick introduction. If you’re reluctant to jump between two separate pieces of writing, know that internal email signatures should be different from external ones. They are directed to different audiences and serve a different purpose.

In the article below, I won’t delve into signature basics. Instead, I’ll focus on more fancy signature uses.

Advanced ideas for internal email signatures

User photo

Seeing a face behind an email makes it easier to relate to the email sender as a human being. A nice user photo is good for building healthy relations between employees. We’re trained by mother nature to look at faces and read them. But you probably know that. What you might not know is that email signatures can be used as a phishing countermeasure.

One example of high-risk cyber threats is when an attacker pretends to be another employee (most commonly your boss). It’s even technically possible for attackers to use your boss’s email address. That’s where internal email signatures can come in handy – they usually don’t leave the company, so attackers might have a hard time learning how to set them up. And if those email signatures contain user photos that cannot be found outside the company, you will immediately see that something’s wrong, when an email signature of your boss is way different than normally.

Employee recognition

You’ve probably heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. One of the important highlights from this psychological theory is that it’s natural for human beings to be recognized for their achievements. It helps them stay motivated and on top of their game.

An internal email signature is a good place to show off the achievements. You can add small icons for employee milestones, employee of the month titles and any other badges your employee recognition program includes.

Marketing banners

Promote your CSR initiatives with email signatures

Well, you wouldn’t use standard marketing banners for internal emails. However, there are times when you could use some extra channel for promoting important company announcements. Here are some of the most common examples:

Company event coming up – you can stir up some excitement before the event takes place or encourage more people to sign up.
Company benefits – don’t assume that everyone knows about all the employee benefits they can get. Sometimes people need a reminder that the company takes good care about them.
CSR initiatives – whether you want more people to sign up or spread the news, an email signature is a good place to let everyone know what the company has been up to. Either way, you will probably boost morale.

One-click surveys

One-click surveys are an easy and effective way to get feedback. You recipients click a rating button and optionally leave a comment. Their most common use is measuring customer satisfaction, but you can get creative. Here are some ideas for internal one-click surveys:

Monitor employee satisfaction levels.
Learn how people rate the latest company retreat.
Get ideas to make the office environment a better place.

Company policy reminders

Internal email signatures - policy reminder

An occasional kind reminder on following company policies on productivity (or anything else) can be useful. Everyone needs a refresher from time to time.

Upcoming out of office periods

Upcoming out of office period in internal email signatures

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could plan your projects ahead without surprises? Well, that’s wishful thinking, but when you add upcoming out of office periods to email signatures, at least one kind of surprise should happen less often. It is incredibly helpful, especially when discussing complex projects that require more than one team to work together.

How to add upcoming out of office periods to email signatures

Working hours

In your company you probably have a way of checking if a certain person is online or not. But that doesn’t give you the full context. If you need a time-consuming task handled as soon as possible, you need to know if your recipients don’t finish their shift in the next 15 minutes.

This addition to email signatures is especially helpful if your company has multiple offices, if users have flexible working hours or work shifts. The most convenient way to add working hours to signatures is if users provide those on their own. That’s where things might get tricky – everyone might have their own idea of how to add those values. The article below explains how to use an advanced email signature solution to best handle such scenarios:

How to add extra information to your signature

How to unify all company email signatures

No matter how smart your internal email signature ideas are, they are worth anything only if they actually get deployed. There are various methods of enforcing email signatures. The video below should give you a quick idea on how hard the process can be:

So, for a quick list of benefits of the email signature management tool, CodeTwo Email Signatures 365:

Everyone gets unified, company-issued email signatures.
Signature setup and updates are lightning-fast and don’t require any end-user interaction.
You can create different email signatures for internal and external communication.
Users can add advanced elements (like out of office periods) to their signatures without any harm to the email branding.

Tag Archives: one-click surveys

Why and how to use email signature surveys?