Online surveys offer significant advantages over other modes of data collection, and you should use them whenever possible. Some of the advantages include:

Speed – The Internet offers instantaneous distribution of surveys and real-time accumulation and tabulation of results. This allows for immediate data analysis, even while the survey is still in progress

Candor – People are more honest when their answers are not filtered through someone. This is essential for research on sensitive subject matter where studies indicate people are more likely to answer questions on the Web than they are on the phone or in personal interviews. The removal of interviewer bias and the elimination of the wait time for an interviewer to record results also yields more candid and complete responses to open-ended questions

Cost – The Internet eliminates many of the costs associated with traditional marketing research. Online surveys avoid postage and telephone costs as well as basic materials like paper, staples, envelopes, and printing. Because it is self-directed, there is no interviewer cost. Finally, it’s more convenient so the cost of offering incentives can be reduced

To help you celebrate your independence from traditional survey methods, Zoomerang is offering an Independence Day Weekend special:

Sign up for Zoomerang Pro during the 4^th of July weekend and you’ll get 2 months free with a 1 year subscription

Hurry, this 3-day offer is only valid July 3rd – 5th, 2009!

Zoomerang has a wealth of information available to help you collect the actionable data you need and analyze the results. You can find a new Zoomerang Survey Tip each day on Twitter which are designed to help make your survey experience a success.

To help keep you up to date, I have compiled the survey tips from the last week for easier reference and I will be posting an update weekly.

-  When posting a survey url on your website/blog make the link prominent & position it next to a relevant section

-  If asking questions on future intentions keep in mind predictions are rarely accurate more than a few weeks ahead

-  When using Skip Logic always test all of the skip sequences carefully before launching the survey

-  If your entire target audience is 2,000 people or fewer invite as many of them as possible

-  During the online survey creation process, save the survey often

You can find compiled lists of the previous Survey Tip of the Days as well as additional online survey tips and suggestions here at the Zoomerang blog as well as links to helpful Zoomerang tutorials and Zoomerang webinars.

Be sure to follow Zoomerang on Twitter if you would like to view the Survey Tip each day. You can also add the Zoomerang blog to your RSS feed or bookmark the site to get the weekly recap. If you have any survey tips you would like to share leave me a comment or send me an email, Zoomerang is all about sharing knowledge.

What is filtering?

  – Filtering is a quick and powerful way to segment your survey results

 - When you apply a filter, you see only the survey results that meet your filter criteria

 - The filter criteria can be survey responses, date, deployment, or email addresses

 - You can apply multiple filter criteria to your survey results and cross tab reports and use up to five filter groups in a comparison report

Why filter?

The Results Overview displays the results for all completed surveys and provides a summary of your data. However, you may need to know how a specific group of your survey respondents answered your survey. Any time you need to dig deeper into your data to analyze a subset of your respondents, you can apply a filter.

Not only can you filter by survey questions, the date that the survey was completed, or email addresses, you can also apply multiple filters. For example, if you need to isolate the responses by gender, age, and income, you can do that with filtering.

You can also apply filters to cross tabs or use up to five filter groups in a comparison report. If you are looking at the relationship between more than two survey questions through a cross tab, then you can add a filter to the cross tab report.

What types of questions can filtering answer?

For customer satisfaction surveys, find out:

  – Who are our biggest advocates – who says they are very satisfied and likely to purchase from us again and would recommend us?

 - Why are they our biggest advocates – why do they say they would recommend us?

 - Why do dissatisfied customers feel that way – how do they answer our open-ended questions?

For employee surveys, find out:

  – How do employees in specific departments feel about our company?

 - Is there a relationship between office location and satisfaction? (cross tab) Does that relationship still exist when we control for length of employment? (apply filter to cross tab)

For awareness and usage surveys, find out:

  – What are the demographic characteristics of those who purchase my brand?

 - What are the demographic characteristics of those who purchase my competitors’ brands?

