Whenever you can increase your survey response rate, you also increase the validity and usefulness of your survey. To do that, it’s important to understand participant preferences and habits so you can optimize your promotion and incentives strategies.
By knowing where people learn about survey opportunities, what survey topics they prefer, and what motivates them to choose to participate, you’ll reach more potential respondents and recruit them more successfully.
Our recent research with integration partner Qualtrics surveyed more than 2,000 participants and asked exactly those questions. Here are five insights that will inform your work and help boost your survey response rate.
READ MORE: Download our full report, “Maximizing Research Participation & Optimizing Incentives”
Only 54% of younger participants fill out online surveys daily, compared with 73% of those in older generations.
Reaching Millennials and Generation Z has been notoriously difficult for everyone from marketers to TV networks. The same is true for researchers, since younger generations report participating less often. If you need to hear from an even distribution of ages or you are specifically looking for insights about younger people, you’ll need to tailor your research plan to ensure a high survey response rate among Millennials and Gen Z.
The research topics that participants prefer the most are their general preferences and shopping habits (68%) and new products or services (64%).
How hard you have to work to boost your survey response rate may also depend on the topics you’re researching. Studies about preferences and shopping habits and new products and services are most enjoyable for participants, particularly those in older generations, but they’re less inclined to want to offer opinions on packaging designs (38%) and website or app usability (18%).
An overwhelming majority of survey respondents—92%—say they choose to participate for the incentive or compensation, more than double the percentage of the No. 2 motivation (to help improve products and services at 43%).
Nearly two-thirds of participants (63%) cite the incentive value as a top influence in their decision to take a survey.
It’s no surprise that incentives are a big reason that participants complete surveys, but it is noteworthy that not just any offer will do. How much you give has a huge impact on the effectiveness of your incentive. Obviously a longer survey should earn a larger incentive, but also make sure the value is appropriate for the depth of the questions. For instance, a survey that requires only multiple-choice answers typically takes a lot less effort than one with many open-ended questions.
While 98% of all online surveys are compensated, the same is true for only 38% of one-off company or brand surveys.
Incentives for online surveys are a tried-and-true strategy with established research firms, of course, but full-time researchers aren’t the only ones who can benefit from incentives. Don’t count out their effectiveness even for one-off surveys about your brand or product, such as those seeking feedback on recent purchases or customer experiences. Such questionnaires aren’t incentivized nearly as often—but they should be. If fact, ensuring a high survey response rate for customer feedback might even more important to avoid “squeaky-wheel syndrome,” meaning that unhappy customers are more likely to respond and therefore skew your results. It’s important to get a range of data from customers across the satisfaction spectrum.
Get more insights from our research on why using virtual prepaid cards as incentives can increase your survey response rate, or download the full report now!
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
