Understanding Customer Success Metrics
By John Laughlin
Metrics are key to success in marketing, and for email marketers, we need ways to know what’s working and what isn’t in our messaging. By using metrics, we understand how best to target audiences, and demonstrate to our partners just how effective our email programs and efforts are in driving business to them. Some metrics are more appropriate and effective than others depending on the industry being served, but in this article, we’ll take a look at three metrics that are universally key to consider tracking for email.
Net Promoter Score
Net Promoter Score, or NPS for short, is measured when we ask whether someone is likely to recommend a given partner to someone else. This is a measure of the partner’s reputation and relationship with their customer base and can be used to find ways to help both nurture customer relationships and improve the partner’s visibility and status as a quality provider of their goods or services.
Measuring NPS is simple and can even be the focus of an email marketing program. All you require is a one-question form or tool of some sort where members of your audience can quickly and easily leave a rating of their satisfaction with the given partner. Scoring scales from one to ten are the easiest form of these, with an additional text box to allow the audience the opportunity to further explain the rating they gave.
A survey like this can be easily disseminated to audiences of any size via an email with a clear CTA linking to the quick survey. What’s more, it can also be just as easily re-sent to non-responsive contacts, or we can collect non-responders to provide to the partner for further follow-up along other messaging routes.
Customer Satisfaction Score
At first, you might not see how this metric differs from NPS since they’re measured in a similar manner by using a simple single-question survey. However, Customer Satisfaction Score, or CSAT, isn’t about whether a customer would recommend your product or services, but simply about their experience with the partner in question. It’s a snapshot idea of how the customer feels after completing a purchase or interaction with the partner.
As mentioned, we use another one-question survey to gather customer sentiment about the partner’s performance. Rather than being something sent out at any time, however, CSAT surveys need to be reactive to customer interactions as we want their immediate reaction to the overall experience. Once we have the survey set and a good amount of data gathered, we can calculate the partner’s CSAT by dividing the number of positive scores (six or higher) by the total number of scores submitted and then multiplying that result by 100. So if we received 50 responses and 40 were positive, the CSAT would be 80%.
As with NPS, an email program can be engineered to serve this purpose with the right access to sales data to act as a trigger to send the email survey out. And just like with the NPS email, we can also set up to resend it to non-responders or collect non-responder information for further follow-up using other methods.
Qualitative Customer Feedback
The best way to find out what customers want is, quite simply, to ask them. At its core, that’s what Qualitative Customer Feedback is all about: Getting the straight story from customers to figure out what a given partner is doing right, what they’re doing wrong, and what they may not realize they should be doing but aren’t. Consumers want to be heard and feel like their opinions matter to the companies they do business with.
As with NPS and CSAT, the simplest way to gather feedback is with a survey, though this time we’ll be asking several questions rather than just one. The key is to construct the survey with enough questions to get meaningful information, but not so many that your audience is disinclined to respond. Another consideration to make is if offering a small token of appreciation for a response is appropriate and in order. Survey rewards don’t have to be extravagant to entice a response from customers, it can be something like a tradeshow giveaway item of some kind or even a small gift card to, say, Starbucks that would cover a cup of coffee. Whatever you choose will act as an incentive for the audience to respond, especially if the survey is a bit on the long side.
Once again, email is an ideal marketing platform to reach out to any size audience and invite them to take such a survey as well as follow up with or collect data on non-responders. Furthermore, unlike other marketing mediums where messages need to be shorter in length, email can go into a bit more explanation about what’s being asked of the audience as well as detail the reward – if any – they stand to receive for their time and thoughts, thus making it even more likely that we will receive valuable, useful feedback from them.
There are many other kinds of metrics that can be used to track, prove, and improve email marketing effectiveness, but these three are of key importance. Email is an ideal way to send out survey requests of any kind, track responses, follow up with people who either bounce or don’t either open the message or click through to the survey and so much more. ChoiceLocal’s Marketing Automation Team is always ready, willing, and able to help get this kind of program more crafted and monitored.
About ChoiceLocal
ChoiceLocal is a franchise marketing agency that is dedicated to leading a purpose-driven business as the first and only franchise marketing agency with a money-back guarantee. This has led to successful partnerships with more than 50 franchise brands and a spot on Inc. 5000 fastest-growing companies. The core values are driven not only by the digital marketing work that is done but reflected in each person that becomes a teammate. Teammates are volunteering in their local communities every quarter and making a difference to those around them. Named a top workplace for four years straight, ChoiceLocal is dedicated to making the lives of all those it’s involved with better.
