Online Survey Tool

I think I have always thought of myself as a "planner." While some people "fly by the seat of their pants," I am constantly thinking ahead to the consequences of my actions. The way I see it, this can be a good thing and a bad thing. Being a "planner" is bad because I am not as spontaneous as some of my friends. The "life of the party" is usually not someone who thinks ahead. However, it is a good thing at the same time, especially when operating in the corporate world, and specifically when designing online surveys.

I wrote a post a couple weeks ago about the importance of thinking ahead to reporting before designing a questionnaire online. I want to address a related issue: survey question logic. We on the Cvent Web Surveys Client Services team always strongly encourage our clients to use survey logic to their advantage. Lately, however, I have been getting lots of calls from clients who are having trouble with the logic they have applied. The reason for this is simple: too many clients do not plan or map out the logic they'll apply to their electronic survey. This lack of planning can cause numerous problems, most notably conflicting survey logic.

In the past two weeks, I have spoken with two clients who applied both branch logic and advanced logic to their online surveys. Both of these clients called because they were concerned there was a technical issue which was prohibiting the logic from functioning as it should. "But, I set up my branch logic correctly, and I know that my advanced logic should be working fine too, so what is wrong?" In both cases, the problem was the clients had applied branch logic which conflicted with the advanced logic, and the survey system therefore did not know where to send survey respondents when they answered a question a particular way. "If only these clients had planned ahead and mapped out the survey logic before launching their surveys," I thought, "then this problem could have been avoided."

Moral of the story: Please take advantage of the wonderful survey logic functionality available with Cvent Web Surveys software. However, at the same time, make sure to plan ahead. Even if you are someone who generally "flies by the seat of your pants," when designing online survey questionnaires, you should be a "planner" for once.

All too often, we begin the survey creation process, but draw a blank.  How should we design a survey?  Should a survey design have the company look and feel?  Or should we design it to be a fresh look?

Having an online surveys tool that has survey templates built into the system is extremely important.  It eliminates the nagging question, "What is a survey design? How do I create a professional looking web 2.0 survey?"  This gives the survey builder that boost to get the creative juices flowing. In the Cvent Web Survey solution, there are over 50 graphical templates, ready to help you in designing surveys. Any color, any pattern, any style. They are all preloaded in the Cvent Web Surveys application. Definitely check these out the next time you are trying to figure out survey research design ideas for your next questionnaire.

Want to learn more about our survey design software? Sign up for a product demonstration.

This week I've shared what different colors mean and how they can effect people. The neutral color group is the last of the three groups, cool and warm colors being the other two.

Neutral Colors are good background colors because they unify diverse color palettes. When neutral colors are paired with warm or cool colors, they allow the focus to be on the other color (whether it's warm or cool). They also serve to tone down the intensity of the other color. As I've mentioned in the other two posts, neutral colors do have attributes of warm and cool colors. Blacks, browns, tans, golds and beige are considered warm. Cool neutral colors include white, ivory, silver and gray. As you might guess though, these attributes are much more subtle than those of reds (the hottest color) and blue (the coolest).

	Black - As we've discussed with other colors, black can have contradicting meanings. While black is conservative, conventional and serious it can also be sophisticated, mysterious and sexy. Black, like many of the neutral colors, match almost every color. The colors black doesn't match well with is other very dark colors.
	White - White represents purity, cleanliness and innocence. Like black, white goes well with most colors. Keep in mind that too much bright white can cause some people headaches and be a bit "blinding." For the most part, the colors paired with white, no matter the proportions, are often the ones that pass on meanings in your survey design.
	Gray - This is a neutral color, but it also has cool elements and rarely evokes strong emotions. Dark, charcoal grays show strength and mystery, similar to black. Gray is a sophisticated color, without the negative connotations of black. Grays are good background colors because they're so neutral. You can swap a light gray for white, or a darker gray for black.
	Silver - Silver can be cool like a gray, but it can also be livelier than a gray. Silver is often associated with being sleek and modern and imparts an ornate feel. Silver is a cool metal and lack the warm that gold has. When you use silver, it can give an earthy, natural, or sleek and elegant feel.
	Brown - Earthy. Wholesome. Dependable. Brown is a warm color that can be associated with all of these things, as well as being considered steadfast, simple and friendly. Not sure that brown represents dependability? What about UPS? They've built their whole brand around brown's dependability. Browns, taupes, beiges and creams all are excellent background colors because they make the other colors appear richer and brighter.
	Beige - Like a chameleon, beige takes on the attributes of the colors that accompanies it. However, on it's own, beige is a calm background color. The reason beige can behave like a warm or cool color is because it has the warmth of a brown and the coolness of white.

