The U.S. postal system may seem a bit old-fashioned, but in many instances mail surveys provide higher response rates (and perhaps more representative results) than telephone surveys or online surveys. That is, if 100 households were surveyed by mail, phone, and online, it’s likely that a greater number of completed surveys would result from the mail survey. This is especially true if incentives are offered, and if the topic of the survey is of moderate to high interest, such as the new car recently purchased, or the diamond engagement ring, or the music concert, etc. Mail response rates tend to be lower among downscale consumers, but this is also true for the telephone and the Web.

Mail Survey Experience

Optimize Data Analytics’ mail survey experts have managed and processed thousands of mail surveys from simple postcard invitations to online surveys, to multicell, in-home product tests, to major customer satisfaction monitoring studies, to large market structure studies, to global tracking studies. Capabilities include:

• Postcard or letter invitations to an online survey
• Warranty card receipt and processing, online and offline
• Multipage paper questionnaires
• In-Home Usage Tests

Project Management

Optimize Data Analytics provides complete mail survey services, including:

• Sampling
• Questionnaire design and layout
• Tracking identification coding
• Variable inserts
• Printing
• Test product labeling
• Test product packaging
• Test product mailing or shipment
• Insert, meter and mail
• Business reply mail accounts
• Incentive fulfillment
• Response tracking
• Editing questionnaires
• Data entry
• Quality assurance
• Cross-tabulations
• Statistical analysis
• Reporting

Mail Questionnaire Design and Layout

Since mail surveys are the original self-administered questionnaires, they need to be simple and easy to understand, with no skip patterns (if possible) and with a minimum number of open-ends. Optimize Data Analytics has created hundreds of mail questionnaires over the years, and prides itself on exemplary mail surveys. Optimize Data Analytics’ mail survey design team can design the letterhead, postcards, questionnaires, and envelopes with your existing brand and logo or other graphics for printing.

When the informational needs of a project dictate a more complicated questionnaire design, Optimize Data Analytics recommends programming the questionnaire online, and then mailing survey invitations to potential respondents, inviting them to the online survey.

Sampling

Optimize Data Analytics utilizes sampling and panel management software system, to simultaneously balance samples by geography, gender, age, income, and ethnicity with random selection of respondents within each quota cell.

All mailing lists are cleaned, dedupped, and assigned a unique ID before mailing. When appropriate, mail samples are cleaned via the NCOA Database and CASS certification.

Survey Return Handling & Response Tracking

Completed questionnaires and forms are typically returned to one of Optimize Data Analytics’ business reply accounts. Respondent participation is carefully tracked using Icion®. Once surveys are returned to Optimize Data Analytics, the questionnaires go through editing, coding, and data entry processes, followed by data cleaning and quality assurance checks. Cross-tabulations come next, followed by analysis and reporting.

Mail Surveys Versus Online Surveys

Mail surveys provide the widest reach, since almost everyone has a known mail address. However, only a subset of the population may be reached by online surveys (not everyone is online) or by telephone surveys (not everyone has landline, answering machines screen calls; do-not-call list blocks many numbers, etc.).

Mail surveys are best for moderate- to high-interest product categories, where participants are most likely to respond to mail surveys.

When to use an Online Survey:

• When the questionnaire is long and complex, involving skip patterns.
• When the target audience is reachable via email.
• When the results are time sensitive.

When to use a Mail Survey:

• When the questionnaire is simple and easy to follow for respondents.
• When you have time to wait for completed surveys.
• When the audience is difficult to research by other methods.

Combined Mail and Online Surveys

A combined data collection approach is a solution to consider. In a combined mail and online research design, an invitation to an online survey is sent to respondents via the mail. This provides the reach of mail surveys and the questionnaire control of online surveys.

In-Home Usage Product Testing (HUTS)

Optimize Data Analytics’ Mail Processing Department is ships thousands of products each year to households in the U.S. and other countries, so that those households may participate in home-usage product testing studies. Optimize Data Analytics has evaluated thousands of consumer package goods and consumer durables using its American Consumer Opinion® panels, online research capabilities, and mail processing capabilities.

Quality Assurance

Quality assurance is exacting, and mail surveys are carefully monitored at every step in the process by Optimize Data Analytics’s Quality Assurance Department. Before printing, all materials are carefully proofed by the Quality Assurance Department. Once the surveys are printed and inserted into the envelopes, they are inspected for completeness, matching IDs, correct product for the cell assignment, etc. As questionnaires are completed and returned, each questionnaire is checked against the original sample to prevent duplicates and uninvited respondents. Data entry accuracy is 99.95% (after data entry and 100% verification, the standard procedure).

Types of Mail Surveys

• Customer Satisfaction Surveys
• Customer Loyalty Surveys
• Customer Experience Surveys
• Employee Surveys
• Product Testing
• Home-Usage Testing
• Product Consumption Studies
• Media Usage Studies
• Membership Studies
• Attitude Surveys