Surveying Tools

Over the past year, I have run into many new Cvent Web Surveys clients with the same issues or problems with their employee satisfaction surveys.  Most of the clients have the same story: in the past, using a different online survey solution, they released an employee satisfaction survey and were not able to follow up in a timely manner. 

The workplace employee surveys were conducted in a number of different fashions: paper-based, with different online survey tools, and even website survey forms.  All of these previous methods had one tragic flaw: reporting.  The survey administrators waited untill the survey was closed to run survey reports or review the paper surveys.  The problem inherit in this approach is time.  They would wait weeks before pulling reporting and discovering an employee had a problem in the workplace or in the case of paper based methods, sometimes months before they scanned the surveys.

When they finally discovered a problem that needed attention they would act, but what they discovered was:

Both of these resolutions are horrible.  If the employee solves the problem themselves they feel the organization is powerless and does not care about their situation.  If they quit, we all know that it costs 10 times more to train a new employee than to retain the old one.

A simple solution to these problems is a feature that Cvent's online survey solution embodies: Triggered Email Alerts.  Most other survey tools out there do not contain this feature.

The beauty of this feature is the survey administrator can have an email alert sent to whomever they designate; Human Resource Manager, Employee Liaison, etc...  In this manner as soon as an employee answers the appropriate question and then clicks finish on the survey an email is sent to the designated person, who in turn can then immediately follow up with the employee and solve the problem.  Thus, boosting employee retention rates, making them feel like a needed part of the organization, instilling employee loyalty, and finally creating a better work environment.

The triggered email alert feature in Cvent's survey solution solved these client's employee retention nightmares and resulted in a better workplace and a more cost effective future.

Last time we discussed in detail about the Graphical Survey Templates offered to Cvent Web Survey software users. Today, I wanted to share with you another marvelous feature available in Cvent’s online survey tool: Cvent Web Surveys Question Library. The question library is home to a list of customer service, demographics, event, HR/training, and marketing/sales survey questions you can utilize when creating surveys online.

Here’s a Sneak Preview:

Customer Service Survey Questions:
1. Did the representative answer your question adequately?
2. Did the representative respond to your phone call or email in a timely fashion?
3. How likely will you be to continue service with our company?

HR Survey Questions and Training Survey Questions:
1. Did this training meet your expectations?
2. Do you have all of the necessary resources available to you to perform your job?
3. Do you have any comments about what might improve your work experience at the company in the coming year?

Marketing Survey Questions and Sales Survey Questions:
1. How does this product's pricing compare to other similar products?
2. How likely are you to return to our site in the next 30 days?
3. How often do you use this product?

If you are new to the survey tool and need help with designing online surveys, I certainly recommend you to make use of these wonderful features. You can also call our award winning Client Services Team at 866-318-4357 for additional help.

In today’s competitive world, most of us find ourselves asking, What more do I get out of our online survey management software besides the obvious?

Well here’s one extraordinary feature you get along with the Cvent Web Surveys tool: A Robust Address Book. The Cvent Address Book is where you can store all you contacts; you can manually add new contacts if you need to update your records with just a handful of contacts or you can use our 4 Step Import Wizard to add bulk contacts in one go.

You can also export contacts out of the survey software if you need to update your personal database. For example, you want to be able to update contacts in your CRM system that attended your conference and completed your post-event survey so sales can follow up appropriately with attendees. Using the Cvent Address Book you can also merge duplicate contacts, create contact groups to help manage the Address Book more efficiently, or edit existing contacts to keep your records up to date.

Wait! There is more. In the Cvent Web Surveys application, you can not only run different reports to pull up information based on your address book, but also run reports to pull up information from your address book. Here is a list of some of our Address Book Reports:


If you are interested in knowing more about the benefits you can enjoy with Cvent Web Surveys, go ahead and sign up for a free trial account!

We all know the holidays are getting closer, which means office pot lucks are about to become all the rage. What will you be bringing? How is your office going to make sure that not everyone plans to bring the same thing? How do you determine the winner of this year's Tastiest Dish Awards?

Competitions involving food are definitely a favorite around this time of year. However, if you have a big office, it can be a pain to collect everyone's votes. As I mentioned at Halloween, building polls to quickly identify the winner of your office Halloween Costume contest can be applied to the Best Dish Award too. Simply log into your web site voting poll software, make a poll to gather employee opinions on who should win this year's Best Dish Awards. Have different categories, such as best presentation, tastiest appetizer, most unique recipe? Add in images of the dishes to help jog people's memories and create one web poll using your poll maker.

