How to Integrate Surveys into Your Communication Strategy

By Melissa Mintz

February 26, 2009 — Email marketing is already an integral part of most company’s corporate communication strategy, however many are not maximizing its potential to create a dialogue with customers and prospects.  Leveraging surveys to introduce two-way communication can increase the ROI of your campaigns by allowing you to gather important information before your send out your campaign.  It can also assist you with making important business decisions.  Here are some easy ways to incorporate surveys into your communication strategy.

The Invitation: A compelling survey invitation that is personalized and includes the purpose of the research will increase the number of recipients who open your email, and increase the number who click on the survey link to complete it. 

Using an Incentive:  The use of an incentive to encourage recipients to fill out the survey can greatly increase your response rate, but also has the potential to skew responses. Consider these factors before deciding whether to offer an incentive.

Survey Goals:  Before sending out the survey, make sure you’ve defined the objective of your survey and how you will evaluate the results.

Customer Insight:  One of the most popular uses of surveys is as a yardstick of customer satisfaction. Annual, semiannual, quarterly, or transactional surveys serve as a barometer of your business’ health and allow you to monitor your performance over time. Be sure to try and get feedback from your customers right after any interaction, while things are still fresh in their minds.

You Company’s Messaging:  You can make use of surveys to test what marketing message your customers and prospects react best to by sending a concept test survey to two segments – a small portion of your customers and a small portion of your prospects.  The results will provide you with insight into whether your current prospects require a different messaging or approach than you’ve used in the past.

Product Development:  By including graphics of new products and questions related to expected volume of purchase into test surveys, you can obtain powerful information to drive product development and even production quantities.

Event Marketing:  If you are in the marketing and event planning departments, surveys can help you coordinate the details of your events (e.g. meal preferences, arrival times).  You can also deploy a separate survey to evaluate your event afterwards and ask attendees whether they plan to come next year.

Building a real-time feedback loop into a number of sections of your annual business plan can provide you with a way to be nimble – and knowledgeable – in your operations and increase your bottom-line.