At Litmus, we personalize our emails with goal: to create tailor-made inbox experiences that go the additional mile—the sort that surprises and delights our subscribers (and goes past “Good day %%first_name%%”). It’s our method of creating a extra human connection with our subscribers, and is one thing we predict is very necessary throughout a time dominated by synthetic intelligence (AI).
It’s a brand new period with customized emails, and we’re right here for it! In the present day, we’re sharing considered one of our favourite methods so as to add a human-touch to our e mail advertising and marketing campaigns—and that’s with Litmus Personalize Reside Polls.
On this publish, we’ll cowl:
The facility of polls: What you possibly can obtain with in-email polls
E mail polls give you a option to seize distinctive zero-party buyer information with out having to run an extended survey, buy an costly consulting report, or pour over 1000’s of micro-engagements to have a look at developments. You may ask a query like, “Do you favor X product or Y product?” and get a direct reply you possibly can then use for retargeting in e mail or social media.
However e mail polls additionally give subscribers one thing thrilling, too. As an alternative of simply studying, subscribers can have interaction immediately with the content material with out having to depart their e mail. This makes emails not only a message, however an entire expertise by itself.
What’s an e mail ballot?
An e mail ballot is a query embedded immediately into the physique of an e mail marketing campaign. Subscribers click on on their option to reply the query. Every alternative is linked to a touchdown web page that kicks off an interactive journey for the subscriber, when you acquire the info.
At Litmus, we name these Reside Polls as a result of Litmus Personalize lets you add a dynamic component to them. Our Reside Polls show the outcomes so each time a subscriber opens the e-mail, they’ll see what different individuals have chosen within the ballot.
Each are helpful for accumulating buyer information, however serve completely different functions on your total e mail advertising and marketing technique.
How does dwell polling in e mail work?
You may run an e mail ballot with out making it dynamic, however it received’t replace ballot ends in the e-mail. That’s the magic of Reside Polls, which enhance engagement by showcasing what different individuals have mentioned up to now—making it irresistible for subscribers to click on.
Reside Polls begin with a query you wish to ask. Subscribers then click on on which possibility they like, with as much as 4 choices
“Polls give the client an avenue to precise their opinion in a straightforward method, however additionally they give the e-mail marketer an avenue to gather information,” says Litmus buyer success supervisor Ceegan Flood. “Folks like to share their opinion, after which you possibly can seize information that helps you additional phase these individuals and provides them a greater e mail expertise.”
E mail polls vs. e mail surveys
The most important distinction between e mail polls and e mail surveys is that subscribers fill out an e mail ballot immediately inside the physique of the e-mail, whereas they might go to a different web page to fill out an e mail survey. E mail polls are designed for easy, one-question campaigns—so simple as, “What’s your favourite shade?”—whereas surveys supply room for a number of alternative questions, fill-in-the-blanks, and open-ended questions that present extra nuanced qualitative information.
E mail polls | E mail surveys | |
---|---|---|
Happen within the physique of the e-mail. | A call-to-action takes subscribers to a touchdown web page to fill out information. | |
Can reply just one query at a time. | Can run a number of questions on a subject. | |
Designed for easy this-or-that campaigns. | Affords extra choices for questions like a number of alternative, open-ended, fill-in-the-blank, and so forth. | |
Your outcomes seem as a part of your engagement metrics in your e mail. | Takes time to kind by way of information and add to your e mail advertising and marketing efforts | |
Can use in an ordinary e mail builder with Litmus Personalize. | Require utilizing a survey platform like SurveyMonkey or coding your individual in your web site. |
Each are helpful for accumulating buyer information, however serve completely different functions on your total e mail advertising and marketing technique.
How does dwell polling in e mail work?
You may run an e mail ballot with out making it dynamic, however it received’t replace ballot ends in the e-mail. That’s the magic of Reside Polls, which enhance engagement by showcasing what different individuals have mentioned up to now—making it irresistible for subscribers to click on.
Reside Polls begin with a query you wish to ask. Subscribers then click on on which possibility they like, with as much as 4 choices.
Clicking on their alternative works the identical as every other CTA, taking subscribers to a devoted touchdown web page you present. Within the background, that information refreshes the outcomes displayed subsequent to every possibility in order that future subscribers who open the e-mail will see the up to date outcomes.
It’s not fairly real-time—you received’t be capable of see the ends in your e mail until you refresh your browser. As an alternative, it’s mirrored for the following one who sees that e mail. What issues on your subscribers isn’t that the info is ideal, however that they’ll share their voice (and click on.)
