Last Updated: December 3, 2021
No matter what your business is, focusing on customer retention is a proven way to grow revenue. Although it’s important to attract new customers, selling to them can cost five times more than satisfying and keeping current ones.
And to give your customer a clear reason to choose your brands over the competitors, you need to measure customer satisfaction and increase it. The happier your buyers are, the more chances they will come back for more.
There’s no better way to understand our customers’ needs, wants and expectations than asking for their opinion. Your customers can provide you with valuable insights that can improve your product and service. However, you need to convince them to share their thoughts with you, and it’s better to interact with them in an interesting and engaging way.
The solution is simple: use Instagram Stories polls.
Why Instagram?
- Your target audience hangs out here. With over 800 million monthly users on Instagram, the platform gives an opportunity to reach their customers in a genuine way.
- Instagrammers are ready to engage with brands. The engagement rate is 10x higher than Facebook and 84x higher than Twitter. You can use an Influencer database to witness this social media engagement difference.
- The platform impacts on purchase decisions. 72% of Instagrammers have made a purchase after seeing something on Instagram.
- 60% of Instagram users find new products on the platform
Moreover, it’s a perfect place to understand your customers better without clogging up the main feed with content. Instagram Stories has hit 300 million daily active users, so using ephemeral content is a great way to engage users. The platform has rolled out poll stickers that help marketers get their followers’ feedback with ease.
Instagram Stories polls allow users to place a simple two-option poll on the photo or video you share in your Stories. Followers can tape on the icon and vote, and you can see the results afterward. Also, if your followers watch the same story again, they will see the latest results. Thus, it’s an engaging way to understand your customer better.
Here are five ways to use Instagram polls to increase customer satisfaction:
1. Ask a Yes/No question
Look: it’s in human’s nature to crave for self-fulfillment, so many Instagram followers love sharing their thoughts. And if you want your followers to interact with your brand, use poll stickers to ask the most common question with a simple Yes/No answer in your Story. Brands can use this straightforward question to ask their customers about their product and experience. However, this type of question doesn’t give the in-depth understanding of it.
For example, ASOS uses polls to understand whether their followers keep an eye on the latest news.
In this case, using a Yes/No question is a way to grab followers’ attention and inform them about the news. Also, the results help ASOS marketers understand that they need to put effort into the promotion as just 16% of followers know about the new version of their magazine.
Although Yes/No questions don’t allow respondents to explain their thoughts fully, this type of polls is an effective way to split people into groups for later analysis.
2. Invite followers to vote for their choice
If you want to understand what product is more popular, ask your followers. As people believe their opinions will help to make their favorite products better, they are ready to share their opinions, and it’s a great way to make customers feel valued while understanding more about their choices.
As a beauty brand, Sephora wants to know their customers in order to understand products that can satisfy buyers’ needs. Thus, they contrast common products’ options and invite their followers to vote for their choice.
Women have different makeup behavior and cosmetics preferences, and their choices are based on the age, status, occupation. Encouraging the followers to vote for their choice helps Sephora understand what products their buyers love, analyze their profiles, and therefore create a target audience profile.
Keeping your poll short, simple, and creative is a perfect way to attract more participants and get a better understanding of your customers.
3. Suggest Instagrammers to rate your product
Another option to poll your followers is to use the emoji slider that helps to understand better what your followers feel about a particular question. Instead of two simple answers, let your followers give their rating with the emoji slider sticker.
Here’s a little case study of this strategy in action by Coffee ‘n Clothes. As the swim season is here, fashion lovers are obsessed with the idea of finding a perfect swimsuit. Therefore, the company offers options with a short description and the emoji slider to suggest their followers to rate the products.
The slider allows marketers to understand what their customers truly think about the options.
It’s also proven that posts with emojis have a 15% higher interaction rate which means attracting more participants. Moreover, the rater helps you see the individual rates and the average choice.
You can choose to use the text box to ask a question or describe the picture as well as you can pick out the most suitable emoji. When it comes to your visual content, post to Instagram from Mac to ensure the highest quality for your images.
4. Encourage users to share their opinion
One of the best ways to increase participation is to ask customers to share their opinion. Once they feel people can listen and act on the information, they are more likely to interact with your brand. Keep in mind that the poll should be relevant to your customers and interactive.
Just look at Airbnb: every Tuesday they post several Stories to give their followers a hint and then ask whether the users can guess the place on the picture. The more information Instagrammers get, the easier for them to make the choice.
This interactive poll helps to engage the audience, test their knowledge, and increase brand loyalty as people love sharing their thoughts.
Moreover, asking customers to share their thoughts helps them understand that the company cares about their buyers. Thus, it’s more likely it will foster customer loyalty.
5. Add a clickable link to get feedback
Sometimes you need to ask more questions to measure customer satisfaction, and using two-option polls isn’t a great idea. However, you can use the Instagram potential to get more insights – add a clickable link to a survey within your Instagram Story.
As Instagram allows users with 10k following to add a clickable link to their Stories, it’s a great way to create entertaining surveys and gain better insights.
Let’s take Lululemon, for example. They’ve posted a simple story with a question and a link that leads to further information.
As more and more people use Instagram Stories on a daily basis, it’s easier to grab their attention and invite them to fulfill the survey here.
Instagram Stories polls help to increase customer satisfaction as it’s a way to make buyers feel valued and understand their experience and needs.
Here’s what we can learn:
- Use creative methods to engage the audience. As the number of Instagram users is growing, it’s important to use the platform to interact with them in an interesting way and get insights where they are more likely to share their thoughts. Instagram rolls out various functions to poll the users, and it’s important to stay creative and find out what polls work best for your audience.
- Analyze your poll results. It’s easy to use Story analytics to see get your poll results and see who voted for which option in the poll. When you tap on the viewers, you can see the list of participants. However, it’s important to remember that the poll results are only available while the story is live. Thus, it’s better to turn on the notification in order not to miss valuable insights.
- Focus on your loyal voters. If your followers participate in your polls and want to show their opinion every time, it’s a great reason for offering them something more. For example, you can follow them up to get deeper and more qualitative insights. Moreover, paying attention to these loyal voters can help to convert followers into ambassadors which means having more loyal customers on the platform.
Related reading: Why you should use surveys in your social media marketing strategy
The bottom line
Customer retention depends on customer experience, so it’s useful to understand what your buyers think about your product and service to improve the quality. Therefore, brands should think about asking their customers to share their thoughts, and using interactive Instagram Stories polls is a great way to receive insights and make followers feel valued.
One Response
Hugh Beaulac, thanks so much for the post.Really thank you! Keep writing.