3 Thoughts on Reminders for Surveys

When you run a survey, your goal is to get as many responses as possible. After all, the more people within your sample that fail to respond to your survey, the more likely there is some factor from within that demographic that you are missing within your data. Yet there is no such thing as a perfect sample – or at least, there is no such thing as a sample with a 100% response rate. Once you’ve sent out your first survey invitation you will get a large percentage of responses, but you will still have many more people to reach. That is why it is highly recommended that you send out reminders for surveys, with the goal of reaching as much of your sample as possible. However, reminders are never quite as effective as initial survey invitations for a variety of reasons. Most people that are willing to fill out the survey will do so during the initial run, and the remainder include those that either procrastinate or are unwilling to complete it. In order to improve the response rate for reminder emails, here are three reminder email tips:

1. Test the Reminder Language is very important when you are coming up with any email you send to respondents. You need to make sure that the language you are using attracts them to complete the survey. So if you have the budget, it may be a good idea to test out the language you use in the reminder surveys. Look for one that gets the highest response rate, and use it to get people to complete the surveys.
2. Consider Different Language If you composed your initial email with very formal, very “marketing-like” language, consider doing the opposite for the reminder emails. It is possible that people are unwilling to respond to emails that make it sound as though they are being sold, while they may respond to something that sounds more casual.
3. Stress the Incentive Finally, make sure they understand the incentive they are going to receive. Email recipients get dozens of survey emails, and these days very few pay any attention to them when they arrive in their inbox. A good incentive and they are far more likely to pay attention to your email than if you spend the entire email stressing only why you want feedback. Reminders that are composed well have the potential to help you receive a much better response rate from your sample. Take the time to make sure that your reminder email is effective.