Learn about member surveys

Surveys let you gather feedback from members at crucial points in their membership journey: upon joining and after they cancel. Welcome surveys provide insights into why fans join your Patreon, while Exit surveys help identify opportunities to retain more members. Keep reading to learn how member surveys work and how you can leverage their insights to develop strategies for membership growth.

Welcome survey

Available to all creators, welcome surveys let you get a deeper understanding of what’s motivating paid members to join your Patreon.

Welcome surveys are enabled for all creators by default. You can turn off your welcome survey by navigating to your survey insights tab and clicking the designated link.

How the welcome survey works

Immediately after completing checkout, new paid and upgraded members will be presented with a multiple-choice survey, where they can select what about their membership they’re looking forward to most:

• Merch or products for sale
• News and updates
• Connecting with other fans
• Exclusive work from the creator
• Supporting the creator financially
• Connecting with the creator
• Other

Once members have selected their response, they can add more details in a free-form response.

Members who rejoin your Patreon or join for free won’t be presented with the welcome survey upon signup.

You can preview the member experience by navigating to the survey insights tab. From here, click on the Preview button and click the next button to see both steps. The multiple-choice responses are disabled when previewing the welcome survey, so only members can respond.

Currently, welcome survey customization isn’t an option.

Viewing welcome survey results

You can check members’ responses by navigating to the surveys insights tab. Analyze results over 30 days, 60 days, and all time. You can also use the tier filter, which defaults to All tiers, to better assess trends driving fans to join which tiers.

You can view free-form survey responses by clicking the comment link for a multiple-choice response.

How can I use insights from welcome survey results?

• Leverage survey responses to tailor your offering to what fans want most. Understand what benefits resonate the most to adapt your benefits and promotion strategy
• Use aggregated survey responses to spark creative ideas, discover trends, and ensure your content strategy aligns with your fans’ expectations

You can export welcome survey results as a CSV to review individual responses and further analyze responses with the visualization tool you prefer.

Exit survey

Exit surveys offer insights into why a member has canceled their membership. Members can select one of the following reasons for canceling: 

• I was overcharged
• I'm not happy with Patreon's features or services
• I only became a member to receive a specific benefit and now I've got it
• It was too hard to find or access my benefits/rewards
• I only intended to give [CREATOR] a specific amount of money and now I have
• [CREATOR] wasn't as active as I expected
• I didn't like the benefits/rewards that I received from [CREATOR]
• I didn't receive the benefits/rewards described on [CREATOR]'s Patreon page
• My financial situation changed
• Some other reason — members can further explain in a text field

More information about exit surveys 

• Exit Surveys are optional. Members can skip the survey if they prefer.
• Exit surveys are anonymous, so members can freely share the reason(s) for canceling their membership.
• Cancellations happen — it’s a natural part of membership businesses. That said, our Product team is constantly working to help creators get and keep members. 

FAQ

• One way is by polling your members. Polls are a great way to source feedback.

• Welcome survey results will include member names, and you can message those members. At this time, it's not possible to review Exit survey responses since exit surveys are anonymous.

• Here's how to message members who completed the Welcome Survey:

  1. Navigate to your survey insights tab
  2. Click on a response to view individual comments
  3. Click on the message button to send a private message to that member

  Exit surveys are anonymous, so it's not currently possible to message members who respond to the exit survey.

• Currently, survey customizations are not an option. 

• While we don't send notifications for completed surveys, Exit survey results and Welcome survey results are updated as soon as members respond.