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Survey Response Rate Directly Proportional to Strength of Relationship

We're often asked by customers what response rate they can expect from a survey that they are about to launch. While many factors affect the response rate - including how long the survey is, what incentives are offered (if any), the subject matter of the study, and so on - we find that the biggest factor is the strength of the organization's relationship with its potential respondents.

Response rates to web surveys seem to vary in roughly the following ranges depending on who the target audience is:

• No Relationship - 0%-20% response. The most demanding group to survey is a group that has no relationship with your organization. The 0% response is from a general market research survey that we did to a rented list, asking recipients about "Your last visit to the dentist"! (We repeated the mailing, with an incentive, to get the needed results.)
• Lost Customer - 10%-30% response. Since a lost customer has already made his or her decision and moved on, these recipients are less likely than other groups to respond to your survey.
• Prospective Customer - 15%-35% response. While prospective customers are interested in you, they have about an average chance of responding to your request for a survey.
• Current Customer - 20%-65% response. Current customers have a vested interest in providing feedback to an organization that they do business with. For customer-satisfaction studies, consumers have a lower response rate than businesses, and businesses in general have a lower response rate than major accounts.
• Student - 25%-80% response. Student response rates vary widely, depending on the nature of the survey. Course-evaluation surveys for corporate-sponsored training tend to have lower response rates than surveys for semester-long classes.
• Employee - 60%-90% response. Your organization has no stronger relationships than with its employees. As a result, employee-satisfaction surveys typically have a high response rate. Tactical employee surveys will provide lower response rates.  

Update:
Interested in tips and tricks for increasing response rates? View a complementary webinar given by Brian Koma and me: Boost Survey Response Rates with Proven Tactics.  Also see the post, Reminder Invitations Double Survey Response Rates.