Survey Says...

I received an email from NikeiD this morning. It arrived in my inbox at 7:26AM EST. When messages are sent at that time, it’s on top of my inbox when I arrive at the office. Pure genius email marketing.


But what if I had subscribed using my personal account? No worries there. According to the Consumer Email Study conducted in December 2005 by DoubleClick, 21% of respondents check their personal email at work all the time, while 48% of respondents check their personal email at work at least occasionally.

For retailers, such as Nike, their email marketing campaigns can almost insure that consumer shopping and browsing hours include working hours.

The timing of their email was well thought out. It was one of the first messages I opened this morning. Unfortunately, the survey the email was requesting I take was not as well planned.

I clicked on the link in the email, which brought me to a well designed survey that was a mix of single answer, multiple answer and form boxes that allow the survey participant to explain their answer if needed.

I was dismayed to see that after I completed the first page there was a NEXT link at the bottom of the page. There were more questions. Before I jumped into the second page, I scrolled down to see if I would be completed with the survey after another full page of questions. When I found another NEXT link, I abandoned the survey.

Nike’s timing was sure to catch people as they were starting their workday. And without any idea of how much time the survey would take, I could not commit to continuing any further.

If you are planning to survey your subscribers, and you are trying to gather a lot of information, set expectations about how long the survey will take if it will take longer than a few minutes, or is more than one page.

Consider gathering information from your subscribers in the form of crumbs, rather than loaves. Subscribers are more likely to spend 45 seconds at a time over the course of several weeks answering questions rather than investing 10 minutes all at once.