In the last article, I talked about the four types of surveys you can use to improve your marketing and retention.

The article began with this:

People have a love/hate relationship with surveys.

Nobody loves them and everyone hates them… unless you keep them short and/or incentivize the completion.

I should have stopped at this point to go deeper on how this should look.

After all, execution is what matters. There’s no point in knowing what kind of surveys to run if nobody completes them.

Below are the four main ways to get your surveys completed without annoying your members.

1. Use them sparingly

Nobody wants to complete your survey.

Running a survey is like making a withdrawal at the bank.

You had better deposit a lot of goodwill before you ask people questions, even if your goal is to make their experience better.

Aim for no more than twice or three times a year (depending on the type and context).

2. Make them easy to complete

When you do decide to ask people questions, make sure it’s super easy for them to do.

One way to make it easy is to send a one-click email survey.

Or walk around with an iPad asking people for a moment of their time to ask a few questions while they are warming up their lunch.

The less friction involved, the more likely they are to complete them.

3. Keep them short

A big part of making them easy to complete is keeping them short.

Long surveys tell me you don’t value my time. Time is people’s most valuable assets.

I’m a big fan of 1-3 question surveys. Ask good questions, get good answers.

4. Incentivize their completion

The best way to encourage completion of your surveys without making a withdrawal is to offer a reward for completion.

There are a lot of creative ways you can reward (compensate) people for their time and responses.

The most straightforward way is to give out gift cards to local businesses or access to one of your services for free (such as meeting room time).

If you don’t give people value that is equal to or greater than the time it takes to complete a survey, you’re making a withdrawal.

Always err on the side of generosity.

Takeaway

Whenever possible, do not ask people to complete a survey unless it’s short, easy, infrequent, and comes with an incentive.

The last thing you want to do is make withdrawals on the goodwill of your members. They pay you good money to use your space, so make sure you are always contributing more than you take in each interaction.

And if you’re not convinced that surveys are actually valuable to your business and worth the time and effort, stay tuned…