Email Survey Tool

In the past several years, many market researchers have shifted to using online surveys more frequently. Traditionally, these online surveys were emailed rather than posted online to avoid data skewing.

When creating the online survey design, there are several things to consider. Make sure the electronic survey is simple and easy to use. Too often, online survey forms are cumbersome or technologically dated. Keep it simple, and you won’t run into any problems.

You must also plan carefully to make sure no questions are missed. You can design online surveys so they will not allow survey respondent to move on if mandatory questions are not completed. In addition to requiring survey questions, I would advise setting up the internet survey so respondents cannot complete the questionnaire more than once. Most online survey research software applications have features to create limits on how many times someone can fill out an online survey form. This prevents skewed data – some respondents will try to complete online survey forms multiple times if there is a giveaway or drawing offered as an incentive.

Make sure you read over your electronic survey a few times as well. Proofreading is especially important when designing online surveys. You must have members of your team proofread not only for grammar and clarity, but also functionality. Make sure all the links work, and the survey can be completed with all your caveats and mandatory questions. 

Online surveys have made it possible to gather information much quicker, and when used properly provide an excellent resource for market researchers.

Within the survey research process, a "Thank You" note is something that is sent a few days to a week after a questionnaire is sent out to your clients. This mailing expresses appreciation for responding and indicates that, if the client survey has not yet been completed, it is hoped it will be soon.

The postcard or email survey "thank you" note is not written in order to overcome respondent doubts or fears about taking the survey, rather, it is meant to jog memories and help re-arrange priorities, bringing your potentially forgotten survey back to the top of potential respondent's "To-Do" pile.

If timely and appropriately worded, the postcard "Thank you" note can arrive just in time to make an appeal that engenders a sense of importance about survey participation, without crossing the line into sounding impatient.

When possible, attempt to have your "Thank you" note be as different as possible from your original survey invitation request for participation letter. The goal is to create a stand-out piece of paper or electronic mail that contrasts with others, creating new stimuli for your potential respondent.

Utilizing these survey tips in conjunction with adding a "Thank You" note to your survey project outline are just some of the ways you can ensure your products are recognized as standing out from the crowd, especially in this all-too-hectic world.

Yes, you read right; we’re not talking about cloning people. But wouldn’t it be awesome if you could clone your electronic surveys? The advantages are endless. If you have an internet survey that has to be sent out to people who attended different conferences on different dates, the headers and welcome pages would be different – as would the responses coming in, but the questions and emails would be almost exactly the same. Or if there’s an old online survey, closed and archived years ago, but you’ve realized you need to send it out again – clone it!

The best part about cloning surveys is that you can still make changes to them – so if you were designing surveys with similar content for five different groups of people, you could create a basic survey with all the questions, headers, templates, security settings, etc. and make minor changes to each of them so that each group gets a customized online web survey, but you only spend a fifth of the time.

When you clone a survey form, all information except the people added to its targeted list, gets carried over. So the next time you spend hours adding complicated branch and pipe survey question logic to an online questionnaire, worrying all the time that you will have to do it again and again, you can breathe a little easy. You always have the option to clone a survey irrespective of whether it’s in Test mode, Active, Closed or even Archived. Once you’ve done the work, you will never have to do it again.

So go ahead and clone your next survey – send it out to different people, generate different reports for each of them – you can even have one as anonymous and the other collecting contact information from respondents. As for cloning people, that debate will rage on.

Cvent offers a variety of Pre-Designed Survey Templates you can choose from for your first online web survey. These internet survey templates contain default questions, email, welcome and thank you text which you can utilize when designing a questionnaire. You can also choose from over 50 different graphical templates to suit the look and feel of your survey forms. Here’s a list of the different pre-created survey templates that you can use to build the base of your survey:


Besides this vast list of pre-designed questionnaires and graphical survey templates, Cvent also offers you a Question Library, which is filled with Customer Service, Demographics, Event, HR/Training, Marketing/Sales questions that you can utilize in your survey.

So! Go ahead and Sign up for an online web survey free trial account now and enjoy these á-la-carte features absolutely free.

