Low response rates represent the most frustrating and costly side of survey strategies. While marketing leaders prioritize the problem, they have yet to substantially erase the challenge of how to increase survey response rates.
Why does it matter? There’s nothing better than surveys for getting direct, unbiased feedback from your target audience. However, in market segments with thousands of clients, it’s critical to calculate precisely what response rate (a crucial metric) represents the feelings and thoughts of the broad market.
Survey response rates in practice
For example, suppose your team believes there are three thousand brand loyalists within your client base, and you want to confirm this hypothesis with an NPS (Net Promoter Score) survey. Our suggestion involves asking each customer on the elevated list, “Would you recommend “Brand X” to friends and family?” This is considered one of the most revealing ways to confirm customer retention.
In this case, you must secure at least a 5% response rate (i.e., 150 survey completions). Many disagree, setting the bottom rung at closer to 20% (600) to ensure reliable results, going as high as promoting a fifty percent targeted average response. In other words, developing marketing initiatives based on data feedback can only progress if you’re confident the insights are accurate and statistically validated.
The bottom line is this: Surveys seamlessly facilitate collecting vast data feedback in a relatively short time as long as they conform to a scale that makes statistical sense. How do you ensure that? Read on to learn more.
What is a survey response rate?
Circling back to our example in the introduction, every marketer must know how to calculate survey response rates. It’s simply (The number of responses/The number of people you sent the survey to) x 100. Less than 5% is a poor response rating, and 30% (plus) is excellent.
Apply this formula to the results. Please note that some surveys divorce themselves from a response rate (i.e., a completion rate—see below). Why? They’re open-ended (like a suggestion box), making the formula baseline (i.e., the number of people you sent the survey to) indeterminable.
Response Rate vs. Completion Rate – Is there a difference?
You’ll probably see the term “survey completion rate” when you enter this arena. It’s different from response rate in that it measures as follows:
(The number of responses/The number of people who began the survey process) x 100.
For example, suppose you distributed 3,000 surveys via email, and 300 responded (i.e., a 10% response rate). However, your virtual tracking indicates that 1,500 started the survey process. In this case, the completion rate (based on the provided formula) is (300/1,500) x 100 = 20%.
Disappointing response rates frequently coincide with low completion rates, although the latter signifies different dynamics, such as overly long surveys, questions that are too complicated or personal, and anonymity issues.
So, talking about completion rate metrics specifically, they allow you to review things from a different perspective by looking at how easy or difficult your survey process is to navigate, with disruptive touchpoints a primary consideration.
Market segmentation best explains survey response rates
While it’s sometimes easier to look at all of your participants as a big group, what you’re really dealing with is a lot of individuals. Segmentation can help you to balance personalization at scale so you have a better understanding of how to connect with each group. Types of segmentation include:
- Demographic (e.g., age, religion, education, etc.).
- Geographic (residence in the same country, city, town, or suburb).
- Behavioral characteristics (influencer following, social media channels, brand loyalties, etc.)
- Psychographic (emotional and thought drivers)
Market segmentation is like a magical glue that drives thousands, even millions, of individuals into defined economically viable groups (i.e., with demonstrated spending power) that adhere to predictable buying trends and react to marketing stimuli similarly.
From there, it’s logical that we can predict brand reactions in the aggregate market if we get insights into a small but representative sample of the masses. The question is how small the sample must be and what amounts to “representative.” Why is this crucial?
Although demographic constructs drive similar behavior, individualism always exists. Marketing thought leadership acknowledges that the primary segment trends seldom have a 100% following.
Thus, it can significantly skew sample readings if the sample size is too small or the response rate is inadequate for any other reason.
Still, detecting the most robust motivators and drivers from a representative sample audience is good enough for any brand to create a lasting market impression.
The problem with too-small survey samples is that individual tastes deviating from the trends may overwhelm the survey results, registering erroneously as the trend. Indeed, they create a “garbage in, garbage out” situation around the data feedback. In other words, size matters when it comes to sample size.
How to increase survey response rates
Several strategy initiatives can impact survey response rates, maximizing aspects that promise benefits and minimizing the touchpoints that create obstructions. The variables determining response success or failure begin with the survey type (e.g., online, email, paper questionnaire, or over the phone) and how easy you make the survey process. These primary drivers integrate with the instructions’ clarity, unambiguous question wording, the flow and survey logic, how long it is (as mentioned above), and the degree of personalization.
No matter how robust your survey structuring is, respondent motivation, customer engagement intensity, guarantee of anonymity, email receptiveness, and demographic propensity to survey participation are fundamental considerations.
Other survey response energizers are the integrity protocols you build around the surveys, email and SM backup campaigns, and survey participant incentives.
Tools that make it easier to boost survey response rates
Leaders in the survey arena have honed their tools to address every process touchpoint to give users encouraging survey response rates in almost every instance with extraordinary confidence.
They also contain data analytical components that confirm minimum sample responses for reliable results (in relation to the segment size).
The most prominent players in the marketplace are as follows:
Sogolytics Enterprise Survey Tool
- Highest-rated integrity and security with SSO and encryption
- AI-based survey creation to save time and improve quality
- Real-time analytics in custom dashboards and presentation-ready downloads
- API, integrations, and automation including to streamline business processes
- In-app collaboration and privacy settings to support separate use cases for multiple users
- Offers survey templates across your customer and employee audiences
- Provides a broad range of proven, penetrative questions for every situation
- Automatic and seamless survey response scoring
- Ensures best practices in every survey process
- Easy-to-use dashboards, multiple users simultaneously
- A user-friendly interface
- Personalized surveys
- AI-driven technologies
- Integrates with all other relevant apps
- Part of the Google Workspace package
- Versatile formats with image, content, and video flexibility
- Seamless and automatic results analysis
- Email, link, or website distribution
- Multiple team visualization
Top tactics to boost response rates
Of course, consultants confirm that tools alone are not enough. Commitment to a cohesive strategy deploying technologies and team coordination are the paths to survey success and the answer to how to increase survey response rates. Here are the ten of our most valuable tips.
