Survey Says... Part Deux

So last week, I received an email from Nike that I covered in a previous post. The gist is that if you’re going to send out a survey email -- especially early in the morning while people are at work – make it short and sweet. It can’t be too distracting or time-consuming, since people gots things to do!

Today, I received a survey email from Photobucket, which was significantly efficient in comparison to the Nike survey. It was short, sweet and to the point. Expectations were set up front at the beginning of the survey that it would take no more than two minutes. There was one page of questions (no more than ten at the most) instead of the three (or more) pages worth of questions I encountered with Nike.

The moral of the story here is that timing and expectations are everything. If you must send out a lengthy survey, time it appropriately and let your subscribers know either how many questions they are committing to, or how long they can expect to spend on your survey: Send it early evening, when most people will have enough free time to commit to filling it out in its entirety. If you want to get a feel of what your client base is thinking, it’s ok to send out a survey during the day while people are at work. If you’re looking for a more specific feel, break the survey up into separate parts. People will be more willing to invest their time to let you know what they think.