It’s nice when people care about our opinion, but sometimes we just want to say, “Leave me alone.” We try to be sensitive to that when deciding if and when to survey our members. I wanted to give you a heads up that you will be getting a survey from us soon.
It’s an important survey. Really!
We are trying to find out what services and elements of our website add value to members, what needs to be worked on, and what needs to be added.
We are also asking for some demographic data that will help us understand who our users are. It helps us with advertisers when we have data like that.
Please take the time to complete the survey. It is vital as we proceed with Project Phoenix that we understand what our members want and need.
It might help to have a link to the suvey from here and on STC.org. Some members may have opted out from all STC.org emails….
Thanks for the suggestion, Rick. We want to keep the survey to just STC members, so putting it on a public site, like this blog or stc.org, would not work for us. Also, because we have sent it by email, we know exactly how many people have had the opportunity to take the survey and we can calculate the completion percentage more accurately.
I guess I don’t understand… make the announcement public with a link to the survey that requires an STC login.
For example, the TE SIG uses this flow: we made the announcement of SIG election public (for wider audience) but the link to the actual ballot requires a SIG login.
See http://stc-techedit.org/2011+Elections for our implementation.
simple matter of programming 🙂
The bottom line for now is that members who want to get actively engaged in these kinds of outreaches, need to let us contact them by email.
Then why in the world is there an option to opt-out of STC.org mails?
People opt out for different reasons. Obviously, you have opted out because there are some kinds of emails you don’t want to get from STC, but you would like to get notified when there is a survey.
It seems that the practical solution would be to offer an opt out with multiple options, e.g., I don’t want to get webinar announcements but I do want to get invited to take surveys. I can look into that.
Bandwidth is an issue for all of us, and we must accept that when we initiate a “don’t call me, I’ll call you” filter in any channel, we run the risk of getting left out of some conversations we would have like to have been included in.
I understand that completely…. don’t “push” information to me; I’ll “pull” it when I want it.
What I *don’t* understand… how hard could it possibly be to:
1. Have a blog post on notebook.stc.org that says “Hey members, we need your input. Click here to take the survey.”
2. Have a button on STC.org announcing the survey with a link to it.
3. Add an entry int he STC.org RSS feed.
It is all about having multiple channels of information. If STC.org continues to rely solely on email, STC.org is not going to get a complete picture…. if STC.org *really* wants input from its members, that is.
Rick’s point is valid. There are private areas of STC.org. It should be incredibly easy to post a new page or edit an existing one for things like this. Announce and link. You drive traffic to your site, create awareness of other things of interest there as a nice side-effect, reinforce your brand, and all the while giving you the ability to announce and advertise publicly while controlling actual access. The same logic was employed for all of the top-level STC.org navigation. Show people what’s available but only let the general public browse certain areas, leaving other areas members-only.
The opt-in/out of email argument is a side issue. The greater issue is using the communication channels you have at your fingertips to get awareness out there and to generate interest from the greater techcomm community. The more the public sees in general, the more interest they’ll have in getting to the specifics. In other words, free samples can drive sales.
I don’t think I received the survey, either, and the only thing I opted out of was Vendor email. I guess the consultant in charge of administering the survey is considered a vendor. If I were a cynical person, I’d think that since I’m not allowing STC to make money off of selling my name to vendors, they’re not interested in my opinion.
It does seem quite limited to only send a survey to members who have opted into the full range of emails. Getting member input is critical right now. It’s not a favor to members. It’s not “snooze you lose.”
Even sending an email to chapter leaders asking them to remind members would have helped–something they could have forwarded.
As for whether there is bandwidth to program a private page for members to take a survey, I would hope that there would be, or for something equivalent, given that there is such a focus on remaking the organization. Posting the survey to more than one channel seems very, very basic to me.
Regarding my previous comment, to alleviate any misunderstanding: The phrase “If I were…” is in the subjunctive mood, which indicates a statement that is contrary to fact. The subjunctive is properly used only with hypotheticals known to be *untrue*.
Since the deadline for completing the survey has been extended, do you think you could send it to the people who were excluded last time? There’s no option for opting out of surveys (at least in my account settings), so I don’t understand why anyone would have been excluded in the first place.
The survey falls under “general STC announcements” on the opt-out form. A few of our members simply do not wish to receive any email from STC, and we can’t go against their request to send this survey. We’ve posted a link in the blog and on our RSS feed, but legally we must adhere to the opt-out requests of our members.
OK, I see where the disconnect is. The communications options are named differently on the member account page than they are on the renewal form. The member account page contains the following options to opt-out of email communications:
(1) News, (2) Election, (3) Candidate, (4) Event, (5) Vendor, (6) SIG, (7) Chapter.
The renewal form contains the following options to opt-out of email communications:
(a) Election, (b) Candidates, (c) General announcements, (d) STC Conferences and Seminars, (e) Emails from related companies/organizations, (f) Chapters, (g) SIGs.
It appears that the “News” category maps to the “General announcements” category. While I would expect to be excluded from surveys if I opted out of “general announcements,” I would not expect to be excluded from surveys if I opted out of “news.” Perhaps on the communications page of the account settings, “News” could be changed to “Announcements,” if that’s what it means? I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m being picky, but ensuring consistent terminology is an important part of what technical communicators do.