Don't think that an online poll survey software tool can only play it's part at the end of the pot luck event, you can send a pre-event survey to find out who plans to bring what. If too many people are planning to bring dessert, a typical favorite, the online poll generator can easily run a survey report to identify categories with too many volunteers. You can easily create a survey contact group to email those volunteers and ask them if they can bring something else.

Holidays are a time to celebrate with family and friends, and eat delicious food. Unfortunately, we often make such office traditions a little more painful than they need to be by forgetting we can use a polling system or survey software tool we already have. Since Cvent Web Surveys doesn't limit the number of responses you can have, it wouldn't make sense to suffer through paper ballots when it can be done for you! Ready to create a poll for your next staff opinion survey? Get started with a free trial.

What are your other sample employee opinion survey examples?

Surveys are an invaluable tool for researching the community attitudes, employee concerns, product needs, customer loyalty and priorities held by different groups or target audiences.  Designing a questionnaire and collecting survey responses from a sample allows us to draw a profile of the group as a whole, and perhaps perform some correlation analysis to understand the source of those feelings.  The online survey findings can then support fact-based organizational decisions or improvement projects to help continually improve the organization over time.

Survey research can be applied to many venues.  Here are just a few practical applications listed below:

An Internal Employee Survey could identify reasons for low employee retention and provide ideas for reducing those costs, such as a better designed benefit program, improved training opportunities, or problems in the way the organization functions.

A Training Survey can identify how a training program has improved the capabilities of some group and how the training program itself can be improved.  

A Product Satisfaction Survey can identify initial customer experiences with a product, providing data to address unforeseen problems and help the next product release.  

A Market Research Survey can identify customers needs when creating these new service and product offerings.  Surveys can be part of Design for Six Sigma activities.  

An Association Survey, which is similar to market research and customer surveys, can show the member benefits most of interest.

However, a survey program is only valuable if it is properly designed and executed.  While performing a survey project seems deceptively simple – it's just a bunch of questions, and survey software tools make electronic surveys quick and cheap – a small mistake in the survey questionnaire design or survey administration can skew or bias the data, leading to erroneous conclusions.  No organization should ever make critical business decisions based on unreliable or invalid data.

Bad data is worse than no data!

I realized it only after the emails had been sent.  It was a test survey that wasn’t intended for entry level employees and senior management.  It was an employee evaluation that had initially been slated to go out only to our newest batch of hires.  Only last minute did we discover we could use logic to create one interactive survey online for senior management to evaluate the progress of new hire training, and new hire survey questions for them to evaluate the training process.  The wording, the slang, everything was wrong!  What did I do…

Hopefully, this scenario has appeared solely in a nightmare (and yes, survey nightmares are very real and very terrifying).  But a similar, less daunting situation is common among many: You have an online web survey that will go out to two groups of respondents, the wording in the two would ideally be completely different, and you do not have the time to go into the two templates you’ve created and select the different audiences then manually send the emails.  Not to mention, this method would require using Cvent’s email survey tool's default templates and the Custom Messages.  What if I told you it was possible to create entirely separate email marketing campaigns, set the emails up to go out automatically AND keep the both default templates and custom messages for each group of respondents? 

The multiple email marketing campaigns feature allows you to do just this!  You can select the number of separate email blasts you intend on sending, you can add entirely different contact groups to each campaign, and you can set up your emails to go out automatically. 

1. This feature is perfect if you have a multilingual survey.  You can translate your message into as many languages as you like to ensure maximum comprehension. 

2. Multiple email campaigns is also great for newsletters that are tied to a generic instant survey.  Instead of copying your survey and creating a new email blast every month, you can add an email campaign for the October '09 Newsletter, November '09 Newsletter, December '09 Newsletter and so forth.  You can then get an aggregate view of the data collected across all months.

3. The nightmare scenario outlined above.  It is likely that emails sent to your senior management are not worded the same as emails sent to entry-level new hires.  The formality of the verbiage aside, your new hires might be a bit disconcerted to know that the bosses of the bosses are watching them and evaluating their decisions. 

We all know creating surveys and designing questionnaires can be a bit overwhelming.  Why put yourself through that again just so different people can receive the same questionnaire?

