{"id":7078,"date":"2013-03-25T06:02:59","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T13:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/?p=7078"},"modified":"2013-03-25T06:02:59","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T13:02:59","slug":"6-reasons-to-use-custom-variables-in-your-online-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/6-reasons-to-use-custom-variables-in-your-online-survey\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Reasons to Use Custom Variables in Your Online Survey"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m always telling people that QuestionPro is an enterprise quality software for small business. \u00a0And today, I’m going to describe just one of the features that you mainly expect in an enterprise software – but that QuestionPro has had for YEARS. \u00a0Unfortunately, very few people use this wonderful feature as well as they could. \u00a0And today, I’m going to show you just a few ways that you can use Custom Variables in your online survey.\"iStock_000009458297XSmall\"<\/p>\n

What are custom variables<\/strong><\/p>\n

Custom variables are basically additional information that you can attach to the email list that you’re going to survey. \u00a0For example, First Name, Last Name, Product, Gender — any kind of demographic information that you have about the potential respondent to whom you are emailing a survey.<\/p>\n

QuestionPro allows you 255 custom variables (that’s crazy!) so you can define your respondent to your heart’s content.<\/p>\n

Why use custom variables<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Faster surveys:<\/strong> Fewer questions make online surveys faster and increase your response rate. \u00a0So ANY demographic information that you already have and might need for analysis and grouping – stick it in your email list upload!<\/li>\n
  2. See cool stuff in your data:<\/strong> \u00a0Lots of people know that they can segment their responses by the way people answer the questions you ask – but not too many users realize that you can segment based on the custom variables that you’ve defined and uploaded! \u00a0This is key to creating online surveys with actionable results. \u00a0When I first discovered the power of custom variables, I wanted to see if customers who ran frequent transactions perceived my client differently than those customers who ran fewer transactions. \u00a0We simply created custom variables for number of transactions and created a couple of categories Frequent and Rare and then we were able to create cross tabs with that information. \u00a0It was eye opening!<\/li>\n
  3. Personalize:<\/strong> Our next step was to personalize the email invitations and so we were able to add First Name to the emails. \u00a0Just doing this increased our response rates by a couple percentage points.<\/li>\n
  4. Define specific transactions:<\/strong> Another way that custom variables came in handy was to specify the transaction we were surveying. \u00a0For example, if someone contacted the organization 3 times within a 6 month period, it was likely that they might receive multiple surveys OR that they would have forgotten WHAT we were surveying them for. \u00a0We simply created descriptions for the transactions such as “Address change” or “Deposit” and added a custom variable called “Transaction” to our data. \u00a0This way when the respondent received an email invitation for the survey, they were able to see exactly WHICH transaction we were talking about.<\/li>\n
  5. Grab their Income level:\u00a0<\/strong> I don’t know what it is about the “income level” question that has so many people not answer it (well, I do know, but it drives me crazy) anyway. \u00a0If you already have a respondent’s income level or any other personal information from another survey – you can upload it as a custom variable. \u00a0This gives you the information while NOT having the respondent have to answer it.<\/li>\n
  6. Customize the survey experience<\/strong>: \u00a0Another super-cool thing you can do with custom variables is use them inside of branching and logic questions<\/a>. \u00a0This allows you to customize the survey experience for specific respondents based on the custom variable that you define. \u00a0Another way to say this is that you can literally create a single survey and run it with a diverse email list instead of segmenting your list and creating multiple surveys based on specific respondent criteria.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    How have YOU used custom variables? \u00a0Take a moment and share your experiences and strategic tips for using custom variables in your online survey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’m always telling people that QuestionPro is an enterprise quality software for small business. \u00a0And today, I’m going to describe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[263,409],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n6 Reasons to Use Custom Variables in Your Online Survey | QuestionPro<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'm always telling people that QuestionPro is an enterprise quality software for small business. \u00a0And today, I'm going to describe just one of the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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