The filtering feature is available to Paid Zoomerang subscribers. If you have a Zoomerang Basic (free) account, learn more about the benefits of upgrading now.

Zoomerang also provides you with over 100 professionally designed online survey templates to help you create a best-in-class survey in minutes. With Zoomerang, you can quickly and easily create online surveys and receive the fast feedback you need to make important decisions. Remember: the information you need is only a survey away!

Zoomerang is a popular tool for conducting all types of surveys — from Customer Satisfaction, Employee Satisfaction or even to what movie your friends would like to see this weekend.  We have created templates for the most common types of surveys and offer you the ability to create you own survey from scratch as well.

Zoomerang provides over 100 survey templates in four categories (Business, Community, Personal/Social, and Education) to help get you started. Zoomerang also now offers some of our most common survey templates fully translated into French, Spanish, Chinese, or Japanese.

To create a survey from a template, click the Create Survey button after logging into your Zoomerang account. Click on one of the four categories to display a list of available templates in the category and a brief description of each.

You can preview any template before you select it by clicking on the preview link next to the template title

To create a survey based on a template, click on the template name. Once the template is open, you may:

- Use the template as is (Note: If there are choice options, you may need to enter text for those options)

- Add and delete questions

- Modify and move questions

Need survey tips? Zoomerang offers a great deal of free resources to help you including:

- 10 Tips to Improve Your Surveys

- How Many People Do I Survey?

- 12 Tips To Help Increase Your Survey Response Rates

- Survey Design Checklist

Zoomerang has a wealth of information available to help you collect the actionable data you need and analyze the results. You can find a new Zoomerang Survey Tip each day on Twitter which are designed to help make your survey experience a success.

To help keep you up to date, I have compiled the survey tips from the last week for easier reference and I will be posting an update weekly.

-  Fewer questions per page causes respondents to use submit button more frequently which records their answers

-  Share your survey results – publish a survey results widget on a blog/website

-  When incorporating surveys into your planning cycle allow for the time needed to analyze results

-  Questions that have skip logic should be mandatory and should be the last question on the page

-  Dig deeper into your survey data to analyze a subset of respondents with Filtering

You can find compiled lists of the previous Survey Tip of the Days as well as additional online survey tips and suggestions here at the Zoomerang blog as well as links to helpful Zoomerang tutorials and Zoomerang webinars.

Be sure to follow Zoomerang on Twitter if you would like to view the Survey Tip each day. You can also add the Zoomerang blog to your RSS feed or bookmark the site to get the weekly recap. If you have any survey tips you would like to share leave me a comment or send me an email, Zoomerang is all about sharing knowledge.

The best means of administering a survey depends on whether it is a transactional or relationship survey. A transactional survey is conducted at the point of customer contact. Depending on the nature of the customer contact, an in-person, telephone, or online survey may be appropriate. Relationship surveys, on the other hand, are most cost-effectively conducted online.

Online data collection offers significant advantages over other modes of interviewing customers, and you should use it whenever possible. The advantages include:

Speed – The Internet offers instantaneous distribution of survey and real-time accumulation and tabulation of results. This allows for immediate data analysis, even while the survey is still in progress. Because customer satisfaction results are used to identify problems and fix them, the faster responses arrive, the faster they can be addressed. In contrast, mail surveys suffer from long lag times and low response rates, as low as 5%. Telephone surveys take longer because of declining response rates. Refusal rates for phone interviews have reached 60% (AC Nielsen). With the ease of answering online surveys, they can be completed faster and a broader segment of the customer base can be reached. Depending on a number of variables—the relationship with the survey recipients, the length of the survey, whether a reminder is sent, and whether an incentive is offered—response rates for online surveys can be upward of 35%. Even for online surveys in which there is no prior relationship with recipients, response rates can be 23% to 31% (Quirk’s Marketing Research Review).