Cvent provides you simple survey tips as best practices that you can follow while working on your electronic survey project to ensure that the project is flawless. Mentioned below are some survey form best practice tips that will help you achieve this.

Anonymous Survey: If you are creating an anonymous survey, please carefully consider the fact that you will not be able to link the responses that you collect to any of the respondents on your targeted list. As soon as a respondent clicks on a link in your online survey email, that person is removed from your targeted list and all of his or her contact information is removed as well. When you run survey reports for an anonymous survey form, the respondents will be identified by unique response numbers that are not linked to any respondent contact information. Respondent contact information is removed from the response for a particular anonymous survey, however it remains in your Cvent address book.

Removing Identity Confirmation Page: You can also create a collect respondent contact information survey and hide the identity confirmation page from your respondents so that the survey appears anonymous to your online survey respondents. However, for this functionality to work in your electronic survey, respondents must access the survey via a link in an email survey invitation. If the respondents are coming through the generic website link, they must go through the identity confirmation page, as there is no way to know who is responding.

Brand your company: As a valued Cvent Customer, we have activated the custom header feature in your account for a custom online survey design. Please take advantage of your ability to customize the headers on your welcome page and survey body pages to include your own images, banners and logos.

Be clear about privacy protections: People are more comfortable sharing information on the internet if they know how it will be used. The welcome page or the first page of the survey is the place to include information about how you will be using people's survey responses. Are they anonymous? Confidential? Shared with others? A university human subjects statement, if needed, would go here.

Use Page Breaks: We recommend putting a maximum of 5-6 questions on each survey page in order to keep the page lengths short. Not only does keeping each page short help reduce the likelihood that a respondent will time out, but adding page breaks helps you to collect partial responses. Anytime a respondent clicks on a "Next" button, the responses entered previous to that button are saved. This ensures that any respondents who exit the online web survey before hitting the "Finish" button will be able to go back in and answer the remainder of the questions to complete the survey.

Progress Indicator Bar: Use a progress indicator bar to allow your respondents to see where they are in the survey and to inform them when they have completed the survey.

Survey Logic: Where possible, drill down for more information. The logic in the Cvent Web Surveys system makes this very easy to do. If someone selects a negative answer choice, add a sub question to probe them for details. Use branch logic to create paths within your survey that are only applicable to one group of respondents. Pipe logic allows you to personalize your survey by pulling an answer from a previous question into the question text of a follow-up question. Lastly, advanced survey question logic can be used to make a question visible to a respondent when specific criteria are met. These criteria can be based on respondent contact information, custom contact fields, or questions in the survey. When you are applying advanced logic, you can also turn on link logic, so that respondents only see certain answer options for one question, depending on how they responded to a previous question in the survey.

Have your respondents market your survey: Activate the survey invitation forwarding feature to allow your online survey respondents send an email invitation to friends or colleagues at the completion of the survey. The contact information collected will be automatically added to your address book for future surveys.

From Name in the emails: Always use a recognizable From Name in your emails as this drives your respondents to open the email. This is very important because without opening the email, your respondents will not be able to take the survey.

Use Multiple Email Campaigns: Send targeted email marketing messages to your audience in order to help increase survey response rates. Within one survey, you can send out different messages to different groups of people by segmenting your invitee list. This functionality allows you to specify the From Name, From Email Address, Subject Line of the email, and body of the email. Take advantage of this functionality and manipulate these variables in order to increase the open rate of your survey emails and your response rates.

We often get asked, "What is a good survey design?" All of these survey best practice tips are components to keep in mind when designing a questionnaire to ensure quality survey data. Watch out for more tips coming soon...

Yesterday, I pointed out you should think about how the colors you pick may affect survey respondents when designing survey templates. There are typically three groups of colors to consider: cool, warm and neutrals. Cool colors are typically thought of to be cooling colors. But what about their counter part?

Warm colors: Get up! Get going! That's the mantra of warm colors, they get us going. Warm colors create excitement, and sometimes, evoke anger by conveying emotions from simple optimism to strong violence. Much the same way that white and gray can carry cool attributes, blacks and browns carry warm attributes. Since I mentioned that cool colors tend to appear smaller, you may be expecting this next part: warm colors sometimes appear larger and closer. As a result, warm colors can over power a cool color when they are used in equal proportions.

