What are best practices for surveying cancelled customers via email to protect sender reputation?

Key findings

• Legal compliance: Before sending any email, verify that you have legal permission to contact these customers, especially if they have cancelled their subscription but not formally unsubscribed from your email list. Ignoring this can lead to severe penalties.
• Engagement matters: Even with legal permission, targeting highly unengaged individuals (who didn't engage even when they were paying customers) is risky. They are unlikely to respond and highly prone to reporting your emails as spam, which negatively impacts domain reputation.
• Volume control: Batching these survey emails and keeping their volume to a small percentage (e.g., 5-10%) of your regular, engaged traffic can help mitigate negative deliverability impacts. This approach is similar to how you might re-engage inactive subscribers safely.
• Sender consistency: Using your primary sending domain and maintaining a consistent 'From' address is generally recommended over trying to hide behind a new address. Transparency builds trust, even with cancelled customers.

Key considerations

• Segmentation strategy: Prioritize surveying recently cancelled customers who showed reasonable engagement prior to cancellation. Avoid those who were consistently unengaged, as their non-response is a strong signal they won't participate in a survey.
• Clear communication: Be upfront and honest about the email's purpose. State clearly that it's a one-time request for feedback related to their cancellation, emphasizing that their input is valuable for improving the service.
• Spam report mitigation: The primary risk is a surge in spam complaints. A sincere, humble tone, explaining the value of their feedback, can help mitigate this. For general guidance on avoiding spam filters, see OptinMonster's email deliverability best practices.
• Timing: Integrating the survey into a transactional cancellation confirmation email (if not already done) is often ideal, as recipients expect communication at this stage.

Key opinions

• Legal permission: Marketers frequently underscore that the foremost consideration is whether you legally have permission to email these individuals, especially if they have not explicitly unsubscribed. Without this, no other strategy matters.
• Unsubscribed means no email: There's a strong consensus that once a customer unsubscribes, sending them any bulk email is against best practices and potentially illegal, regardless of their cancellation status. This is crucial for safely managing inactive addresses.
• Segment by prior engagement: Many advise segmenting cancelled customers based on their past engagement. Those who were highly disengaged even as paying customers are highly unlikely to respond to a survey.
• Batch sending: To mitigate risk, integrate survey emails as a small proportion of your overall daily sending volume, typically 5-10% of your engaged traffic.

Key considerations

• Email purpose: Clearly communicate the purpose of the email. If it's a customer research project, state that upfront to set expectations and reduce the likelihood of spam complaints.
• Sender address: While some might consider a different email address, the consensus leans towards using your main, trusted sending address. Transparency is key to preserving sender reputation.
• One-time communication: If the survey email is an out-of-the-blue survey, make it clear that it's a one-time request to reduce recipient annoyance and potential spam reports.
• Sincerity: A sincere and humble tone in the email can significantly mitigate spam reports, especially for initial outreach to a disengaged audience.

Key opinions

• Legal due diligence: Experts firmly advise that the first step is always to research your legal situation. If customers cancelled, ensure you retain permission to email them. This foundational step prevents potential violations and protects your sender status (e.g., domain reputation).
• Behavioral segmentation: Conduct a deep dive into recipient behavior. Unengaged customers, even when paying, are highly unlikely to respond to surveys post-cancellation. Culling 70-80% of such a list is not uncommon.
• Controlled volume: Adding survey emails in small batches (5-10% of normal engaged traffic) to regular campaigns is recommended to minimize deliverability impact.
• Authenticity: Experts advise against using different email addresses to mask the sender. Instead, be honest and transparent about the outreach, stating it's a one-time request.

Key considerations

• Spam report risk: The main risk associated with emailing disengaged segments is an increase in spam reports. Sincerity and humility in the email content can significantly mitigate this risk, especially for a first contact.
• Contextual relevance: Consider whether the email is part of an offboarding process or an out-of-the-blue request. Emails expected by the recipient (e.g., transactional) generally perform better. This aligns with approaches for targeting inactive users safely.
• No urgency for bulk sends: Since survey responses are not typically time-sensitive, there's no need to send them all at once. Trickling them into your normal traffic is a sensible, low-risk approach.
• Integrated surveys: Incorporating the survey into an existing cancellation confirmation email is a highly effective method, as it leverages an expected communication point. AWS discusses this among its four pillars of email reputation.

Key findings

• Sender identity verification: Policies like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are essential for verifying sender identity and protecting your reputation from spoofing. Ensuring these are properly configured is a baseline for deliverability, as detailed in our guide to DMARC, SPF, and DKIM.
• List hygiene: Regularly cleaning email lists by removing inactive subscribers and addresses that consistently bounce is critical. High bounce rates significantly harm sender reputation and can lead to blacklisting.
• Recipient memory: Recipients who remember signing up for your emails are less likely to report them as spam, directly improving your sender reputation. Double opt-in is often recommended to reinforce this memory.
• Structured reputation management: Effective management of email reputation requires a comprehensive approach covering prevention, monitoring, analysis, and response to deliverability challenges.

Key considerations

• Explicit consent: Ensure that your consent records clearly permit sending surveys to cancelled customers who haven't unsubscribed. Ambiguity can lead to compliance issues.
• Unsubscribe impact: Unsubscribes, while not directly negative like spam complaints, indicate disinterest. Over time, high unsubscribe rates can signal poor list quality and indirectly impact reputation. More on this in our article on unsubscribe impact.
• Monitoring: Utilize analytics and deliverability tools to monitor sender reputation, inbox placement, and engagement metrics after sending survey emails to identify and address any negative trends quickly. Salesforce emphasizes this in their deliverability guidelines.
• Transactional timing: If possible, integrate surveys into transactional emails like cancellation confirmations, as these emails have higher open rates and are less likely to be marked as spam because they are expected communications.