How to Create an Anonymous Survey

Have you ever thought about using an anonymous survey as part of your marketing toolkit? A survey, or even an anonymous survey, can help support your lead generation and customer retention efforts. 

But why?

A survey is a valuable means of gathering information or data. Surveys let you craft a list of questions based on what kind of response information you hope to gather.

An anonymous survey, then, is where you gather the same information but don’t require respondents to provide their identity or contact information. This allows you to gather data without attributing any specific response to an individual.

How do you create an anonymous survey, and why would it make sense to utilize one?

We’ll dive into that below, as well as some valuable background information on surveys and data.

We’ll also touch upon how you can utilize the services of Agolix in your survey creation. Agolix has a wide variety of question formats and types so you can customize your anonymous survey to be the most beneficial for you and your business.

Understanding Anonymous Surveys

As briefly mentioned above, an anonymous survey is a survey where the respondent’s identity is kept anonymous. In a normal survey, you know who has taken it, and what responses someone has given. You have the data as a whole, but also individual data. With an anonymous survey, you still have a group of data as a whole, but you don’t have the individual specifics of who said what.

Why would you want to use an anonymous survey? There are a variety of reasons, but one of the most critical is that it fosters honest responses.

Think about it – if you know someone can see what you’re writing about them, wouldn’t you want to keep it to a certain level of politeness? By asking questions anonymously, you give your respondents the ability to be completely honest with you. This can be especially important if your respondents have a personal relationship with you and they don’t want to risk offending you. 

Another benefit of an anonymous assessment is that it helps encourage more people to complete your survey. Some respondents may be reluctant to respond at all if they’re being asked for their identity.

Planning Your Anonymous Survey

So, you’re ready to start planning out your anonymous survey. What do you include?!

Firstly, as with any survey or assessment, it’s important to define clear objectives. What do you want to achieve or measure with this survey? What data are you collecting, and looking for?

Then it’s time to think about your target audience. Who are they, and where will you find them? Why would they want to take this survey? And – based on what content is in your survey – why would anonymity be important in this instance?

For question types, you’ll want to figure out the types of questions to utilize in an anonymous setting as well. For example, highly specific questions with long narrative answers may not be appropriate for your needs – or they might! Similarly, do you want a lot of true/false or yes/no data if you don’t know who is saying it? Or do you want to figure out a critical mass based on those answers?

Finally, what is the structure of your survey? Be cognizant of the flow and organization of your questions. Also remember that, even though the survey responses will be anonymous, you still must be aware of any potential biases in your questions. We’ve got some great tips on how to avoid bias in all of your survey and assessment questions here!

Setting Up an Anonymous Survey with Agolix

Are you ready to create an anonymous survey? We’re ready as well!

Now is a great time for a brief overview of Agolix as an online assessment and survey-generating tool. Let’s dive into the steps below:

First, you can check out our sample assessments, where you’ll learn more about what scoring models are available.

With Agolix, you are able to keep your branding incorporated – from logos to colors to images.

Then, choose between a Simple, Type, or Multi-Type format. We’ve got more information on each, as well as the many types of questions you can choose from, here.

Once you’ve played around with and chosen types, you’re off to a great start! The next step is to consider how you will communicate results with those taking your survey – if at all. Given that it is an anonymous survey, even though the data is anonymous, you may want to keep it private and use it only for your own purposes. This is up to your discretion, of course.

It’s easy to configure an assessment to be anonymous in Agolix. Just visit the Results tab of the assessment editor and select “Do not require the respondent to enter their contact information.” Our user guide has all the details.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Agolix respects your privacy and data, as you respect that of your potential and current clients. More information on that can be found here.

Reasons To Conduct Anonymous Surveys 

What are some reasons you’d want to conduct an anonymous survey?

As we touched upon briefly above, anonymous surveys encourage honest feedback from participants. When submitting anonymous answers, someone is more likely to give a candid, truthful response. There is less of a chance someone will feel uncomfortable being truthful, and that will also therefore reduce bias among your responses. There is no fear of judgment, thus reducing social desirability bias within the survey.

Why is all of this important? If you’re looking for the most accurate survey data possible, this is a way to gather it. Data accuracy and reliability 

Benefits of Anonymous Surveys

In addition to the above benefits around data accuracy and collection, anonymous surveys foster an increased sense of trust. This is important – especially with lead generation – because it creates a level of trust between you and your business to a potential customer. That trust is the first step in building a long-standing relationship with them.

Similarly, this lets current or potential customers give you unbiased feedback and answers. Does someone want to work with you? Why or why not? Do they like working with you – why or why not? A client may be wary of telling you these things directly to your face, but the veil of anonymity can lead to more honest answers and feedback. This can also lead to easier and more clear decisions on your end. Armed with facts and data you can trust – you can make better business decisions.

While this may seem new and scary at first, this honesty is incredibly important for you and your business if you want to keep growing, scaling, and succeeding!

Summary

Hopefully, you’ve learned the importance of anonymous surveys as part of your marketing toolkit. From providing more honest and truthful information, to how to create them, they can be an incredible tool to build trust and gain insightful data.

Agolix is an incredibly powerful tool in your survey-creation process – from uncompromised branding, data collection, and privacy – to how you use that data and information afterward.

We encourage you to utilize anonymous surveys with Agolix to get to the next level of client insights for your business. Are you ready to get started today? Click here to test one out for yourself today!