Candor – People are more honest when their answers are not filtered through someone on the phone. This is essential for research on sensitive subject matter where studies indicate people are more likely to answer questions on the Web than they are on the phone or in personal interviews. (Quirk’s Marketing Research Review). The removal of interviewer bias and the elimination of the wait time for an interviewer to record results also yields more candid and complete responses to open-ended questions. This is particularly important when customers volunteer additional information to explain their satisfaction ratings. Such responses provide insight into what a company is doing well and frequently provide warning signs about the health of the business relationship.

Cost – The Internet eliminates many of the costs associated with traditional marketing research. Online surveys avoid postage and telephone costs as well as basic materials like paper, staples, envelopes, and printing. Because it is self-directed, there is no interviewer cost. Finally, it’s more convenient so the cost of offering incentives can be reduced.

Online and offline methods of data collection can also be combined. If offline methods are necessary for part of the customer base, the data for customers who can be reached only via mail, in person, or by telephone can be input to an online survey tool. That way all survey results can be captured, reviewed, and analyzed together.

Put an end to guesswork as you know it – start a customer satisfaction research program today. Visit the Zoomerang Customer Satisfaction Survey Center where you will find pre-designed survey templates to help you get started.

It is important to capture the respondent’s interest in your survey immediately. If you are sending email to people within the United States, it is also important to follow the rules set forth by the CAN-SPAM Act.

To help ensure your survey experience is as successful as it can be, Zoomerang offers the following best practices for survey email invitations: 

- Ensure that the targeted recipients have agreed to receive offers from your company

- Confirm how the list was gathered and how it has been managed since then. For example, how are opt-out requests and bounce backs handled?

- Confirm that opt-out requests from prior use have been processed appropriately

- Subject line (by law) must not mislead the recipient about the subject matter or contents of the email. In addition, to avoid being filtered as SPAM, do not use the words “win”, “prize”, “sweepstakes” or have a dollar amount (i.e. “$1000”) in the subject line. Do include the topic of the survey and survey sponsor whenever possible

- The From and Reply To addresses (by law) must be accurate and identify the person who sent the email

The body of the message (by law) must include the following:

      - Opt-out information. A valid email address or other method for recipient to be removed from mailing list.  For example, ‘To be removed from future mailings of this type, please send a reply to this email and include in the subject line – ‘Remove from XYZ Study’

     - Sender’s physical street address

The body of the message should include all of the following:

     - The first sentence should be compelling, and it should communicate the reason why taking the survey is  worthwhile. Be as specific as possible

     – Name of company or individual who is sponsoring the survey

     – Brief explanation of the purpose of the study

     - Amount of time it should take the respondent to complete the survey. Be honest; a time range is okay

     – Explanation of where/how the recipient’s email address was obtained

     - Clear instruction on how to access the survey

     – If there are screeners within the survey, include a statement around how the respondent must fully qualify and   complete the survey. This is especially important if an incentive is offered. For example, ‘We are looking for a specific target market.’

     – Incentive information (if applicable). Information must be clear. Sweepstakes rules or link to the rules should be included (if applicable)

The body of the message should not:

     - State that it is “not SPAM” (or use the word SPAM at all)

     - Sound anonymous or vague

     - Have lengthy text explaining the way the data will be used

     – Use pressure language such as “must” or “hurry now”

     - Use “scam” type of language or offering

Reminder emails should:

     – NOT be sent to people who opted out of the first mailing

     - Have the word “Reminder” in the subject line

     – Be an abbreviated version of the first email

Zoomerang also provides you with over 100 professionally designed online survey templates to help you create a best-in-class survey in minutes. With Zoomerang, you can quickly and easily create online surveys and receive the fast feedback you need to make important decisions. Remember: the information you need is only a survey away!

Zoomerang has a wealth of information available to help you collect the actionable data you need and analyze the results. You can find a new Zoomerang Survey Tip each day on Twitter which are designed to help make your survey experience a success.

To help keep you up to date, I have compiled the survey tips from the last week for easier reference and I will be posting an update weekly.

