SurveyHints & Tips

Topic: Benefits of Online Surveys

Battle of the Inbox 2009: Relevancy Wins!

In this year's battle of the inbox, the most successful marketers will be the ones who get to know their customers and deliver content and promotions relevant to their interests and needs.

Digging Deeper with Surveys

 In the Twitter Age, customer feedback can be easy to find -- just run an internet search for your business or organization's name and you'll likely uncover someone talking about you online.

Event Planning Through Survey

An event is great way to attract customers to visit your store to learn and make purchases, to bring members together to celebrate an occasion, and to rally supporters to raise funds for a good cause. While events can take multiple forms -- be it a class, webinar, open house, or gala -- they all take proper planning to ensure your organization and attendees get the most out of the gathering.

Sending a survey before your event to get feedback from potential attendees can help with these efforts not only to tell you if your thinking is in line with your guests', but also to make the event even better based on attendees' input.

Experiencing the Economic Rollercoaster?

In this kind of economy, it's more important to be getting a constant flow of customer feedback. It's called "drip intelligence" and it gives you customer feedback on a regular basis. If you ask the right questions, the feedback you'll get will be easily actionable, timely, and will give you a leg up against your competition.

Get to the Heart of the Matter

As summer begins to fade into the fall and people's attention shifts from vacation back to business, what better time is there than now to publish an online survey to gauge your customers' or members' thoughts and plans? Creating an effective survey can generate responses to help you craft your business plan in the weeks and months to come.

Getting a Lot, Little by Little

In recent issues of this newsletter, we've provided you with strategies for writing effective survey questions and getting to the heart of the matter when planning and conducting a survey. However, it's not always feasible -- or practical -- to create comprehensive surveys that cover all aspects of your business. Even if you have the time to construct such a questionnaire, asking your customers to fill out a long survey every month might be a little too much to ask.

Learn Your Lessons Well

Conducting an online survey is a good chance to take a 50- or 100-foot view of your organization and get a fresh perspective on what you're doing to see if your customers feel the same way that you hope they do. It allows you to learn things about your organization that you might not see on a day-to-day basis.

Learning More from Survey Results

Congratulations! You've completed a survey effort and got lots of great feedback from your customers or members. Now what?

Companies do surveys all the time and never act on the data, resulting in a lost opportunity to impact their business and affect customers. That's a huge mistake. You have the impetus to do something and a pile of raw data in front of you. It's time to take steps toward analyzing the results and applying them to improve your organization.

Listening to Customers Goes Beyond Answering the Phone

You think you offer great a product or service to your customers and members, but do you know that for sure? Are you taking the time to listen to what your customers are saying about you? If the answer to both questions is no, you could be missing out on some valuable insight that could help grow your business or organization, or better shape some of your processes. Fortunately, it?s pretty easy to ?hear? what your customers are saying through multiple feedback channels.

One Quick Question, One Quick Answer

In a rough economy, as at other times, it's important for companies and organizations to know what's on their customers' and members' minds. Sometimes you just want to know the answer to one question, and you need to know the answer today. That's where polls come in.

Quantifying Feedback

Have you heard the buzz around social media marketing and how it's a great way to get feedback about your business or organization? It definitely can be. Tools such as NutshellMail can be used to track what's being said about your products, services, or events on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, while Google Alerts can be used to scour the web for similar mentions.

Ready for a New Year?

With the hubbub of the holidays over and new 2010 calendars already broken in, chances are good that you've already started to execute your communications plan for the new year. But if you were too busy with end-of-2009 wrap-up and didn't get a chance to look forward, it's not too late to put together an outline of your marketing communications plans for 2010.

In fact, this is a great time to decide what topics you will cover in your newsletter, when you will send your messages to ensure maximum engagement and relevancy, and how you will collect feedback from your customers and members to know you're meeting their needs. Having a plan and a strategy for your communications will save you from scrambling as the months fly by, and will allow you to concentrate on the day-to-day operations of your business or organization.

Here are some tips for pulling together an effective communications plan.

So, What Did You Think?

Planning an event requires a lot of time, resources, and money, so you want to make sure it's a successful endeavor. The simplest way to ensure a good outcome is to reach out to attendees and invited guests to ask for their input prior to your event and for feedback after the event.

Solid Feedback Produces Better Scouts

For many girls, time spent in Girl Scouts forms the foundation for the woman they will grow up to be. That means it's critically important for leaders to provide the kind of experience that will create stronger and more confident members. But it's not just about the Scouts themselves. The organization also has an active group of volunteers, alumni, and parents, all of whom have concerns and interests about how to help the Girl Scouts stay successful.

As Michelle Clinch, director of communications for the Girl Scouts of Oregon and Southwest Washington, says, the organization is "By Girls, For Girls," so receiving constant feedback about what's working and what's not working keeps things running smoothly. That feedback comes from two sources: online surveys and social media.

Time to Turn the Page

Hooray, you survived 2009! Make sure 2010 is a banner year by allocating resources wisely. How? Ask your customers for input so you know how to spend your time and money in the New Year. It's more critical than in the past that you know what your customers, clients, and members want and need from you as an organization. Then you can build and execute plans to meet or exceed those expectations.

When to Get Customer or Member Feedback

No matter how finely tuned your organization is, there are things your customers or members want or don't like that you're not aware of. Getting a steady stream of customer or member feedback is an essential part of efficient growth for any small business or nonprofit. Feedback provides a new level of confidence in making smart everyday decisions that will make the most impact for your organization. But how can you get consistent feedback without annoying your audience?

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