	Red - The color red can evoke a range of emotions: passion and love versus violence and war. Both cupid and the devil are associated with the color red. It certainly does seem to have a conflicting identity. Red is the hottest of all the warm colors and as a result, is a good stimulant. Think about the places you see red and what it indicates: red tie in the boardroom denotes power, flashing red lights warn of danger, etc. Red tends to grab people's attention and gets them to take action. But don't put all your calls to actions in your next email survey invitation in red because it can quickly become overpowering and evoke the wrong emotions.
	Yellow - Ahh! Sunshine! One of the many things the color yellow brings to mind. Like the color red, yellow can have conflicting meanings: happiness and joy versus cowardice and deceit. As you might imagine, yellow is best used in conjunction with other colors and not as the primary color. However, it can work as a primary color depending on the overall design. While blue iris was Pantone's Color of the Year in 2008, Mimosa is their 2009 Color of the Year.
	Orange - As a blend of red and yellow, orange brings together some of the best qualities of both colors. Orange brings the energy, warmth and cheerfulness of the two colors while leaving out the aggression that red brings to mind. Like other warm colors, orange is stimulating and is a good way to get noticed without "screaming" at your survey respondents.
	Gold - Gold is a cousin to yellow and orange, both warm colors. Because gold is a precious metal, it's also a color that represents riches and extravagance. Much like it's cousin yellow, gold can be both bright and cheerful, as well as somber and traditional.
	Pink - Pink is the softer side of red. Park that aggression at the door. Pink is sugar and spice and everything nice. As a result, it's often associated with the "weaker sex" and too much pink has been shown to create physical weakness in people. Both red and pink tend to allude to love, but unlike red's fiery passion, pink tends to denote romance. When combined with black or gray, pink tends to take on a sophisticated.

Gathering feedback and designing surveys that get a good response rates are definite challenges along the business survey decision path. However, if you keep simple color rules in mind and don't overwhelm your respondents, it gets a little easier.

Partial responses are an unavoidable caveat of online surveys.  There are no moderators to ensure the survey respondent completes the web survey in its entirety and there are, generally speaking, no punishments or consequences should a respondent exit the survey early.  Add in the ever decreasing human attention span, and we have quite an obstacle to overcome to ensure your survey gets the most complete and most accurate responses. 

This was exactly the issue facing one of our clients.  Their survey was a decent length, only about 30 single choice questions, and the contacts on the target list were all product users.  So when they called in about the substantial number of partial and visited responses, I will admit I was a bit baffled.  Hey, it happens. 

I asked whether people had sent in messages about possible error messages when they tried to continue on to the next page or submit their responses; nothing. I checked their emails to ascertain whether any information in the messages was discouraging people from finishing the survey or telling them to return at a later date to complete; again, nothing.  It wasn’t until I previewed the survey to test whether there was any bug preventing the collection of responses that I noticed something: a hyperlink.  In the middle of the survey body.  It was so innocuous yet tempting, offering something new and unknown after having monotonously clicked through numerous page breaks and questions. 

I clicked the link and was immediately connected to a new, enchanting website filled with animated images, graphics, and wild colors.  Oh my!  What was this exciting new Wonderland I had discovered?  It was the distant, yet audible cough on the other end of the phone that brought my attention back to the task at hand.  And, I had discovered the cause. 

The hardest part of any online survey is to motivate survey respondents to not only open your email survey invitation, but take time out of their day to complete the survey.  With the proliferation of internet-based communication, people are becoming more desensitized to email marketing.  If you have already overcome the most difficult task of having a respondent start your survey, why lead them astray?

The solution was simple: take the hyperlink out of the survey body.  Put it in an email message or as a link on the separate Thank You page instead.  Keep this survey best practice in mind and you'll keep survey respondents focused on the project at hand.  Once they complete the survey, you can unleash the wonderful and ever intriguing world of the internet upon them.