E mail shopper help for dwell polls is fairly constant.
After all, there’s a catch. Apple’s Mail Privateness Safety (MPP) implies that the caching of photos makes it so clicks from earlier subscribers received’t replace. Keep in mind, although, that doesn’t influence your information assortment. You could have two choices for this:
- You may embrace a fallback with random information factors within the photos to encourage subscribers to click on, although that’s not important.
- Or, stagger your sends when utilizing a Reside Ballot, which permits a click on depend to be gathered earlier than the photographs are cached for segments of your subscribers.
As a result of a ballot is displayed as a picture, any person with photos turned off for no matter cause received’t see the ballot. A very good fallback is to incorporate a hyperlink to a touchdown web page with the identical questions or you possibly can merely write the copy in order that customers who don’t see the ballot don’t know what they’re lacking.
Harness the ability of e mail personalization
Create 1:1 experiences utilizing e mail personalization that goes past “Good day, %%first_name%%” with dynamic and real-time content material.
The best way to create and embed polls in your emails
As an alternative of utilizing a web-based ballot maker, Litmus Personalize makes it simple to create a ballot you possibly can embed into your subsequent e mail advertising and marketing marketing campaign. Right here’s how:
1. Create a Reside Ballot: Within the Personalised content material tab, select “Reside Polls.” Choose the inexperienced Create ballot button within the higher pane, choose a template, or select the clean + block beneath “Your dwell polls.”
2. Customise your Ballot: Select your format and magnificence choices like variety of choices, background shade, font, measurement, and shade beneath within the “Customise” panel. Be certain to call your template so you will discover it later within the high left. Ceegan recommends skipping the “immediate” and utilizing dwell textual content to code the query in your e mail physique so it’s extra accessible on cellular and in Darkish Mode.
3. Preview and take a look at: To check your dwell ballot, enter numbers within the “Clicks” discipline for every choice to preview the way it will look as subscribers vote. These are placeholder values and received’t have an effect on your ballot’s closing outcomes.
4. Embed the ballot in your e mail: So as to add the dwell ballot to your e mail, copy the code generated and add it to your e mail’s HTML. You may copy the tag utilizing the Copy HTML button beneath the code field. Drag and drop the code to your e mail in Litmus Builder or anyplace you develop your emails!
5. View your ballot outcomes: When you’ve despatched your e mail marketing campaign, hover over a thumbnail within the Your dwell polls part of the Personalised content material tab and choose the View report button to verify the outcomes and click on information for any ballot.
You should utilize easy e mail polls in a wide range of campaigns, however one good spot for these inquiries to go is in your common publication.
We make good use of dynamic dwell polls in our Product Pulse publication. They’re a key function that we use recurrently as a pre-designed module, making it simple to incorporate every time the inspiration hits us to ask our subscribers a query. We consider it as a temperature verify: we ask a query, subscribers reply (with a click on to vote), and in return, we get the insights. Listed here are just a few finest practices we all the time observe once we’re together with an e mail ballot in a publication:
1. Preserve your questions easy and mobile-optimized
With an e mail publication, your subscribers are in search of info. Don’t overwhelm your publication with a sophisticated query or with too many solutions. Preserve it easy. In Litmus Personalize, for instance, you possibly can have solely as much as 4 choices on your response. That is particularly necessary as you optimize for cellular, as a result of the reply choices will stack.
If in case you have a couple of query you wish to ask, maintain your second query for an additional day.
Right here, we used Reside Polls as a pulse verify to get a really feel for what our subscribers are prioritizing this yr:
Made with Litmus Personalize Necessities →
And on this challenge, we needed to know what our subscribers’ record hygiene habits had been like:
Made with Litmus Personalize Professional →
2. E mail placement is determined by context
A query it is best to ask your self earlier than each ship: “Why am I sending this e mail?”
For those who’re trying to get a solution to a selected query with a Reside Ballot, keep in mind your why. This doesn’t simply allow you to perceive a marketing campaign’s goal, however it could actually inform your execution.
Do you wish to get a fast pulse-check on publication sections? Ask a couple of favourite shade to find out your design efforts? Or perceive which merchandise or classes subscribers are drawn to? All three of those would have completely different placement in your e mail.
“The content material of the query you’re asking impacts the position. For those who’re asking one thing like, ‘How did you want this e mail?’ then you definitely’ll in fact need it on the backside. However it will also be a enjoyable component that engages your subscriber inside a extra informational publication, so you possibly can put it anyplace. I’d take a look at your objective. If you really want the suggestions, be certain the ballot is on the high.” says Ceegan.
