- When having a few subscribers, it is necessary to check where they come from, what their preferences are and if one still meets their needs.
- I outline how you can create a short survey and get feedback from your most important resource – your customer.
When I checked my subscription statistics in WordPress today, I found out I had 138 e-mail subscribers. Last time I looked I had less than 10. This was, of course a few months back.
Some would argue that it is tough to get the first 10 subscribers but easier to get the next 100. I am not sure if I can agree with this. Nevertheless, it continues to go up each week. This is especially true right after I have added another post to the blog.
I have no clue how many people subscribe using RSS or any of the many feed readers. I guess it is probably about another 138. Using this type of arithmatic gets me up to about 250 subscribers. Thank you all for stopping by.
Of course, 250 customers is small too. For me it is a mixed blessing. It is small but too big to talk to everybody. Experts would say whilst it is early to talk about reader segments, I should reflect on it.
I began thinking about reader segmentation. Of course, I have been talking to some of you and taken your feedback and advice to continue improving on our content and services. But when I read a post by
2008-11-19 – Eric Ries–Lo, my 1032 subscribers, who are you?
I decided to follow his advice and use a small survey to get feedback from you. Services that allow you to construct online surveys are, for instance:
Survey Gizmo, or
Here you can set up your questions. To make it easy on your audience, use some scales. This makes it easier for your respondents to answer the questions and simplifies analsis of data for you. Examples are such as
– questions that allow one to check off the answering box, such as Yes or No,
– 5 or 7 points (scales), such as, disagree completely, disagree, undecided, agree, agree completely.
Make sure it is five or seven point scale. Going beyond seven such as nine points is, accoding to research not wise. In fact, people start having difficulties distinguishing beyond seven anchors on a scale. Furthermore, using an even scale such as eight or 10 points is not ideal. You should give your respondent the chance to stay undecided and not force her to make a choice between, for instance, agreeing or disagreeing with your statement.
As well, I recommend using in-depth optional questions sparingly. Not only are they more time-consuming to fill out for your readers or customers but, as importantly, they require a lot more effort from you analysing these typed responses.
I thought I follow Eric Ries’ advice and set-up my own survey. Here is my survey for ComMetrics.com:
As a loyal subscriber, I’d like to invite you to take the first ComMetrics.com customer survey:
I put this together using the free version of SurveyMonkey. It shows you how easy it is for you to create your own survey. Naturally, at a later stage you have to pay and subscribe to the professional version. In turn, you can download data or serve a different set of sub-questions based on the answer the person gave for a grouping-type of question (also called funneling).
Be sure to make the thank you page a call to action such as a link to subscribe (see my example at the end of the survey).
This seems the least you can do for a customer passionate enough to talk to you.
So, to those of you who take the time to fill out the survey: thank you for your valuable feedback
And to everyone who has taken the time to read, comment, or subscribe to our ComMetrics.com blog – thank you so much and keep reading 
Incidentally, why not subscribe right now so you get the upcoming post that will discuss what the feedback tells us? Any thoughts you like to share, please leave a comment, love to hear from you.