-  The body of the message should not use pressure language such as “must” or “hurry now”

-  Compare results between groups of respondents with Cross Tabs

-  With all types of questions avoid determiners e.g. always, never, without a doubt, etc…

-  Highlight the key words so respondents can easily spot the differences between similar questions

-  Organize your report logically, write clearly & avoid jargon that may be unfamiliar to your readers

You can find compiled lists of the previous Survey Tip of the Days as well as additional online survey tips and suggestions here at the Zoomerang blog as well as links to helpful Zoomerang tutorials and Zoomerang webinars.

Be sure to follow Zoomerang on Twitter if you would like to view the Survey Tip each day. You can also add the Zoomerang blog to your RSS feed or bookmark the site to get the weekly recap. If you have any survey tips you would like to share leave me a comment or send me an email, Zoomerang is all about sharing knowledge.

Zoomerang’s automated reports allow you to view your survey results online in real-time graphic format and your survey results are available to you with the click of a button:

- To ensure your survey success, we recommend first viewing the survey results analysis quick online demo

- Overall results (counts and percentages) for all completed interviews to all survey questions. This is the default report displayed on the Results Overview page

- Share your overall results online or via email

-  Compare results between groups of respondents with Cross Tabs. Understand how cross tabulation reports are calculated

 - Dig deeper into your survey data to analyze a subset of respondents with filtering

- See how each respondent answered your survey

- Exclude specific responses from your results

To help provide you with actionable data, Zoomerang offers these best practices tips for analyzing your survey data:

- Trending over time: For satisfaction surveys, be they customer, product, employee, training or otherwise, it is helpful to see how the ratings change over time, month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter, etc. To effectively track these trends, you will need to ensure your question content and rating scales remain consistent over time. For example, overall satisfaction with Zoomerang quarter after quarter has ranged from 95% to 97%

- If you want to generalize the survey results to a larger group, check to see how well your respondents represent that group. If you know certain profiling information about the audience you were trying to reach, for example the percentage of males and females, check to see whether you have the percentages you were expecting

- In creating a cross tab, the question that you believe changes or affects the responses to the other question, should be the column question. The question responses that are being affected or explained, should be the row question. For example, if you believe that gender affects likelihood of purchase, then gender should be selected as the column question

- Save Time! Allow Zoomerang to program, translate, and send your survey. We can even help you access your target audience for your survey

Zoomerang also provides you with over 100 professionally designed online survey templates to help you create a best-in-class survey in minutes. With Zoomerang, you can quickly and easily create online surveys and receive the fast feedback you need to make important decisions. Remember: the information you need is only a survey away!

Zoomerang offers three survey deployment options that are not mutually exclusive, so you may use more than one distribution option for a single survey. After the initial launch, you can always deploy the survey to additional recipients regardless of the option you chose initially.

Zoomerang online survey deployment options include:

- Send the survey by email through Zoomerang using email addresses from your address book or new addresses you enter

- Send the survey by email through Zoomerang using an email list provided by Zoomerang

- Generate a URL link to send through your own email system or to post on a website

If sending your survey through Zoomerang, Pro and Premium Zoomerang subscribers can schedule the survey to launch at a later date and time. Zoomerang Premium subscribers can also take advantage of the convenience of mobile phone surveys.

When deploying your survey keep these Zoomerang best practices in mind:

- Include opt-out instructions in your email invitations so respondents can let you know if they no longer wish to receive emails from you

- If a respondent chooses to opt out, remove their email address immediately to prevent spam complaints

- Do not send surveys via email deployment to a distribution list such as all@zoomerang.com. Only select the email deployment option if you have a one-to-one relationship, meaning only the receiving email address will take the survey and the link will not be forwarded. If you want to send to a distribution list, use the url option and send it via your own email client

Need survey tips? Zoomerang offers a great deal of free resources to help you including:

- 10 Tips to Improve Your Surveys

- How Many People Do I Survey?

- 12 Tips To Help Increase Your Survey Response Rates

- Survey Design Checklist