1. Encourage visitors to your online store to set up an account with you
2. Encourage customers to sign up for your mailing list
3. Collect demographic data about subscribers that you do not already have
4. Segment/target subscribers according to their stated interests
5. Perform sales diagnostics
6. Keep tabs on customer satisfaction

And more!

Ez.newsletter webforms allow you to create surveys within your account and use them on your own web space. The data from any survey made in your account will be collected and stored there. You can also have individual’s responses sent to you (and/or other members of your staff) in emails.

What’s more, you can use webform options to filter all respondents into a special email list just for them, or even file respondents into separate lists according to the questions they respond to, or the answers they choose. If, for instance, you asked respondents about their interests and wanted everyone who checked golf as an interest to be placed in a list called “GOLFERS” and everyone who checked rock/mountain climbing  into a list called “CLIMBERS,” you could do that. As you can imagine, this option can be usefor for targeted mailings.

How does all of this work? Section 2 gives you some general suggestions for survey design, and tells you exactly how to build yours. Then, section 3 discusses editing survey questions and answers in the system. Finally, section 4 touches on how to use webforms on your site.

2. DESIGNING AND CREATING SURVEYS IN EZ.NEWSLETTER

Before you begin making a webform, you must decide what purpose(s) you want your survey to fulfil. One survey can serve many functions, and you should plan each question and answer set carefully.

Most e-marketing experts recommend keeping your surveys fairly brief and uncomplicated. Otherwise, people will not want to complete them. Shoot for a webform that will take the average person no more than five minutes to complete, and test it out on people who were not involved in the design process, to make sure that it doesn’t take too long. Remember, if you can’t get all of the information you need from a short and simple survey, you can always use another to get the rest of the data at a later date.

To get started creating your survey:

1. Click webform.management
2. Then click webforms.manage
3. On the main part of the page, click the Create New Webform link
4. Enter basic information about your survey in the boxes provided:
   • Provide a name for the webform
   • Include a brief description
   • If you wish to have all respondents to the survey added to one of your mailing lists, select the list. If you do not wish to add them to a list, or you want to add respondents depending upon their survey answers, do not select a list at this stage.
   • If you would like to have all submissions sent to one or more email addresses at your organization, enter them.
5. If you wish to redirect respondents to a page on your website when they have completed the survey, enter the URL
6. Lock the webform if you do not wish to accept further submissions, or leave it unlocked while you are collecting data
7. Select whether to use antispam validation or not (it is highly recommended that you do)

Once you have saved this basic data, you can begin adding question and answer sets to the webform. Questions must be added one at a time, followed by the answer choices that correspond to them. To get started with a question:

1. Enter the text for your first question
2. Choose the format for the answer choices that makes the most sense:
   • Textfields work best for answers you wish to limit to just a few words or characters
   • Text areas can accommodate answers of several lines or paragraphs
   • Radio buttons should be used with questions where you want the user to select only one answer
   • Drop down boxes can be used similarly to radio buttons
   • Check boxes are useful with multiple choice questions where you want users to be able to select as many options as they wish
   • Multi-select allows the respondent to see all possible short answers and select one or more
   • The file upload format allows respondents to upload a file
3. If you wish to make the question you are currently creating a required question, choose a validation type. The type you choose will determine the message that is sent when someone attempts to fill in the answer in an unapproved format, or attempst to skip it.
   • Is Not Blank validation will ensure that respondents enter something in the answer space
   • Is A Number validation requires a numerical entry
   • Is A Date MM/DD/YYYY asks respondents to enter a date in the appropriate format
   • Is An Email Address requires respondents to answer the question with a full email address
4. If you selected a validation type in the previous step, enter a message to be displayed with the validation response. For example, if the validation type selected was Is A Number, you may want the message shown to survey participants to say “Please provide a numerical answer to the first question.”
5. If you would like everyone who answers this question to be added to the same list, select the list. If not, leave the field as is.

When you have completed these steps, click Add Question. Next, you will need to add the answer choices that go with the question you just added. The type of information you are asked to provide will vary somewhat depending on what kind of answer format you chose when adding the question.

