4 ms·

So, the purported benefits are that a) it's easier to create the form than other form creators and b) you'll get improved response rates because people fill out

So, the purported benefits are that a) it's easier to create the form than other form creators and b) you'll get improved response rates because people fill out the form in-line and reply rather than clicking a link? Marketing managers don't want to learn some type of special markdown, and I can't imagine they would ever prefer it to a nice WYSIWYG form creator like Wufoo or SurveyMonkey. No one wants to try and figure out exactly where to click and put their "X" for each choice - that's a much more frustrating user experience than native form controls, even in a desktop browser. On a mobile device? Forget it, and don't forget that something like 30% of emails are opened and clicked on mobile devices. Apparently Google Forms has a way of embedding native forms in emails, although I'm not sure how they do it: http://www.gettingmoreawesome.com/2011/05/24/increase-survey-response-rate-by-embedding-it-in-an-email/ http://www.gettingmoreawesome.com/2011/05/24/increase-survey... Now that would actually improve response rates, and was what I was hoping to see here.

eli 14y ago
Google just straight up embeds a <form> tag for those messages. Works if your recipient uses gmail (usually), but not such a great idea in general. http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/forms/ http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/forms/
wim 14y ago
Thanks for the comment! HTML emails would be a next step to look at, and it would be great to be able to combine the advantage of fast/easy form creation without the need for any 'markdown' (just like most marketing managers probably also wouldn't type their blog posts in markdown, even though that might be more popular here). As we also have a different product which actually has a WYSIWYG form creator, this is just a nice way for us to experiment with different ways of creating forms, and see if there's ways to improve the workflow. Inline html forms are another way of collecting the inline replies, but not every email client supports them (although gmail does), which means some people still have to click a link. It's definitely something worth exploring more though.

eli 14y ago

Google just straight up embeds a <form> tag for those messages. Works if your recipient uses gmail (usually), but not such a great idea in general. http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/forms/ http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/forms/

wim 14y ago

Thanks for the comment! HTML emails would be a next step to look at, and it would be great to be able to combine the advantage of fast/easy form creation without the need for any 'markdown' (just like most marketing managers probably also wouldn't type their blog posts in markdown, even though that might be more popular here). As we also have a different product which actually has a WYSIWYG form creator, this is just a nice way for us to experiment with different ways of creating forms, and see if there's ways to improve the workflow. Inline html forms are another way of collecting the inline replies, but not every email client supports them (although gmail does), which means some people still have to click a link. It's definitely something worth exploring more though.