I found an interesting poll today about colors preferred by men and women, and it provoked some questions about what are the best colors to use when you create polls or design survey questionnaires. Here's the breakdown from the poll shared in a Lyris Whitepaper:


Why does it matter? Because colors are also a form of non-verbal communication. So whether you're creating an online questionnaire to collect feedback or using an email survey tool to craft email marketing messages for survey invitations, you should care how colors affect those reading your email or completing your customer survey forms.

Colors can cause physical reactions. For example, too much red has been show to increase blood pressure. As you design survey templates, keep in mind how color meanings can affect survey respondents.

Cool colors: Cool colors typically have a calming effect. Keep in mind that cool colors can appear smaller than warm colors and visually recede on the page.

	Blue - As you might have guessed, blue is calming. Almost everyone likes some shade of blue, whether it's a strong and steadfast blue or a light, friendly blue. In fact, in 2008 Pantone selected Blue Iris as the color of the year. As a result of the calming effect blue has, it can make time seem to pass more quickly and help you sleep. However, too much blue can cause the calming effect to go to the extreme and cause you to have the blues. Beyond just being calming, blue can convey richness and sometimes superiority (deep royal blue) or it can convey trust and truthfulness (combining light and dark blue). See how using blues could improve your response rate if it helps people trust you?
	Green - Like blue, green has some calming effects and can make time seem like it's moving quicker, but it also signifies growth, renewal, health and the environment. Like with blue, green has it's own extreme as well, green can mean jealousy or envy and inexperience. With a hint of warmth and coolness, green can create balance, harmony and stability.
	Purple - Over the ages, purple has come to be synonymous with royalty. Since purple comes from red (warm) and blue (cool) it has intriguing qualities of both. Typically deep and bright purples suggest riches, while lighter purples are more romantic and delicate. Keep in mind though, while purple can be noble and spiritual, too much purple can cause moodiness - the same as with too much blue.
	Turquoise - As a blend of blue and green, turquoise can have a soft, feminine qualities or a more sophisticated feel with the darker teals.

Look for parts two and three later this week for warm and neutral color meanings.

As market researchers, we are all aware of the many ways data can be gathered for a study. There is the online survey, telephone survey, in-person interview, direct mail questionnaire, email survey, focus groups and more.

Telephone surveys often yield decent response rates but can be difficult to conduct. A lot of people simply don’t want to be bothered on the phone and spend time answering poll questions. But phone surveys are great because you can ask all the questions and get clarification on any answers that don’t quite have the information you are looking for. The opportunity for that is of course not present in an online, email or direct mail survey.

A telephone survey is not going to work for every study, however. There are some products that won’t match up well. For example, a survey about a medical product is likely not one that anyone will want to discuss over the phone with a stranger.

For a consumer survey with a lot of feedback answers using numbered responses, an email questionnaire might be best as it could grow tedious and leave too much margin for error.

If it works, you can also combine survey methods and gather data both ways. When creating the surveys be sure to incorporate the differences into the call script and email. If it is necessary to have pre-screening questions for the phone interview, make them as concise as possible. Combining data collection methods is helpful and can achieve a more well-rounded result, but be careful about choosing the best method for your purposes.

When was the last time you fretted over an email that looked perfect for some of the people in your audience, but seemed irrelevant for others? If you are a survey writer, it was probably not so long ago. It is an essential component of the planner’s job to create an email that would seem inviting to the audience; the hard part is deciding the emails' subject, body and sender so that the proposition is attractive to everyone. If you have been walking this tightrope, it is time to come down.

Multiple Email Campaigns is a Cvent email survey tool feature that gives you the ability to give everyone exactly what they want! Within one survey invitation email, you can send out different messages to different groups of people by segmenting your invitee list. This functionality allows you to specify the From Name, From Email Address, Subject Line and body of the email for each group or targeted list.

Let’s take an example, hosted an event and created an event survey to send out to the exhibitors and attendees; you’ve created separate questions for them and used survey question logic to decide who sees which conference survey template questions. Now, when it comes to the invitation email you realize the exhibitors need an email asking them to fill out the questionnaire asking about how much they gained from the event and why they would/would not want to return next year. On the other side, the attendees will prefer a warm note from the CEO thanking them for making the conference a success and inviting them to vote on which exhibitors/stalls they liked best or how they liked the food/accommodation. It is impossible for the two emails here to be the same; hence the need for multiple target lists.