If you selected radio buttons, check boxes, drop down boxes, or multi-select lists:

1. You must enter the text for those choices one at a time. Enter the text for your first option in the box provided.
2. Next, you must assign a value to the answer choices one at a time. Values can be a numerical code, or simply a reiteration of the wording of the answer choice it represents.
3. If you want respondents who select this answer to be sorted into the same list (for example, if the question is about whether the respondent likes golf or not and you want all of the people who reply YES to be sorted into a list for golfers), select that list. If not, leave the pulldown menu as is.
4. If you need to add more answer choices for the question at hand, click Add Answer and repeat these steps until all answer choices have been added.
5. When you have added all answer choices, click Add Question to start adding another question and answer set. Or, click Back to Webforms to save your work and return to the list of webforms.

If you chose a textfield or textbox format:

1. You will be asked to select a maximum number of characters that can fit in the field or box.
2. If you selected a text field, you will also be asked to specify how many rows of text the box will be able to accommodate.
3. If you want respondents who select this answer choice to be sorted into the same list (for example, if the question is about whether the respondent likes to paint or not and you want all of the people who reply YES to be sorted into a list for artists), select that list. If not, leave the pulldown box here in its default position.
4. When you have set your textfield or textbox preferences, click Add Question to add another question and answer set. Or, click Back to Webforms to save your work and return to the list of webforms.

If you chose the file upload format:

1. Specify the length of the file upload display.
2. If you want respondents who select this answer choice to be sorted into the same list (for example, if the question is about whether the respondent likes to read or not and you want all of the people who reply YES to be sorted into a list for readers), select that list. If not, leave the pulldown box here as is.
3. When you have set your file upload preferences, click Add Question to add another question and answer set. Or, click Back to Webforms to save your work and return to the list of webforms.

Continue adding questions and answers until you have completed your survey. Clicking Back to Webforms will save your work before taking you back to the webforms list, so don’t fear taking a break at any point. Finally, note that you can easily edit your webform at any stage in the process, so you don’t have to make everything perfect from the start. The next section discusses how to edit your survey.

3. EDITING SURVEYS

If you are already working on a webform and you decide that you want to make changes, you can easily do so.

• If you’re starting from the main webform page, locate the survey you want to work on and click the Edit link in the column to the far right of it, then scroll to the preview area at the bottom of the webform.

The lefthand side of the preview area gives you a general idea of what the completed form will look like. The right side allows you to make changes to the question or the answer choices, alter the order of the questions and/or answers, or delete items from the form.

If, for instance, you wanted to change the order in which a question appears, you would locate the question on the left side of the preview area and follow it to the column associated with it on the right side. Then, find the pulldown menu that has a number appearing in the top space: this number represents the current order in which the question appears. To change it, simply select the number that stands for the order in which you want the question to appear. So, for example, if you want the second question to be the tenth question, you would locate the pulldown menu to the right of question number 2 and change it to read 10.

Don’t like the way a question is worded? Or maybe you want to place it in a different font? Click Edit Question in the column directly to the right (in the same row) of the question you want to change. Doing so will return you to a screen like the one in which you initially entered the question, so you can change any aspect of it. When you are finished making changes to the question, you can scroll back down to the preview area to make more adjustments, or click Back to Webforms to save and exit.

To delete an entire question, simply click the Delete Question link to the right of the question you want to remove.

To change what list respondents to a question filter into, simply select the one you want from the pulldown menu labeled List to the right of the question.

Changing answer selections follows the same process. Answers have their own numerical ordering pulldown menus, Edit Answer links, Delete Answer links, and List pulldown menus: as with changing the order of questions, you can change the order of answer choices using the numerical pulldown menu; like editing questions, the Edit Answer link returns you to a page like the one on which you entered the answer choice initially; just click Delete Answer to get rid of an answer choice completely; and use the List pulldown menu associated with an answer choice to change the list that respondents who select a given answer will filter into.

USING WEBFORMS