As part of planning a series of seminars on Social Media I decided to take a survey of my email list that might help decide on the day, length, price and topics. In just a couple of days I had a clear idea of how to schedule the seminars.

To do this in the past I had used Survey Monkey which was an adequate tool but this time I decided to try out the Constant Contact Online Survey Tool and I found there are several significant advantages.

Step 1 – Contacts:  I reviewed my contacts in Constant Contact and decided to send out the survey to people who lived in my geographic area.  I reviewed the sub-list with the Contact management tool.

Step 2 – Survey Design:  The Online Survey tool has many questionnaires already designed and I browsed and selected the one closest to my needs.  I deleted some irrelevant questions or modified the wording to make it appropriate.   I added introductory text and easily setup a reply page that respondents would see when they completed the survey.   I tested the survey to check that everything was working and that the flow would be clear.

Step 3 – Publish the survey: A link is generated that you can send in an email, post on your website or Facebook or other social media.   To use it in an email there is a link that takes you directly to templates useful in inviting your contacts to fill out the survey. All of this is integrated directly to your email and contact manager

Step 4 – Send out the link:  I created an email inviting people on my specified contact list to take the survey and used the email template as the building block for this. I worked on the email on the weekend but scheduled it to go out on Tuesday morning as that is a good time for people to respond.

Subject: Need your help – Social media seminar planning  See the email here

I also posted the link on my Facebook Business page – the results that come in from any replies from website or Facebook are listed as “anonymous”.  See link to the survey here.

Step 5 – Track Results:  With the excellent reporting features in Constant Contact I was able to graphs and numbers summarizing the results.  For questions that were open ended – the text shows up in a table format.  For optional contact information for people who wanted to continue to be informed a list of names, emails, website were tabulated – and again a very nice feature to add them to a list – I created a list “responded to survey” and this makes it easy to send them more information about the seminars.   The report can be exported to an XLS  file.   I will also be able to send invitations to this list in the event management module.   I was able to see that Thursday mornings for 2-3 hours would be the most popular seminar timing.   Many suggestions on topics and popular pricing are very helpful in planning the seminars.

Here’s an example export report from a survey. It includes the summary data in graph and numeric format.  It does not include the text answers that people gave as they included comments not for public view.  Social Media Seminar – copy for email – RESPONSES from survey1

Some examples of surveys

Here are just a few ideas of how to use surveys: Customer satisfaction, event planning, employee feedback, shopping and purchase experience, product development, website feedback, travel and tourism.  All of these and more have several templates in Constant Contact that give you a quick start in your survey design.

Value of a survey

A survey helps you to find out what your contacts think, need, want.  You can view the results on an individual or compiled in easy to read reports. With Constant Contact you are able to integrate this information with your contact list management and with your email newsletter or invitation.  With the many templates available the design part of survey creation is greatly simplified.

Start your free trial of Constant Contact to see in detail how the survey / email / contacts work seamlessly together to create a powerful way to communicate with your contacts and get relevant feedback directly from them by asking.

Constant Contact is very responsive in replying to your questions and have great customer support.