How an End-of-Year Survey Can Improve Your Newsletter Strategy

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Email should be a conversation between two people. In the case of a newsletter, it’s between someone at your business/organization and an individual subscriber.

The way a good conversationalist asks questions, each of your newsletters should solicit subscriber feedback. Their opinions, reactions, advice, comments, criticism, and praise are critical to the success of your email efforts. 

What I’ve learned from 700+ issues of my newsletter

Non-profit staff and consultants don’t always have time to expand their horizons by sorting through hundreds of blogs and newsletters. I saw a need to bring information to one place. And that’s what I created with the “Your Daily Dose of Nonprofit” newsletter.

For over three years, I’ve published my newsletter four days a week. In January, I celebrated hitting “send” on edition number 700. 

I’m proud that it has a click-through rate 511% higher than the non-profit average, according to these benchmarks from Campaign Monitor. It means I have a clear sense of what subscribers like and don’t, and have created a format and tone that they learn to recognize and appreciate.

Each issue contains four articles on a variety of sector topics. I add my tips, expert advice and suggestions to each, along with a bit of humor or absurdity to keep things light. I know it’s hard for people to keep up with a newsletter that lands in their inbox this often. But while I might not have the world’s most massive readership, it is a very engaged audience. And that has helped me refine the content I include and provide an email experience subscribers look forward to.

I also need feedback to continue to build a newsletter that readers will love. My newsletter’s tagline is “read, learn, grow, implement” — and finding a way to incorporate surveys into my strategy has helped me deliver on that promise.

Learn to love feedback

Feedback is gold. It allows me to understand how individual subscribers react to the content I share. So, I include a feedback CTA in the footer of every email.

It helps that I’m not afraid of negative input. If anything, bring it! Tell me where I messed up. Lemme know which content doesn’t hit the mark so I can do better next time.

The great thing about feedback, positive or negative: It gives me the chance to have a 1-to-1 conversation with that reader. I can address their concerns and make sure they know their opinion matters. If I’ve made a mistake, I can apologize to them directly. It does take time, but I respond to every single newsletter-related email I receive.

Building this type of relationship will help when you send out your survey. When you have a good rapport with your subscribers, they’ll be happy to help you — because if you use their advice to create a better newsletter, it also helps them.

Construct a survey that gets responses

My annual subscriber survey helps me improve what I provide and decide which new products or services I want to launch in the coming year. I can see what’s missing, what the needs are, and meet those needs.

I create my survey using Google Forms, and I do my best to be mindful of my subscribers’ time. The survey only takes about three minutes to complete.

I state the goal at the top so subscribers understand that taking the time to fill out the survey will be helpful to their work.

But I also know that people sometimes need a push to spend time replying to me. This year I offered an incentive to subscribers to fill out the survey: I raffled off two free 30-minute consultations to help two organizations solve their biggest fundraising and marketing pain points. (46 percent of respondents entered their name into the raffle as part of this survey.)

How I structured my survey

Let’s take a look at how I crafted the survey — and the insights it yielded:

1)  General feedback

I asked for an overall rating of satisfaction and whether my readers recommend the newsletter to friends and colleagues. I then followed up by asking how many had shared an edition with someone.

Response: 80% of respondents had.

That’s a great indication that my content is doing its job and providing valuable information to my readers. This is a good push for me to improve how I encourage shares in the footer of my emails. Subscribers are already doing it. I want them to do it more often.

One idea for this year: I’m considering moving the share link into the body of the email. I’m hoping that increased visibility will prompt people to share more often with individuals or their network

The survey then asked how subscribers initially heard about the newsletter. This lets me know which marketing channels are working and which I may need to ditch or rework strategy.

I asked my subscribers next how they read the newsletter for two reasons:

• Open rates are no longer reliable, which means data an ESP shows me related to open times also isn’t trustworthy. So I checked for myself: If they’re reading it on their phone, I can assume they do so early in the morning. (As one subscriber told me: “It’s the first email I read when I wake up.”) If they’re using a laptop or desktop, they’re probably at work.
  
• Dark mode was a 2022 email design trend. If a large percentage of subscribers read my emails on their phones in dark mode, I might consider making some design changes.

Response: Turns out 88% read the newsletter on their computer and of those who read on their phones, 96% don’t use dark mode. Looks like I don’t have to make that big design change!

But it might mean I have to change my send time.

