Reach the response. We like to think it’s what we do best here at Cvent. That is our company slogan, after all.
In a recent post on getting a significant response, we mentioned the importance of response rates when conducting an online survey. In short, without sufficient response, it is impossible to rely upon survey data to provide accurate information.
Here are some easy ways you can boost response rates for your next online survey:
1. Keep Your Survey Short and Simple
You’ll hear this best practice a hundred times, but it’s one of the most important. Nobody wants to answer a 100-question survey about your company. You can get the feedback you’re looking for with just a few questions. Ask yourself after writing your survey draft, "Do I really need to ask this?" It’s better knowing something than nothing at all, and you risk the latter when you start asking for too much.
2. Use Incentives Wisely
Offering an incentive is a great way to elicit higher response rates, but such a plan needs to be carried out with caution. Depending on the specifics of the survey (who is being surveyed, what is being asked, how much time it requires, etc.), different type of incentive strategies can be useful. Determine what the optimal balance between incentive cost and response rate is. This may take a second or third survey attempt, but finding out can be very valuable to your organization. Remember that incentives are an expense too.
3. Personalize Your Survey Invitations
This is email marketing 101 at work: if you’re using email invitations (as most businesses do) to drive survey traffic, you have to ensure that the messaging is personalized in every way possible. This includes the email sender name, the subject line and the message content. Over 60 percent of email recipients determine whether or not to open a new message based on sender name alone. Getting noticed in the crowd of marketing emails and spam requires you to pique your respondent’s interest with relevant information. Remember, if they don't even read your email, they certainly won’t respond to your survey.
4. Personalize Your Survey Content
Don’t bait and switch your respondents with a fabulous personalized invitation, only to follow up with a generic one-size-fits-all survey. You won’t have a response until they choose to accept the invitation, and complete the survey. Keep their interest by using skip or branch logic to route respondents down a path of questions that only applies to them. Also, maintain that same level of personalization using pipe logic to display custom question text that makes your respondents feel like their opinion is important.
5. Segment Your Audience
To effectively personalize your messages and your survey, you need to segment your respondent database into groups. This will allow you to reach an exceptionally remarkable level of personalization without much effort at all. A robust customer database allows you to segment your contacts into multiple groups; these groups can be a determinant for whether or not a question is displayed. Target the appropriate segments with the right messaging and the right questions to maximize response rates.
6. Make It Appealing
A visually appealing design, in both your survey and your invitation, can help elicit higher rates of response. People will be more likely to respond to a survey and offer personal information if a survey looks credible. Making sure your emails and your surveys match the look and feel of your corporate brand is essential to establishing this trust.
7. Use Automated Reminders
Even the best emails get lost sometimes. People who have every intention of completing your survey may simply set it aside during a busy day, then forget to ever come back to it. Using automated email reminders will offer your audience another chance to respond to your invitation; this follow-up may even catch them at a better time.
8. Make It Easy
The information you already have about your respondent can be leveraged in more ways than one. Not only can it provide data for personalizing content, but it can also be used to pre-populate various survey fields, such as contact registration forms. Survey recipients are surprisingly adverse to filling out their contact information; pre-population of data saves respondents time and has been proven to significantly increase survey participation rates.
In a recent post on getting a significant response, we mentioned the importance of response rates when conducting an online survey. In short, without sufficient response, it is impossible to rely upon survey data to provide accurate information.
Here are some easy ways you can boost response rates for your next online survey:
1. Keep Your Survey Short and Simple
You’ll hear this best practice a hundred times, but it’s one of the most important. Nobody wants to answer a 100-question survey about your company. You can get the feedback you’re looking for with just a few questions. Ask yourself after writing your survey draft, "Do I really need to ask this?" It’s better knowing something than nothing at all, and you risk the latter when you start asking for too much.
2. Use Incentives Wisely
Offering an incentive is a great way to elicit higher response rates, but such a plan needs to be carried out with caution. Depending on the specifics of the survey (who is being surveyed, what is being asked, how much time it requires, etc.), different type of incentive strategies can be useful. Determine what the optimal balance between incentive cost and response rate is. This may take a second or third survey attempt, but finding out can be very valuable to your organization. Remember that incentives are an expense too.
3. Personalize Your Survey Invitations
This is email marketing 101 at work: if you’re using email invitations (as most businesses do) to drive survey traffic, you have to ensure that the messaging is personalized in every way possible. This includes the email sender name, the subject line and the message content. Over 60 percent of email recipients determine whether or not to open a new message based on sender name alone. Getting noticed in the crowd of marketing emails and spam requires you to pique your respondent’s interest with relevant information. Remember, if they don't even read your email, they certainly won’t respond to your survey.
4. Personalize Your Survey Content
Don’t bait and switch your respondents with a fabulous personalized invitation, only to follow up with a generic one-size-fits-all survey. You won’t have a response until they choose to accept the invitation, and complete the survey. Keep their interest by using skip or branch logic to route respondents down a path of questions that only applies to them. Also, maintain that same level of personalization using pipe logic to display custom question text that makes your respondents feel like their opinion is important.
5. Segment Your Audience
To effectively personalize your messages and your survey, you need to segment your respondent database into groups. This will allow you to reach an exceptionally remarkable level of personalization without much effort at all. A robust customer database allows you to segment your contacts into multiple groups; these groups can be a determinant for whether or not a question is displayed. Target the appropriate segments with the right messaging and the right questions to maximize response rates.
6. Make It Appealing
A visually appealing design, in both your survey and your invitation, can help elicit higher rates of response. People will be more likely to respond to a survey and offer personal information if a survey looks credible. Making sure your emails and your surveys match the look and feel of your corporate brand is essential to establishing this trust.
7. Use Automated Reminders
Even the best emails get lost sometimes. People who have every intention of completing your survey may simply set it aside during a busy day, then forget to ever come back to it. Using automated email reminders will offer your audience another chance to respond to your invitation; this follow-up may even catch them at a better time.
8. Make It Easy
The information you already have about your respondent can be leveraged in more ways than one. Not only can it provide data for personalizing content, but it can also be used to pre-populate various survey fields, such as contact registration forms. Survey recipients are surprisingly adverse to filling out their contact information; pre-population of data saves respondents time and has been proven to significantly increase survey participation rates.
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