Why Questionnaires & Newsletters Don’t Always Gel

“Hold it! I gotta read this story!” That’s the sort of reaction you want from every story posted in your newsletter, press release, company blog, etc.

Which is easier said than done, given the amount of legwork involved. Perhaps that’s why execs choose the easy way out by resorting to questionnaires to gather raw information for a human-angle story. Unfortunately they often stop there with dire results.

• Low cost incurred as a questionnaire can be sent out to many at once
• Respondents can consider answers carefully, without being badgered by interviewers

Unfortunately, things have gone wrong when some junior execs have tried to use this research tool. Consider the following example.

Busy marketing professional Susan is in charge of a membership club. When ordered to feature a member in their upcoming newsletter, she quickly taps out a decent-looking e-questionnaire on her shiny Kermit green laptop.


The response is a dribble of sad-looking replies. Grimacing, she publishes one. Keeping fingers and toes crossed, she prays hard that the glitzy graphics will camouflage the fact that there isn’t much for readers to chew on.

Here’s the catch with questionnaires.

Firstly, respondents have to be motivated to fill it out, i.e., most will throw you the “What’s in it for me?” question. An honest answer of “Nothing.” will result in a response rate that can sink to as low as 10%.

Motivation need not always be something tangible  in the form of a reward. It could be a subtle line about important personalities previously featured or an even subtler one about influential business persons who read the newsletter.

Secondly not all respondents like to write or worse, are any good at writing. Hence, the story that pours out onto the page may be lukewarm whereas your newsletter needs something sizzling!

This is where the skill of sniffing out stories comes in handy. The writer needs to pick up the phone or schedule a meeting to tactfully elicit more information from the respondent. All of which would have given Susan’s story the oomph it badly needed.


Don’t totally write off the questionnaire as it does help in narrowing down storylines and identifying potential articles. Just don’t stop there. Explore, investigate, and expand on it. The questionnaire is a fav tool for researchers. For newsletters, it works well when you wish do a spot of quantifying. Amongst the advantages of using a questionnaire are: