Online Surveys: How to Maximize Your Response Rate

Online surveys are by far the most cost-effective way to collect important data, such as customer satisfaction and employee feedback. But how do you maximize your response rate? This is a problem that most companies conducting online surveys incur and there is a lot of literature available related to the topic, all with varying facts and figures in relation to the expected response rate, techniques to increase responses. responses, the length of the survey to be used, etc. .

The simple truth is that there is no single guide to follow when taking an online survey, as each survey has its own set of variables that affect its response rate. However, there are some common techniques used to increase the likelihood that a potential respondent will complete your questionnaire.

Having conducted hundreds of online surveys of customers, employees, businesses, member groups, and event guests, I began recording survey response rates and the types of key variables that would likely affect them. The variables recorded were:

1. If the survey invitations were personalized (i.e. Dear John Smith or Dear Customer)
2. Survey duration (categorized into completion times of 1 to 4 minutes, 5 to 9 minutes, and more than 10 minutes)
3. If a reward / prize was offered
4. Whether or not the survey was sent to people with a known interest in the survey topic (i.e., job-related, previous customer, tied to social interests, etc.)

The figures shown below were derived from data from 143 online surveys, which were completed by a total of 49,335 respondents. As a general process, prospective respondents were contacted twice by email to encourage participation in the online surveys.

Note that most of the respondents had submitted their data to various databases or were clients of my clients; therefore, it is likely that they were aware of the brand / company prior to being invited to the online survey. People who send email invitations to random subsets of contacts shouldn’t expect to achieve response rates as high as those listed below.

Taking into account the 4 variables and their options, there were 24 possible combinations; this will make sense by looking at the points below. Combinations with the 5 highest and 5 lowest response rates are listed.

5 higher response rates

1. Personalized email and 1-4 minutes to complete and reward offered and respondents had a known interest in the survey topic = 45.3% average response rate
2. Personalized email and 5-9 minutes to complete and reward offered and respondents had a known interest in the survey topic = 40.1% average response rate
3. Non-personalized email and 1-4 minutes to complete and reward offered and respondents had a known interest in the survey topic = 39.8% average response rate
4. Personalized email and 1-4 minutes to complete and no rewards offered and respondents had a known interest in the survey topic = 39.2% average response rate
5. Personalized email and 5-9 minutes to complete and no reward offered and respondents had a known interest in the survey topic = 38.4% average response rate

5 lower response rates

1. Non-personalized email and more than 10 minutes to complete and no rewards offered and respondents had no known interest in the survey topic = 8.2% average response rate
2. Non-personalized email and more than 10 minutes to complete and reward offered and respondents had no known interest in the survey topic = 15.5% average response rate
3. Personalized email and more than 10 minutes to complete and no rewards offered and respondents had no known interest in the survey topic = 16.2% average response rate
4. Non-personalized email and 5-9 minutes to complete and no rewards offered and respondents had no known interest in the survey topic = 19.4% average response rate
5. Non-personalized email and more than 10 minutes to complete and no rewards offered and respondents had a known interest in the survey topic = 19.5% average response rate

So what works best?

The above findings show some clear correlations between response rates and the variables that affect them. As a general rule of thumb, it seems that the following actions should ensure that you get the highest possible response rate when taking an online survey:

1. Personalize your email invitations. People are more likely to reply to emails that are addressed to them by name rather than ‘Dear Sir / Madam’, Dear Colleague ‘or’ Dear Customer ‘. If you have the names of potential respondents, use them. This is easily done using simple software such as Microsoft Word in a mail merge format sent through your Outlook account. It links directly to your database, eliminating the burden of typing each name on each email invitation.
2. Keep the survey as short as possible. In most cases, the shorter the survey, the higher the response rate. Obviously, some online surveys need to be detailed and cannot avoid lasting more than 10 minutes; however, try to avoid asking questions that only collect irrelevant information. This is a common crime among survey developers when preparing questions for an online survey.
3. Offer a reward. Everyone loves getting something for free, so try offering a reward when you send online survey invitations. Some experts, like Kurt Knapton, Executive Vice President of e-Rewards Market Research, suggest that you are more likely to get a higher response rate if you offer each respondent a small reward rather than the chance to win a big prize in a sweepstakes. . Their study found that offering 4,000 people $ 2 each to complete a survey achieved a response rate of 19.3%. Serving the same volume of people with a $ 2,500 giveaway entry only achieved a 12.2% response rate.
4. Look for contacts who may be interested in the topic of the survey. This is not a scientific discovery, but response rates will always be higher if the potential respondent has an interest in the topic of the survey. Job satisfaction surveys always get high response rates because employees believe their responses will influence beneficial changes. Likewise, regular buyers of a particular product / service will undoubtedly have more interest in a related online survey than someone who has only used it once or never.