Customize your email marketing to your audience and take advantage of this functionality in order to increase the open rate of your emails and your survey response rates.

Using Cvent’s Web Survey tool, you can choose to send your survey emails manually or setup a specific date and time for the emails to go out.

Manual Send is ideal to send emails to specific invitees from the target list. As you get the option to select:

1. Respondents by choosing which Contact Group the email needs to be sent to
2. Respondents that have not received the email before.
3. Manually enter the search details to search for particular respondent(s)
4. You can click on the Search Button to search for all respondents that have been added to this targeted list
Auto Send on the other hand is ideal to send out mass emails to every contact in the target list on a specific date and time. This feature is perfect to send out reminder email survey invitations to respondents who have not yet completed the online questionnaire or send confirmation emails to completed respondents thanking them for their time and feedback.


Along with these options, there are various other features that you can choose from in the Cvent email survey tool:

1. What format do you want to use to send this email?
Choose from both HTML and plain text or only plain text. If both HTML and plain text are selected, an invitee will receive either the HTML message or plain text message, depending on their email settings.

2. Click Tracking
A way to track which links are being clicked in HTML emails. You can run reports to determine which survey invitation emails and links are getting the most traffic. Turning on Click Tracking enables tracking in your HTML emails.

3. CC Option
Sending to a CC email address is available in all survey email templates. When the CC email recipient takes the survey, the primary contact’s information and email address will be pre-populated within the survey.

To use all these features for your organizations benefit. Sign up for a Free Trial Account now!

Increasing survey response rates is a major goal of most survey builders and market researchers. There's an art and a science to increasing campaign response rates whether it's an email marketing campaign or an online market research study. I wanted to share some of my tips for how to increase survey response rates:

• Make the email survey invitation from names easy to recognize. You can do this by including an individual's name within the organization that's well known (such as the CEO or if it's a client survey, the name of their sales rep). You can also use the organization's name, or both. For example, I'm subscribed to a few MarketingProf's newsletters. When they send out emails they include the same person's name and their organizations name so it looks like this: Anne, MarketingProfs. I recognize it everytime, and since I enjoy their newsletter, I made sure to open the email.

• Keep subject line's compelling, but short. The subject line and the From Name are the two most critical pieces to get your email opened. Try to keep your subject lines to 35 characters or less. You don't need to put the entire email in the subject line, but you do need to include enough information to make the recipients open the survey email.

• Create an attractive survey invitation. Studies have shown that well done HTML email messages get better response rates than plain text emails. With HTML you have the opportunity to include images, change font sizes, bold text, etc. Take advantage of this chance. It's one more way to get people to click through to your survey!

• Send personalized survey invitations. Personalizing your emails, even something as simple as including the recipient's name in the greeting, will return a higher response than a generic message. It creates a personal touch, and makes the recipient feel like someone took the time to send them a personal message (even though your email survey tool did it for you).

• Introduce the survey. Let the participants know why they should participate in your survey. If they don't understand why their opinion is important to your survey findings, why would they want to take the time to fill it out?

• How long will the survey take? Not setting expectations in the beginning for survey length leads to low response rates and high abandonment rates. Not what you want to see. If you don't let people know how long it will take to fill out your online survey, they're going to assume you're hiding something about how long it is. Tell them it will take X minutes or the survey is only Y questions long. Definitely be honest, if you lie here, you're going to hurt your future chances of getting those respondents to complete your next online survey questionnaire.

• Remind your survey sample that their responses will be kept confidential. This is particularly important for surveys about uncomfortable topics. For example, you created a poll for a public opinion survey to see how your population feels about an emotional topic such as abortion. If you don't keep the information confidential, you probably will not get honest feedback. Same thing goes with employee questionnaires, they should always be kept confidential and anonymous. Not keeping responses confidential will definitely hurt your response rate, as well as the validity of the data.

• Offer an incentive. Offering incentives is a proven method for increasing survey response rates. But this method doesn't work if you don't let people know about it up front. Put it in your email, put it on the welcome page of the survey, then make sure to follow up. Again, if you drop the ball here, the chances of that survey respondent completing your online survey form in the future is drastically reduced.