Tip #1: Use incentives.
Rewards and incentives significantly uplift survey response and completion probability. The following characteristics stand out as the most influential:
- To stretch the budget, favor small rewards for the many versus relatively large ones for the few
- Raffle formats are generally not engaging.
- Elaborate on how a high response rate can change things and why you chose the respondents.
Tip #2: Utilize a survey panel.
What’s that? A sustainable group of pre-selected respondents willing to respond to surveys – saving significantly on time and effort in finding new survey project participants. It works best for researchers conducting many surveys with thin or complex audience profiles. The downside? A single repetitive audience type may not be representative of the target market. The upside? If or when it is, it’s the way to go.
(Need to connect with a survey panel? We can help!)
Tip #3: The more you connect the survey to respondents’ personalities, the better.
Strong responses align closely with respondents expressing their beliefs and lifestyle drivers through survey participation, with answers that do not go against the grain of how they feel or think about the subject under focus.
Tip #4: Conduct the survey close to a relevant event.
Respondents are more likely to respond to surveys connected to fresh interactions with the brand, a price change, a distribution alteration, a customer support agent, a complaint resolution, a product introduction, etc. Surveys covering stale or distant happenings reflect weakening response scores.
Tip #5: Align the survey with respondents’ preferred channels.
Email, mobile text, website pages, and social media all qualify for consideration. However, not all channels work equally well with all audiences, so selecting the appropriate channel or channel set is integral to response success.
Tip #6: Keep it short and sweet.
TLDR: Participants don’t read long surveys. Non-completion is undeniably connected to survey length. Respondents’ limited attention spans result in a low tolerance for long-winded questionnaires. If your surveys require 12 minutes or more, you’re entering the “boredom” arena and in danger of disrupting the survey response rates. Also, allow your audience to express opinions beyond ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers.
Tip #7: Inject cues into the answering process to encourage respondents to complete the survey.
It’s vital to do this, especially when the survey has more than three questions. Text cues such as ‘Nearly there! Just a couple more questions’ work well. You can also include progress bars to show that they’re well on their way!
Tip #8: Personalize the survey.
Use Piping (like mail merge!) and Logic to ensure your survey flows well and keeps participants engaged. Consider the difference between the two approaches below:
- Hi, Megan! Can you believe it’s been three years since you joined us? We’d love to check in on how your HealthApp subscription has been helping to support your health journey.
- What’s your name? How long have you been a customer? What app do you subscribe to?
Tip #9: Remind non-participants (not everyone else!).
Our experience shows that reminders definitely make a difference. Respondents frequently miss the first survey message (irrespective of the selected channel), so two to three gentle, personalized reminders (such as survey reminder emails) will help energize survey responsiveness.
Even better? Send Intelligent Reminders, so that only those who’ve not yet participated get the nudge. Don’t risk annoying those fabulous folks who have already responded! Let them off the hook and focus on those who are holding back.
Tip #10: Provide feedback on the survey response results.
From a quick Instant Thanks to show your immediate appreciation to more detailed follow-up, what happens after the survey matters, too. This is a massive step forward, inviting respondents into the tight brand or corporate family. Sharing information about an initiative that they helped succeed makes your audience feel valued and important. It may not impact the survey completed, but it will strengthen the foundation for future ones with the same participants.
Conclusion – A survey response case study
The UX team at Matlan – a leading UK fashion and homeware retailer – aimed at higher conversion rates and a more engaging website user navigation process. So, they implemented an integrated survey program (alongside professional guidance) to gain insights into the most crucial touchpoints. The results were remarkable:
- The survey revealed checkout disruptions that were creating several cashout abandonments.
- It resulted in an over one percent jump in conversion rates.
- It generated new ideas for A/B testing, with a 17% leap in new concepts.
- The survey investment’s ROI was 400% in less than a year.
Although Sogolytics wasn’t the professional resource in the case study above, we have many that parallel it. So, if you want corner-to-corner survey structuring and uplifted survey response rates that never falter, connect with our team for a personalized demo of Sogolytics’ capabilities in this vital arena.
Survey Response Rate FAQs
Q1: What’s a good survey response rate?
A: As noted above, unless you can secure at least a 5% response (preferably closer to 20%), results may be unreliable. Many disagree, setting the bottom rung at ten percent and promoting a fifty percent response as the targeted average. Remember that response rates will vary based on your participant group. For example, employee surveys generally have higher response rates than customer surveys. “Better than last time!” is always a good position to be in when you’re asked this question.
Q2: Why are my survey response rates so low?
Revisit the tips explored in this article.
- Use incentives.
- Utilize a survey panel.
- The more you connect the survey to respondents’ personalities, the better.
- Conduct the survey close to the marketing or in-company event.
- Align the survey with the channels respondents love the most.
- Keep it short and sweet.
- Inject time cues into the answering process to encourage completion.
- Personalize the survey.
- Remind n0n-participants.
- Provide feedback on the survey response results.
Q3: How can I improve my survey response rates?
A: If you’ve used all of the tips above and are still struggling, ask your audience! Learning directly from potential participants can offer fresh insight from a new (critically important!) perspective.
Q4: What are some best practices for writing survey reminder emails?
A: We refer you to this Sogolytics review for a detailed and expansive response to customizing emails.
