“How did you hear about us?” is the easiest question to ask at the admissions desk and one of the hardest to get answered online. Staff can tap an answer while a visitor is at the window. Online buyers move through your ticket or membership form without anyone asking them anything. The marketing team then ends up guessing which campaign actually sold the tickets.
This article covers what you can realistically collect during online sales in Altru, where the answers should live once you have them, and how to fill the gaps when the online form can’t ask the question you want.
First, confirm what your online forms can ask today
The survey-style prompts staff use in daily sales don’t necessarily appear on Altru’s online sales forms, and how much you can add to a web form depends on your Altru setup and the form type. Before you design a workaround, check what’s possible for your own setup:
- Test in a sandbox or on a test event. Build an online ticket form and a membership form, add whatever custom fields or questions the form editor allows, and run a test purchase. Then open the resulting constituent and order records and see whether the answer was saved, and where.
- Ask Blackbaud support directly. Ask a specific question: “Can an online advance sales form capture a marketing survey answer, and where does it land in the database?” A vague question gets a vague answer.
- Check whether the answer is reportable. A value that’s stored but can’t be pulled into a query isn’t much use to marketing. Confirm you can query it alongside revenue and sale date.
If the test shows the answer saves cleanly and can be queried, you may not need anything else. If it doesn’t, the options below still get you usable data.
Decide what the survey is actually for
A survey without a reporting plan turns into a column nobody reads. Before you add any question, write down the one or two decisions it should inform. Typical ones:
- Channel attribution. Did the radio spot, the paid social campaign, or the school newsletter drive this sale?
- Visit motivation. A special exhibit, a holiday event, or a routine visit?
- Audience profile. First visit or repeat visit, local or traveling?
Keep it to one question if you can, two at most, and use a fixed list of answers rather than free text. Free-text “how did you hear about us” answers are close to impossible to summarize later. Use the same answer list online and at the desk so the two sources can be compared.
Where the answers should live in Altru
However you collect the answer, it’s only useful once it’s in Altru next to the sale. The usual choices:
- Constituent attributes work well for facts about the person, like “first-time visitor” or ZIP code region. They’re easy to query and to use in smart fields.
- Something tied to the order or revenue record is better for “what drove this purchase,” because the same person may answer differently next time. Check with Blackbaud what your forms can attach at the transaction level.
- Appeals or source codes are often already part of your fundraising reporting. Some organizations reuse them for ticketing campaigns so marketing and development report the same way.
Choose one place and use it consistently. Answers that are attributes for some sales and notes for others can’t be reported together.
Workarounds when the form can’t ask
Let the link answer the question
Often you don’t need to ask how someone heard about you, because the link they clicked already tells you. Use a distinct landing page or tagged URL (UTM parameters) for each campaign, and read the results in your web analytics. You won’t see individual buyers this way, but you’ll see which channels produce completed purchases, and that’s usually what the marketing question is really about.
Ask right after the purchase
A short survey link in the confirmation email or eTicket gets decent responses because the buyer is still engaged. Use a standard form tool, include the order or constituent ID in the link if your email tool can merge it in, and import the answers into Altru on a regular schedule. It adds a step, but you get the answer tied to a real record.
Ask after the visit
Questions about satisfaction and motivation get better answers once the visit is over. A post-visit email built from a query of yesterday’s attendees tends to get more thoughtful responses than a question added at checkout, and it doesn’t slow down the purchase.
Capture it at the gate
For timed tickets bought online, some sites have scanning staff ask one question at entry and log a tally. It’s crude, but it gives you a rough split between online and walk-up buyers that you can’t get any other way without changing the form.
Don’t let the survey cost you sales
Every required field on a checkout form gives some buyers a reason to quit, especially on phones. Make survey questions optional, put them after the payment details or on the confirmation step if the form allows it, and look at your completion rate before and after. If online conversions drop noticeably after you add a question, it isn’t worth keeping.
Where Social Good fits
Some organizations reconsider this question when they replace Altru’s web forms entirely. Our Checkouts product is a branded, mobile-friendly checkout for tickets, memberships, and donations that writes data back to Altru. If capturing a specific marketing question is part of why you’re looking, bring the exact question and where you want the answer stored in Altru to the conversation, and we’ll tell you plainly whether it fits.
Quick answers
Should the survey question be required?
Almost never online. A partial answer set is more useful than a lower purchase rate.
Can I compare online answers with desk answers?
Only if both use the same answer list and are stored in the same place in Altru. Set that up before launch rather than trying to reconcile the two later.
