Perfecting your webinar strategy is a constant work in progress. Improvement rests on several factors, feedback being one of the most important. Unfortunately, webinar attendees often don’t leave feedback, and when they do, it tends to be unhelpful to your business.

You can remedy both of these problems with a reassessment of your post-webinar survey questions. For best results, you need to put a lot of thought into your surveys. In this article, we’ll go over the full process, from preparation to distribution. We’ll also touch on analysis and how to improve your surveys over time.

Preparing Post-Webinar Surveys

When crafting your surveys, keep in mind the following ground rules:

• Craft contextual questions
• Distribute questions at the correct time
• Start with lighter/easier questions and question formats
• Ask few but dense questions 
• Keep your survey short and simple

Timing is crucial. Humans have short memories, so, to obtain the most valuable information, you need to send participants the right questions at the right moment.

The “right moment” is subjective, but there are certain best practices that can help you nail your timing. First, send the survey no more than one business day after the webinar so it’s still fresh in attendees’ minds.

You can also ask some questions using webinar tools immediately after the content is delivered. However, if the transition from content to survey is confusing, your results will be confusing too. So, consider the tone and context of the webinar’s final segments.

Additionally, you’ll need to consider time zones. If you deliver a webinar or survey at 8 p.m. in California, it’ll be close to midnight for any attendees on the east coast. The late hour may cause them to forgo your survey. They’re also unlikely to answer the survey later as they receive other emails and become busy with other things.

Most importantly, avoid overwhelming your attendees. If you include multiple-choice questions in your survey, provide only a few possible answers. Likewise, if you ask for written responses, keep the scope of the question as brief and simple as possible.

Gather Input Pre-webinar

A great way to prepare post-webinar questions is to run pre-webinar surveys. These are best sent via email a few days before your event and uncover useful information on and insights into your attendees. Carefully crafted questions reveal what your audience knows and doesn’t know prior to the webinar.

Crafting Survey Questions

Your survey questions should yield as many meaningful responses as possible. That requires a balance between requesting enough detail without overwhelming the audience. As such, you may want to use several types of survey questions, depending on the stage of the buyer’s journey you’re targeting, since some types are more appropriate than others for each leg.

👉True or False

These are the most straightforward questions and require the least thought from attendees. There are only two possible answers, and processing true or false questions is easy.

To produce robust true or false questions, remember to make each answer choice decisive and remove any ambiguity from the wording.

True or false questions are best for gathering basic and broad information, but they can also help measure the success of your webinar. Ask questions concerning the goals of the session to see how well it met people’s expectations. These questions are useful for revealing crucial information about:

• Attendees’ level of knowledge 
• The opinions attendees formed both before and after the webinar
• Common pain points

👉Single Answer

Single-answer questions are another easy way to gather basic information, such as demographics, simple qualifiers, and other useful data. This type requires little mental energy, making it excellent for post-webinar surveys.

👉Multiple-Choice

Multiple-choice questions are slightly more complicated and can take several forms. They can use a scale rating (e.g., 1-10) or offer a set of predetermined answers.

A common and effective example of a multiple-choice question is a satisfaction scale: “On a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), how satisfied are you with today’s webinar?” You can pose similar questions regarding the presentation of key information, such as asking attendees to rate how much they felt they learned about one of the central topics.

Qualitative multiple-choice questions require greater care. Simply rating something out of 10 is easy and non-intrusive, but if you provide multiple sentence-long options for them to choose from, remember to:

• Always provide an “Other” option for them to insert a custom response, as your provided answers may not resonate with all attendees
• Keep your pre-written answers short and unambiguous

Your audience should feel they can provide real, raw feedback. The “Other” option thus demonstrates you’re open to different perspectives and value their opinions.

Also, avoid confusing attendees with questions that are too controvertible, as they’ll provide you with less useful data. So, make sure your questions and pre-written answers are clear and strong, leaving no room for doubt.

👉Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions don’t include pre-set responses; you ask a question, and the respondent leaves a textual answer. This gives them the greatest freedom in their response to provide the most honest feedback. Apart from the framing of the question, you don’t lead the respondent. This can be a strength or a weakness, depending on the quality of your question.

Open-ended questions are a popular way to gain additional secondary feedback, but you can also apply them to learn about customers’ broader experiences, personal opinions, and what they felt they received from your event.

