Want Better Survey Response Rates?

So, you are doing a customer survey and just sent out email invitations for participation. This is an exciting moment in the survey research lifecycle! If you are at this juncture, that means you successfully completed a questionnaire design and approval process, coordinated list planning and email logistics, and are (hopefully!) now looking forward to some nice, fresh data. But suppose you are like many who do customer surveys (surveys of a company’s actual customers, versus surveying a broader population). In that case, you are likely worried about what response rate you will get from your carefully sampled customer list.

Response Rates from Customer Lists Vary Dramatically

In a perfect market research world, email invitations to market research studies would generate a 100% response rate, providing the company with a census-quality representation of its customer base. The reality, however, is bleaker; these invitation emails often fail to engage the customer, assuming the customer’s spam blocker has not already filtered it.

What kind of response rate do you expect to get for your customer survey? 80%? Or 8%? Perhaps this is your first time conducting a study using an in-house customer list, so you just don’t know.

Companies that survey their own customer lists get very different response rates. In reality, I have typically had customer list response rates anywhere from 5-20%, and a few outliers in the 60-80% range. Those lucky few were all big brands with famously loyal customer bases. Regardless of your customer base’s loyalty, every response is golden when conducting market research with customers.

The Text of the Email Matters

When planning survey invitation emails, we want to use known best practices to boost the effectiveness, and thus, we hope the response rates. These best practices are not just pulled from thin air—there is existing “research on research.” Better yet, we have these sources compiled in a handy infographic. Might some of these items help boost your response rates? Will invitees see your invitations and get that “You’ve Got Email” thrill?

While the response rate depends on more than just the text itself, the text does matter. Therefore, if you are seeking to improve survey research response rates, it is an appropriate best practice to periodically test new wording ideas—or even retest old ones—to see if you gain greater response rates. Even a 2-5% improvement could make it worthwhile!

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to improving email invitation response rates, we hope that this compendium can take some of the guesswork out of your optimization strategy. We are sharing this compendium as a free resource, and you can get your own copy by downloading here!