Increasing Survey Response Rates: Part I

UPDATE: After reading this, don’t forget to check out Part II: Using Incentives

Many of us continually fight the battle of low-response rates.

My first professional experience with surveying occurred more than 30 years ago. I simply wanted to get the opinions of particular professionals at eleven different colleges in my state and I developed a two or three page survey for them to respond to and send back to me. I thought it was going to be easy because:

• I was asking pretty good questions that I thought even the respondents would want the answers to.
• I assumed professional courtesy would compel people to respond.

My boss scoffed and said, “You might get two back.”

Well, I put my survey together with a cover letter promising to share the aggregate results with all respondents. Then I followed-up with a reminder postcard about a week later.

Low-and-behold – I received 10 out of 11. Being naïve about my success, I actually called the 11th respondent asking him to complete the survey and respond (I probably even told him that everyone was waiting on him!). I remember he was rather curmudgeonly and really wanted nothing to do with my survey, but I persisted and he relented.

I had a 100% response rate!

It was several years before my next professional survey experience. I was Director of Research at an education technology company.

We wanted any one-of-three people in each of the fifty state departments of education to respond to a survey about curricula in economics. I had just responded myself to a survey which I had received in the mail with a crisp one-dollar bill, so I thought, “I’ll make sure to get a good response by including TWO crisp one-dollar bills.” I went to the bank, purchased 300 crisp one-dollar bills and included two with each survey.

I think I got 3 surveys back – 3 out of 150.

Motivating people to respond to a survey is a curious thing. There is some well-accepted common knowledge about incentives to respond to surveys. Here are five tips:

1. Share the results.
2. Identify other people who care about the results.
3. Send a reminder.
4. Charitable giving.
5. Tangible incentives do work.

SHARE THE RESULTS

Offer your respondent the opportunity to see the survey results. The simplest way to do this is to generate a SurveyGizmo summary report in PDF format and post it on your website or (an even easier option) is at the Pro level and above, you can embed a report into your website. Sometimes, an organization may even add value to their survey by sending out a PowerPoint summary.

I have had clients tell me they don’t want to share the results of their surveys because they believe the information they are gathering gives them a competitive advantage. The silliness of thinking that competitive advantage lies in survey results aside; the half-life of survey information is too brief to convey much market power. There is more to be gained by sharing the results and being seen as the organization to generate that information, than believing you’ll have a competitive advantage by holding it back.

I have a client who sponsors a market information survey annually. Five years ago they were reluctant to share the information. Today, they get higher response rates because people in their marketplace anticipate the survey and want to make sure their company is included in the published results.

IDENTIFY OTHERS WHO CARE ABOUT THE SURVEY RESULTS

You are not the only person who wants to know the answers to the survey you are building. Your pastor, professional colleagues, the school board, the president of the local chapter of your professional organization, or even a magazine/newsletter editor might care about your results.

All of the people who care about your survey results can help prepare your respondents by announcing your survey at meetings, in newsletters or in e-mails. You don’t have to be alone in generating survey responses.

SEND A REMINDER

We don’t send post card reminders very much (at all?) anymore, but reminders work just as well via e-mail as they do via snail mail.

Use SurveyGizmo’s email system to send reminders out to all those who have not responded.

You will probably receive a third to a half as many responses to the first reminder as you did to the initial invitation. Subsequent reminders will generate fewer and fewer responses so, after that first reminder, consider your purpose before sending more reminders.

If you’re doing a lead-generation survey where every response can increase your revenue stream, subsequent reminders may be a good idea. If you’re doing research where you need a particular sample size to represent central tendencies, reminders after your first reminder will probably not substantially change your results. It would not be worth the time of leaving your survey in the field, but that first reminder is almost always worth the effort.

CHARITABLE GIVING

Charitable gifts can be particularly effective if your target audience is affluent business executives or other professionals.

Charitable gifts can also be effective if you’re trying to gather responses from a group that you know has a singular mission in mind.

For example, I once pilot-tested a marketing survey for a transportation components company. In order to make sure we got enough responses to the pilot test, we offered $10 to a local nonprofit bicycle shop that trained neighborhood kids in bicycle mechanics for every person who responded to the pilot test and helped us make survey changes.

TANGIBLE INCENTIVES

I have seen tangible incentives positively affect survey response rates and I have seen them crash and burn. After years in the business, I still haven’t figured out the science of incentives.

Here are three approaches you can take:

• Offer a “thank-you” gift – a coffee card, a USB drive, desk knick-knack – to those who respond.
• Offer “points” for each response. Most online panels do this. A respondent gets 250 points for each survey they respond to. As they respond to more and more surveys, they accumulate more and more points, which they can redeem for other gifts.
• Offer a lottery. Take the total cash you have budgeted for “thank-you” gifts and offer it as a cash prize to one randomly selected winner.

My next article will have more to say about tangible thank-you gifts as incentives since, although they may not be the most effective way to increase response rates, they are easy to administer and used very often – so they do deserve a longer discussion.

In review, there are several things you can do to increase your response rates. Components of your strategy might include:

• Offering to share the survey’s results.
• Engaging allies who are also invested in your survey content.
• Use reminder notices.
• Offer charitable gifts.
• Offer tangible incentives.

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