Reminder Invitations Double Survey Response Rate
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Mon, Mar 16, 2009
We often argue for the need to respect your potential respondent's time and interrupt them as little as possible. Yet our survey software includes the ability to schedule the survey invitation and as many follow-up email reminders as you would like:
Reminders can be an annoying nuisance to recipients and should be avoided unless really necessary to your survey. Here are when they are necessary:
- You are surveying a small population (e.g., employees, major accounts) and have not yet reached your recommended sample size for 95% confidence.
- You are attempting a census instead of a survey.
- You suspect that initial responders may vary in key ways from later responders. For some studies, when we run the numbers we find no measurable difference between early and late respondents; for others, we find important differences in satisfaction and loyalty.
- You are using email triggers to alert you to dissatisfied respondents and want to make sure that you have the opportunity to address their issues.
Following up survey invitations with reminders is the most dramatic way to improve your response rate. For one recent study, a series of three reminders doubled the response rate:
Many of our users do not send out reminders because they are concerned about harassing potential respondents. However, since over 80% of responses to a closed-participation survey come within 24 hours of sending out an email invitation or reminder, think of that first reminder as doing the recipient a favor: often they meant to respond, but went on to other things, and the invitation got pushed down further in their in-box. Your reminder brings it back to the top of their mind - and their in-box.
One way to minimize the pain of reminders is to make sure that each recipient is given a unique hyperlink to the survey (this may be inappropriate in certain surveys where anonymity is vital). That way, reminders will only be sent to those recipients who have not yet completed the survey.
The only thing more annoying than receiving an email reminder about a survey you haven't taken is to receive a reminder to one that you have taken!