Creating a survey that both interests and engages the recipient is of utmost importance. It can also be of great use as an e-mail marketing tool. There are many steps that can be taken to ensure that a survey elicits a clear, genuine response from the customer. As with most things a pre-planning, smooth conduction and thorough analysis will go a long way in having a successful survey. Here are some easy tips:

Research

This is very important before formulating the survey. Know your target audience and have a firm grasp on your subject matter. Defining a clear target audience will ensure that you have willing participants who are more likely to be truthful.

Why do you need a survey?

Planning to make a change in your services or business structure? Want to know how your customers will react? Make sure you know exactly what your survey hopes to accomplish, enabling it to be a smooth simple process for your customer while giving you a valuable insight into your customer base. A good survey can accomplish many things for you.

Shorter the better

Show your customer that you respect his/her time by making sure your survey does not cross the 3 minute barrier to fill up. Remember that not everyone has time to spare. Also mention the time that the survey will require as accurately as possible.

Sentence Structure

You always want to choose your words carefully. You want to be able to communicate the question effectively with minimum complication. Use questions that begin with who, what, where, when, why or how. This will make the survey experience much easier on your customer.

Try to Avoid

Loaded, leading, double barrel, ambiguous or compound questions. Also, avoid questions that use jargon or double negatives. The last thing you want is to confuse the respondent and make it difficult to answer the survey.

Variety in Questions

Have a variety of question options, multiple choices, true or false and even open ended questions. In addition try to give the customer as many chances to answer beyond the given choices. This will enable the customers to fully express themselves without having the fatigue of answering the same kind of question types.

Conducting the Survey

Sometimes it makes sense to consider using a third party to conduct your survey. This can provide anonymity, reliability and transparency. Conducting a pre-test on a small sample can also help you fine tune your survey.

Survey Analysis

Sample size is of great importance. A sample that is too small might not be accurate. This however depends on the nature of the survey and the target audience. Here again, if the analysis is for a large sample and quite complex you might want to look for a third party to professionally analyze your statistics and data for you.

Be Wary of Overkill

Don't send out too many surveys to your customers. They will lose their value and your number of responses will drop drastically. Remember that you need to send out a survey when it is most relevant and show that you are listening by actually incorporating the findings of your survey.