How to Increase Summer Camp Enrollment Using Surveys

Summer camp surveys are your most powerful tool for unlocking the “why” behind registration decisions. They eliminate assumptions, close the gap between your offerings and camper desires, and give you the competitive edge needed to design a summer experience that families can’t wait to sign up for.

In this guide, we are going to reveal how gathering targeted feedback can refine your camp offerings, making them more appealing and bringing in more campers than ever.

What Is a Summer Camp Survey and Why Does It Matter?

A Summer Camp Survey is a structured questionnaire designed to gather data from campers, parents, and community members at key points throughout the camp lifecycle.

You can use these surveys to gain actionable insights for program development and enrollment strategy.

The surveys consist of 3 distinct categories depending on the time you aim to gather data.

The Three Types of Strategic Surveys

To maximize registration and retention, successful camp operators use 3 main types of surveys:

• The Pre-Camp Survey

Sent to prospects and past families months before registration opens (typically September to November), the objective of this survey is to inform your program design. This is how you can explore their expectations, preferences, and any special needs or accommodations. The data directly informs your Early Bird launch, ensuring you sell the programs families are most excited about.

• Mid-Camp Survey

During the camp season, seize the opportunity to gather real-time feedback from campers and their families. Conduct short, daily surveys to analyze their satisfaction levels, identify areas for improvement, and address any potential concerns.

• Post-Camp Survey

Sent immediately after a session or the full summer, this comprehensive survey captures overall satisfaction, evaluates staff and facilities, and identifies areas needing fundamental improvement. The primary objective here is retention and marketing material generation.

This is how you gather feedback for summer camp, learn what may go wrong, plan your next moves and eventually, increase summer camp registration using surveys.

What Questions Should You Ask in a Summer Camp Survey?

The success of your survey depends entirely on the quality of your questions. To drive registration, questions must be strategically designed to uncover your camp’s pain points, desire drivers, and perceived value.

Pre-Camp Surveys: Understanding Parent and Camper Expectations

The goal of the pre-camp survey is to inform your marketing and programming before the registration window opens.

You can include such questions:

• Past Experience: “In the past, what did you love or dislike about other summer camp experiences?” 
• Child’s Interests: “On a scale of 1–5 , how important are the following areas when choosing a camp for your child: Safety protocols, Skill-building, Social/Friendship opportunities, Flexible scheduling?“
• Financial and Logistical Priorities: “What is your ideal budget for a one-week camp session?” or “How important is early drop-off/late pick-up to your summer scheduling?”

Mid-Camp Surveys: Checking Satisfaction in Real Time

These short, often anonymous, surveys are designed for instant optimization. You are looking for points you can fix before the week ends and the family leaves unhappy.

You can begin by asking:

• Activity Enjoyment: “On a scale of 1–5, how much is your camper enjoying the activity track they are currently in?” (If ratings are low, you can offer a switch.)
• Staff: “Have you found the camp leaders friendly and helpful to this day?”
• Operational Friction: “What is the single most frustrating part of drop-off or pick-up this week?”

Post-Camp Surveys: Gathering Feedback for Next Year

Now that everyone has gone home, it is time to invest in retention and future marketing.

You can ask:

• “On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend our camp to a friend or colleague?”
• “If you could change one thing about your camp experience to make it better next year, what would it be?”
• “What was your highlight of the camping experience?”

How Can Summer Camp Surveys Help Increase Registration?

If you ask strategic questions and interpret the data, you can convert curious families into registrations and the existing campers into retention.

This is how you can use survey results to increase camp registration:

Improve Programs

If your Pre-Camp Surveys reveal that 60% of parents highly value STEM or specialty arts programs, you have a mandate to launch them. It makes sense to spend resources on high-demand offerings rather than guessing.

Refine Marketing

The Post-Camp Survey directly captures the emotional “win.” When a parent says, “My shy child made three new best friends and gained confidence,” that is a more powerful marketing message than any general camp slogan.

Build Parents’ Trust

After analyzing your Post-Camp Survey, send an email to all past families detailing one major change you are making specifically because of their feedback. Example: “You asked for more shade at the pool area, and we are installing two new canopies for next summer.”

How Do You Design an Effective Summer Camp Survey?

Effective survey design prioritizes the respondent’s experience, making it fast, effortless, and rewarding.

So this is how you can create quality surveys:

• Keep It Short and Focused: Respect the parent’s time. A general rule for a targeted survey is no more than 8-10 primary questions. If you need more data, segment your audience and send multiple short surveys rather than one long one.
• Prioritize Mobile-Friendliness: Most parents check email and complete forms on their phones. A dedicated platform like Jumbula uses a responsive design, making multiple-choice bubbles and open-text boxes easy to tap and type on a small screen.
• Mix Question Formats Strategically: Use multiple choices or rating scales for quick, measurable data such as satisfaction level to speed up completion.
• Limit open-ended questions to 1-2 per survey to gather your rich data and respect the users’ time at the same time.
• Avoid camp jargon or overly complex terms. Every question should be easy to understand on the first read.
• Offer respondents priority access to your registration launch. Example: “Complete this survey to receive a unique link allowing you to register 48 hours before the public.”

What Tools Should You Use for Camp Surveys?

The platform you choose for your surveys dictates how efficiently you can gather, analyze, and, most importantly, use the data for registration purposes. You have several options:

Google Forms

It is best used for very short satisfaction surveys: Free, accessible, and simple to use.

Dedicated Survey Platforms

Platforms like SurveyMonkey or Typeform offer professional templates, good analysis features, and sophisticated branching logic. You can start free and unlock premium features for more sophistication.

How to Turn Survey Data Into Continuous Camp Improvement

The ultimate goal of surveying is to ensure your camp continues to evolve, remaining attractive and competitive year after year.

1. Year-Over-Year Comparison 

Compare key metrics like satisfaction scores, importance ratings, and budget limits from this year’s survey to last year’s. This helps distinguish a temporary issue from a long-term trend. For instance, If you invested in a new art studio based on last year’s survey, measure the satisfaction score for “Art Facilities” in this year’s survey.

2. Identify Growing Market Trends

Pay close attention to open-ended and pre-camp feedback to identify growing program interests. If you see a year-over-year increase in requests for culinary arts or nature survival skills, you need to integrate these themes into your next year’s offerings.

When returning families see that the suggestion they made last year has become a new feature this year, they become your most reliable fans.

How to Use Survey Feedback for Marketing and Communication

Parents trust honest feedback and visible action far more than generic advertising. This is how you can use this insight:

• Immediately pull the highest-scoring, most emotionally resonant quotes from your Post-Camp Surveys. Feature these direct, unedited quotes on your homepage, registration page, and in your email campaigns.
• f surveys consistently show that “flexible scheduling” is the number one registration driver, ensure your paid online ads and website copy lead with that message.

Final Thoughts

The path to increasing summer camp registrations using the Summer camp survey lies in truly understanding your campers and their families. 

Join the growing community of camp organizers and leaders who trust Jumbula’s camp registration software to streamline their survey and data collection processes. With its intuitive interface and comprehensive feature set, Jumbula is the ultimate companion for anyone seeking to elevate their summer camp offerings and soar to new heights of success.

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