One-Time Surveys

Schedule surveys in advance to send at a pre-set date and time.

Recurring Surveys

Automatically send the same survey out on a recurring basis. (ex. Set a survey to send every Monday at 6pm.)

On-Creation Surveys

Send surveys when recipients are onboarded.

Time Zone Support

Surveys can send at a respondent's local time (if different time zones are set for different participants).

How survey flow works:

Instant Census sends a message that contains a single question, then waits for an answer from the recipient. When the recipient texts back an answer, Instant Census parses the answer and sends the next question.

Skip Logic

You can set which questions (or whole blocks of questions) a recipient will see, based either on the recipient's answers to previous survey questions, or based on custom fields that you set on the recipient ahead of time.

Piping

Instant Census can pipe a recipient's answer into the text of any question later in that survey or in a future survey.

Merge Fields

You can use merge fields in questions and outgoing messages. For example, you can send a message saying "Are you registered to vote in [[STATE]]?" where [[STATE]] is a custom field populated with the name of the state where the recipient lives.

Open Response Questions

Instant Census supports open response questions that will accept any answer. Information given in open response answers can be piped into later survey questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

The technology behind Instant Census allows the platform to intelligently parse responses so that respondents can answer survey questions naturally. For example, Instant Census would ask, "Are you female or male?" instead of "Are you female or male? Please respond 1 for female; 2 for male."

Numeric Range Questions

Numeric questions ask the respondent to text back a number. You can set a range of acceptable answers.

Yes or No Questions

Instant Census can ask questions that are looking for a response of "Yes" or "No", and will intelligently accept synonyms that are commonly used in texting. For example, "Yup" would be accepted and automatically coded as a "Yes" answer.

Messages

Instant Census can also send messages that do not expect any response. These can be useful for sending notifications, alerts, and reminders.

Data Dashboard (Graphs, Reports)

The Instant Census Admin Portal shows graphs for data visualization. Researchers can see graphs in real time of answers, recipient custom fields, response rates, and response times.

CSV Data Export

Dump all data into a CSV file, or you can selectively create a CSV file with certain data.

CSV/Excel Data Import

Import study recipients and data into the system by uploading a CSV or XLX file.

Manage Recipient Profiles

The Instant Census Admin Portal allows you to view recipients' information and edit the data stored in their custom fields. Each Cohort has its own recipient management page.

Automatic Opt-Out Handling

Any recipient who texts STOP will be automatically opted out and will no longer receive messages from you unless they re-enable by texting START. You can view reports of opt-outs and see the conversation threads that led to people opting out.

Message Inbox

When a recipient sends a message that Instant Census does not expect, the message is flagged and appears in the Message Inbox in the Instant Census Admin Portal. Here you can review the recipient's flagged message and follow up as appropriate.

View Recipient Conversation Transcripts

The Message Inbox also allows you to view each individual recipient's message history. This is important if follow-up with an individual recipient is necessary.

Individual Message Sender

Also within the Message Inbox, you can individually send messages to recipients from the Message Sender. For example, if a respondent is confused about a particular question, you can easily respond individually to each question without any interruption to the survey flow.

Custom Fields

Custom fields are the primary way surveys can be tailored to a particular recipients. Every recipient in a particular Cohort has the same set of Custom Fields, but each recipient may have different values for those fields. Furthermore, each Custom Field has a default value set at time of creation which serves as the field value for any recipient on the Cohort who has not had the field explicitly set. These values can then be checked and set by surveys to guide the course of communication.

Pause/Unpause Recipients

Each recipient has a status to indicate whether or not a recipient is actively receiving messages from Instant Census. This is shown in the third column of the recipients table.

"Unpaused" is the default recipient status; upon creation, every recipient is "Unpaused." An unpaused recipient receives messages from Instant Census as normal.

"Paused" indicates that the recipient is no longer receiving Messages from Instant Census. Recipients are set to "Paused" manually by adminstrators. Recipients cannot reactivate themselves via text message and can only be reactivated by an administrator.

Choose Your Area Code

If you're distributing a survey to a group of recipients in a certain geographic location, you have the option to choose an area code from that specific location for your survey's phone number. For example, if you're distributing a survey to recipients in Boston, you could choose to use a 617 area code for your survey's phone number.

Industry-Standard Amazon Web Services Hosting

We run Instant Census on servers in Amazon Web Services data centers; we use the same infrastructure as many technology companies and US government agencies.

Dedicated Servers For Each Client

Every client's deployment runs on a unique server, with a unique database, from a unique subdomain. This means that clients do not share servers or databases with other clients.

HTTPS

All access to the Instant Census Admin Portal is via HTTPS connection, and every authorized researcher has a unique username and password login.

Multiple Administrator Accounts

Instant Census customers with Enterprise Plans have access to multiple Administrator Accounts. This means each account has access to its own Cohorts and data so that each different team members in your organization can simultaneously utilize Instant Census for their own specific projects.

Cohorts

Our platform groups together survey recipients and their associated surveys and schedules as an Instant Census Cohort, which can be thought of as projects. This allows you to group together people to whom you want to send the same surveys to easily organize and coordinate your studies and results.

Cohort Status Options

Cohorts conveniently have statuses that provide you greater control over your studies. Active and paused statuses indicate whether or not a Cohort is actively sending out surveys, and a completed status allows you to stop all incoming and outgoing messages while retaining all associated data for archive.

Email Support

Email support is available to all Instant Census customers. We respond to all requests in a timely manner.

Expert Survey Team

Need help building your survey? Not sure what types of questions to ask? Our expert survey team is on hand to assist with survey creation, deployment, managing responses, and analyzing your data. Our team has extensive experience and knowledge on question wording and structure, deployment and recruitment strategies, and respondent incentives.

Concierge Service

Exclusive to Enterprise Plan customers, our concierge service offers round-the-clock phone support. For an additional fee, we can handle any to all aspects of survey design, creation, and deployment, as well as data compilation and reporting.