How to do user surveys over Email to collect 8x more responses (case study of FlutterFlow)

These days, many companies are sending out user surveys via emails hoping to collect quality feedback from their users to help shape their product, but usually with very limited results.

First, a bad example (which might seem familiar to you)

So yesterday, I received an email from FlutterFlow asking me to fill out their user survey (I’m a registered user of FlutterFlow and I do 💜 the product).

Ok, so this email is asking me to spend 6 minutes filling out a survey. As a busy founder, I’m usually not gonna spend 6 minutes filling it out, but I’ll entertain the idea today.

So I clicked on the survey button, and it takes me to a typeform survey, okay.

The first question that I see —— “What is your email address?”

Uhmmmm...

Uhmmmmmmmmm...

Didn’t you just email me to fill out this survey? How come you don’t know my email address?

At this point, it’s an instant-close for me.

But for the sake of exploring, I’ll continue.

And the first question I got asked is an NPS question - it’s okay to ask in Email, but way better to do it in the app as a pop-up survey.

And from here, the survey continues on to ask many free response type questions...

You get the idea.

The 3 biggest issues here

I could tell the team at FlutterFlow put a lot of thoughts into these questions. But a few issues are dragging them down:

1. The email proposes a high barrier to enter into the survey - user has to agree to take a 6min survey and click on the button to be taken to the survey. (So there’s no easy way for busy users to tell you what they think.)
2. User identity is not attached to the survey, creating extra friction and chances for mistakes when asking the user to self-report their email address - before even getting started with the first question.
3. Responses are not recorded if some required fields are missing and the user abandons the survey.

Each of these issues creates additional friction towards your users actually giving you quality feedback you could use to shape the future of your company.

Now, here’s a better approach which will give you 8x more responses

In your email, directly get users to engage with you and give answer to your question. When they click on the link, they’ll be taken to the rest of the survey,

• with their response already recorded
• and their email address automatically passed on from the link! (pass this in with [email protected] (issue #2 solved)

Email Example

Help us shape the future of FlutterFlow by sharing your thoughts!

How likely are you to recommend FlutterFlow to a friend or co-worker?

0 - Not likely at all 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 - Extremely likely

Each link prefills the NPS question with a parameter ranging from q1=0 to q1=10

When user clicks on a link, they are automatically directed to continue their response:

Thus reducing the barrier to entry (issue #1 solved).

Whenever user finishes answer to any one question, their responses are immediately recorded - so even if they abandon the survey midway, you’ll still get to see what they were able to say. (issue #3 solved)

Finally, a bonus:

In the last question, FlutterFlow team asked if user would like to volunteer their time for a 15min user interview. When I clicked YES and tried to submit, all that happened was that Typeform showing errors telling me I have to answer all mandatory questions in order to submit.

Lost opportunity.

Instead, you could have defined a logic to open Calendly page when “YES” is selected

Want better user surveys that get 8x more responses?

We’ve created a simple to use user survey tool that helps startups understand customers along their entire journey. 1Flow started with in-app surveys for web / mobile apps, and now we are offering shareable link surveys to reach users outside of the app - all the insights feed into your 1Flow dashboard in realtime.

Visit our website to learn more: 1flow.app

Read our docs on shareable link surveys

Want to use 1Flow? Send me an email at [email protected].