How to Beat Online Surveys with Old-Fashioned Paper
Conducting surveys with your own customers is surprisingly difficult anymore. Phone options are dead, and online surveys are tough, because nobody answers or responds anymore. So what’s a researcher, strategist, or marketing professional to do? How about conducting a paper-based mail survey.
It sounds crazy, but we just did it, and it succeeded beyond what we had hoped. We got a 25% response rate.
The Versta Research spring newsletter came out this week with a feature article on How to Beat Online Surveys with Old-Fashioned Paper. It describes the conundrum we faced in trying to conduct a customer survey for Devon Bank.
You can read the whole story in our newsletter, but in brief, here is what it involved:
The Challenge
- An immigrant population
- More than 30 languages
- Few e-mail addresses or phone numbers
- A small customer base
The Solution
- A paper survey via U.S. mail
- Design based on census best practices
- An invitation about why the survey matters
- A generous cash incentive for participating
- A super short survey
- Translation for Russian, Arabic, Spanish, and Hindi
- Providing an online survey option
- Keeping Versta Research invisible
The Result
- An amazing 25% response rate
- Rich data that provided excellent insight
In short, we designed a unique and brand new (old-fashioned) approach, to a tough problem.
If you are interested in more details of what went into this paper survey and how it succeeded, feel free to browse the newsletter!
—Joe Hopper, Ph.D.
