Make The Most Of Your Online Surveys: Share Em’ Properly!

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Photo Credit: iStock.com/Artist's TPopova

Surveys are great.

But knowing how to ease people into filling them out is also a significant, if not an oft-neglected aspect of the process.

Because after all, what good is a survey that doesn’t feature good responses?

A Perennial dilemma for Surveyors and companies

You want your survey to reach the right people at the right time? You want them to fill them up without ignoring it? You want to carry out a generally accurate market research by way of a survey? Then its time you knew how to do it right and accrue the maximum benefit.

There are a lot of considerations to keep in mind when sending out surveys to colleagues, customers and other stakeholders, in order to get the best responses. Every audience requires a uniquely deft touch.

You will be pleased to know however, that this daunting issue does have a solution.

It all boils down to choosing the best collection survey option in tandem with the surveying situation that you are faced with. Modern technology takes care of a lot of hassles and hair-pulling that would’ve otherwise ensued. Knowing who you sent out the survey to, how to follow up, and how to make sense of all that data are all part of the survey experience.

Lets get started

The Email Option

You have an email list of people that you wish to send a survey to. Therefore you want to maximize the potential of email as a way to entice people to fill out your survey.

The good thing about email is, that it gives you full control over creating and monitoring your email survey campaign from the start to the end. Most online survey creation tools also feature deep integration with email curation and management services like MailChimp, giving you more automated and personalization options when serving surveys.

Integration between Mailchimp, your email lists and the online survey tools gives you the edge over your competitors. It gives you:

  • The means to incorporate custom data and merge fields about your contacts. This is good for using customized subject line and invitation message content. Makes the individual recipient feel good about the undivided attention they’re getting.
  • Easy-to-use charts that make response rates easily track-able.
  • The data for who has responded and who hasn’t.

Try going for an email invitation that welcomes people to take your survey.

The Targeted Audience Option

Survey creation tools are perfect companions to social networks as well. They can effortlessly and efficiently leverage a host of niche and general integration options with services such as Eventbrite, Google Docs, Dropbox, MailChimp, Facebook, ClickTale and more.

For example, you can use the Eventbrite integration feature on an online survey site to get data about attendees to an event that you have organized. These attendees contact information is automatically saved as an email list, perfect for identifying and separating your audience by demographic factors.

Some of your audience might like using Dropbox to fill out your surveys. Some might prefer Facebook to engage with your surveys. It depends upon the audience that frequents these platforms. The more channels you target, the more data about demographical factors you can use to improve your surveys in the future.

Getting response from a diverse demographical range becomes easier as your audience grows.

The best part? Every time someone from your audience fills out a survey, you can be automatically notified via email of the updates. Or you can set a preset time if you hate interruptions.

Building exposure is not just about flooding the inboxes of anyone and their grandparents on email or social media. It is an undertaking where human psychology, and technological sense come together to ensure that data complied from online surveys help you reach the right decision in your life, work or any other pursuit that requires a strategic rethink.

About The Author

Kelvin Stiles is a tech enthusiast and works as a marketing consultant at SurveyCrest – FREE online survey software and publishing tools for academic and business use. He is also an avid blogger and a comic book fanatic.