My theory is when subscribers are at work and in a frame of mind for learning, I’ll get more clicks on the content than when a subscriber is bleary-eyed in the morning.

I currently send the email at 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. But would I give my click-through rate a boost by sending it at 8:30 or 9 a.m.? To be tested.

2) Understanding the content readers want more of

Since sending issue no. 1, I have covered almost 150 different non-profit-related topics. 

In my survey, I listed 28 main topics (like fundraising, marketing, donors, and storytelling) and asked respondents which content they wanted to see more vs. less of. I also provided an open-ended question so subscribers could add topics to the list.

Yes, 28 topics is a lot to choose from. But the feedback from readers was clear. There were several topics that readers clearly said they wanted to hear less about, including life/work balance and cybersecurity. (Surveys don’t just have to be about adding more to your newsletter — they can also help you subtract the stuff that isn’t working.) And I learned that there was a definite preference to read more about the big/important topics to their work, like email marketing, strategy and planning, and fundraising best practices. That data aligns with the results of surveys the previous two years, and suggests I’m on the right track overall with the content readers are getting.

I use the responses from these two questions to help me determine newsletter content, although it’s hard to meet everyone’s needs and expectations. It’s a work in progress.

3) Helping me plan my strategy for 2023

When you build your survey, consider not only the separate sections but how data from multiple sections can work together. In this case, I wanted to know if readers were interested in these workshops. I didn’t ask what content to build around — from an earlier question, I already know what topics subscribers want to learn more about, which allows me to identify what types of workshops will most likely be in demand.

I wasn’t sure what the response to this question would be. This would be a new business offering and there’s a cost involved. But I was encouraged by the results. Nearly two out of five respondents were definitely interested in it and half might be. That’s more than enough for me to determine that I should offer these paid workshops and see how they go.

4) Learning more about my readers

Building relationships with readers is central to what I’m doing, both as a newsletter publisher and someone who works in the non-profit space. So I wanted to use the survey to learn more about my subscribers — the more I know about them, the easier it is to engage and connect with them.

So inquired about how much sector experience they have and what position they held. Over 60% had 11+ years of experience, 29% were CEOs and 42% were directly involved with fundraising.

Now I know that beginner’s level content may not hit the mark with my audience. Couple that with the results in section two and I can dig deeper into what type of content to include in my newsletter.

I also asked for my readers’ pain points at work. I can help them by creating targeted newsletter and blog content, specific workshops, and emphasizing certain services my agency offers when turning to subscribers.

5) Asking for open-ended feedback

I got the idea for my last question from Not A Newsletter year-end survey, where he recommended asking your readers for a testimonial. 

I was up front and told respondents I’d use their quotes in places where I promote the newsletter. Social proof is critical to getting more subscribers!

It’s never too early to survey

But feedback isn’t just something to ask for after they’ve seen your content or something that can only be asked for at the end of the year. It’s also good to request it right from the start.

In addition to my main newsletter, I also publish a weekly newsletter with a free five-minute video teaching non-profits how to upgrade their email fundraising and marketing. In my welcome email, I ask new subscribers to take 30 seconds and fill in a one-question survey: What’s their biggest email pain point?

That one-question survey has proved very useful when I consider what content I’ll create each week. I’m seeing a few common issues among readers: They want more readers to click their CTAs, are struggling to convert readers to donors, or need to know email fundraising and marketing best practices. I’ve used that feedback to shape my content strategy, both in my newsletter and on social media channels. They’ve got pain points, and I can make sure to share ideas and resources that will help solve these problems.

Takeaways for your newsletter

While our newsletters and aims for them may be different, we probably all aspire to give our readers the best value possible to keep them subscribing and recommending to others.

Here are some takeaways on soliciting feedback for any newsletter:

• Ask for feedback constantly and consistently. Let subscribers know their feedback matters and that you’re using it.
  
• Unsure what to ask? This list of questions might help — or get ideas by reviewing (and taking!) other people’s surveys.
  
• The better you know your subscribers, the more targeted your content will be. The more targeted content you publish, the higher your retention rate will be. And a higher retention rate can mean more revenue over time for your organization.

Thanks to our sponsor

The stories you’re reading on inboxcollective.com are made possible thanks to the generous support of our spring sponsor, Litmus. They’re an all-in-one marketing platform that empowers you to build, test, review, and analyze emails more effectively than ever so you can get the most out of every send. Learn why 700,000+ professionals trust Litmus to make every send count.