• Always say Thank You! Remember when your mom always made you write thank you notes when you got presents or cards from people for holidays and birthdays? It was because people like to feel their effort is noticed and appreciated. Same idea here, it's nice to just get a short note thanking them for their time. After all, survey respondents are doing you a favor.

• Don't over email your contact list. This is very important. You shouldn't be inviting the same people to complete your online surveys every month. It's important to segment your list using whichever survey sampling method that works best for your surveys to avoid email list fatigue. Make sure that you're coordinating with other campaigns as well. Just because you know they're different initiatives you're emailing about, your contact's wont necessarily see it that way. If you begin sending emails too frequently, contacts are going to just delete your email and never open it, opt out or report you as a spammer.

Have a tip that I missed? I'd love to hear it!

Cvent’s online survey tool is like a treasure trove.  Every day, there are new features to discover, new ways to utilize different functionalities and, of course, a never ending feeling of adventure as you navigate your way through.  With all the excitement, it is easy to overlook some features or get stuck in a routine where you use the same survey question types, same images, etc.  for every survey.  Regardless of the purpose or goal of the internet research survey, you will find a way to make those features you are comfortable with work.  But, come on now.  What kind of Customer Support would we be if we didn’t educate you on features that may be underutilized but have enormous potential to change the way you look at surveys forever?

Cvent offers 19 different question types; that is 19 unique ways to ask a question and 15 unique ways to collect a respondent’s rejoinder (single and multiple select questions have 3 different formats each).  My recent favorite, which I have seen in very few surveys (and there are only so many formatting ways to stress VERY), is the File Upload question.  This feature allows respondents to upload additional documentation which will be stored in one, central location.  Think about the possibilities:

1. With the amount of free and easily accessible information available on the internet, online tests have become increasingly difficult to administer.  What is to stop a student or anyone for that matter from "just having a peek" at Wikipedia or "accidentally" having a Google page up with the pertinent information?  A study done by Donald McCabe and Linda Trevino found that schools that had an enforced honor code have significantly less prevalence of cheating (McCabe, D.L. & L.K. Trevino, 1993). How can this be accomplished through an online survey?  Have respondents sign your school’s/organization’s honor code then use the File Upload question to have them upload that document. 

2. When I mentioned that Cvent’s web based survey tool can do anything; I meant it.  You can use the survey tool to identify and confirm respondents eligible for rebates offered on a purchase.  I know personally I get a little perturbed when I see that an item costs $X but, when I get to the register, I find out that it actually costs $Y but I can get the appropriate rebate in 4-6 weeks if I just mail my receipt to the company.  Call me impatient, call me lazy, but I don’t like having to go through all of that.  “But, Dorian, how can we do this differently?” you must be asking...  Two words: File. Upload.  Customers can upload the receipt from their purchase which will be stored within your Cvent account instantly.  If your survey is a collect contact information survey, you can ask for their address and the only step would be to verify the receipt/purchase and then send out that rebate.

3. Respondents can upload images or graphics; photos for a high school reunion, anyone?

The possibilities are endless.  Any additional documentation can be collected and you don’t need to overwhelm your inbox with email attachments for each respondent.  So go forth, I say!  See what other survey treasures you can find, Captain Sparrow.

I got an email today from Smarter Travel announcing the winners of their 2009 Readers' Choice Awards. Notice anything interesting?

The demands of a market research study are complex. You may need a large number of respondents, but all those respondents need to be the “right” respondents. You don’t want survey responses from outside the target demographic skewing your data, forcing you to start over.

For example, a survey questionnaire we did at my company was recently returned with highly skewed data. We were surveying a school where 78% of the student body was composed of “in-state” students. When we got the results back, only 3% of respondents were in-state students – definitely not representative of the population.

Where we erred: We did not specify what percentage of different groups of people the survey should be sent to, and did not set up quotas to get a certain mix of people. Instead, we just let it fall out naturally, which should have returned results representative of the population.

It is important to specify the type of respondents you need and decide who the email survey will be sent to, and if necessary, set up quotas to ensure a respondent set that matches the population.