3. Model your polls to mix in to your newsletters
Consider Reside Polls as their very own module inside your bigger publication. Whether or not you place the ballot proper on the high of the e-mail because the headliner or embed it additional down within the e mail physique, be certain to customise the ballot so it matches your model.
The Ikon cross added a ballot to their publication speaking in regards to the upcoming ski season, asking recipients their favourite time to shred. The ballot appears seamless within the e mail design:
Litmus Personalize lets you change the fashion, font, and shade of your ballot in order that it matches any model. You may also add customized fonts so, regardless that you’re dragging and dropping a customized component in your emails, it’ll appear and feel cohesive.
Beautiful emails, large outcomes
Discover our high picks for emails that may assist your model get extra clicks, extra income, and supply higher in-email experiences.
Maximize your subsequent e mail marketing campaign with a dynamic ballot
However e mail newsletters are just one instance of how you need to use dynamic polls in your e mail campaigns. Promotional emails, re-engagement emails, suggestions emails, and triggered emails are all varieties of e mail campaigns which you could create with a dwell ballot.
Reside polls are actually priceless due to the info you acquire. Right here’s the way to benefit from it:
1. Use dwell polls to extend engagement
Reside Polls are an amazing e mail advertising and marketing tactic, however they’ll’t magically remodel an underperforming e mail into considered one of your high campaigns. Whenever you’re serious about which e mail campaigns so as to add a dwell ballot to, take a look at alternatives to extend engagement, quite than conversions or click-through price. For those who’re undecided, then create a brand new e mail quite than replace an outdated one.
“I as soon as had somebody say, ‘Our dwell ballot didn’t generate any additional clicks,” says Ceegan. “However we dug extra into that e mail and noticed that it was underperforming in a number of methods. For those who’re going so as to add a dwell ballot to your e mail, play up that component in your topic line to extend your open price, and incorporate the ballot into the physique of your e mail early on in order that your subscribers see it.”
Deal with your Reside Ballot like several component designed to extend engagement—use it sparingly and make it front-and-center as a part of your marketing campaign, until you’re including it to a publication as a selected module.
2. Flip ballot information into actionable follow-ups
What makes polls so priceless isn’t simply the subscriber expertise however the information you’re in a position to acquire. When somebody makes a alternative for the ballot, tag them for future campaigns associated to their alternative. For instance, ByLaurenJean used Litmus Personalize to create a dynamic ballot round completely different diamond cuts for a jewellery retailer. Subscribers might upvote the lower they appreciated essentially the most.
Supply: ByLaurenJean
Profit from this information by segmenting upcoming campaigns primarily based on these clicks—so on this instance, you would ship an upcoming marketing campaign that includes merchandise utilizing a radiant lower diamond for individuals who voted for it as their favourite.
“Any ESP lets you phase primarily based on what a person clicks on, which might kick off an e mail journey on your subscribers,” says Ceegan. “You may export that information to Microsoft Excel or have these clicks to pipe into Google Analytics or no matter information warehouse you’re utilizing so you possibly can take that information and put it into new audiences and even automate an e mail nurture marketing campaign primarily based on what they clicked.”
3. Mix ballot responses with different information to create customized campaigns
The holy grail of e mail advertising and marketing is sending the fitting message to the fitting particular person on the proper time. Combining Reside Polls with different types of personalization can assist you try this—and construct an interesting marketing campaign that delights your subscribers.
Take this instance from grocery chain The Co-op, which up to date the climate for every participant, which they used to alter the header picture to an outside BBQ or indoor enjoyable. Under, they included a ballot on dietary preferences to maintain the digital social gathering going:
For those who’re accumulating polling information, use it to tell different points of your marketing campaign. Litmus Personalize makes it simple to create interactive, customized e mail designs on your subscribers, together with customized photos, countdown timers, progress bars, sentiment trackers, and extra.
Drive engagement with dynamic content material
Design emails with dwell polls, customized photos, scratch-offs, and extra with Litmus Personalize. No coding expertise required.
Examples of dwell polls to make use of as inspiration
Able to strive dwell polls in your individual emails? Listed here are just a few industry-specific examples that you need to use as inspiration on your subsequent e mail marketing campaign:
Retail and e-commerce
Retail and e-commerce manufacturers can use dwell polls to assemble buy intent information. If you realize that somebody prefers one sweater over one other, for instance, you possibly can extra simply retarget them sooner or later by way of social adverts or an on-site popup. It’s additionally a good way to get insights into total shopper developments, like which colours, kinds, or shapes your prospects want.
