Top 10 Tips: Get the Most out of Mobile Surveys
Key to the success of a mobile survey campaign is the management of the entire process including properly engaging and incentivising respondents. As the market leader in mobile surveys, OnePoint is committed to defining best practices to help you to be as successful as possible when using this latest methodology.
Why Mobile Surveys?
Mobile surveys are a cost effective method of gaining real-time responses from recipients about any subject anywhere in the world at anytime. Compared to traditional surveys methods which have seen response rates as low as 2%
1 , mobile surveys provide instant feedback and see response rates as high as 80%
2 . The mobile phone is today’s communication tool of choice with 94% of all text messages being read
3 and 82% being responded to within 1 hour
4 . Immediate feedback is proven to be 40% more accurate
5 with response rates increasing by 10% to 12% simply by requesting feedback as soon as the event is completed
6 because the information is fresh in the respondents mind.
Using the mobile phone to engage with your audience is an obvious choice considering that 40% of the global population owns a mobile phone, that is 3.5 Billion mobile handset owners
7 , and that the penetration of the mobile handset is three times higher than current numbers of Internet connections (1.3 billion vs. 3.5 billion
8 ). Furthermore, it is an inevitable trend that the future of the web is progressing towards the mobile handset.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Mobile Surveys
Here are our Top 10 Tips to help you get the most out of your mobile survey campaign ranging from survey design, targeting, and implementation.
Decide what you want to achieve from the campaign – this can range from measuring customer satisfaction levels, diary tracking, omnibus opinions, generating leads or improving brand awareness. These objectives will help you design and implement your mobile survey and measure the success of the campaign.
The following factors help keep the survey abandonment rate to a minimum:
- Don’t ask too many open questions - the recommended maximum number of questions is 5 for SMS surveys and 10 for WAP surveys.
- Select the most appropriate question types - multiple choice, rating scales and free text.
- Use intelligent question routing - enables each new question to be initiated by the answer of the previous one which optimises response rates and data quality.
- Make sure the survey content is relevant to your target audience.
- Make the survey simple and easy to complete by keeping the questions concise - aim for the entire survey to take no more than a couple of minutes.
- Name the organisation that is sending the survey and state its purpose - this provides a good opportunity to brand the survey.
There are two ways in which you can gather feedback with a OnePoint mobile survey:
- Invite responses (outbound survey) - send a survey to a selected list of recipients such as a customer list or a panel. These surveys can be fully personalised based on the recipient profile data that you upload and their responses.
- Self initiate responses (inbound survey) - promote a keyword, for example ‘FEEDBACK’, to let people take part in your survey by texting a short code.
By using OnePoint’s unique short code - 85001- it is FREE for recipients in the UK and Northern Ireland to receive and respond to SMS surveys.In certain circumstances a combination of both methods is appropriate in order to gain maximum response rates. For example an event organiser could send all ticket holders a survey to their phone during the event as well as promote a keyword and short code on poster boards and flyers in order to gain their feedback or promote a special offer for an upcoming event.
WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) is commonly used to described the ‘Cut Down’ method of accessing the Internet. The reduction in functionality specifically addresses the constraints of the mobile environment (e.g. screen size, processor speed, transmission speed, graphics capability), but demands a consistent network connection to work effectively.
SMS (Short Messaging Service) is used to describe the transfer of a text message from one device to another, usually from mobile to mobile, but with OnePoint from mobile to survey service. It only demands that the device is connected to the network for the period of the text transfer and therefore is more effective in lower quality network areas.
Decide whether SMS and WAP is the most appropriate media for targeting your audience. This is dependant on several factors:
- The type of questions you want to ask
- What answers you want to receive
- The country that your respondents are in
- The demographic of your audience
A key principle of OnePoint Surveys is that mobile surveys are free for participants to receive and respond 9 however an incentive is still a good idea to encourage high response rates. The incentive does not need to be of significant monetary value but should be appropriate for the target audience, for example a restaurant could offer a discount off the next meal or entry into a free prize draw for a crate of champagne.
It is always advisable to test the survey with a small sample in order to iron out any teething problems and make final adjustments based on what you learn.
Dependent on the purpose of your survey, a call to action may be required. The call to action should be clearly stated for example ‘Become an advisory panel member’ or ‘Order a brochure’ or for a business to business customer ‘Book an appointment’. It should also be very simple for the respondent to fulfil the call to action.
At times it may be appropriate to consider combining mobile surveys with other aspects of a marketing or research campaign in order to complement the wider activity to capture different types of respondents in different environments.
If you opt to conduct a survey which respondents need to self-initiate by texting a keyword to a short code the promotion is key to its success. Leverage every opportunity to promote the survey including, posters, flyers, adverts, packaging, receipts, tickets and emails. All communications should include:
- The keyword and short code
- The cost, if any, that will be incurred by the respondent to participate. Note that with OnePoint Surveys it is free for participants to receive and respond 9.
- Any incentives
- Time it will take i.e, “Spend less than a minute telling us your thoughts…”
It is vital that you have a clear understanding of the specific laws in the countries where you plan to conduct surveys. In some countries, including the US, it is illegal to send an unsolicited message to somebody’s mobile phone. In this case a participant would need to text a keyword to a short code in order to initiate the survey. The laws also vary between countries relating to prize draws including the nature and value of the prize and the time period of the draw. The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has published guidelines for mobile marketing:
http://mmaglobal.com/modules/article/view.article.php/1107 References:
1 Refers specifically to postal surveys - Alison Gill, CEO, Getfeedback.net
2 Survey by Dipsticks Research Ltd gained 81% response rate in 5 minutes & total response rate of 95% in 5 hours.
3 MMA, 2004
4 NOP World, 2003
5 Gartner Research, March 2006
6 Gartner Research, March 2006
7 49th Appleton lecture by Mike Short Vice President, R&D, O2. Prediction is supported by the Netsize guide ‘08.
8 www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm , March 2008
9 This may vary between countries.