subject: Create Surveys: Web-based Or Email Based? [print this page] Surveys have become integral marketing strategies for most business ventures across the globe. They not only help getting information from clients about their preferences, but also help keeping an open-door policy between entrepreneurs and clients, fostering a healthy relationship between them. Knowing what the clients want is key to the success of any business. Not only this, surveys also play a vital role in enhancing relationships between employers and employee by knowing the attitude of employees.
There are basically two kinds of surveys being created, implemented and benefitted from: web-based and email surveys. Both have their own pros and cons; it purely depends on your requirements and objectives to choose either or even both. When you create surveys that are web-based, they are simply posted on your website and marketed. On the other hand, email surveys are mailed to existing and prospective clients to gather information about their wants and preferences. This article provides a quick overview of both, web-based and email surveys to help you decide on your marketing strategies.
Email Surveys
Email surveys are efficient, easy and cost-effective. Questionnaires of e-mail surveys are pretty simple and target specific. You could shoot out e-mail surveys to your database and quickly receive their responses. There are several advantages of email surveys in comparison to web-based surveys. They are faster mediums of gathering data and after the initial step of creating and shooting them to clients, it becomes absolutely cost-effective. It is like a one-time investment plan, i.e. if you choose good survey software available in the market which permits you to create, analyze and sort data. When you create surveys that are email based, you could also attach pictures and sound files. Plus, you would receive higher response rates as compared to spam mail surveys.
Some demerits of e-mail surveys are that you would require a list of client emails, you might not be able to generalize the findings of e-mail surveys to entire population and most email surveys cant automatically skip questions.
Web-based Surveys
Web-based surveys are popular these days, with their significant benefits with time and cost saving. Such surveys reach out to maximum customers at once and can be modified to skip questions any time. A web-based survey posted on popular websites such as your company website or social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, can collect several responses within a couple of hours. It is also cost-effective and media flexible. The best advantage of web-based surveys is that the questionnaires utilize complex questions-skipping logic, randomization and other efficient features. A large data can be collected and superior analysis can be conducted on web-based surveys.
However, when you create surveys that are web-based, there are chances that people would quit the questionnaire in between due to various factors and authenticity can be questioned.
With this information, you could now decide the type of surveys that would work best for you!