It would be almost impossible to cover all the survey pitfalls you can encounter while sampling. My best advice would be to use common sense. When starting the study I’d advise doing a “soft launch” (sending out a small amount of sample) and then check the returns.  If you find that the completes from the soft launch are not representative, work to iron out any issues before doing a full launch.

The Invitation Forwarding feature is one of the absolute coolest things about Cvent Web Surveys software. After all, who doesn’t love having someone else do their work for them? Invitation Forwarding allows your survey respondents to email survey invitations to up to 10 other people. This in turn allows you to grow your database of contacts exponentially, as the system will automatically put all of these new contacts in your Cvent Address Book for you!

In my humble opinion, Cvent does a fantastic job of updating your Address Book for you, and Invitation Forwarding is one of the reasons why. Many of our clients actually find that their Cvent Address Book is more inclusive and “up to date” than their organization’s internal database! Remember that you always have the option to export your entire Cvent Address Book, which in turn enables you to update your internal database, if need be.

Like many of the features present in the online survey application, Invitation Forwarding saves you time that you otherwise would have had to spend hunting down people who were relevant to your survey. Allowing your survey respondents to forward the survey along to other people obviously has other perks as well, since it will undoubtedly increase your response rates and the reliability of the data you collect.

In summary, here is my advice to all of you out there reading this post: Leave the Invitation Forwarding feature turned on on the Thank You page, as long as you are not conducting a private survey. Invitation Forwarding will definitely save you time, increase you response rates, and grow your database of contacts, all of which are guaranteed to make your boss happy.

At the beginning of the week, I shared the first 10 tips from the Meetings & Convention article, Survey Science: How to craft more effective attendee evaluations, in Part I and Part II of this post. The first ten event survey tips include several of your typical online survey best practices: set clear survey objectives at the beginning, create clear survey questions, think about question flow, vary your question types, etc. While the last five tips shared in the article are still good online survey tips, they do focus a little more on event and conference surveys.

11. Avoid the spam folder. Once upon a time, spam folders weren't something paper survey designers worried about. It's a different story now with email survey invitations. Nat Estes, an account executive here at Cvent, shared his tips in this article: Avoid using all caps in the subject line, avoid the word "free" and the use of lots of dollar signs or exclamation points. These tips apply to both sending reminder survey invitations as well as the initial invite.

12. Offer incentives. We've talked about how incentives tend to boost survey response rates in the past. Offers can include free products/samples, cash, gift cards and drawings, or it can even go the route of sharing the survey report after the survey is over.

13. Use pre-meeting surveys. Post-attendee surveys are no brainers at this point, but they don't always tell the whole story. Think of this survey questionnaire example, the post-seminar survey shows that the majority of the attendees have a positive impression of a product. The planner doesn't know if their impression was changed because of the seminar, or everyone already had a positive impression before the event. The reverse could be true as well. The majority of registrants may have had a positive impression before, and after the event had a negative impression. Something went really wrong! But if you don't ask pre-event survey questions, you're not going to be able to track the change. Not to mention the benefits of asking other pre-event survey questions about what they want to get out of event, etc.

14. Use regret event surveys. As a leader in the event management space, this tip is near and dear to our hearts here at Cvent. Most people make the mistake of just forgetting about those people who say they can't come, "They don't matter." This is definitely the wrong approach. Every planner should want to know why people aren't coming to their event. Regret event surveys should be kept short, only a few questions. The questions should try to find out if the invitee is still interested in the topic or product, why they can't come (schedule conflict, not in the budget, etc.).

15. Conclusions? Don't Jump! Lots of us look at survey results and draw conclusions about the entire target population based on a small survey sample. If your event survey has low response rates, don't make drastic change's just because that's what the survey data pointed to. Think about how representative the sample was, and if the changes make sense.

Hopefully everyone will consider asking attendees to give feedback through survey questionnaires or comment cards after the event. If you get really adventurous, you can set up survey kiosks at the event using a kiosk survey system (My suggestion? Cvent.) to catch attendees while your event is still top of mind.

The research is mixed regarding the extent of the effect that prenotification letters have on survey response rates.  But since most studies do show at least a modest increase in survey completion rates, it’s a good idea to send a prenotification to your sample survey respondents. 