If you're using the Cvent Web Surveys software application, you'll notice all our pre-created survey templates take into account how colors interact with each other. So next time you're working on a world class customer service survey or creating web polls, check out the graphical survey templates in your online survey account.

One of the great things about Cvent Web Surveys software application is that it is constantly getting “better.” I, for one, am not aware of another survey software company that can state with confidence that 80% of all product enhancements come directly from the requests of current clients. Cvent, however, has certain processes in place so that every time a client expresses interest in seeing a new feature added to the online survey application, this request is quickly relayed to our technical team.

For those of you who were clients before our most recent product release in August 2009, you definitely noticed at least one big change in your account the first time you logged in after the release. As soon as you logged into your Cvent Web Surveys account, you saw that your surveys were no longer organized into folders on the Survey Selection page. Instead, they are now displayed in “views.”

Now, you may wonder why I chose to write my blog post this week on the transition from folders to survey views. It may seem like a pretty dry topic. I wanted to write on this particular survey subject because I get so many calls from clients asking how to create a new survey view that pull the appropriate surveys into view. If you have a lot of surveys created in your account, then this is a pretty important thing to know how to do, so that you don’t have to sort through all of your company’s surveys just to find the few that you are personally working on!

When you are ready to create a new survey view and filter the appropriate surveys into this view, you need to remember 3 simple steps:

1) Create a survey custom field. You can create survey custom fields under the Administration tab, on the same page that you create contact custom fields. Survey custom fields are primarily used to classify the surveys in your account and pull them into the appropriate views on the Survey Selection page. So, for example, if your marketing department and human resources department are running surveys, you may want to create 2 separate survey views, one for each department. The first step to do this would be to create a survey custom field for department.

2) Create a new view on the Survey Selection page. You can create a new survey view by choosing “add new view” from the Display drop-down menu. When you add the new view, you will need to name it and also specify certain options (i.e. whether you would like the view to be private or public). Finally, at the bottom of the page, you should apply an advanced filter based on the survey custom field you just created for department. For example, if you are adding the survey view for “Marketing Surveys,” you should choose “department” as the field, “equals” as the operator, and “marketing” as the value.


3) Now that you have created the survey custom field and added the new view, all you need to do is pull the appropriate surveys into the view you just created! When you added the new view for “Marketing Surveys,” you should have gotten a message, “no surveys match your criteria.” This is because you have not yet applied the survey custom field at the survey-level! To do this, simply go into an individual marketing survey, and click on  Settings on the top navigation bar. On the General Information page, you should click on the Custom Survey Fields tab. Here you can apply the “marketing” label to the individual survey, so that it will show up in the “Marketing Surveys” view.


Hopefully this post will be helpful to those of you who are struggling with the transition from folders to survey views. Believe me, survey views are completely customizable and will help you organize online surveys in your Cvent Web Surveys software account.

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!

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.

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.

Incentives with surveys are often used to increase response rates.  Well, do you handle internal trainings? Is your organization involved with continuing education courses? Use online surveys to gather information on those attendees: What is their satisfaction with the training course or training instructor, what kind of courses would they like to see, etc.

Then, let those attendees know how important that information is to your work by giving the certificate of completetion only after they have finished the survey (by the way, with Cvent Web Surveys software that can be automatically done for you). Survey incentives can work both ways - as a gift for the respondent OR a gift for the survey creator (which in this case is incredibly high response rates!).

