Increasing The Survey Response Rate

Survey Response is important to determining the success of your survey. No matter the time we spend in creating a near accurate survey, we need to give equal importance to getting the responses for the survey. An average of 30% response rate is referred to as a good score but what if we told you that there is a way you can do even better than that?  Read the entire blog and by the end of it, you will have ideas that will help you in increasing the survey response rate.

What is the survey response rate?

Survey response rate refers to the response you get for every 100 links or invite sent. A survey rate determines how many people would respond to your survey link. So for example, if you sent a survey to 1000 people and 200 responded, the response rate for the particular survey would be 20%.

The average survey rate for a CX survey is roughly around 33%. Anything above that is considered great. However, with further analysis, we realize that different modes of survey data collection yield different results. Response rate benchmark for different tools differs across the industry. However, anything in the bracket of 25-33% would be called a good survey response rate.

Why Is Higher Rate Better?

Before we begin to unravel the ways you can be increasing the survey response rate for your survey, we need to understand the importance of a high survey response rate and what it means for your brand.

A high survey response rate is usually a piece of good news for a brand conducting a research or feedback collection exercise. The benefit of it is listed below:

• Data Analysis: If you are conducting a study or a customer feedback exercise, a low survey response rate would yield a small data set. This data collected for analysis can not be attributed as a true representation of your customer base or the population you are trying to reach.
• Failed Objective: If your result requires you to collect the sample over bigger population size, your objective would fail if you have a low response rate. Hence, in order to conduct a successful study or feedback collection exercise, it is best advised to aim for a higher survey response rate.

Improving The Survey Response Rate

Now that we have established the importance of a high survey response rate, we will now understand how you can improve the response rate for your survey. There are steps you can take to optimize your survey for a better response rate.

Creating the right survey invite

As they say,” First impression matters”. Basing our survey on that, our survey invite sent either via Email or SMS would be our first impression. In order to get the respondents to respond, you need to write an invite that convinces them to take up the survey in the first place.

The subject and “from” name are very important if you are sending your survey invite by Email. Most of the users read the subject and the sender’s email and decide if the mail is junk or not. 43% of the user mark the email as spam based on the Email id. So be sure that you use a real person’s name and email id to send the survey link. It adds a layer of human touch to the survey link. You can also use something similar to “Devon Smith (Vima Inc.)” to link to both the company and person.

Use The Perfect Subject Line

Subject Line is another aspect using which your respondents might mark you as spam. Make sure to use the Subject to convey what the mail is all about. You can mention your survey duration or question to convey how long your survey is. You can also use the subject line to convey what the survey is about.

Use The Survey Introduction Effectively

When the respondents open the survey link, the survey introduction page is the first thing visible to them. Use this space efficiently to convince the respondents to take the survey. An ideal introduction includes the message from the survey creator, expressing the purpose of the survey. Other than that, you can talk about data security and give information about the survey, including the number of questions and how long will it take to fill the survey completely.

You can also incentivize the survey in terms of using data to positively enhance the service and product.

Make The Survey Personal & Intuitive

The 21^st century is all about creating personalized products and services. This should reflect in the feedback surveys also. Your survey should be personalized including using the respondents’ names. For example, the survey should start with “Dear FIRST NAME”.

You can also use Logic to create a survey path that navigates as per response, making your survey more efficient and interactive for the respondents.

Put Yourself In Your Customer’s Shoes

The best practice when it comes to creating a feedback survey is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Prior to making the survey live, take the survey for yourself and analyze where the dropout might be highest. Check the survey for fluency, tone, length, type of questions. Too many open-ended questions are bound to increase the dropout rate.

Once you have identified the weak points, it is time to analyze the strong points. You need to increase the efforts on collectors that are bound to bring in better results.

Finally, make sure you acknowledge your respondents’ time. Add a personalized thank you message at the end of the survey to make the entire exercise a pleasant experience for your respondents.

Send Your Surveys When The Time Is Right

In a study by Smart Insights, it was concluded that the highest open rate comes in the first hour of receiving the mail, at 23.63%. This drops to 4.8% as the window increases to 6 hours and as low as 0.63% at the 24-hour mark.

Therefore, it becomes even more crucial to be perfect with your timing. Most marketers suggest that the time slot between 8 am to 10 am and post 8 pm. These slots would ensure that you don’t fight against business or official mails a respondent might be receiving during other hours.

Use WhatsApp To Send Surveys

One tool that can get you a higher response rate is WhatsApp. Sending your survey via WhatsApp can yield a better result since you won’t be competing against hundreds of promotional messages and emails. An active internet user, on average, receives more than 100 emails each day and more than 15 SMS. If you go with an Email or SMS collector, you would be competing against them. But with WhatsApp integration, you can reach your customer on WhatsApp, getting better reach and visibility.

Survey2Connect offers you WhatsApp integration to your Survey2Connect accounts, allowing our users to send their survey link on their respondents’ WhatsApp messenger. This has given them a better survey response rate from their customer and ensures that they have a true omnichannel collection suite at their disposal. You can book a demo and see for yourself how the WhatsApp integration has been a game-changer for our clients and their CX strategy.

Click here to start your free trial of Survey2Connect’s platform. To learn more about Survey2Connect, visit  Survey2Connect