Survey Research

We get asked all the time about incentives and their place in survey research.  There are people standing on both sides of the aisle with strong opinions about whether or not you should offer respondents an incentive when conducting a market research or customer satisfaction surveys.  Both sides of the argument have valid points, and if you decide to offer an incentive, here are some tips to get you started:

1. Make sure to promote the incentive when soliciting for survey responses. If you're using email marketing, put it in the email; if you're adding the survey link to the bottom of a receipt, include the incentive information; if you're posting it on a website, add a sentence or two about the reward.
    
2. Always include details.  Is every respondent rewarded or are they entered into a raffle? Some people argue smaller rewards that everyone gets yield higher responses than a 1 in 10,000 chance of winning a really awesome giveaway.
    
3. What is the timeframe?  If respondents must complete the survey before a specific date, include that infomration.  Also let them know how long after submitting their response they should expect to receive the incentive.  You may see a higher response rates when the time between survey completion and receiving the incentive are shorter.
    
4. Is the reward relevant and desired?  For some businesses this might be easy.  If you're a retail store, you could give discounts or an exclusive offer.  We're seeing more and more gift card incentives being offered, so you may want to keep the economy in mind as well - that gas card could be exactly what the survey respondent needs right now.  Make sure the reward is relevant and enticing.  If the respondent views the reward as worthless, they may be insulted and refuse to complete the survey when they would have taken it with no incentive.

No matter what kind of incentive you offer, the most important part is to follow through.  If you say they will receive the gift card in the mail in 1-2 weeks, make sure they receive the gift card in 1-2 weeks.  If you fail to deliver what you promised, the chances of respondents believing you next time you need them for customer research does not look good.  But it could be worse than that.  With social media (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, blogging, etc.) becoming more and more popular, it's easy for respondents to share their discontent and backlash could quickly become a PR nightmare.