Don't inundate survey respondents with too many questions though. After all, they may have just paid for a class, seminar, or workshop. Get your data quickly and easily and let them be on their way. They'll appreciate it.

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!

Yes! You read it right! You can use Cvent’s survey tool to conduct online quizzes and tests. What makes it possible is our fantastic feature called "Scoring."

The online survey scoring feature allows you to assign scores to individual questions and answers within the online poll. As a survey designer or quiz builder, you can decide the maximum score you want to assign to a particular question and further divide it to different answer options. 

 
That’s not all! Within the Cvent online survey platform you can also run reports to pull up average or individual survey respondent scores. We have two reports dedicated solely to Scoring.

1. Scoring Details by Respondents: This report returns scoring details by respondent for completed responses within the specified date range. Each online survey response is on its own page and identified by response number, name, and email address. For anonymous surveys, only the response number is displayed. The total score of the response and the total possible score for the survey is listed at the top. For each respondent, the question, answer, and score is listed.

2. Scoring Details for All Respondents: This report returns scoring details and a list of all responses for selected questions within the specified date range. The question number and the survey question text are listed at the top. The average score for each column is displayed at the bottom. Each response is identified by number, name, total score, and the score for each selected question.

This feature is equally useful for educational institutions as well as business institutions. In today’s times, all organizations want to retain the best and most efficient man power; and constantly conducting training surveys and course evaluation tests for employees. I do not recommend any different. But why waste paper, when the same can be achieved online!

“Knowledge is power.” Again, a statement that I frequently heard from my parents and teachers growing up. When I was 10, I was probably told this because I was complaining about doing my fifth grade homework. These days, I still say this silently to myself from time to time. This is because knowledge is power not only to the fifth grader who is trying to get A’s in school, but also to anyone trying to make a profit in the business world.

There is no way around it; Cvent Web Surveys software provides you with business knowledge. By surveying your client pool, you will learn about their likes and dislikes, and you can thus enhance your products or services to meet the needs of those who matter. The web survey application also provides you with another kind of knowledge though, through the recent addition of click tracking reports.

Whereas the actual act of surveying customers allows you to learn more about them “from the horse’s mouth”, click tracking reports give you insight into which links people are clicking on in your survey emails, which can be extremely beneficial as well. For example, if you send your monthly e-newsletters out through the Cvent online survey platform (as many of our clients do), then you can run click tracking reports to view which links to outside websites your recipients are clicking on. Who is clicking on which links? Which URLs are the most popular?

Cvent email marketing click tracking reports include graphs that are easy to read and interpret. You can export them into Microsoft Word, Excel, or PDF. Most importantly, however, click tracking reports teach you how to place information and links in your emails. If you use emails to market your organization at all, then click tracking reports will help you leverage your ability to format those emails in order to generate the maximum possible business (and money!) for you.

No matter what kind of business you are in, you are looking to make a profit. Money may not be everything, but to those of us in the professional world, it certainly counts for a lot. We are all always looking for new ways to increase our revenue and decrease our expenses, and those of us who are smart know that time wasted is the greatest expense of all.

I am not saying this just because Cvent writes me a paycheck twice a month, but rather I am saying it because I know that it’s true: Cvent Web Surveys software is a time-saver. Our clients may pay us to license our online survey application, but in the end, the time they save thanks to the web surveys tool allows them to profit in the long run.

One of our primary goals here on the Cvent Web Surveys Client Services team is to educate clients on the best ways to use the Cvent survey tool in order to save time (and money!). In my opinion, there are a couple of features in particular with which you should familiarize yourself if you want to maximize the time that you save using our system:


If you make use of all 5 of the features listed above, not only will you get out of the office earlier, but you will also bring more money in for your company or organization. Always remember that “time is money,” and familiarize yourself with the Cvent Web Surveys tool so that we can help you save both.

