The big question: “Is there a connection between email clients (Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail etc) and Net Promoter® response rate?” If yes, which email client has the biggest response rate? And which has the lowest response rate? Is there is a connection between email clients and comments rate? Find out in this short presentation from CustomerGauge

1. Email Clients and
Survey Response
*Net Promoter, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are trademarks of
Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, and Fred Reichheld.
Rhys Wesley
Directness
Adam.dorrell@directness.net
An analysis of Net Promoter® surveys
April 2013
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2. A word about CustomerGauge…
• CustomerGauge is the leading real-time
Net Promoter® measurement platform.
– Complete workflow and service recovery
system
– B2b, b2c and b2e solutions
– Automated reporting and digital signage
– Automated, with integrations to CRM
systems including SalesForce.com
– 32 languages (reporting system in EN,
DE, ES, FR, NL, CN)
• Launched 2007
• HQ Amsterdam, global coverage with
partners
A D V E R T I S E M E N T

3. Email Clients and Survey Response
• The big question:
“Is there a connection between
email clients (Hotmail, Yahoo,
GMail etc) and Net Promoter®
response rate?”
– If yes, which email client has the
biggest response rate? And which
has the lowest response rate?
• Is there is a connection between
email clients and comments rate?
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4. Sampling size and media
• Data sample taken from 5 clients operating in
b2c during period of 1 January 2013 until 31
March 2013
• More than 400,000 records examined
– 93K responses
– Mostly from European countries
• “Response”: our definition
– Open primary email or a reminder email,
– completed short NPS survey
• “Comment Rate”:
– Number of completed surveys that included a free
text comment
• Email Domains:
– Microsoft (MSN, Live, Hotmail, Outlook)
– Google (GoogleMail, Gmail)
– Yahoo (YahooMail,Ymail)
– AOL
– GMX
Our emails and surveys are optimised for mobile and desktop

5. Email – Maximising Deliverability
• We test the emails by previewing in
37 different email clients (using
Litmus, which we highly recommend)
• We test spam, and eliminated the
issue as much as possible for this:
– Wording is carefully chosen: does not
contain any usual spam filter trigger
words
– HTML carefully crafted and tested in
most email clients
• We monitor opens, clicks, bounces
and spam alerts
• Our emails and surveys are designed
to work on the desktop and mobile
devices

6. Data Contribution
Email Clients Sent
Microsoft 117,085
Google 62,458
Yahoo 42,246
AOL 9,839
GMX 21,360
All others 196,239
Client spread Sent
Client 1 179,649
Client 2 112,015
Client 3 56,760
Client 4 9,612
Client 5 91,191

7. Response Rate per Email Clients
Email
Clients
Sent No
Response
Response Cumulative
Response
Rate
Microsoft 117,085 100,958 16,127 56.8
Google 62,458 46,560 15,898 104.9
Yahoo 42,246 34,284 7,962 77.4
AOL 9,839 8,532 1,307 13.5
GMX 21,360 17,336 4,024 77.4
All others 196,239 148,549 47,690 100
The highest response
rate is from Google – it
even trumps out the
response rate from all
other email clients
26% of emails were sent
to Microsoft and yet they
have the second lowest
response rate.
(on average their
response rate is half of
Google’s)
Gmail is 2x
response
Microsoft

8. Comments Rate per Email Clients
Email Clients Response Comments Cumulative
Comments
Rate %
Microsoft 16,127 6,919 42,9
Google 15,898 6,724 42,3
Yahoo 7,962 3,431 43,1
AOL 1,307 501 38,3
GMX 4,024 1,082 26,9
All others 47,690 19,206 40,3
Microsoft, Google,
Yahoo have similar
rates of comments
completion
GMX has the lowest
comments rate
NO SIGNIFICANT
DIFFERENCE IN
COMMENT RATE

9. Bounce Rate per Email Clients
Email Clients Bounce
Rate%
Microsoft 3
Google 2.3
Yahoo 2.7
AOL 2.1
GMX 0.5
All others 2.7
Microsoft has the
highest bounce
rate at 3% (above
all others) and
GMX has the
lowest
Google has the
lowest of the major
clients at 2.3%

10. Surveys: Mobile growing fast
• Mobile surveys
are at 28% and
rising
– Some clients at
50%
– iOS
significantly
leading android
• Implications -
simple emails,
short surveys
Desktops: Windows / Mac
Mobile: iOS / Android
Stats from Mar 2013, 10 CG Clients
AveraGe 28%
MOBILE

11. March 2013 Stats on Email Opens
Stats taken from All
CustomerGauge clients

12. Conclusions
• For b2c clients, there is a significant correlation between
customers’ email client and survey responses rates.
– Gmail has the best response rate, followed by “all others.”
– Microsoft (Hotmail, Live, Outlook, etc) have the lowest
response – about half that of Gmail.
• Most email clients return a similar rate of comments.
• The variation in bounce rate between email clients does
not account for the variation in response rates.
• We can predict response rates based partly on seeing
the split by email clients.
• INFERENCES:
– Could it be that Microsoft spam filters are more highly tuned? This
could account for the large difference, but we don’t believe this to
be the case
– Is it more likely that the value attached to reading mail in Microsoft
accounts is lower, meaning many mails are ignored, or email boxes
rarely opened?
– Be aware that your Hotmail contacts may not be as engaged as
your Gmail contacts
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Gmail is 2x
response
Microsoft

13. Connect with us
• If you’d like to request a demonstration or find out more
about the CustomerGauge platform, please email
info@customergauge.com
• To stay ahead of your competition with Net Promoter
best practices, follow our blog at
http://customergauge.com/engaugement/
• You can also sign up to our weekly Net Promoter News
or connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter
@CustomerGauge.