The we heard you email: what to send after you change something
Customers tell brands what is wrong constantly and almost never hear what happened next. Closing that loop is a campaign in itself.
Feedback goes in and nothing comes out. That's the normal experience of telling a brand something, and it's why survey responses fall away over time. The we heard you send closes the loop. It's only worth sending when something genuinely changed.
Don't send this unless something changed
You know the version that fails. It thanks everybody for their thoughts and promises to take them on board. Corporate throat clearing, basically. And it makes your next survey perform worse, because the list has learned that feedback goes nowhere.
So you need one specific change. A product altered, a policy rewritten, a size added, a material swapped, a delivery option put in. Nothing changed? Then the honest campaign is a founder note explaining why not, and that one is harder to write.
What they said, what we did, what it means for you
The shape is fixed. Don't dress it up. Quote the feedback in the customer's own words, describe the change, then say plainly what they should do differently now. Three movements, in that order.
- The complaint, quoted, unedited, blunt phrasing and all
- How often you heard it, described in words and not counted
- What you changed, specifically, with the date it took effect
- What it doesn't fix, because there's always something
- What the reader should do now, in one line
That fourth point is what makes the email credible. Every change has a limit. Name it and you head off the second wave of complaints, the ones from people who assumed the fix covered their situation too.
Give it away entirely
Resist the version where you improved something through your own commitment to excellence. Nobody buys it. The interesting story is that customers said a thing, over and over, and you listened, which is rarer and far more persuasive than a brand improving on its own. Hand the whole story over to them and it gets better, not weaker.
Name the customers where you can, with permission. A change credited to a named person in a named town is a different email from one credited to valued feedback from our community. Not close.
Start with the people who complained
Send it first to the people who raised it, individually if the number is small enough. Somebody complained six months ago. Now they get a note saying it's fixed, with their name on it. That's about as close to a guaranteed reactivation as you'll get.
Then the broader send. Lapsed customers first, because the reason they left may be the thing you've just fixed, then the active list. It's the one campaign that belongs in front of people who walked, and it's where the winback flow usually has nothing new to say.
It makes the next survey work
| Without the loop closed | With it closed |
|---|---|
| Survey response falls each time | Response holds or improves |
| Feedback arrives as public reviews | Feedback arrives by reply, privately |
| Complaints repeat after the fix | Customers reference the change themselves |
Report back and you get more feedback, earlier, and in private. Over a year that's worth more than the revenue this send makes. A lot more. That's why it belongs in the lifecycle plan and not in the promotional calendar.
Find the change nobody announced
Ask your operations or product lead what's changed in the past year because customers asked for it. There'll be at least two. Odds are neither was ever mentioned to the list, because inside the business the change felt small and obvious.
That's two campaigns sitting unused, and the people who asked for them are still on your list. Send them. It's the cheapest reactivation available on any account we take over.
Alex Gregoriades
Operations director at Engage Commerce, where he runs the accounts the writing comes out of.
FAQs
What if the change was already planned before customers asked?
Say so. Customers pushed us to bring this forward is true, and it still flatters them. Claim a roadmap decision was their idea and somebody eventually contradicts you in public, usually at the worst possible moment.
How soon after the change should we send it?
Within a few weeks of it going live, and not a day before. Announce something that isn't live yet and you've turned it into a promise. If the change rolls out gradually, wait until everybody on the list can actually experience it for themselves.
Should we send it to people who complained publicly?
Yes, individually and first, and reply to the original review or post as well. A public complaint answered months later with a specific fix is worth far more than the same message sent quietly to everybody at once.
What if we cannot make the change customers asked for?
Then the honest campaign explains why, from the person who made the call. It performs worse than a fix and a great deal better than silence, and it stops the same request landing in your inbox every single quarter.
Report back, or stop asking
The we heard you email is the second half of every survey, review request and feedback form you've ever sent, and most brands never send it. Quote the complaint honestly. Describe the change and what it doesn't fix. Hand the credit to the customers who raised it, and send it to the people who left before you send it to anybody else. It brings the lapsed back, and it makes every future ask for feedback work better.
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Bring your Klaviyo account and the thing annoying you most. We will tell you what we would fix first, on the call, before you spend anything.
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