Our high-response postal survey services allow you to get quantitative responses from your target audience from the comfort of their homes, with accuracy.
Obtain valuable quantitative insights into target consumer behaviour through postal surveys.
One of the biggest advantages of conducting postal surveys is that your respondents can share their thoughts and opinions with you in the comfort of their homes or wherever they prefer to fill up your survey questionnaires. There is no pressure on them. There is complete privacy. Conditioned upon the nature of the survey, they can also respond anonymously. This anonymity is not available in face-to-face interviews. How this sense of anonymity affects your overall postal survey results and postal survey response rates depend on the quality of your respondents.
During postal surveys, a logically connected set of questions, printed on paper, are sent to potential participants by post. This is a self administered method in which the participants provide the answers on their own and then they need to post the answers back to the organisation conducting the survey.
Many organisations prefer postal surveys because then one is not confined to only those prospective respondents who are connected to the web. There are big chunks of population, for example the elderly, who are not well versed with the ways of the Internet and hence, don’t feel comfortable providing answers to survey questions.
A postal survey on the other hand can be sent both to those people who are connected to the Internet and to those who aren’t. Among various methods of collecting data, why you choose to go the postal survey way depends on the nature of the data that you need, your budget, and your demography. The type of response rate that you get and how cost effective is your postal survey whether in large numbers or small numbers, depend on the abilities of your research partner.
What gives FG Connect an indisputable edge to deliver great postal survey rates?
What enables FG Connect to deliver stellar postal survey services?
Our core strength lies in our ability to process a large number of responses without hiccups, 3000+ mailed returns daily. For printing your postal survey questionnaires, we partner with printers who use robust technology to deliver large-scale printing projects, in complete sync with your brand image and quality requirements.
The postal survey questionnaires, after the respondents have completed them, are received at our offices through prepaid envelopes. Then, using scanners, we can quickly process thousands of returned responses in a small amount of time, derive data from them and then store this data digitally in your preferred format, preferably Microsoft Excel. The scanners that we use can recognise pre-coded selection boxes and then export the data into Excel spreadsheets. Our technology can also process free text comments. The data is validated and verified according to MRS guidelines and ISO 20252 quality standards.
At FG Connect we can easily scale our postal survey services according to your needs and budget.
We have over 15 years of experience in carrying out postal surveys for the automotive, utility, business services, and automotive finance sectors.
From sending out the postal survey to receiving the replies to opening individual responses to scanning the data collected and then processing it, we take care of the entire spectrum.
After understanding your requirement for carrying out postal survey we can quickly shortlist prospective respondents based on demography, profession, gender, household income, health conditions, nationality, age, education and a wide array of other distinctions that will give you high-precision data which you can use to grow your business or refine your research.
Additional reasons why you should partner with FG Connect for your postal survey services needs:
No need to rely on local remote agencies due to our centralised coordination approach.
We have developed an expertise and evolved a methodology specifically for the regions of the UK, Europe, USA and other selected international locations.
We give you global capabilities with local reach.
Cost-effective management of the entire postal survey process right from sending out questionnaires, receiving them and then digitally processing them.
OUR PROCESS
Define and understand your goals and objectives through extensive brainstorming with you.
Define metrics for postal service success.
Identify user group/target audience.
Set up a deadline for a compilation of data.
Prepare the questionnaire, get it approved by you and then get it printed.
Send the questionnaire through the post to prospective respondents who have been chosen in close consultation with you.
Turn the received data into intelligence and insight.
Salient advantages of using postal surveys
The following are the reasons why businesses and organisations go for postal surveys:
Reach audience that is off-line
Not everyone is connected to the Internet. Due to choice or circumstances, there are hundreds of thousands of individuals who don’t prefer to use the web to communicate or to respond to even critical surveys. If this audience is vital to your decision making, sending them postal surveys to answer is the best way of obtaining qualified feedback.
Obtain feedback from people who don’t want to answer on phone
Providing answers to questions in real time can be discomforting for many and you may not get accurate responses even if people get ready to provide those answers. Hence, instead of asking questions over the telephone, you can send them postal surveys.
Comparatively inexpensive
Postal surveys are not as expensive as other forms of obtaining qualified feedback. You can easily publish a questionnaire in bulk and then use a local postal service to send them out to thousands of prospective respondents.
Greater anonymity and hence, more accuracy
Postal surveys can be very useful if you intend to obtain confidential information that people wouldn’t otherwise share if they can be directly identified. Even through the address people can be identified but they can choose to not mention their names while responding to your questionnaire. Hence, you can obtain answers to even those questions that people wouldn’t otherwise provide.
Respondents can provide answers in a relaxed manner
Although you can have postal surveys that are time sensitive, at a micro level, people are not rushed. No matter how many responses they want to give, they can give them at their own pace. Nobody is sitting in front of them waiting for an answer. This way, they can provide answers in a relaxed manner.
Are there disadvantages of conducting postal surveys?
There are always pros and cons of following a certain approach so, yes, there are some disadvantages of conducting postal surveys, but then, this is where FG Connect can minimise the disadvantages and amplify the advantages.
For example, many fear that when people receive questionnaires by post, most of them are directly thrown into the waste paper basket. Does this happen? Yes, in many cases, but if you carefully choose your target audience, such instances can be minimised.
The key is, not sending out the postal survey to a randomly chosen sample. If your target audience does not relate to your survey, then obviously it is not going to respond well. Hence, we can help you fine tune your target audience for maximum feedback. We don’t focus on quantity, but on quality and relevance.
Another apprehension is that what happens if people don’t understand the question? In a live survey in case there are doubts, they can be immediately cleared but when people are responding to a printed questionnaire, they may not take the initiative to clarify and consequently, may either skip, or provide inaccurate information.
Again, the experts at FG Connect will help you come up with clear and concise questionnaire formats that won’t leave the scope for confusion and misunderstanding.