Vocus, a leading provider of on-demand public relations management software, released the results of a recent public relations and marketing survey they conducted. The survey sample was made up of 1,800 marketing and PR professionals. Among Vocus's key findings was the response of 80% respondents that social media would be a key focus for them in 2010. Vocus shared that they believe social media has been a catalyst for the change in the PR industry, where PR is becoming increasingly more important.

How is the PR industry dealing with the fact they're being asked to do more with less? Investing in technology. Sounds like a familiar story, right? Marketers turn to email survey tools to send out email survey invitations instead of having to manually send all email marketing messages through Outlook. Accounting departments use software to help them manage finances instead of the old way of paper, pencils and ledgers. Technology is often used to help professionals manage their work loads, and PR industry is doing the same thing.

Here are some of the other key findings Vocus shared from it's marketing survey:


You can learn more about the survey results by viewing the recording of webinar Vocus hosted yesterday, PR Planning Considerations for 2010.

Some people still believe in using paper surveys instead of designing online questionnaires, sending personalized email survey reminders and utilizing electronic survey methods. Sometimes I have to wonder, Why? Some of the reasons people claim they want to use paper questionnaires instead of web survey forms is because they think it's cheaper. That's not usually the case.

Consider this: Online survey response rates are typically hire than response rates on a direct mail survey. Online survey research designed well will yeild response rates from 20-40%. Let's be conservative and say the paper survey you plan to send out will get a 20% response rate as well. I looked up the cost of a ream of standard multipurpose paper (500 sheets) on Office Depot's website: $7.09. A black ink cartridge for a laser printer is $77.99 and will print on a maximum of 2,200 pages. Most printed surveys will be kept to three to five pages, longer than that your survey form looks over whelming from the very beginning and is going to lower your response rate. This is how that cost quickly adds up:


Keep in mind these costs don't include the staff time of stuffing envelopes to send out the direct mail survey, or the staff time of manually entering in all of the responses into some sort of data collection software, be it Excel or a survey software tool. You can figure it will take an intern a week to send out 5,000 survey responses and another week for them to do the data entry for the 1,000 responses. So that's an additional cost of $600 to $800 for one survey campaign. What if you want to do a quarterly customer satisfaction survey? You're looking at an annual cost of over $25,000.

For me, that would be enough reason alone to look into an online survey software application. With a web survey tool, you have the ability to not only send one invitation, but reminders survey emails as well. Sending reminders, as we've mentioned before, can drastically increase your survey response rate. My suggestion: don't fall for the myth that paper surveys are cheaper than online surveys. It's definitely the other way around.

Designing survey invitations so that they render correctly in the person inbox is critical. However, with every email client, from Hotmail to Gmail to Lotus Notes to Outlook, have their own rules for rendering HTML email. In the past, I've given you updates on changes Gmail has made that's effected email rendering. Today, I wanted to share some tips to ensure you're creating emails that will look good in Outlook 2007. With Outlook 2003, the general rule of thumb is if it looks good in Internet Explorer, it will look good in Outlook. Outlook 2007 doesn't play by that rule.

Depending on your target market and who you expect your survey respondents to be, you may care more about these email survey design tips. If you are a business-to-business organization, most of your email marketing list is probably going to have business emails on it as opposed to freemail domains. If you're a business-to-consumer organization, you may care more about the rules Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail use to render your emails.

Next time you're sitting down to work on your email survey design, keep these Outlook 2007 tips in mind:

Keep styles in line: This is a general email marketing best practice because a lot of email clients don't support embedded CSS. Outlook 2007 does support embedded CSS, but not all properties work the way they should when their rendered. To avoid running into these problems, just keep your styles in line.

Avoid animated files: Animated .gif files are not going to work in Outlook 2007. Instead of animating, the email will just render with the first image in the animation. As long as you're happy with this first image of the animated .gif file, then it's not going to detract from your email message. Just know that when you go to test your email survey invitation in Outlook 2007, nothing's going to happen.

Specify accurate table widths: This is another email marketing best practice for designing online survey invitations. You should use tables to design HTMl emails. If you have multiple columns and your column widths don't add up to the width you specified for the overall size of the table, you're probably going to run into issues when someone tries to read your email in Outlook 2007. To avoid this, just make sure you're doing your math correctly, or use percentages instead of pixels (just make sure you're adding to 100% not 101%).

Use Alt tag: In Outlook 2007, images are blocked by default. While some users may chose to turn this off and have images automatically show up - you shouldn't count on this. To avoid survey respondents from having no idea what your email says, be sure to include alternative text for all images.

