8 Tips To Improve E-mail Surveys
Pam Stein, Co-founder, Clientize.com Inc.
Published April 29, 2002

1. Establish what you want to get out of your survey and stay focused on that goal. Point your survey questions to the answers you want. Target what you want - don't try to throw everything into one survey.



2. Make the survey easy to complete - it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes for the respondents to finish. Don't ask more than 10 to 15 questions. Try not to exceed more than two Web pages of questions.



3. Offer an incentive to increase response. The longer the survey is, the better the incentive should be. Keep the incentive business-oriented, such as a subscription extension, or a drawing to win a digital camera, hand-held device, round-trip ticket to an upcoming tradeshow or another appropriate item with a $200 to $300 price tag.



4. Consider the order of questions you ask. Don't ask your most important question first; start out with quick, easy questions to warm them up. The last question should be an open-ended text question, such as, "What is the one thing that ..."



5. Some publishers use e-Panels, which is a group of readers who agree in advance to answer three to five questions every month. Each month has a different topic or theme, such as the shelf life of a publication ("How long do you keep the publication?" or "How many people in your company is the publication routed to?") or editorial content, for example. This is a great way to get your readers involved and have your own focus group or editorial advisory board. In fact, this might be a good way to use an editorial advisory board if you have one currently.



6. Be consistent in your surveys. The value of a survey is the ability to benchmark results across time.



7. Reader surveys can tell you a lot about your subscribers. But, another benefit of surveys for publishers is to create news or editorial content for your publication.



8. Electronic surveys are inexpensive to send, but, more importantly, you will know the majority of the results within 72 hours. For better results, you can send a follow-up about two weeks later to get more responses.