How to schedule surveys in Pollfish

How to schedule surveys in Pollfish

Sometimes it’s not always convenient to launch your survey—either it’s not in your target audience’s time zone at launch, or perhaps you’re away from your computer. With survey scheduling in Pollfish, you can automate the process and send surveys at your convenience.

Benefits of scheduling surveys

The benefit of scheduling surveys is that you can set them to run anytime, on your own schedule. Whether you’re about to leave town for vacation or want to be prepared for work the next day, a scheduling feature can automate the sending of your survey for a time that works best for you or your target audience.

When scheduling your survey, you can also select whether or not you want to add additional responses to your survey on a recurring basis for continual monitoring. For example, if you wanted to measure the impact of a quarterly campaign, you could schedule the same survey to run at two different dates with sufficient time for you to gather data needed to measure your impact on brand awareness or ad effectiveness. Other times, a recurring survey can validate actions you already have in place, ensuring that you’re still on the right course.

What to keep in mind when scheduling surveys

Be ready 2+ hours ahead.

When surveys are scheduled, they launch automatically at the set date and time. This means all audience targeting and questions in your questionnaire must be finalized before selecting the scheduled time. The minimum amount of time for selecting scheduled surveys is 2 hours before the survey launches.

Targeting cannot be changed on scheduled surveys.

Once your survey is scheduled, your targeting is set and cannot be changed. For surveys that have multiple occurrences, the same targeting will be used and the same number of responses added to your existing survey. If targeting needs to be changed in a scheduled survey, that survey must be canceled and a new one created.

This can easily be done in your dashboard by duplicating an existing survey and making the manual changes needed before rescheduling the launch.

The survey's completion status has no impact on future scheduled additional responses. For example, if a survey was scheduled for 3x occurrences with 2000 responses added each time and only 1000 are complete by the scheduled date of the next round, 2000 additional responses would be automatically added regardless of how far the survey has progressed.

Timezones and frequency are in your control.

Scheduled surveys allow you to select the time, timezone, and frequency of your survey’s launch. This can be a one-time scheduling or it can be set up for daily, weekly, quarterly or custom occurrences to add more respondents and track changes in target audience attitudes and behaviors over time.

Billing occurs on a rolling basis.

A scheduled survey appears in your dashboard under the status of “scheduled” once it has been approved. Payment will not be collected until the survey launches to ensure all billing information is accurate and up-to-date. Each scheduled occurrence of a survey will be billed separately at the time that additional responses are added.

This also gives you the opportunity to cancel and reschedule surveys as needed up until 2 hours prior to launch at no cost to you. There is no additional charge for choosing to schedule a survey or penalty for canceling one.

How to schedule a survey

Survey scheduling is offered as an option when you check out. This means your audience targeting and questionnaire must be selected and finalized when you get to the checkout page to be approved. Targeting cannot be edited in scheduled surveys, so be sure to select the right audience prior to launch.

You can also select the number of times you want to run the survey, the dates and times in which you want to launch it, and the timezone you want it to launch in. The number of responses you have selected for your original survey will be added on the scheduled date for each occurrence. All of these can be selected in your checkout option.

by Ally

How To Export Survey Data With Pollfish (And What To Do With It)

How To Export Survey Data With Pollfish (And What To Do With It)

It may sound like a cliche coming from a consumer data company, but data is powerful.

It is so powerful, in fact, that one single survey can touch every corner of an organization. By building smart questionnaires, carefully choosing targeting options and exporting and slicing data, brands can create internal messaging, build dynamic content, remake company strategy, build new products and much more.

To get the most out of your next survey, understanding your data export options is a great place to start.

What Are Export Options?

When you create a survey with Pollfish, you can download your results as four different report types. These reports present your data in radically different ways, and allow the various teams within your company to inject data into everything from interactive infographic to complex statistical analyses.

What Report Types Does Pollfish Offer?

PDF

What is a PDF?

PDF stands for Portable Document Format. A PDF is a file format developed by Adobe in the 1990s to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. Basically, instead of your document adopting the settings of the application you are saving the document to, PDFs stay true to how you saved them originally, similar to how a screenshot might behave.

What can I do with it?

The Pollfish PDF report offers a convenient, visually appealing document that can be shared with stakeholders, added to reports and saved as reference docs. The layout of the Pollfish PDF is similar to that of a PowerPoint presentation.

Excel Spreadsheet

What is an Excel Spreadsheet?

Microsoft’s spreadsheet platform should be instantly recognizable to anyone working in a modern business environment.

What can I do with it?

With an Excel spreadsheet export from Pollfish, you will have full access to all results from your Pollfish survey inside the data management platform you know best. Add pivot tables, graphs, use functions to get deeper insights--anything your Excel mastermind can dream up.

The report layout helps you access the right data more quickly, separating out the full list of respondents, as well as individual spreadsheets for each question, delivered in the familiar tab layout of Excel.

Lastly, once you have created your perfect data set, adding your data to Google Sheets allows you access to a great number of API and data delivery tools for use in websites, interactive infographics and more.

Crosstabs Report

What is a Crosstabs Report?

For a full guide to using your Crosstabs report, the Pollfish Resources Center can help. That article offers this definition:

Crosstabs are a matrix-style format for data visualization and are one of the most useful and common ways that market researchers analyze data. Pollfish offers cross tabs as an excel export for easy synthesis outside of the platform.

What can I do with it?

