What is a Poll?

A poll in an email works the same way as a poll on social media.

You ask your audience a question and give them a set of potential answers to choose from.

They click on a single answer.

You can see how your audience responds – and you can choose whether or not to share that data with your respondents.

Earlier this month, I decided I wanted to trial ending the week with round-up email, so I wrote one and at the end asked my audience if I should keep doing it.

How can I add polls to my emails – does this work with Mailerlite / Mailchimp / Kit/ Flodesk…. etc etc?

No matter which email marketing platform you use, there is a way for you to add polls to your newsletter – so yes the rest of this blog post is relevant to you.

These platforms have a poll (or survey) feature built in:

• Kit
• Mailerlite
• Mailchimp
• Flodesk

If your platform has a built-in polls feature, and I haven’t listed it here, let me know in the comments so I can update this blog post.

And there are multiple add-on services you can use if your platform doesn’t include a built-in poll feature, including:

• List Gadget
• PollKit (free)

Why use polls in your marketing emails and newsletters?

The four big benefits to using polls are:

1. Insight – I’ll dig into this in more detail when we get into the ideas on how to use polls. These are quick and easy for you to set up, and for your audience to answer, giving you a low-friction way to get data to use in your marketing decisions.

2. Connection – When subscribers get the opportunity to participate in, and influence your business even in small ways, they feel a deeper connection to it (more likely to open future emails, buy offers, share content).

3. Segmentation – You can use a subscriber’s poll responses to help you know if they’d be interested in particular types of content or offers, so you can target future emails or automated sequences.

4. Deliverability – Every click is a positive engagement signal, which tells inbox providers (like Gmail) that you’re worthy of a place in the main inbox.

When to share your poll results

Most poll tools are set up so the subscriber can see the results so far after they’ve cast their ‘vote’. This is a powerful incentive to participate, so if you’re new to using polls with your audience, introduce the poll with a sentence like: ‘after you’ve submitted your response, you can see the results so far’.

Reasons not to automatically share the results of the poll with respondents:

• You’re worried the result could be unflattering – for example, if you’ve asked for feedback on content or a product, you might want to see the results for yourself before promoting them to your wider audience
• You don’t want to feel bound to the outcome of the poll – for example, if you’re asking what blog post to write next, but you want the freedom to ignore the result and go with your own preference.

Whether or not you offer an immediate reveal of poll results, consider reporting back to your subscribers later to let them know the results and how you acted on them – it’s a good way to encourage future poll participation because the subscribers know their effort will have an impact.

What to do when you get conflicting results

This is information only, not a decision.

You get to decide who much emphasis you place on this data and how you act on it.

If you want to test the robustness of the responses, you could use a different poll a few days/weeks later, and phrase the question and answers slightly differently, and present them in a different order, to see what happens.

9 Poll Ideas For Your Marketing Emails

1. How they see themselves

This can be helpful to find words to use in your copywriting later.

Example:
How would you describe yourself

• freelancer
• self-employed
• employed with side hustle
• business owner
• something else

2. How you can help them

What you know they need, and what they think they need are usually different, and to sell you need to start where they’re at. You can use polls to get a better understanding of how your subscriber perceives their current situation, and how you can help them best right now.

Example:

• Which of these is the most pressing problem for you
• We don’t have any kind of bedtime routine – every night is chaos
• We have a routine but my kids resist every step
• I can get them into bed but they don’t stay there
• They go to sleep but wake up in the night.
• They wake up far too early in the morning

3. Check you’re creating content people want from you

Give yourself a motivation boost by checking that people want the thing (topic and/or format) you’re about to create before you put any time or effort into it.

Example:
Which video should I record next:

• The correct way to get a perfect-for-dipping soft-boiled egg*
• 5 delicious takes on the humble omelet*
• You’re making scrambled eggs wrong, here’s how to fix that*

*You don’t have to use real titles, you could use matter-of-fact statements about the intended content, ‘how to make a soft-boiled egg’ – as long as you use the same approach for all options. Don’t present one option as a flashy headline and the others as matter-of-fact statements.

4. Instant feedback (and motivation)

Add a poll to an email sharing your newest piece of content to get an instant motivation boost. I will typically get 2 or 3 replies to an email with a blog post, but if I add a Poll I can get 10 times as many people respond with their feedback.

Example:
Should I do more emails/posts/videos/podcasts like this

• Yes please
• No thanks

5. Decide what offers to sell

If you need to choose between different ideas for new offers to create, or promotions/discounts to run, let your audience tell you which they’d be most likely to buy – this also helps seed the idea of buying the thing, so it works like a little pre-launch warm-up.

Example:
I’ve only got time to create one of these courses before Christmas, which one would you be most likely to buy:

• Cartoons for communication – how to draw your thoughts so your kids will understand you better
• The hygiene talk – how to talk to pre-teens about personal care
• I love them both
• I wouldn’t buy either

6. Help you shape up an offer

Use this when you’ve already decided what you want to create and want to make it as attractive as possible for your subscribers.

Example:
I’m creating something in January to help you do XYZ would you prefer:

• An all-day done-together workshop with a mix of teaching, co-working and opportunity to ask questions
• An hour-long presentation teaching you the ‘how-tos’ that you can watch in your own time

7. Rate their satisfaction with your content/course

Useful for your feedback and also to use in your marketing.

Example:
How much do you enjoy the NAME OF NEWSLETTER

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐
⭐

8. RSVP

Use this when you don’t want to create the friction of people registering for an event, but you do need some kind of indication of numbers – plus someone voting ‘I’ll be there’ makes it more likely they’ll be there.

Example:
The Q&A Call is at TIME on DATE – give me a feel for numbers and let me know if you’re planning to attend (you can change your mind, this is just to give me a rough idea of how many people to expect

• I’ll be there live
• I won’t be attending, but would like to send a question in*
• I won’t be attending

*If you want to get fancy, when the subscriber clicks this option they could get redirected to a form where they can submit their question. And/or you can follow-up with the people who chose this option ahead of the call to make sure they’ve submitted their question.

9. Check on progress

Example:
Last week you downloaded my Beginner’s Guide to Crocheting Cat Toys. How are you getting on:

• I haven’t opened it
• I’ve started looking at it
• I’m stuck and I’ve got questions
• I’ve created my first toy

Then you could follow up with people to ask what their questions are, or to see a photo of their cat enjoying their freshly crocheted toy.

Source: Phillipa Rice, https://www.mycardboardlife.com/

8 Prompts to help you come up with your own Poll ideas

1. What would you like to know about your audience?
2. What assumptions have you made about your audience that you’d like to check?
3. What are you considering creating?
4. What have you already created that you’d like feedback on?
5. What marketing decisions are you making that your audience can help you with?
6. What small choices would be easier if you checked in with your subscribers?
7. What would help you tailor your content, timing, or offers to where people actually are?
8. What automated email sequences do you already send out, and how could they be enhanced with a poll?

For the opportunity to…

And tell me…..

• Any related questions you want me to answer
• Have you tried Polls in your emails – what did and didn’t you love about it?

Relevant things inside the All Access Pass

• Get Opened
• Lead Magnet Copy Quest
• Welcome Sequence

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