11 Easy Ways to Improve Your Survey Response Rates

W H I T E P A P E R

M A R I T Z C X . C O M

Surveys are a powerful and cost-effective way to

gather information, identify and diagnose problems,

and uncover new and emerging opportunities.

W W W. M A R I T Z C X . C O M 2

WHITE PAPER 11 Easy Ways to Improve Your Survey Response Rates

THE POWER OF A GOOD SURVEY

Surveys are a powerful and cost-effective way to gather key information, identify and diagnose problems, and uncover new and emerging opportunities. However, one of the biggest challenges that many companies face in conducting surveys is getting the right mix of people taking surveys and also getting a high enough response rate in order to ensure that their survey results are accurate.

The best way to calculate a survey response rate is to divide the number of surveys taken by the number of participants contacted. For example, if you contact 100 people and 30 people respond, you would have 30/100 = .3. Multiply .3 by 100 percent and your total response rate for that survey would be 30 percent.

Survey response rates can vary widely depending on whether you are conducting your survey via phone, email, a paper survey, etc., what industry you’re in, and whether your survey is going to customers or employees. Although there is no single way to improve your response rates, implementing the following steps will help you improve your survey response rates:

1. Know Your Survey Audience

Knowing your survey audience allows you to tailor all of your survey questions and communications to them. For example: Who are they? What type of topics are they interested in? When are they most likely to be available to take your survey? What is the best communication channel to use to reach them (online, e-mail, IVR, mobile, paper surveys, etc). Keep in mind that survey topics that may be of interest to some individuals or groups of people may be of little or no interest to others. What’s more, people are more likely to respond to surveys from companies or people they know or have an existing relationship with vs. a stranger, so plan accordingly.

2. Keep Your Survey Short

The shorter your survey is the more likely people are to take it, and the higher your response rate will be. However, don’t make your survey so short that you’re not able to collect the information that you need. In general, try to develop a survey that is no more than 5-7 minutes long. Also, make it as easy as possible for participants to take your survey. Provide respondents with a way to save partially completed surveys so that they can return and finish taking the survey later. Put harder or more complex questions at the end to reduce survey abandonment rates. Sensitive questions should be included at the end. Even if you tell people your survey is being conducted anonymously, people still may not trust that and may abandon your survey once they come to a sensitive section. By asking this information at the end of the survey, it will minimize your abandonment rates.

3. Ensure Your Contact List is Up to Date

Make sure that you are working with an updated, clean and valid contact list. Otherwise, if you don’t have a valid e-mail address for an e-mail survey or a valid mailing address for a paper survey, it will be difficult to deliver the survey, and will prevent people from participating.

4. Conduct a Pilot Test

Test your survey with a smaller group of people before sending it out to your entire survey participant list. By doing so, you will identify any issues existing with your survey or your contact list so you can fix errors before your survey goes out. Doing a pilot test will also give you a general idea of what you can expect to see in terms of an overall response rate once you send out your survey.

5. Be Mindful of the Timing and Delivery of Your Survey

Tuesdays through Thursdays are generally the best days of the week to send out a survey invitation for B2B surveys; the day of the week is less of an issue for B2C surveys. However, avoid busy times such as major holidays or major events such as a presidential election. Significant holidays or events will adversely affect your survey response rates. It is possible to demonstrate how engagement can be quantifiably measured to show economic value.

6. Pre-Notify Those You Plan to Survey

Prior to sending out your survey, send out an announcement to all you would like to participate. For the cost-conscious, announcements need not necessarily be sent via postcard or email. Including the announcement in your bill, in a newsletter, or on your website alerts people you are planning to conduct a survey and when to expect it. It is also good to include a brief explanation about what the survey will be about and why you’re conducting it, and explain why the survey is important (surveys perceived to be important achieve much higher response rates). In addition, include information such as the time it will take to complete the survey, what you’re planning to do with the survey results once you have them, and what your policy is for safeguarding personal information. Also, be sure to give people the option to opt out of taking your survey (an opt-out option should be included in all of the communications sent, including the survey invitation and reminder).

