Surveys suck. That much, we can all agree on.
That's why we created PropFuel. It's a way to capture feedback and build stronger relationships with members by asking questions in small digestible bites throughout the year.
So now that you have a WAY to ask questions... what do you ask? How do you start figuring out what questions to ask?
Use this simple 3 step process for creating a healthy set of questions:
STEP 1: IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM/SEGMENT: Forget about the questions at first. Think about the problems you're facing. Think about your organization's key objectives. Are you trying to improve new member engagement? or improve your relationship with students? Perhaps you're trying to help your members grow into a higher level membership. What problem are you trying to solve and what does success look like?
And let's figure out who's involved. Is it new members, students, or basic members you want to upgrade to a full membership? This is the target. When you understand the target audience, you're more likely to model questions that relate to them.
STEP 2: IDENTIFY YOUR GOALS AND TOUCHPOINTS: Not only do we want to learn about our members, but we want to plant a seed in their heads that lead them to take an action. For example, awareness of offerings, event attendance, connect with staff, connect with other members, etc... Thinking about what would solve the problem in step 1 leads you to your goals and touchpoints with the target audience.
STEP 3: CURATE THE QUESTIONS: Now that we know the problem, our target audience, and what we're trying to accomplish, the questions become clearer and it's a lot easier to think about the questions we want to ask. It's a good idea to start with high level, structured questions, and then follow up with an open ended/unstructured question. So think of 1 or 2 questions to ask in each of several check-ins over time. Start simple. Brainstorm on different questions related to this problem and this audience. Don't rush it by asking everything up front. Take your time and build a stronger relationship over the course of the year. And remember, you can always make changes as you learn more about the problem and your target audience.
When you're creating a survey, it's easy to just pound out a billion questions. That might be why they suck. But when you're more strategic about asking 1 or 2 questions at a time, having a process makes it much easier to think of what's really important to ask and what will drive the best response rate and interaction with our members.
If you would like to see examples of how associations are solving member engagement problems, reach out to us at www.propfuel.com.
