Have you thought to yourself - I wonder how my people are doing in their walk with God? I wonder if anyone in our ministry has taken a step of faith in the past few months? I wonder what our people would like to study in the next sermon series?
It's important for churches to have visibility into their people, but sometimes it can be difficult to do so - especially in our increasingly digital world!
This is the power Surveys can give your church! Surveys are the best way to ask for responses to these kinds of questions, and actually get an answer because responding to a few text messages is so simple and convenient.
Survey Types
There are 2 types of Surveys you can create: Opt-in and Scheduled.
Opt-in Surveys
Opt-in Surveys are initiated by a person texting in. Opt-in surveys are deployed when a person texts in the keyword related to the survey. Upon texting in that keyword, it deploys the questions you have set up.
Here are a few times it might be best to choose an Opt-in Survey:
During a Sunday service, you announce you would like people to tell you how they are doing. For example, you can invite them to text in the keyword "Heart" and it initiates your survey questions asking them to rank how they're doing in each of the spiritual disciplines.
During an event or seminar, you announce you would like people to give their feedback on the time. For example, you can invite them to text in the keyword "Feedback" and it initiates your survey questions asking them how they experienced the time.
Scheduled Surveys
Scheduled Surveys are initiated by your organization. Scheduled surveys are deployed when a Gloo administrator selects a group and schedules a time for that group to receive the survey. This means everyone receives the first question to the survey at the same time, and the person receiving the text has a choice whether or not they answer your questions.
Here are a few times it might be best to choose a Scheduled Survey:
At the end of the year, you want to find out who is still engaged in your church and how are they engaged. For example, you schedule a survey to your entire congregation that sends out questions asking their attendance rhythms and where they are serving.
You want to use a Survey to capture data from your staff team and other ministry leaders. For example, you schedule a survey to all small group leaders to ask how many people are attending their small group, what are they studying, etc.
Creating a Survey
Under your Messaging menu, navigate to Outbox -> Surveys and click Create New Survey.
Choose whether you want your survey to be Opt-in or Scheduled.
Creating an Opt-in Survey
Choose a topic you'd like to create a survey on. Name the survey something related to that topic. For this example, we will create a survey for a spiritual disciplines check in. Then create the keyword(s) that you want someone to text in to start the survey.
Click Add New Metric to start adding metrics. Think of metrics as the data points you'd like to capture in the survey. Each question you ask requires a metric associated with it.
Type in each metric name. Select if you'd like a metric to be Numeric. Any question that is related to a Numeric Metric will require the person taking the survey to answer with a number in order to proceed to the next question. If Numeric is unchecked, someone can answer anything in order to proceed to the next question.
Click Add New Question to start adding questions in the order you want them to be asked.
Type in the question that will get texted. These questions will relate to the metrics (data points) you're trying to capture.
Select the metric associated with each question.
Important: If you select the same metric for 2 different questions, the data for those 2 questions will be visualized together in your results.
Continue until all questions are written and associated with a metric.
Input the Ending Response. This is the text that gets sent back upon the completion of a survey. Once you have everything the way you like it, click Save.
Pro tip: Rather than collecting lengthy text responses through the survey itself, it's often more effective to ask simple, numeric questions in the survey and then use the Ending Response to ask people to submit a Story. Check out our Best Practices article for more tips and tricks!
Publish your Survey to make it active. You can come back and Unpublish the survey any time if you want to save the data collected, but don't want people to be able to submit any more responses.
Pro Tip: Try out your survey in the Texting Simulator!
Creating a Scheduled Survey
Select Scheduled for the type of Survey.
Choose a topic you'd like to create a survey on. Name the survey something related to that topic. For this example, we will create a survey for a spiritual disciplines check in.
Select the groups and/or individuals you want to send the Survey to. If you'd like to exclude certain people or groups, you can do that as well.
Select if you would like the survey to go out once or weekly.
If you select Once, select the date and time to send the survey.
If you select Weekly, select the day(s) of the week and time the survey gets sent each week. Optionally, you can also select an end date on which you'd like the weekly recurring survey to stop getting sent out.
Choose when you'd like a reminder text sent out, or select No Reminder. This gets sent out the selected number of days after the first text to people who have not yet replied to remind them you are waiting on their response.
Click Add New Metric to start adding metrics. Think of metrics as data points you'd like to capture in the survey. Each question you ask requires a metric associated with it.
Type in each metric name. Select if you'd like a metric to be Numeric. Any question that is related to a Numeric Metric will require the person taking the survey to answer with a number in order to proceed to the next question. If Numeric is unchecked, someone can answer anything in order to proceed to the next question.
Click Add New Question to start adding questions in the order you want them to be asked.
Type in the question that will get texted. These questions will relate to the metrics (data points) you're trying to capture.
Select the metric associated with each question.
Important: If you select the same metric for 2 different questions, the data for those 2 questions will be visualized together in your results.
Continue until all questions are written.
Input the Ending Response. This is the text that gets sent back upon the completion of a survey. Once you have everything the way you like it, click Save.
Pro tip: Rather than collecting lengthy text responses through the survey itself, ask simple, numeric questions in the survey and then use the Ending Response to ask people to submit a Story. Check out our Best Practices article for more tips and tricks!
Publish your Survey to make it active.
Pro Tip: Try out your survey in the Texting Simulator!
Important: There is a demo keyword that is auto-generated for Scheduled Surveys that only works in the texting simulator.
To find this keyword, click on the title of the survey to expand the details for your survey.
Try it in the simulator!
Editing a Survey
If you do not complete the creation of a survey, just click Save and you can come back and finish it later by clicking Edit. You can also edit any live survey.
Click into the survey you'd like to edit.
Click Edit.
Unpublish a Survey if you are done with a Survey but want to keep the data.
Delete a Survey if you are done with a Survey and do not want to keep the data.
Viewing Results of a Survey
Navigate to the Survey you want to view results for.
Select the Time Frame you want to view results for.
View data on each of the Metrics from your Survey.
For Numeric Metrics, you can view:
Total: The sum of every response given.
Average: The Total divided by the Total Number of Reports.
Total People: The number of individual people who have responded.
Total Reports: The number of times a survey question has been answered.
Note: Total People and Total Reports will only be different if some people responded more than once.
For non-Numeric Metrics, you can view:
Recent: Some of the last responses to the question.
Total People: The number of individual people who have responded.
Total Reports: The number of times a survey question has been answered.
Note: Total People and Total Reports will only be different if some people responded more than once.
View the List of People to see who has responded to your Survey.
View the "User Breakdown to see individual responses.
Export all Data to a CSV file.
Refresh Data to see real time responses coming in.
