It’s been shown many times over that it costs more to acquire a new client than it does to retain them. Understanding your customer base is so important to retaining customers, and research can often be overlooked in this instance. 

Brands often use Point of Sale (POS) data or may have an idea of who their audience is when it comes to demographics, but there is more that can be discovered by actually asking your audience directly. 

Below are some simple rules of thumb  when leveraging your customer email list for research purposes:

1) Not all research makes sense to be conducted among existing customers.  

• For example, for research to understand general awareness of your brand, or to determine strategies for expansion it is more appropriate to use audiences outside of your existing customers.

• A few examples of different types of research that can utilize your existing customer list include:

  • Customer satisfaction surveys: 

    • Useful for gauging satisfaction with your products/services. 

    • Can identify areas for improvement and understand what customers value most.

  • Product feedback surveys: 

    • Collect customer feedback on specific products or services 

    • Gather suggestions for new features, enhancements, or brand new products

  • Brand perception surveys:

    • Measure how your customers perceive your brand compared to competitors

    • Assess the effectiveness of your marketing and advertising

  • Customer segmentation surveys

    • Break down your customers based on demographics, behaviors, attitudes, or preferences.

2) Consider your budget: 

What is the maximum amount of money you can spend on this research? One of the biggest benefits of using your customer email list for conducting a survey is reducing the overall cost.

Instead of searching for qualified candidates and incentivizing them to complete your survey, it’s more effective to use those who have interacted with your brand and would be willing to share their opinions.

3) Provide an incentive:

Keep in mind, while costs may be lower, it is still best practice to include an incentive of some kind (discount, coupon code, gift card, etc.) to thank your respondents for their time and input.  

When considering an incentive, it is crucial to think about the overall budget for market research and the impact it may have on the business. 

One efficient work around is limiting the incentive to the first XXX number of respondents. This will help create urgency among the audience, yet still provide a backstop in case you end up getting many more respondents than anticipated. 

4) Estimate your expected reach and completion rates: 

To help determine the expected reach we generally advise estimating based on the average open-rate and click-through rate of marketing emails.

Because these surveys are asking the customer to take an additional action (the survey), the overall completion rate is usually lower than that of your marketing emails. We typically see completion rates from customer email list surveys around 5-10%. If there is a great incentive or the audience is highly active, we have seen upwards of 50% completion rates in the past. 

5) Consider your specific target audience: 

Depending on the goal of the research, targeting an audience can be as simple as focusing on individuals subscribed to marketing emails or as complex as customers who have purchased a specific product within the past year. This can impact everything from the response rate to the feedback provided by respondents which will ultimately impact the insights derived from the study. 

Leveraging your customer email list for market research can significantly enhance your understanding of your audience, leading to better product development, more effective marketing, and improved customer satisfaction. By following these best practices, you can gather valuable insights without a hefty price tag.

Stay tuned for our next blog post, where we'll dive deeper into the types of projects best suited for using customer email lists. From exploring innovative ways to gauge product feedback to understanding brand perception, we'll cover it all to help you make the most of your research efforts.