What kinds of things can I do with surveys and forms?

Dear Stumped,

Our, ahem, nifty surveys & forms feature makes it easy to quickly collect information – juicy stuff like customer feedback, registration forms, market research and employee questionnaires – then apply it in all sorts of interesting ways.

With what you learn from surveys & forms, you can email new segments of your audience, improve your latest product or know exactly how many copies of Loverboy Classics: Their Greatest Hits to order for your upcoming 80s-themed dance party. (We'll be there, with taffeta on.)

Here are our suggestions for putting surveys to work. For handy reference, we've divided 'em into four broad categories, with a few specific suggestions and details alongside each:

---------------

Feedback

+ Send a customer service evaluation form
+ Create a product review
+ Publish a product sampling survey

These days, a lot of organizations are focusing on better service, loyalty and retention, knowing that their current customers (or donors, members or fans) are among their most valuable assets.

Why not send a quick survey asking those folks for feedback on your latest product, your customer service or even your monthly email newsletter? You'll hear great insight from your customers, and your customers will have an easy way to share their thoughts with you. If only there were a punchy phrase to describe this kind of mutually beneficial situation. Oh, well.

Events

+ Create an event registration form
+ Follow up with a post-event questionnaire + Send an evaluation form for an online class

If you host events of any kind - seminars, conferences, online classes or fundraisers - you're probably coordinating lots of moving parts. Are the parts literally moving? One hopes not, unless you're envisioning some kind of elaborate event showcasing pulleys and levers and such, in which case, good luck with that.

No matter how involved your events are, surveys & forms can simplify how you manage 'em, with pre-event forms to register who's coming and post-event surveys to collect feedback. Pair surveys with date-based trigger emails to simplify things even more, automatically inviting attendees to take your survey one week after the big pulley showcase.

Market research

+ Create an opinion poll
+ Conduct a market research survey
+ Discover new segments of your audience

Alas, many of us come from humble email marketing beginnings, starting out with nothing in our databases but email addresses and first names. With surveys & forms, you can expand on that knowledge a bit and ask your audience where they live, what their interests are or where they work.

Use what you learn to refine a product or entice advertisers with better demographics. Or fold that information into your email strategy to create new segments of your audience. Then, send more targeted campaigns down the road based on what you now know. You savvy marketer, you.

Employees

+ Send an employee satisfaction survey
+ Create a company suggestion form
+ Publish a quick staff-wide poll

As you're seeing how email and surveys can help you stay in touch with your customers, don't forget the same tools can help you get to know your employees better, too. A survey helps you gauge employee satisfaction, and you can even collect responses anonymously to protect your staffers' privacy.

You might also send a survey to get employee feedback on simple but meaningful things around the office. If you've got a monthly charitable budget, poll your people to see which non-profit they'd most like to support. Find out which after-hours social destination is most popular. Or send a survey about the all-important break room snack options. The people, they want the Funyuns.

Something we haven't even thought of yet

While we hope a few examples inspire you to try surveys & forms at your organization, we know your use of the new feature will be as unique as you are. That's just the ingenuity of the Emma community - with your own brand, style and goals in mind, you'll put surveys & forms to work in ways we haven't dreamed up yet. Which is not to say we dream about surveys at night. But if we did, that wouldn't be weird.

---------------

However you're using surveys, we're eager to hear how things are going out there. Don't hesitate to give us feature feedback, check out our survey self-help or ask us whatever question's on your mind. Oh, and happy surveying!

Cheers,
Emma