4 Examples of Post Black Friday Surveys

Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, is right around the corner. It’s estimated that shoppers in total will spend a whopping £7 billion this year. And a 2018 survey by McKinsey found that in 2017 54% of UK shoppers participated in Black Friday, up from 19% in 2015. What does that mean for you? Black Friday offers a unique opportunity to target a large volume of customers whose experiences are fresh. You need a way to learn from this flood of new customers and retain them. Black Friday surveys are a simple solution. And the insights can help improve your business over the next year.

Why Send a Post–Black Friday Survey?

Black Friday surveys give you invaluable insights you can use to optimize your business. You’re able to better understand consumers — their motivations, shopping behaviours, and experiences — so your products stand out from the competition. Retail, especially ecommerce, has become more competitive because consumers have more options than ever before.

When The Very Group, an online retailer and financial-services provider, needed a way to identify ideal price points, they used VoiceSage to capture customer feedback quickly with rich media messaging (RMM). They were able to see results in a few hours.

Helen Wakefield, then CRM Lead, said, “It’s important for us to learn fast. It’s very competitive in the run-up to Christmas, and we wanted to launch a new delivery charge proposition. We wanted to ask what price points would be motivating. We needed as many views as possible, and time was short.” She continues, “VoiceSage rose to the challenge immediately! Within hours of discussing what we needed, we had draft visuals of branded rich media messaging. The survey was built and sent within hours.”

Higher response rates are more likely with the help of short message service (SMS) and RMM compared with email. Research shows that, SMS open rates can be as high as 98% — compared with 20% with email. A high open rate ensures that customers see your survey requests. Having people see your surveys improves your chances of gathering lots of insights to analyze later.

There are four surveys that help you uncover consumer needs and identify opportunities: customer satisfaction, post-purchase, usability, and product fulfilment. Each tells you something different about your customer, and they’re easy to share via mobile messaging.

Learn more about how to send rich media CSAT surveys: Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Success Metrics.

1. Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Most of us have seen a customer satisfaction survey. They can include single or multiple questions and ask broadly how a shopping experience was or specifically about customer service, product info, or reviews.

To get the most from your survey, segment your customers based on where they made their purchase — online or in-store — and tailor questions for each group. With VoiceSage, you can upload your segmented customer list and create survey templates. Then, for example, you can ask online customers about their satisfaction with the checkout process. Or you can ask in-store customers about customer service.

You can then send follow-up questions if results were poor. Using the online checkout example again, ask questions such as:

• How easy or difficult was checkout?
• Were you able to apply your coupon code?
• Were shipping costs clear?
• Was pricing clear?

Include a text box for customers to share more details about their experience. Look for trends in the data you collect to identify root causes. The solutions you come up with can be used to improve customer experience year-round.

Download our Free Customer Scoring Template and Metrics Calculator to understand your customers better.

2. Post-purchase Surveys

Post-purchase surveys are more direct surveys that focus on a single product, feature, or experience. You can tailor post-purchase surveys to match customer purchases. For example, if they purchased a tech product, you could ask which features factored into their purchase.

This is also the time to understand the overall purchase experience with questions like “How did you hear about us?” The best time to send your post-purchase survey is immediately after customers buy something. You can automate that with an SMS text to customers with a purchase confirmation message and a link that redirects them to a rich media survey.

Keep in mind that you don’t need all of your customers to respond. More consumers participate in Black Friday sales, but not all of them want to complete a survey. They want to check out and move on. Make sure there’s enough variety in your responses to perform meaningful analysis. If 90% of your responses are positive, that’s reassuring; but keep sending the survey to find out what the remaining 10% really think.

3. Usability Surveys

The usability survey is helpful if you had a lot of ecommerce traffic on Black Friday, but low conversion. The results of the survey will tell you where changes need to be made along the customer journey. You might find that your website is slow, which causes people to leave before browsing.

More transactions take place online than ever before, more so on mobile. In fact, 40% of Black Friday sales were on mobile devices in 2018. It’s vital that you understand how people use your website and what issues they face.

[Source]

Usability surveys are short but incredibly valuable. Customize them to get definitive insights about your website, and focus on the following:

• Site design. Design plays a big part in gaining customer trust, so find out whether your site is visually appealing on all devices. If you advertise luxury products but your site looks amateurish, people will leave before buying.
• Operation. You have a few seconds to grab attention when people land on your website. People will leave if pages take too long to load or broken image links appear.
• Navigation. People don’t want to spend too long looking for what they need. Survey to see whether links are placed in the right places and take customers to where they expect.
• Site content. When customers shop in brick-and-mortar stores, they can touch and feel products. Since they can’t do this online, they need product descriptions that include applicable information — like sizes, dimensions, and materials.
• Checkout process. On average, 70% of carts are abandoned, and only half of the remaining 30% follow through with a purchase. Survey to see whether factors like shipping fees, unclear pricing, or a complicated checkout process hinder follow-through.

Analyze survey data to identify opportunities that will increase conversions. Look for opportunities at different stages of the customer journey to ensure that shoppers keep moving forward. Prioritize your list of updates, and create a road map to tackle them.

Discover text message templates that simplify customer communication: 19 Text Message Templates for Customer Service and Marketing Pros.

4. Product Fulfilment Surveys

Send this survey after customers have had time to use their new purchase. The results will tell you whether customers are satisfied with the product quality and your brand in general, and whether it delivered on promised value. When you send this survey, restate the value you offer as a reminder to customers. Use your questions to confirm whether the product lived up to this.

Use VoiceSage to create campaigns that are triggered after a specified number of days. For example, if a customer buys a new mattress, wait a week before sending this Black Friday survey. You want customers to have enough time to determine whether their new product meets their expectations.

Here are examples of the types of questions to ask:

• Did the product deliver on the expectations set in ad campaigns?
• Were the product instructions helpful?
• Did the product work/function as intended?
• Did the product appear as advertised?
• Did the product arrive in good condition?

Product fulfilment surveys are also a good opportunity to ask for product reviews. With this approach, you’ll get content you can use in your advertising campaigns.

Finally, use the insights you get from survey results to improve your ad campaigns. It’s important that your products live up to the promised value. Tailor your ads to target different customer segments when you understand customer pain points. You’ll ensure that when people see your ads, they’re clear on what your products offer and have a better experience.

Improve Your Business with Simple Black Friday Surveys

There’s so much to gain from Black Friday, beyond increased revenue. A strategic approach to learning from your customers will help you to innovate and grow throughout the year. Figure out what type of information you need from your customers, and create the corresponding Black Friday survey. The more you learn, the more in tune you’ll be with consumer needs.

Contact us to learn more about creating and sending surveys via mobile messaging.