The most frequent reason cited for not using prenotification letters in mail and telephone surveys was the cost -- but you are using online survey software where the “letter” is an email, so that’s not a very good reason anymore.  Yes, your respondents are receiving an extra message from you, but sending a prenotification email serves other valuable purposes as well:

1) The letter describes the purpose of the survey, to whom it is being sent, and a description of who is conducting it.  Here’s a chance for you to introduce (or reintroduce) yourself to your customers.  It can also serve as a notice for changes or new ways of business on which you’d like their feedback.

2) The letter provides you an opportunity to “hook” respondents, and they will then expect to receive your survey (and hence you can gather their valuable feedback).  Tell them exactly why they were selected for the survey, and that their opinions matter. 

3) You can let them know (in advance) the incentive that they will receive if they complete your survey.  With a prenotification letter, you’re providing the proper justification for why they should give their time and effort to you.

I recommend taking advantage of the technological power within good online survey software programs.  A great way to increase your survey response rates is to send reminder email survey invitations to your customers if they have haven't completed your questionnaire after receiving notification of selection for your surveys.

People are busy; email inboxes are bombarded with messages, alerts and spam.  Customers may delete your survey invitation email if they are in a hurry, trying to clean up their inboxes, or do not feel the feedback survey is relevant or interesting to them.  Often, people will receive a survey invitation and look through it, but not follow-through in clicking though to the survey questionnaire to complete the actual online survey poll.  They may even have made a mental note to complete the survey later, but then it gets lost in the shuffle.

You can take steps to reduce both these nonresponse problems by sending personalized email survey reminders.  If a respondent or customer contact does not respond to your online questionnaire within a given time frame (that you specify), you can program your online survey software to automatically resend survey invitations (multiple times!).  You set up the invitations, so you can choose to resend the original invitation or tweak it with a different message to remind them they have yet to complete the survey.

In your reminders, let respondents know that they previously received an invitation from you because their opinions are valuable, and they were selected as part of your survey sample for a good reason.  Restate the incentive if you're offering one. 

As we all know, however, there is a delicate line between reminding and nagging.  If you drift toward the latter, chances are your respondents will become annoyed and reactively delete emails from you (surveys or otherwise).  In general, send a maximum of three or four survey emails to your respondents after they’ve received the original invitation and survey poll link.  If they've deleted or lost your previous emails, they may respond to one of the reminders, and who knows… even if they’re ambivalent toward completing your internet survey, you might catch them at a better time and get a completion.

When I was being trained here at Cvent, I remember Chuck Ghoorah, the Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, telling all the new hires that we were henceforth in the business of "alleviating pain." I immediately thought Chuck was a really smart guy. Cvent Web Surveys software application takes away our clients' "pain" because it makes their lives easier. While I obviously think the online survey platform as a whole will save you time (and thus "alleviate your pain"), email alerts is one feature you should definitely be aware of.

Email alerts are just cool. You should familiarize yourself with them in particular because they will help you tremendously in a variety of situations, including any of the following:

1) You are the Director of Marketing at your organization. You are currently targeting a certain age group (say, 18-24 year olds) with your marketing initiatives. Every time someone indicates they are 18-24 years old in an online survey, you want to be notified automatically via email. You can set up a trigger-based email alerts to do just this!

2) As the Senior Vice President of Client Services and Relationship Management, your job is essentially to make sure that your clients are happy. As such, you would like to set up an email alert so that you receive a notification each time a client indicates that they are "very dissatisfied" with your services. This way, you can personally follow up with unhappy clients as soon as possible.

3) You are in charge of training a large group of new hires at your organization. At the end of the training period, all of the trainees will take be tested on what they have learned. You build the quiz in the online survey application and apply scoring to all of the questions. Being as busy as you are, you don’t have time to review everyone’s test responses! However, you want to know if someone does not receive a passing score. So, you set up a score-based email alert that will be sent to you automatically each time someone receives a score below a certain benchmark!

As you can see, email alerts are beneficial for a wide variety of people in lots of different situations. They will alleviate your proverbial pain, allowing you to save both time and money!