Marketing Survey Tips

Want to get to know your donors, volunteers, and program participants? Need to know what they are interested in, why they give, what motivates them to volunteer? Ask them. And, one of the best ways to ask is by survey.

We are asked from time to time to take a look at an organization's marketing survey and offer suggestions for improving it. A little extra time spent producing the best survey possible, will make a huge difference in the validity and quality of the survey results. Here are several tips, along with questions to ask when evaluating a marketing survey.

What do I want to know?

Identify what you are trying to find out. Determine your goal for how the information will be used. Do you want to increase participation, reduce volunteer attrition, increase the average gift level in renewal mailings, etc? A clear goal drives what you ask, who you ask, how you ask, and then what you do with the responses.

Try narrowing your focus for a survey to the things you plan to address in the next 18 months. Don’t think up 1000 questions you would like to ask. Instead, drill down to the most mission- critical things you need to know now.

Create separate surveys for each area you plan to deal with: a survey for donors to find out about giving benefits; a survey for volunteers to find out about retention barriers; and a survey for program participants to determine program usefulness.

Is it simple and short enough?

If the survey will be in writing, keep it short and simple – two pages maximum. If it will be conducted on your website, keep it simple with not too many clicks from screen to screen. In either case, the survey should not require more than about three to five minutes to complete.

What about instructions and format

Format the survey for easy use – lots of white space. Use tables to organize info. Use a sans seraph font like Helvetica or Arial. Indicate a deadline for return and give clear directions about how to complete and return the survey.

Which are the best survey methods

Distribute the survey to your target market by fax, mail, or consider the value of conducting it by phone. If the survey is to be faxed back, show the number in bold type; if mailed, include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

If the information needed can be provided in one or two short answers, consider scripting your receptionist and having them ask each caller. An example would be a survey on how customers heard about you. You might have the receptionist ask: “Did you hear about us through a friend, teacher, doctor, or someone else?” Or, if considering changing your hours, have the receptionist ask: “If the agency remained open past 5PM until 9PM, would you use it between 5 and 9PM?

Consider using newsletters to conduct your survey. You can increase response rates by promoting the survey in the preceding newsletter, and reporting on it in a later issue. Use intake interviews, or new customer surveys to find out why people joined, enrolled, volunteered, etc. When people are new to your organization, they can be very good mirrors that can show you how you are perceived by the community.

Don’t forget about the web. Your website can be a great vehicle for surveying visitors about both their experience on your site, and their opinions of your organization and its services.

Will respondents like it?

Your survey should be appealing to look at, and rewarding to complete. So many surveys are confusing, difficult to follow, or just too time consuming. People don't have time for something that appears as though it will take them a great deal of time to complete. Consider offering a premium or bonus if they complete the survey -- a tee shirt, mug, or other free gift. In some of our online surveys, we offer a free tip sheet, on a topic of interest to the group we are surveying. Limit the use of graphics – especially on a web-based survey.

Are the questions too complex?

Avoid lumping several items into one long question; limit each question to a single concept. Deal with each discrete issue separately with short, simple questions. For example, don’t ask, “Is our staff knowledgeable and courteous?” How will you be able to tell what your respondent meant if they respond “yes?” Yes to both, or only yes to one, and if one, which one? You see the problem.

Don’t make significant business decisions based on flawed data. Choose each question deliberately and pay strict attention to the order they are asked and the way in which they are worded. Be careful of how you construct the scale upon which people’s answers will be measured.

Is the range of answer possibilities appropriate?

Allow people to answer with "other" whenever possible and when using numerical scales, give respondents the opportunity to provide a neutral answer. Ex., make the range 1-7 rather than 1-6. Whatever measurement scale (we recommend 1-7) you choose, stick with it throughout the survey. Changing is around, every other question set, is confusing to survey takers.

Are there any leading questions?

Keep your questions neutral. For example, don't ask: Do you agree that our services are excellent? Yes -- No. Instead ask the question: Our customer service was: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (1 excellent, 7 unacceptable).

Does the survey contain "fluff" questions?

Only include questions designed to elicit information you plan to act on. Don't ask questions just for the sake of asking them, unless you plan to actually do something with the information. Never survey unless you plan to take action on the results.

Are there questions in the survey that could better be answered through observation?

Not all information needs to come from a survey. In many cases, observing the behavior of your clients, donors, and constituents, will give you the information you seek. For example: if you wanted to determine the percentage of females vs. males attending a special event, observe the people who attend instead of including the question of gender in a customer satisfaction survey.

On the other hand, you may want to ask the gender question in a customer satisfaction survey, if you believe that males and females may have differing opinions of your services, etc.

Broad to narrow

Start with broader overall evaluations and progress to more detailed questions later in the survey. Save demographic questions for the end, otherwise you risk loosing people early in the survey. People don’t generally like answering personal, demographic questions, but if they have stuck with you for the whole survey, they find the demographic questions – when placed at the end – more palatable.

Capture comments

Be sure to include a place in every survey for comments. These can be great sources of information you may not have thought to ask, and positive comments can be captured and used in your PR materials.

Be careful of templates, software, and online services

Templates and software solutions do a poor job of helping nonprofits with some of the most important issues that they need to survey on. Most software programs, etc. are designed for commercial business and will not adequately handle the subtle nuances or specialized needs of nonprofit target markets.

This doesn’t mean you cannot use the web-based market surveying; it just means you want to create your best survey offline and then find the best web-based solution that will allow you to post your survey as you have created it.

Does your survey allow you to capture new ideas and information that you did not plan?

Asking open-ended questions and providing space for detailed responses, allows respondents to get creative about their answers. Often respondents will offer suggestions, ideas, or constructive criticism that multiple choice or numerical scales cannot capture.