No Forms: If you're trying to embed a survey form in an email message, it's not going to work. Outlook 2007 disables embedded forms. Instead of embedding the form, include a link to your electronic survey hosted either on your website or your survey software company's website.

For the most part, these email survey design tips shouldn't be that hard to follow. In fact, if you're using Cvent Web Surveys software, our email survey tool will keep some of these tips in mind for you - and you don't need to do anything. What do I mean? Our easy-to-use HTML editor automatically codes the email for you, so when you insert a picture, it's going to ask you for alternative text. When you are changing background colors or applying different rules to headings, it will make sure to code the in line style versus embedding CSS. If you're not using an email survey software tool that keeps email marketing design best practices in mind, you're going to need to do the research yourself to find out what different clients allow - or don't allow - in emails.

So, it is clear that Cvent Web Surveys software is always getting better. Remember that 80 percent of the changes made in your accounts with our quarterly product releases are enhancements that were requested by current clients. However, it is not only the online survey application that is consistently changing for the better. Here at Cvent, we are also constantly rethinking and revamping our training classes to serve our clients the best that we possibly can.

I wanted to write a post today just to let you know we recently rewrote the script used for the Survey Creation and Management training class. Another member of the Web Surveys Client Services team and I spent about a week meeting with the Senior Vice President of Client Services and Relationship Management to completely revamp this training class in order to better suit your needs. Although the material covered in the training class is by and large the same as it was before, it is our firm belief that the Survey Creation and Management class is now easier to understand and follow than it had been previously.

Just to reiterate, if you recently signed a contract with Cvent, it is highly recommended that you sign up for this class. Survey Creation and Management is offered every Wednesday from 2:30 PM EST to 4:30 PM EST. We also offer separate classes for our clients in the UK and Australia. The class for UK clients is every Wednesday from 8:30 AM to 10:30 AM GMT. The Australia class is offered Thursdays from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM Australian Eastern Time. Finally, you can also listen to our recorded training classes if your schedule does not permit you to attend the live training.

In summary, if you are a new survey client or a new user of the Cvent system, please attend the Survey Creation and Management training class at your earliest convenience. Since this class goes over how to set up your first electronic survey in Cvent, how to import your contacts in bulk into the system, and how to send your survey invitations with the Cvent email survey tool, it is extremely beneficial for you to take as soon as possible.

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.

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.

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.

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!

According to The Center for an Accessible Society there are over 49 million Americans living with a disability of some type, with over 30 million between the ages of 21 and 64. That's nearly 20% of the population or 1 out of every 5 people.

Cvent Web Surveys provides federal, state and local government entities with an on demand, feedback management solution. As a web based survey company, our online polling tool enables government officials to quickly and easily gather feedback and analyze the opinions of constituents, while increasing survey response rates and ensuring data protection and security.

Section 508 refers to a statutory section in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (found at 29 U.S.C. 794d). Congress significantly strengthened section 508 in the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. Its primary purpose is to provide access to and use of Federal executive agencies’ electronic and information technology (EIT) by individuals with disabilities. The statutory language of section 508 can be found at www.section508.gov.

Section 508 requirements are separate from, but complementary to, requirements in sections 501 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act that require, among other things, that agencies provide reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities, provide program access to members of the public with disabilities, and take other actions necessary to prevent discrimination on the basis of disability in their programs.

Why should you use Cvent's online survey application?

Say you want to send out a particularly important website link in your survey emails leading to your website, a sponsor’s website or any other page on the internet with information you really want the respondents to visit. Now, you’ve designed different emails, but are wondering which one will be most effective – how do you find out? Click Tracking.
Here's another scenario. A sponsor is funding your online survey and wants to know how many people are actually clicking on their image and going to their website. They want to be able to track the ROI on their sponsorship – how will you do this? Click Tracking.

Click tracking is a powerful new feature in the Cvent email survey tool that is of invaluable importance to anyone who puts in website links in their survey emails. How does it work? When someone clicks on a link in an email, the information is first sent to Cvent and then the respondent is directed to the URL for the link.  Using click tracking, we can track how many times a link was clicked on uniquely, or in total, and at what date and time. Use any of the reports below to get exactly the data you want about who clicks on the link, when they click on it and how many times they clicked:


So the next time you decide to put in a link into a survey email, remember, it is not just a link but a vast source of information that lets you know your survey respondents' preferences, interests and usage. Happy Tracking!

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.