Create Effective Marketing Surveys (that don't suck!)

Surveys have long served as a fundamental component of any marketing strategy.

Not only are they incredibly easy to create, but they are also one of the most direct ways to learn more about your target audience.

Want to learn how your customer’s shopping experience was? Or looking for customer feedback?

Easy. Write a few questions, attach them to your homepage, and *voila* you’ll have all the data you need to power personalization!

Well, while we hate to be the bearer of bad news… this method simply won’t cut it anymore.

While this tactic has been around forever, the use of marketing surveys has evolved in recent years.

Consumers are more aware than ever before about the aim of surveys to collect relevant information and power greater personalization. However, they are growing less and less willing to hand over their data so easily.

Plus, if the customer doesn’t get some sort of genuine value in return, then your business will likely see low completion rates.

Whether your business is looking to gain insights about your customers or conduct market research on potential customers, it’s no secret that marketing surveys are a need to have versus a nice to have.

Lucky for you, technology has come a long way and we have a solution to not only create fun, engaging surveys but also drive scalability and results. Keep reading to learn more, plus watch how Live Nation increased their lead capture rates by 5x since implementing interactive surveys.

What are Traditional Marketing Surveys?

Traditionally, marketing surveys serve two key functions:

1. Collect information from a single or group of people, and
2. Do it in a way that is repeatable, scalable, and consistent so the information is useful over time.

Online surveys have increased in popularity as they are much easier to distribute to the masses. When we think of traditional surveys, we might imagine a simple set of questions embedded on a website or an email, asking the user to take a few minutes to complete.

Often, the questions being asked are useful and important but are presented in a way that is often a one-sided value add only to the brand making the ask.

If marketing surveys seem more transactional than conversational, this can lead to an unfulfilling customer experience.

The fundamental challenges with traditional surveys are:

1. There are inherent biases
2. There’s a lack of insights into who is actually buying
3. Small take rates

This puts marketers in a particularly challenging situation. If a marketing team has a limited data set to work with, they are forced to make assumptions about their potential audience.

Plus, if the surveys aren’t engaging or beneficial to both parties, then conversion rates are likely to be low and your brand will not be able to achieve a comprehensive view of your customers.

In the digital era where consumers’ attention spans are not only shorter, but they are also becoming less tolerant for data collection without their consent, marketers across all industries are working to create surveys that, put simply, don’t suck.

The good news is your brand can effectively gain insights and appeal to the wants and needs of your target audience by shifting your marketing strategy to focus on conversational vs. transactional messaging.

How to Create Engaging Marketing Surveys

In order to create engaging marketing surveys, your business must prioritize the customer’s experience and ensure they are receiving value in exchange for offering over their data.

Maybe your customer is looking to learn something new or would love to receive a product recommendation that saves them time. Or, maybe your business recently launched a new product and is looking to educate your customers and guide them through an interactive experience.

No matter what type of value you are able to provide your customers, giving them the option to partake and submit their data or opt-out is imperative.

Below is an example of a marketing survey in the format of a personality quiz:

You will notice that customers are led through an experience that asks fun, engaging questions as well as first-party declared data questions, like what is your email address or how old are you.

Additionally, the experience shows a balance of open-ended questions, as well as multiple-choice and select-all-that-apply formats to keep the experience fun and personalized.

Creating balanced marketing surveys that combine fun with actionable insights is the best formula to provide a high-quality customer experience.

Not only will your brand effectively gain actionable insights to generate greater personalization, but customer satisfaction will also increase as well.

Marketing surveys can boost any content marketing efforts as they provide flexibility and are able to be launched anywhere.

For example, the personality quiz shown above is able to be launched, on-site, across social media, via email, and so much more.

By giving customers greater flexibility and transparency, the use of marketing surveys becomes much more beneficial to both parties.

Feeling inspired? Check out the Jebbit template gallery for some ideas to get started today!

Surveys: Renaissance or Revolution?

Now that we covered the basics of traditional surveys and how to better prioritize the customer experience, it’s time to highlight a brand that has done just that and so much more.

Introducing a new series called Cocktails and Conversations. Each episode will feature a new marketing expert that is prioritizing first-party declared data through the use of quiz commerce.

In episode 1, Anubhav Mehrotra, Head of Analytics & Measurement at Live Nation, joins Jebbit’s CMO Pam Erlichman to cover the topic of “Surveys: Renaissance or Revolution?”

2020 was a year unlike any other, forcing brands who rely on live-events, concerts, and festivals to quickly adapt and evolve their consumer engagement strategies.

Live Nation certainly ranks atop the list of those businesses most impacted, they were not deterred from leaning into innovative methods to better understand their customer’s preferences, needs, motivations, and intents.

As Anubhav Mehrotra summarizes, traditional surveys need to be supplemented with more engaging experiences that capture bite-sized information to show lifts, incrementality, and the change in mindset that a consumer may have at any point in their journey.

In our first episode of Cocktails & Conversation, you’ll hear Anubhav and Pam talk about:

• What they’re drinking (naturally)
• What they’ve been up to throughout the Pandemic
• And most importantly, Anubhav & Pam’s take on the topic du jour: Surveys: Renaissance or Revolution?

If you want to see what happens when you put consumers first and offer them genuine value, then check out the full episode of Cocktails & Conversations!

‍*Pro-Tip: Jump to the 15-minute mark for the first burning question of the episode!