Print Buying Direct

How to Conduct Your Survey about your Newsletter – 9th October 2009

The type of survey you need depends on the accuracy of information you want. Many surveys are conducted to get a general sense of people’s feelings. Readership surveys for your newsletter can be as informal as calling a few readers from time to time, or as formal as embarking on a full-scale research effort.

Types of surveys:

• Mail-back
• Telephone
• Fax-back
• Focus groups
• Informal
• Online

When designing your survey, you’ll need to balance your desire for the ideal survey with cost, convenience, space and time.

Questions That Solicit Usable Answers

In any survey, you can ask two types of questions: open-ended or close-ended.

An open-ended question lets respondents answer in their own words. It gives them a great deal of freedom in answering the question. A close-ended question presents respondents with a list of choices, asks them to pick one or more, and leaves space for comments and suggestions. Close-ended questions have the advantage of providing answers that are easily summarised. For example, a hospital might survey patients and ask why they chose the facility.

The question can be presented as:

Why do you come to hospital?

• convenient location
• my doctor recommended it
• you offered a special test or service
• _____________ other

The results from this type of question can be easily summarised such as, 32% mentioned location, 27% mentioned doctor recommended, 37% mentioned special service, and 40% listed other.

If the question was presented in an open-ended format, it would appear as: Why do you choose this hospital?

The answers could range from “because my uncle works there”, to “reputation.” Getting wide range of answers isn’t necessarily bad. The difficulty starts when you begin to summarise the survey findings. You’ll have to decide whether “reputation” means the same thing as “well-qualified staff” or “you’re okay.” This is a major disadvantage.

However, consider the following situation. A hospital asked an open question for their survey and was surprised to find “good reputation” as the top answer. If they have led the respondents by the first three options and not have gotten as strong a response for “reputation”.

Check all the questions on your survey for clarity and wording. The best way to do this is to pretest the questionnaire on four or five people before sending it out. Pretesting tells you if there are problems with any of the questions and helps you estimate how long it takes to complete the questionnaire. Pretesting with open-ended questions can help you convert the answers to close-ended ones.

Christmas and New Year Promos – promote your business with our forthcoming offers on Wall Calendars, Desk Calendars, Xmas Cards, Promotional Wall Calendars and CD Calendars.

For more information on printing and graphic design please see some of our recent blog articles;

• Newsletter Print and Design – Why the Pros Survey Fewer People
• Newsletters – Pinpointing Reader’s Interests – part 2
• Newsletters – Pinpointing Reader’s Interests – part 1
• Printing – Paper and board – Certified and recycled
• Printing – Paper and board – Pricing and availability
• Printing – Paper and Board
• Print Finishing
• Digital Presses
• Digital Printing
• Offset Printing
• Print Production Management
• How to create a marketing plan incorporating promotional newsletters
• All you need to know about Digital Printing
• The Future of Printing
• Print Finishing
• Variable Data Printing
• ISO 12647 and Colour Management in Printing
• Pre-press – In Flight, Pre-Flight and Post-Flight
• Print, Paper and Recycling
• Design of the times – (Article reproduced from Printing World February 2009)
• Pre-press – 20 years of change
• Transactional and Direct Mail
• 7 Guidelines For Good Newsletter Printing
• Graphic Design
• Printing – Where in the world are we?
• Improving Your Response Rates to Leaflets, Flyers and Brochures
• HINTS & TIPS…The sales letter
• The History of Printing
• 10 Tips for Creatives in a Digital World
• Eight Easy Ways to Improve Digital Print Sales to Creative and Design Agencies
• Transactional and Variable data printing
• PUR or EVA? That is the question
• What you need to know about…… Perfect Binding
• What’s the point of Recycling Paper and Board?

Print Buying Direct is a Trading Name of The Printing House Ltd. One of the UK’s leading quality printing companies for short run, long run and large format colour printing. Based in Crewe, Cheshire and delivering to customers across the UK and Ireland.

Tags: CD calendars, Desk calendars, Newsletter Design, Newsletter printing, Promotional Wall Calendars, Wall calendars, Xmas Cards

This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 7:28 am and is filed under Banners, Business Stationery, Calendars, Christmas Cards, Leaflets and Brochures, News, Newsletters, Postcards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.