In the past, if one of your customers had a bad customer experience with your product or service, it certainly wasn’t good for you business but in most cases the potential impact was limited to an extremely small audience. Today, the reality is much different thanks to Web 2.0 applications including Yelp, Facebook and of course, Twitter. These websites, and others like them, expand the reach of a single customer’s opinion, effectively giving them an oversize soapbox to espouse their opinion on your product, service or employees. If these cries are ignored, or more cries of the same creep up, you have a problem. The customer complaints will gather momentum and begin to spiral, that is if you're not doing anything about it. Monitoring and measuring customer experiences and satisfaction ratings is definitely one step business can take so they don't have an explosion of bad buzz.

In order to protect themselves against these unilateral attacks, businesses need a robust partner to help them improve customer relationships. Cvent’s web based survey software and enterprise feedback management solution can be one of these invaluable protectors. Cvent’s real-time email alerts leverage the effectiveness of conducting surveys. Take the following sample customer satisfaction survey question, “How satisfied are you with our latest product upgrade?” you can have an email sent to your Director of Client Services whenever somebody responds that they are unhappy or dissatisfied.

By proactively reaching out to clients, you are able to simultaneously improve relationships with customers and protect the value of your corporate brand. Even better than simply helping everybody breathe easier, these types of customer satisfaction initiatives can fatten the organization's "wallet," as research indicates increasing customer loyalty and customer retention by 5% can increase profits by 75%!

Survey writers from various industries conduct surveys using the Cvent Web Surveys software tool. One of the most common industries is customer service, where the survey creator is trying to make sure their customers are happy with their products and services. Customer service surveys are used to ensure the quality standards of customers satisfaction.

When the Cvent clients conduct a customer satisfaction survey, they wait for the survey responses to be completed before running reports to see how respondents feel about their offerings. What about the respondents who were dissatisfied with the product or service and want to be contacted immediately?

Email alerts are one of the most useful features that survey designers can use to identify and then take action, where appropriate, when respondents say they are unsatisfied with the service or product. Email alerts provide the option for the person creating the survey to set alerts on questions, this can be a question where the survey respondents are asked about their satisfaction level with the organization's offering.

Take this example customer satisfaction question: "How satisfied are you with the quality of the product?” If emails alerts were set up, an email will go out to the specified people letting them know a customer selected the survey question option of “Dissatisfied."

When someone answers the question and says “Dissatisfied” an email will be sent to the people who were added to the email alert. In some cases, it may be the same person who created the survey, in others, it may be the sales person who owns the territory the respondent is located in or even the customer service manager. The employee or group of employees can quickly get in touch with the customer to inquire more about their experience. Why do organizations want to do this? Because closing the feedback loop can make the respondent feel valued and in some cases move them to the satisfied customer column.

The email alert function doesn't only work on the question level, you can also use email alerts on the survey level and receive an email anytime someone completes the online web questionnaire, or you can set email alerts based on respondent scores. If you're using scoring in your survey questionnaire, you can set alerts to be sent if a respondent falls above or below the specified score. While we used the example of customer satisfaction questionnaires to explain the value of email alerts, they can also be used with employment performance review forms or market survey questions or other types of web survey research.

Did you know, Cvent’s online survey tool can be used to send out email blasts and newsletters? Users can use the email survey tool to design emails and send them out to prospects, clients, employees etc. Emails can be customized using Cvent’s HTML editor to take their emails to the next level. Instead of sending boring plain text emails, users can add their logo and images into the email making it more appealing or draw more attention to the calls to action. Here are some of the fascinating features you can use in Cvent’s HTML emails.

Add Images: Using the HTML editor you have the flexibility to add multiple images into the email, you can add your company logo as the banner of the email and other images within the body. You can use the HTML editor to resize an image to fit into the email, you can also position the image to be centered or left or right aligned.

Add Data Tags: You can personalize the email marketing using Cvent’s data tags to add contacts information, such as name, address, membership ID etc. This feature allows you as a sender to add a personal touch to the emails, resulting in the recipients feeling valued and remembered.

Attach Documents: Sometimes you want to be able to attach a document. Using Cvent’s email software, you can upload your document into the document library and add a link in the email to download the document. Using this feature you can send out related documents to your email recipients. This feature is particularly useful, to send out certificates or reports to the recipients along with your email.

