Writing lessons I learned as a content writer at a tech company

Welcome to part 3 of this writing lessons series! Thank you for reading this series since the first part.

If you just tuned in, you can find the past series below.

Part 1: Article writing

Part 2: Cold email

Part 3: Sending survey question

Part 4: Improving landing page copy

Sending survey question

1. Only one question

I’m going to be transparent. Here’s what I wrote.

It’s shit because I asked 4 questions. I sent this email to 100+ customers. The result? Only two people replied.

I conclude that this is because:

1. I asked too many questions. I should stick to one only

2. Asking more than one question creates friction

   I’ve realized that if I were getting 4-5 survey questions, my mind immediately calculates and concludes that it will take a long time to answer them.

2. Include incentive

One more reason I failed is because there’s no incentive. The two replies I got were hoping for something in return which are free credits & new feature.

Maybe if I offer free credits then I’ll get more replies.

So, if you’re asking people to do something, promise them something beneficial in exchange.

For example,

• Free credits so your users can increase their usage of the software without spending more money

• Free e-book about your niche so your subscribers can learn more (I don’t like this because I always sign up for an email list and immediately unsubscribe after I get the e-book. Sometimes, I use disposable email.)

• Discount code so they can buy your product at a lower price

• Free audit

• Or you could try tapping into their emotion like this. I think charities do this a lot

UPDATE:

My company just rolled out a new product. To gain feedback from our existing customers, we gave them two months of free credits.

The result? Our inboxes were flooded with replies.

Incentive is a superpower. Also, we only asked one question which is their experience with Proxycurl.

Here’s what we sent using the CEO’s email.

Done for part 3. Do something good today and share this newsletter with your marketing friends or colleagues.