Once in a while, you need to collect opinions of other people in a nice way. One of the options is to create a survey on Survey Monkey. Here are the steps I did to create (and manage) a survey

Log in

This is the first step. You'll need to create an account. They offer free accounts, but those have some limitations (e.g. 3 collectors per survey).

Create the Survey

Use the following steps:

  • Click on Create new survey button
  • Select the title - a meaningful title for the survey
  • Select the category - e.g. Political. This option has bearing if you choose a template and gives you some hints when building up the questions

Edit Survey

  • Select the theme - I have created a copy of the Acqua theme, but the default is OK
  • Add a logo - upload a jpeg image> Note that it has to be fairly small for better performance.
  • Add questions (e.g. multiple choice, single answer). Note that if you choose drop-down representation, a blank entry will be shown in the list.
  • Add any header/footer "Pages" - This is e.g. explanatory text.

Create the list of respondents

Add collector

The collector is the way communication is handled to collect messages.

  • Collect response via email - will send an email to all members of the list
  • Name the collector
  • Add the recipients (e.g. manually or from another collector/survey)
  • Select - Send to New/Unsent

Create the message

  • Fill up the From field with an email address like [email protected] where SURVEY-SLUG is a survey identifier (e.g. "COMPANY vice-President Survey" would result in something like "[email protected]").

IMPORTANT!

If you select an email with your own company address (e.g. [email protected]), the email can be filtered out by your own company's firewall and no feedback will be given (either to you or in SurveyMonkey), so you'll never know if the email reached the target.

  • Fill up the Subject with the relevant subject line
  • Enter the desired text in the Message box. Besides the text, several tags are recognised (see the website for exact information). You can perform spellchecking of the message (most modern browsers have their own checkers).

Preview and send

  • You can edit the recipients list and the message before sending
  • Optional - You can select "Change Settings" in the survey and select "Yes" for "Display a Thank You Page"
  • Clicking on "Send now" will schedule the message to be sent in approx 5 mins.

Follow up

  • You may send a companion email from your (or functional) email to notify users of the incoming survey (and e.g. check their spam folder)
  • You can send a reminder email to people who have not filled up the survey
  • You need to re-create the message accordingly (see "Create the message" above). Remember to change the email address!

Closing

You can close the collector in two ways:

  • Manual and
  • Automatic

Manual closure

  • From the "Collect Responses" tab,
  • Select a collector
  • Choose Close Collector Now

Automatic closure

  • From the "Collect Responses" tab,
  • Select a collector
  • Choose "Change Restrictions"
  • Select "Set Cutoff Date & Time"
  • Enter your date/time

NOTE: Automatic closure doesn't send a reminder.