Snap Surveys Blog

News / Events / Webinars / Guides

14 Things to Love About Online Surveys

Spread some survey love with our list of 14 things to love about online surveys

Online surveys are a flexible and efficient way to collect feedback and data from your respondents, which can be quickly analyzed and turned into shareable reports with actionable insights.

We’ve put together 14 key features of conducting an online survey.

1. Branding

With an online survey you have complete control over the branding. It’s quick and easy to add your logo and colors, and create a branded URL to share your online survey, so that your respondents can easily identify the survey with your organization.

2. Interactive questions

There’s a variety of different interactive questions that you can use in an online survey to make it more engaging, and gather better responses. Drag and drop questions allow respondents to visually categorize or rank items; interactive images can be a good alternative to check boxes; and sliders will allow you to include more options on a scale without using more space. Continue reading →

GDPR compliant surveys: Storing personal data

It’s all too easy to create a survey, collect responses, produce reports, and then move on to the next survey. But under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), there’s a spotlight on how long personal data can be kept for.

 

GDPR and personal data

The GDPR mandates that data should be deleted or anonymized once it is no longer needed for the purpose for which it was collected. This means that when you complete a research project, you should assess how long you need to keep the personal data relating to it, and anonymize or delete that data at the end of that period.

 

GDPR compliant data retention considerations

To help you comply with the GDPR rules when you are undertaking a survey project, we’ve outlined these data retention considerations:
Continue reading →

Including an Opt Out link in email survey invitations

As well as major changes to the way in which data is handled, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has also given individuals greater control over their personal data, how it’s used, and the interactions they have with organizations.

One of the ways in which you can ensure your surveys reflect these changes is by including an Opt Out link in every survey invitation email that you send to potential respondents.
Continue reading →

Including a Consent Question in a Survey

As part of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), all organizations must have a documented, lawful basis for processing personal data.

If you decide to use consent as the basis for collecting and processing survey response data, you will need to provide potential respondents with the relevant information so that they can give informed consent before proceeding with a survey.

How to include a consent question in your survey

One of the simplest ways to obtain a respondent’s informed consent to collect and process their personal data is by including a specific question at the start of a survey. There are a few things to consider when adding a consent question to your survey: Continue reading →

Anonymizing Data After Survey Completion

Learn how to anonymize data after your survey has been completed

This method may be particularly useful when you want to work with your survey data, but not in a manner which identifies your respondents.

Snap Survey Software stores respondent data in a file with the survey name and extension .rdf (respondent data file), and replies for each respondent are held in individual records in that file. When you delete the variable that holds the personal information from the survey file (.mdf), the details remain in the data file. It is possible to remove the personal data entirely.

We’ve create a helpful worksheet to walk you through the following steps: Continue reading →

Anonymization of Respondent Data in Online Surveys

Learn how to anonymize survey respondent data, but successfully track completion

We’ve create a helpful worksheet to get you started. We’ll walk you through the steps to upload your respondent database to Snap WebHost. From there, you’ll be able to send an email invitation that includes a unique respondent identifier.

You will be unable to match the survey responses to a given respondent.  You can, however, track whether a given respondent has responded and if not, send them reminder emails.

This worksheet is part of our GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) series of worksheets. The GDPR applies only to personal data. The obligations under the GDPR do not apply to anonymous data. We offer several options to anonymize your surveys, including the option to run anonymous surveys using Snap WebHost. Continue reading →

New Worksheet: Add an Emoji to an Email Invitation

Learn how to add an emoji to a survey email invitation using Snap WebHost

Want more people to complete your survey? Using emojis in your email subject lines is an effective, attention-generating method to engage with respondents and  increase your survey response rates.

Snap Webhost, online survey management system, allows researchers to send emails to respondents. These emails can be customized once uploaded to Snap Webhost. One of these customizations can be the addition of emojis.

We have created a helpful worksheet to walk you through the steps to using emojis in your next email invitation. You will learn how to:

Step 1: Find a desired emoji
Step 2: Login to Webhost and edit uploaded emails

View worksheet

GDPR – The New Normality and the Impact on the Survey Marketplace

What inspired us to develop a GDPR compliance tool for survey authors

So, the “GDPR Day” has come and gone, the world hasn’t ended, and I’m still getting emails from people I expect to (and a few that I don’t), but many seem to be privacy policy updates and I can always unsubscribe.

Some cookie alert and privacy messages seem a little more sophisticated than before but, in many respects, the new GDPR world doesn’t feel much different to the pre-GDPR world right now. A friend recently suggested that the GDPR is the Twenty-teens (“Tweenies”?) equivalent of the Millennium bug, i.e. a monumental amount of preparation and fuss then nothing happened! Continue reading →

Turn Leads into Customers With Follow-up Surveys

Successfully Qualify Leads and Turn them into Customers

Marketers know that sales conversions are dependent on how well the marketing and sales teams work together to nurture leads throughout the buyer’s journey. From the moment a website visitor completes a web form, to the time they participate in a sales demo, to the time they become a new customer,  that lead needs to be nurtured and refined throughout every step of the buyer’s journey.

As we all know, leads don’t turn into customers instantly (bummer!). You have to warm up a lead first, and methodically build a relationship with them before they will be ready to purchase. One way to learn more about your leads is to conduct a lead follow-up survey. A lead follow-up survey is a great way to better qualify your new leads and learn more about the information they want to receive throughout their individualized buyer’s journey. If done properly, lead follow-up surveys can prove to be a very valuable B2B sales tool. Here’s how you can include a lead follow-up survey in your everyday business practices. Continue reading →

Helpful Tip: Avoid Spam Filters When Sending Online Surveys

Tips to Avoid Spam Filters When Sending Online Surveys

When managing the administration of online surveys, it’s important to take spam filters into consideration. Why? Spam detection systems use a scoring system to evaluate how likely an email message is to be spam. One of the scores is often based on how many other emails have been received with the same content and this score will increase as further copies are received. At a certain point, this score will reach a trigger value and the recipients’ email system will choose how to manage that message. This can be to either mark the message as spam or reject it.

There are also limitations to delivery rates imposed by recipient mail servers. Exceeding these limitations results in a practice referred to as throttling. Throttling in terms of email means that a recipient mail server has accepted all the mail it is willing to accept from Snap WebHost survey management system for a certain period of time.

Each email provider’s system will use different settings and these are not published as making the information public would undermine the reliability of spam detection. As such, any advice given on how to avoid spam filters will never be infallible.

Make sure your subscribers have double-opted-in to receive your emails. Double-opt in means you know that the email address has been typed correctly and is a genuine address.  It also gives you an opportunity to ask recipients to add your email address to their address book.

Here are some tips to help you avoid spam filters. Continue reading →