Open-ended questions provide the deepest insights; their lack of restrictions opens up the door to more fluid and honest responses. Aim to include at least a few of these to gain richer audience information.

However, the quality of the feedback received is dependent upon how well the question is written. Open-ended questions require some thought from the respondent and take the longest to answer. As such, it’s usually best to save these for last.

The questions should be clear and invite honesty and long-form answers. Simplicity is most often the best way to accomplish that, for example:

• What do you think about our demonstration of the product? Why do you believe that?
• Is there anything we could have explained more clearly?
• Is there anything that an alternative to our product can do better?

The how and why of your event are often best answered with open-ended questions.

Question Topics

Besides the type of question, there are certain elements you need to ask about to receive rich feedback.

The Presentation 

The quality of the speaker and/or their presentation is crucial to webinar success, so ask what the attendants thought about them. This feedback will improve the quality of future presentations, which translates directly into better results.

The Content

The only way to know if the webinar topic was communicated properly is to ask the audience. Give them open-ended questions about what they learned or received from the experience. You should also ask more specific questions about the main points you were trying to communicate.

This is a prime opportunity to find out what the audience learned about your product or service. It also helps retain customers, as businesses can lose them simply because they were unaware of certain features or benefits included in their purchase.

Promotional Asks

A post-webinar survey furthers your promotional efforts as well. All you need to do is ask whether they’d like to learn more about a specific product, service, or topic. Strike while the iron’s hot and include a link to register for the next event.

Distributing the Survey

To achieve the highest response rate, distribute your post-webinar survey properly. Consider the different devices your audience uses to complete it, their experience with and perceived value from the webinar, and the time they’re giving up for the survey.

Make It Mobile-Friendly

Many people attend webinars on a mobile device, so, to avoid wasting half of your opportunities, your survey distribution must be mobile-friendly. It should work well and appear just as professional and attractive as it does for desktop and laptop users. Consider small smartphones, touch screens, and the size of the questionnaire form. Making sure your questions are concise and meaningful will help accommodate different devices. 

Express Gratitude

Thank your audience for completing both the webinar and your survey. This small step is more important than you may think. Make it clear you value your attendees’ feedback, expressing how it helps you improve your products, offers, and more. Reminding them of the value they provide you goes a long way towards building loyalty in your audience.

Reward Them

Thanking your post-webinar survey respondents is necessary, but you stand to benefit even more by rewarding them for their efforts.

Send your webinar attendees something extra alongside your thank you message. For example, you could give them a link to an interesting article that provides further value, provide a coupon, gift card, discount code, or other special “thank you” deal, or, more commonly, send them a transcript of the webinar they just watched.

These steps will ensure your audience receives value from you and feels valued in turn. It’ll also help keep their experience (and your brand) at the top of their mind. By adding more value and rewards, you’ll drive these gains home while benefiting your audience as well.

Analyzing the Survey Results 

As with creating survey questions, how you analyze them will vary by question type. The built-in features of the webinar platform you use will also influence your analysis.

Open-ended survey questions require the most in-depth analysis, as the how and why are incredibly useful to marketing teams and product design. Their specificity can also contribute to and guide major changes in your offers.

Questions about the presenter are important as well. If a presenter elicits too many negative responses, it’s crucial to find out why. Some issues can be resolved easily, but ongoing negative feedback will need serious changes. 

For example, technical issues that make the presenter hard to understand can be fixed quickly. But, if people find the presenter irritating or too difficult to follow, you may need to bring on someone else. Consider both quantitative (scale rating questions) and qualitative questions when evaluating your presenters.

The content of the presentation also deserves a closer look. Scale ratings can serve as an indicator of general audience impressions, but you’ll need more focused feedback to improve your future webinars and increase attendee satisfaction. Because of the need for a thorough review, the presentation content may take more time to optimize. 

No survey is perfect, so you’ll have to tweak your questions over time to receive actionable insights. If you receive indecisive answers, look into why. Perhaps the question was unclear or too leading. Removing bias from questions is one of the hardest tasks when creating a post-webinar survey, but it’s also crucial to its reliability.

Conclusion

Through the careful crafting of effective post-webinar surveys, you can discover useful insights about your customers and enrich your future webinars.

Your job isn’t finished after the event ends. It’s good practice to follow up a successful session with a post-webinar campaign that includes a feedback survey. The data collected will help you consolidate your gains even further. 

Ready to realize the full potential of your webinars? Download our webinar strategies checklist.