Table of Contents
Summary
If you don’t have an adequate survey response rate to back your survey data, then the survey is almost of no use. Though a good survey response rate can vary from industry, to industry you can still do a few simple things to improve survey response rates tremendously, like personalizing the survey. Now personalization is one way to go about it, here are 10 more ways and the reason why it can help increase survey response rates.
Creating surveys is one thing, but gathering ample survey responses is where the crux of the matter lies. The ultimate goal of your survey is to get a complete idea of your business’s health and where it lies when it comes to satisfying customers. In order to procure these insights, your size matters, survey response rate matters. Before, getting to know why we are stressing on survey response rate, let’s recap on what exactly it is.
What is Survey Response Rate
Survey response rate denotes the number of people in your sample who actually responded to and completed the survey.
Why does Survey Response Rate Matter So Much?
Let’s say you have 100 customers and you conduct an NPS survey to find how satisfied they are. You find that 60% promoters ( happy customers) and 30% detractors (unhappy customers). Ideally, that is great news. However, when you check further, you find out that only 20 out of 100 customers responded and your survey response rate is just 20%. The rest 8b2b0% hasn’t even responded. The reason could be anything from disinterest or dissatisfaction to not being aware of such a survey. When that’s the case, you can derive any insights from the response rate you’ve received.
The greater your survey response rate, the better is the quality of your data. So, here comes the next relevant question. How much is good enough?
How to calculate Survey Response Rate?
To calculate the survey response rate, the following formula can be used:
Survey Response rate = Number of respondents who completed the survey/ total number of people being sent * 100
The mentioned formula will help you derive the survey response rate as a percentage.
What is a Good Survey Response Rate?
Ideally, a survey response rate higher than 50% is considered to be great. However, this happens when the survey is driven by a strong relationship between the customers and the business. The response rate can be affected by a lot of factors like distribution method, the industry you belong to, demographics, survey invitation, and even incentives.
For example, B2B businesses require more response rates for their surveys than B2C businesses. The average survey response rate for a B2B survey usually ranges from 23% to 32% depending on the type of survey. On the other hand, B2C surveys fetch around 13% to 16% response rates on average.
Same way, customer satisfaction surveys usually receive an average response rate of 33%, internal surveys can go up to 30% or even 40%, and so on. So, basically, the response rate also depends on the type of survey conducted.
But, as we mentioned before, you need a solid survey response rate to derive solid insights. So, the objective should be to improve your survey response rate in order to make result-oriented business decisions. So, let’s see how you can increase your survey response rates.
How to Increase Survey Response Rates: 11 Effective Methods
Low response rates can put all your hard work in vain. It can skew the insights and affect the very objective of the survey. Fortunately, there are several ways in which you can increase your survey response rates and deal with low response rates.
1. Personalize your survey
Personalization is no more an option nowadays. It has become a necessity and customers expect that from you nowadays. In fact, the studies show that 72% of customers will only engage with personalized messaging.
Address your potential respondent by their names and ask questions that are actually relevant. You can even brand your surveys to make them look more credible and add an appealing design. Also, make it a point to customize the open-ended question to increase engagement.
Now, all this can be quite a task if you are doing it manually. Therefore you can use online survey tools like Affiniv with extensive personalization options to make the process simpler and quicker.
2. Let the respondents know why they are being surveyed
Customers always wish to remain informed especially at a time when privacy concerns are increasing day by day. So, they would want to know why they are being surveyed and what its objective is. So, it is best to brief the objective of the survey at the beginning, so that customers feel at ease and are motivated to respond to the survey. Also, let them know that you are complying with the security standards with the help of an online survey tool and that their information will never be compromised. This can really help improve the survey response rate.
3. Send survey from the company domain
When it comes to credibility, you don’t want to take any chances. Sending surveys from personal domains or masking the sender’s email will not provide a sufficient email delivery rate. When surveys are sent from your company domain, it adds credibility and can boost your open rate significantly and in turn increase survey response rates as well. Respondents will also feel safer to reply to the questions to a credible business.
4. Clean your Email List
Clean your existing email list by removing old, inactive, and irrelevant contacts from your list. This definitely going to decrease the bounce rate of your email surveys, increase the open rates and bring higher response rates for your survey as the engagement quotient is also being increased here.
5. Do not over-survey
Over surveying is definitely a no-no. Survey at regular intervals. You can conduct surveys at a quarterly, half-yearly, or annual basis. Your customers should not be bombarded with surveys every week or day, this can really put them off and they might cease to engage with your brand. Evidently, this can bring a steep dip in your survey response rates.
6. Short and simple survey
Out of a two-page long survey and a short one-page survey, which one would you answer? Definitely, the latter right?! It’s a busy world and everyone wants things to be short and simple to understand and so do your customers.
Ask short and relevant questions in your survey, preferably close-ended questions. Craft questions in a way that can be understood faster and also remember to let the respondents know how far they’ve completed the survey with every question answered. This will encourage them to answer all questions. For example, if the respondent has completed 3 out of 5 questions, you can let them know that there are just two more to go!
7. Don’t ask too many open-ended questions
Well, it is not always possible to avoid open-ended questions, However, it is always better if you can limit the number of open-ended questions wherever possible. A lot of open-ended questions can be off-putting to the respondents.
8. UI should be engaging
Now, this is a no-brainer. Make sure the UI is intuitive and highly responsive. Your UI should be engaging enough to motivate the survey takers to complete the entire survey.
9. Choose the right channel
Send surveys in channels where your respondents are actually available. Therefore, picking the right channel is imperative for increasing the survey response rates. For instance, an email survey might reach more people and will be responded by more people rather than surveys sent through SMS, especially if it is a B2B survey. Why? Because of the simple reason that more people are available on that particular channel (email).
10. Provide an Incentive
Rewards and incentives are always a source of motivation. It is a proven method to improve survey response rates. Of course, why would anyone not complete your survey if they can benefit from it? In fact, providing an incentive also conveys to the respondents that your brand values their time and is grateful for it.
You can give incentives like a gift card or discounts on their next purchase. However, be careful about biased responses. Giving away a lot of incentives can make respondents answer the survey only for the sake of procuring the gifts and they’ll just answer randomly. This can bring an opposite effect as the results will be skewed. So, do be careful about it.
11. Send a gentle reminder
Sometimes, your respondents can forget to answer your surveys or be completely unaware of it being sent. To avoid missing potential responses, you can send them reminder emails. This can boost your survey response rate by at least 36%. But again, make sure you don’t bother them too much with it. Sending up to three reminders is fine.
One More Thing!
With the points mentioned above, you can really help in bringing a great improvement in your survey response rates. But there’s something else you can do – Save time and automate most of these processes through an online survey tool like Affiniv. With Affiniv , you can build relevant questionnaires with pre-built templates, customize your surveys, send over multiple channels, create automated reminders and completely automate the workflow. And the result if of course, a higher response rate! Why don’t you try it out? It’s free