As you can see, there are many interesting features in the Cvent tool. So what are you waiting for, sign up for a trial account and explore how you can improve your email marketing using Cvent's email survey software.

Only one more day until our blog will be a year old. As someone who has spent the better part of the last year uncovering online survey pitfalls and survey best practices to share, I'm excited about this milestone. Here are some of my favorite posts about Cvent Web Survey software features.

• Stay Accountable with Easy-to-Create Parked Reports: Creating and managing web surveys is a time-consuming task alone. Add in management and colleagues constantly asking you for updates and reports, and you have even more pressure. Thankfully, this post outlines how you can park reports to share with anyone without giving them an account login.

• Segmented Email Marketing Equals Higher Response: Cvent Web Survey software's centralized contact database helps users segment their lists by any criteria: geography, title, industry, etc. This allows you to better target your survey sample lists and email marketing. Segmenting your contact database is definitely an email and survey best practice.

• Respond To Survey Feedback Quickly With Triggered Survey Email Alerts: This post explains the value of email alerts. This is definitely a very powerful feature. And don't think you're limited to just one alert, the August release gave survey writers, creators and administrators the ability to set up multiple alerts that will go to different people or groups based on the criteria they set in the alert. Triggered email alerts allow you to quickly website visitors.

• Online Survey Tip: Import Known Data To Improve Respondent Experience and New Web Surveys Feature: Question Import: I know I'm cheating a bit in my top 5 posts. However, these two features are both import features that, in my book, go hand in hand. You can save time by importing your entire survey (all survey questions and answer choices) instead of going through the manual data entry a second time. The other feature I'm lumping in is the ability to import completed survey responses. This allows you to do paper surveys in conjunction with an online version of the survey, then store all the data in one place.

• New Web Survey Feature: Advanced Link Logic: This post explains my favorite new feature in our survey tool. Released in August, this feature gives you the ability to customize which answer options a survey respondent sees based on how they answered a previous question. By keeping the survey questions and answer options more relevant to the respondent, you keep the survey more engaging which will increase completion rates.

Of course, it was hard to narrow it down to just five (okay, six) awesome features. If you want to learn more about our online survey software tool, please sign up for a product demo.

Free.  Just let that word sink in for a minute.  Free.  What comes to mind?  Is it the Buy One Get One Free sale (or BOGO for all you deal enthusiasts) at Payless?  Or maybe it is the proverbial classic your mother used to recite when that new pair of shoes you knew you couldn’t afford got you down; “Sweetheart, the best things in life are free.

Now, I personally believe my good buddy Barrett put it best:

The best things in life are free,
But you can give them to the birds and bees.
I need money.
That’s what I want. 

This Motown classic put into song, and with quite a catchy tune, what so many of us have been thinking for years: What can you actually get for free?  What tangible return do you receive without first offering your life-savings to the money god?   At Payless, nothing.  At Cvent, well, where do I begin?

First, Cvent offers a FREE trial of our online survey tool.  You read that right; a completely free trial, no credit card information necessary to sign-up.  Not one of these ‘Try it 1 month free!” ads that still requires you to give them your bank accounts, children’s names, dog’s favorite snack, etc.  And to add insult to injury, in small, ineligible print at the bottom of the TV screen they have the audacity to tell you that the charge will continue per month unless an explicit cancellation notification is given.  But, I digress.  The free-trial allows you to create a survey and utilize all the functionality Cvent offers before you commit financially.  No offering of your first born child necessary.

For my second point, I have two words: Client Services.  We offer complimentary phone support 24x5, Monday through Friday as well as weekend support available 8:30am – 5:30pm US ET.  Our Client Services team will offer a complimentary survey review with some online survey best practice tips to get you the best and most accurate data possible.  You can also take advantage of the complimentary (notice a pattern?) training classes offered twice a week, not to mention our extensive recorded training session library that can be accessed at any time for no charge.  These classes walk you through every step in the survey process from inception to survey reporting and presentations.  You can have as many people take the class as many times as necessary to learn and retain the information.  And did I mention we are current finalists for the Service Excellence Award?  Enough said.