Crosstabs reports allow you to dig into individual insights and slice the data different ways, opening the door to different consumer insights that wouldn’t be readily available from the initial results.

For example, let’s say you conducted a survey of Android users interested in switching to an iPhone. With Crosstabs,  you could see what percentage of women Android users surveyed were interested in switching. You could also see, of those interested in switching, what percentage were women.

So in our data, let’s say we find that only 13% of women Android users are interested in switching. We also find that, of those interested in switching, 58% are women. So while it may seem Android’s female fanbase is pretty loyal, you can also see that women are more open to switching in this survey than men.

As you can see, Crosstabs can be used to slice data in different directions to gain additional context on data, and build deeper, more compelling insights.

SPSS Report

What is an SPSS Report?

SPSS stands for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. The acronym refers not to the type of data being exported, but to a set of software programs combined in a single package. When data is formatted for this package, it allows you to add your Pollfish results to various kinds of complex data analyses.

What can I do with it?

SPSS is very good at combining varied, complex data sets. Researchers use it to make connections, find correlations and quickly graph results from multiple data exports at once.

SPSS has several tools for analyzing data to make predictions and spot patterns, increasing it’s usefulness for brands and marketers looking for trends in buying behavior or trying to vet the viability of a new product or service.

How To Export Data With Pollfish

Step 1: Complete Your Survey

Once you have chosen your targeting, questionnaire and screening/quota configuration, checkout and run your survey. Once your results are complete, you will be able to export your data.

Step 2: Visit The Results Page

Even before exporting your data report, there is plenty you can do right on the Pollfish results dashboard. Check out the different features, slice your data by using the demographic and psychographic checkboxes to the left. Watch your results update as you go. Once you have gotten a few reports where you want them, check out the visualization options available on each question. These will allow you to instantly create graphs and charts to display your data one question at a time.

Step 3: Export Your Report

From your results dashboard, find the button marked Export Results in the top right corner underneath the Credits Counter. When you click this button, a pop-up should appear allowing you to choose your preferred report and download.

A Few Things To Remember…

• • Post-Stratification data is not currently available in the PDF export format.
  • Crosstabs reports come with multiple views, not just the one that appears in the first tab. Make sure you scroll through all tabs to see the different ways you can slice your data.

by John Steele

How to test ad copy using Pollfish.

How to test ad copy using Pollfish

The objective of an advertising campaign is to bring a brand’s message to their target audience, but it can be challenging to know if the message is right. To help with this, brands and agencies can test ad-copy using Pollfish surveys to get data earlier in the process.

Why test ads before launch

When it comes to brands aligning themselves with ideologies, using humor, or moving into new markets where translation may be confusing, testing ad-copy and creative early can make or break a campaign’s success.

Many brands and agencies use Pollfish to help them understand consumer sentiment and behavior to develop ideas for a campaign’s overall message, but Pollfish can also be an asset later in the process. Ad testing early on helps validate the direction, ideation, and creative used. It can also prevent brands from making embarrassing mistakes by revealing confusing or misguided messages prior to launch.

It's especially important for brands exploring more risky, politically charged advertising to make sure they don’t inadvertently damage their image by launching campaigns that are perceived as “tone deaf” or don’t resonate with the target audience. 

With Pollfish’s advanced targeting and variety of question types to choose from, you can test all parts of ad messaging with the right audience early on. Feedback from real consumers before launch gives you data to pivot the campaign as needed without costing a fortune in time, resources, or damaging credibility.

Building a copy test survey with Pollfish

Like all research projects, the best way to test ad-copy will vary depending upon your goals and needs, what type of creative you need to test, and what you need to learn as a result of your research.

Many companies use Pollfish to gather consumer sentiment to determine the direction of their campaign, but they can also use Pollfish to validate it. By presenting the target audience with the ads and asking them to choose the message that best fits, campaign creators can determine that their ads are telling the right story and tapping into the emotions that they want to influence.

A/B Testing

A/B testing involves showing a group of people one concept, followed by a similar group being shown another variation and comparing the results to determine which performed better. On Pollfish, this can be achieved by creating two separate surveys to show Creative A and Creative B to similar groups by selecting the same targeting. 

You can only include one photo, video, or audio file in the question for now, however, you can upload a single image as a split-screen to offer an option to select between images. You can also add images to the answers, allowing you to structure the question differently if you prefer. 

Because Pollfish is one of the only survey tools that allows additions of image, audio, and video media on questions and answers, you have a variety of ways to test other creative in addition to ad-copy.

Test CTAs

To test different CTAs, consider providing an overview of an ad or a short video to engage the audience. At the end, ask them to select, or rank, the CTAs they would be the most likely to click based on the information they were presented with. 

Testing ad effectiveness

A similar form of testing completed after a campaign is live is useful when trying to better understand which messages most resonated with consumers. For example, if consumers are asked to recall where they saw an ad or the brand it was for, their results can help measure the effectiveness of the ad or creative in question. 

To measure ad-effectiveness using Pollfish, we recommend running a pre-test prior to the campaign to collect metrics for awareness, favorability, and other objectives. Once the campaign is complete, duplicate the survey in the same area to compare changes in metrics and validate your campaign’s impact. 

Ad-copy testing is a simple, effective way to validate concepts prior to launch or catch catastrophic mistakes before they’re made. With Pollfish, a simple survey can provide all the information you need to get your campaign on the right track. Reach out to support for additional assistance or to get our ad-copy testing template questions. 

by Ally