Using Mythos: Getting the Most Impact Stories Possible
One of the primary goals of Mythos is to make it easier for you to gather as many stories as possible.
The idea being that the more stories you have, the more likely it is that you’ll have a story to tell to an existing or a prospective donor. For specific goals like endowment impact reporting, you also want as many of the beneficiaries to respond as possible because that means that more of your donors are receiving beneficiary impact stories. And that, of course, is a good thing for you.
With that in mind, there are several ways in which we’ve designed Mythos to help you get the most beneficiary impact stories possible.
- Branded, themed surveys
- Single Sign On
- Data pre-fill
- Survey confirmation page
- In Progress surveys
- Impersonation
Establish Confidence with Survey Themes
The first, and definitely one of the more important ways, is through the branding and theming of your Mythos surveys.
This is important because when a beneficiary receives your survey, you want them to feel confident that it is legitimate and that it actually comes from you (vs. a hacker).
Survey themes allow you to customize the look and feel of your survey to whatever degree you require. That always includes the integration of your organizations logo, usually includes updating the colors and fonts of the survey page, and sometimes means actually customizing the layout or size of elements on the survey page.
Make it Convenient with Single Sign On
The next, and probably the most important way to get the most impact stories possible (since almost all the other benefits below rely on it), is through the integration of Single Sign On. Single Sign On (or SSO) is a way of using your organizations authentication system to allow access to your Mythos surveys.
This is important because when you send a survey, you often will want to limit access to it (especially if you are using data pre-fill, the next item on this list) to ensure you only get relevant responses. SSO allows your survey recipients to login to the survey using a login they already have and through a system which they are already familiar and comfortable using.
This is convenient since most will likely already be logged in or will have their login information readily available, if not saved and preloaded, but also means they don’t have to manage another, separate Mythos login.
Make it Easy with Data Prefill
It can often be challenging to get beneficiaries to respond to surveys. Just like you, they are busy and have a lot of things competing for their attention. And when it comes to student or faculty beneficiaries, that challenge can be even more…challenging.
Data prefill is one way to “grease the wheels” as they say. With data prefill, you can upload information about the recipients of the survey and, if you are using Single Sign On, prefill that information for each individual recipient when they access the survey.
In other words, if you know things like name or school or class year or major, for example, you can have that information already entered into the survey for each recipient so they don’t have to type it in.
This makes it easier for the recipient to get straight to the more high value, and longer form, questions that you really want them to answers–saving them time and getting you a higher response rate.
Motivate with the Survey Confirmation Page
Since many of our customers are in higher education, we know well from experience that students and faculty sometimes need a little motivation to get them to submit their impact stories.
One way you can help motivate them, and thereby get more stories, is to promote a post-survey giveaway or raffle.
Mythos surveys allow you to do that in two ways–through an integrated confirmation page or by redirecting to a specific website page. You can either link to the offer or embed it on your website.
Follow Up with In Progress Statuses
Once a survey response is started, you can see its status in Mythos as “In Progress”. This is great because you know that the recipient has started to complete the survey. But sometimes, people get distracted and forget to finish and submit their response.
In the Survey Response Manager, you can easily see all survey responses that are in progress and, using the Status Report, easily follow up to remind each that they still need to finish up and submit their response.
When All Else Fails, Impersonate and Submit for Them
All of these things have hopefully helped to get the majority of your recipients to respond but if you are on deadline and that deadline is looming, you sometimes just have to bite the bullet and finish up responses on your recipients behalf.
In Mythos, any surveys that are in progress have an impersonate option that you can use to essentially login as that person, and complete, and submit the survey on their behalf.
About the Author
Robb Hoffheins
As the Head of Product, Robb is responsible for the success of Mythos from sales to ongoing customer success with the platform.