This instance from Topshop is a classy option to ballot your prospects and determine what sorts of appears they’re extra considering looking for.
Journey and hospitality
Most shoppers solely make journey plans just a few occasions a yr, so journey and hospitality manufacturers should make their emails depend. Use dwell polls to find out the place prospects want to journey or what sorts of actions they wish to do on trip to higher goal them with resort, restaurant, and tour offers.
You may also use polls for extra common engagement, although. This e mail sequence provides up a trivia query every week. Beautiful photos like this one gas wanderlust simply in addition to extra focused campaigns. (Have you learnt the reply? 🕵️)
Businesses
B2B manufacturers usually get a nasty rap for being boring, however dwell polls are a good way to encourage extra engagement. Ask your prospects questions on what they’re most keen about. Is it button form and shade for UX design? Coding languages? Their favourite productiveness instrument? No matter lights up your neighborhood.
This MailChimp instance makes use of a hyperlink to a Google Kind survey as an alternative of a dwell ballot, which might have been good to assemble fast suggestions from their subscribers about what sorts of emails they wish to obtain sooner or later.
Healthcare
Healthcare suppliers can use dwell polls to assist ship a greater affected person expertise. That is perhaps engaged on communication preferences, operating instructional campaigns about food plan or train, or providing decisions for additional workplace hours.
This instance is technically from a retailer, however is an effective instance of how wellness manufacturers or healthcare suppliers can function completely different services or products (on this case, with a giveaway connected.)
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How does Litmus use dwell polls?
We loooove utilizing dwell polls in our e mail newsletters. Moreover together with polls in our Product Pulse publication, we’ve additionally used it for Litmus Weekly subscribers.
We’ll be the primary to say it’s necessary to have a objective with any personalization efforts. However typically, it’s okay for the objective to be shocking and delighting your subscribers. That’s what we did on this challenge of Litmus Weekly.
And it labored! The Reside Ballot accounted for 17.3% of distinctive clicks.
FAQs for utilizing dwell polls
Have questions on the way to use dwell polls in e mail? Listed here are just a few solutions:
How ought to I construction my ballot query for optimum engagement?
Your ballot query ought to be structured as a this-or-that, yes-or-no fashion query. As a result of your subscribers will select just one out of two, three, or 4 choices of their dwell ballot, you wish to be certain your query is as clear as potential. Suppose questions like, “Do you favor an island getaway or a ski trip?” or “Would you quite get 50% off a pair of sneakers or a pair of denims?”
How can I A/B take a look at e mail polls?
A/B testing can assist you isolate particular components of your e mail campaigns to find out what impacts efficiency—so you possibly can carry that tactic to a different sort of marketing campaign. An effective way to A/B take a look at e mail polls is to run campaigns with and with out the ballot in them to see if it drives extra engagement or not. You may also A/B take a look at particular components of a dwell ballot, like shade, alternative order, or different particulars to see what will increase engagement.
How usually ought to I take advantage of polls in my e mail campaigns?
Like all e mail advertising and marketing tactic, don’t overuse your e mail polls. For those who add them to too many emails, you’ll lose that particular magic personalization can create. Begin by operating an e mail marketing campaign that’s simply in regards to the ballot after which you possibly can take a look at extra common campaigns so as to add inquiries to, like your e mail publication.
How can I incentivize customers to take part within the ballot?
Manufacturers usually embrace carrots like reward playing cards or particular reductions for survey respondents, and you are able to do the identical on your dwell polls. However one of the best ways to incentivize customers to take part is to make your query compelling. Take into consideration what sorts of debates your viewers is already having—whether or not it’s a light-hearted query about whether or not or not scorching canine depend as a sandwich or which coding method is the fitting one to take for a software program improvement drawback.
How do I monitor ballot outcomes inside my e mail advertising and marketing platform?
Your e mail service supplier (ESP) will present total engagement outcomes, together with what number of clicks every possibility acquired. However in case you’re utilizing a Reside Ballot from Litmus Personalize, you possibly can simply see your outcomes by going to the Your dwell polls part of the Personalised content material tab and deciding on the View report button.
The report will show the full variety of clicks your ballot has recorded and a breakdown of what number of occasions every possibility was chosen.
Interact your subscribers with dwell polls
How will you utilize them in your e mail advertising and marketing campaigns? Perhaps you’ll host a voting sales space or carry gamification to the inbox. Whether or not you purpose to assemble insights, increase engagement, or just entertain, Reside Polls supply a artistic and dynamic option to join together with your subscribers on a deeper degree. We will’t wait to see what you create! 💌