Mail surveys are among the most effective tools in the research industry, besting online, email and phone survey methods in both response rate and data integrity. As with all survey research, however, survey success begins with careful planning, including brainstorming your goals, creating questions, choosing participants, determining your budget, and perhaps most tedious, choosing materials and pricing out costs with your vendors. But have no fear. We have you covered with these handy Survey Mail Spec Sheet and Timeline Templates that make your life easy and get you the honest, apples-to-apples quotes you need to keep your costs in check.

 

 

Vendors typically require a spec sheet in order to provide you with an accurate quote. The important thing here is to provide each vendor with the same spec sheet, so you can get an accurate read on their pricing.

Spec Sheet

Your spec sheet should document the list size, number of mailings, type and quantity of materials that will be needed, budget and requirements for each mailing. The good news is we’ve done the heavy lifting for you. This spreadsheet will help organize and calculate the materials across your mailings. Download the spec sheet.

Once your project specification sheet is completed, you’ll want to have your stakeholders, if applicable, review to make sure that everything has been captured. Now you can piece out the specification sheet and send to your different vendors for pricing and don’t forget to ask them for their timeline, which we’ll discuss next.

Timeline

Timeline is driven by the requirements of your project. For example, mailing 500 pieces vs. 50,000 pieces could have a significant impact to your schedule. Alternatively, the complexity of your mailing can also have a significant impact to your timeline. Mailing 10,000 units that have 5 pieces being inserted with a 4 way match, could take just as long to prep 50,000 pieces with 1 component and no matching. A best practice is to provide each vendor with a detailed timeline in advance so they know what your expectations are. We have filled in some ‘standard’ timelines for the different tasks but you can easily update with your requirements. Just populate your tasks and the number of working days required for each task and the spreadsheet will update accordingly. Download the timeline template.

With careful planning, you can account for all the variables in your mail survey, leaving little room for miscommunication and most importantly, get the accurate quotes you need to move forward with confidence.

If you’d like more information on mail survey planning or any aspect of survey management, contact us today!

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