Survey response rates can vary widely depending on whether you are conducting your survey via phone, email, a paper survey, etc., what industry you’re in, and whether your survey is going to customers or employees.

Test your survey with a smaller group of people before sending it out to your entire survey participant list. By doing so, you’ll be able to identify any issues that may exist with your survey or your contact list so that you can fix them before your survey goes out.

PATRICK KULESA, ISR GLOBAL RESEARCH DIRECTOR

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WHITE PAPER 11 Easy Ways to Improve Your Survey Response Rates

7. Send Out a Compelling Survey Invitation

The survey invitation should be short and concise and written in a friendly and welcoming tone. The invitation should be personalized with “Dear Susie Smith” and/or “We’d like your feedback about your service experience on November 1, 2009.” If you’re sending out an email survey, use different subject lines for different groups to make them more relevant to your audience. For example, if you are sending out a product-related survey to your customers, you might use the subject: “Your use of our XYZ product”. Whereas, a survey sent to your employees might say, “A message from our CEO”. The signature line needs to be from a top level executive related to the survey. For example, a survey related to support experience should likely come from the VP of Support, not the CEO. In the body copy of your survey invitation, be sure to include information such as: the survey purpose, importance, what you plan to do with the results, how long it will take to complete, the deadline for completion, whether the survey is being conducted anonymously, your contact information, and a signature of someone high-up in your organization to increase the perceived importance of your survey. Also, to ensure that your survey invitation makes it into people’s email in-boxes and doesn’t get tagged as spam, be sure to adhere to the CAN-Spam Act.

See: www.marketingforsuccess.com/wordstoavoid.html

8. Send Out Reminder Notices

It is important to send a reminder note to survey participants three or five days after sending the initial survey. Your reminder note should remind people about the survey, convey a sense of urgency about the importance of the survey, restate the survey deadline, and stress why you need their feedback. MaritzCX typically encourages clients not to send out more than two reminders per survey. Also, be sure to only send out a reminder to those who have not responded. The one exception is if your survey was conducted anonymously. In that case, consider sending out a reminder to everyone on your contact list. Otherwise, if people find out that some people received the reminder and others didn’t, they may question whether or not the survey was conducted anonymously.

9. Offer an Incentive for Taking Your Survey

In some cases, offering people an immediate reward for taking your survey can dramatically improve your survey response rates (more than 40 percent in some instances). Survey incentives can be a coupon, a gift card, cash, movie tickets, a discount off of a product or service, or the chance to enter a drawing. The point is to offer a survey incentive your survey audience will care about and want. Also, keep in

mind incentives are commonly used for business-to-consumer surveys and less so for business-to-business surveys, as there may be a conflict of interest policy prohibiting offering incentives. It is advised to use incentives sparingly and keep the “incentive” focused on how you can better meet client’s needs.

10. Get Help for Any Areas You Are Unsure About

If you are uncertain how to develop a survey questionnaire and which survey methodologies to use, you may want to consider hiring a third-party vendor to help you. Doing so can save you a lot of time, headache and grief in conducting your surveys. Be sure to hire a firm that offers best practices support so that you will have the support you need throughout every stage of your project.

11. Act On and Promote Your Survey Results

Research shows people are more likely to complete a survey if they believe a company will act on the results. Whenever possible, publish your survey results and your company’s plans to act on the results. In addition, promote the fact that your company is listening and how you responded. If people see a pattern in your company gathering and acting on survey data, they will be more inclined to take your surveys in the future, which will in turn, help improve your future survey response rates.

It is important to send out at least one reminder note to survey participants about three or five days after sending out your initial survey.

MaritzCX believes organizations should be able to see, sense and act on the experiences and desires of every customer, at every touch point, as it happens. We help organizations increase customer retention, conversion and lifetime value by ingraining customer experience intelligence and action systems into the DNA of business operations. MaritzCX is the combination of the Allegiance award-winning CX platform and Maritz Research strategic consulting services. For more information, visit www.maritzcx.com.

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