My final point is this.  Rumpelstiltskin might have required your first-born in exchange for the much sought after ability to spin twine into gold.  But the cost of spinning your paper survey questions into pure web survey gold with Cvent? Priceless.

Day 3 of our top blog post count down. Today we're focusing on email marketing and email survey invitation best practices. Here are our top 5 posts from the last year about best practices and our email survey tool.

• Does Your Online Survey Software Tool Send Automated Thank You Emails? Cvent Web Surveys software allows you to automate survey invitations, reminder invitations to non-respondents and reminders to partial survey respondents, but what about other types of emails you can automate with our email survey software tool? I feel like the automated completion emails that are out-of-the-box with our email survey software is often over looked. This post points out why you need this email from your survey software provider.

• Tips For Writing An Email Survey Invitations: Most marketers have less than eight seconds to convince recipients to click through an email when they send personalized email surveys. The tips in this post should help you create email survey invitations.

• Even More Tips to Boost Email Deliverability: Increased email deliverability means increased survey responses, which allows for better customer analysis or marketing research data. In this post, we highlight 3 ways to make sure your email survey invitations reach invitee inboxes.

• Best Practices for Email Marketing Design: If email marketing is part of you marketing strategy or to gather online survey responses, there are several of email marketing design best practices you should keep in mind.

• 5 Email Marketing Tips To Increase Online Survey Responses: A good subject line may be the most critical part of the formula for a high open rate. In this post, we provide five tips to get you the email survey responses you need to make business decisions.

We on the Cvent Web Surveys Client Services team always encourages clients to customize the headers for their online surveys. By adding your organization’s logo to the header of your survey, you are essentially branding your organization for free!

Although some clients do choose to add customized headers to their survey design templates, many do not carefully consider the best option for HOW to add their header images. When add your header image to your survey, you have two options:


There are numerous advantages to using the HTML Editor to add your header image, as opposed to the alternative option. My top 5 reasons for why you should use the HTML Editor as opposed to the alternative option are as follows:


As you can see, using the HTML Editor to add your header to your custom survey does indeed have its perks. In general, please take advantage of the HTML Editor throughout Cvent’s Web Surveys tool! As soon as you start working in the HTML Editor, you will undoubtedly agree that it's online survey software made easy. I bet it wont take long for you to start singing its praises as well.

Did you know there are 6 steps in the market research process?  While this process speaks directly to marketing research professionals, the process applies to HR, customer or education surveys as well:

1. Identify and define the problem.  Before you start any web survey project, you should identify the key issues you hope to be able to solve.  This step should also include clearly defined objectives.
    
2. Develop the approach. In this step, you need to establish a budget, understand influencing factors such as the environment or economy, decide on sampling and survey methods, and formulating hypotheses.
    
3. Research design. Designing a survey or questionnaire is considered the most important step in any survey process.  Question design takes a lot of thought and time.  We like to say, "If you put garbage in, you'll get garbage out."  This means that if the questions are bad, the data will be bad as well.  During the survey research design, keep in mind sampling methods and data analysis factors you intend to use.
    
4. Collect the data. Don't forget to test your survey before to ensure you're fielding the correct data.  Thankfully, with the help of an online survey tool, this step is relatively painless.
    
5. Analyze the Data. The types of analysis you planned to perform on the collected survey data should have been decided in earlier steps, but after collecting the data you have to actually perform the survey analysis.  Analysis can be performed using survey analysis tools like office programs, such as Excel, or more advanced programs such as SPSS - the complexity of the questions will determine this.
    
6. Report, Present, Take Action.  The final step in the market research process is to present your survey research findings and draw conclusions.  While Step 3 is the most important because it defines the outcome of your survey, if you fail to complete this last step and act on the findings in some way, the previous steps don't matter. 

As I mentioned in the beginning, this same process can be applied to any type of project: product evaluations, customer satisfaction questionnaires, public relation surveys, etc.  If you give each step the attention it deserves, each of your online surveys should be a success.