How To Get People To Fill Out A Survey

[Deeger]

My company is looking at doing some advertising, but we really want to do it right the first time, so we went looking for target market data through a customer survey. We're an online subscription based company, and we just sent out the survey to all of the customer newsletter subscribers, but got less than 50.

How else can I get people to take the survey so that we can learn who we're dealing with? Or are there other ideas?

[spencer]

You can offer them an incentive to fill out the survey, maybe a free report...

[Logan]

How many total did you request to fill out your survey?

[Deeger]

Originally Posted by Logan

How many total did you request to fill out your survey?

Request to fill it out? about 300 directly and we're up to 41 responses. We've put it on an announcements section on our site, right after the sign in where everyone (multiple thousands) filters through, but even that doesn't seem to be working. It's not like people are starting the survey and stopping in the middle, they're just not doing it, and I'm stumped.

[Logan]

41 out 300 would be a good response rate in my opinion. that would be about 13.5%

Regarding the thousands being presented it right after sign in within your announcements section ... I don't think that is going to work. Why? Because they are signing in to do something else, I suspect.

I would focus on directly requesting people to complete the survey. Offering something as an incentive, as spencer mentioned, is a good idea. You could even send out some requests without the incentive, and others with the incentive to test the effectiveness of that.

A basic question, but important. Why would someone want to take the time out of their VERY busy day to complete your survey?

[torka]

A 13.5% survey completion rate when you offer no incentive for filling it out beyond the personal satisfaction of giving you their opinion is a fairly decent response.

We got a higher response rate than that on our most recent customer survey, but we were surveying people who had bought a couple of specific products from us already, and we offered each of them a free accessory item (related to their product) in return for filling out the survey.

Personally, I once filled out a survey that promised the first so-many-people to complete it would receive an iPod. (I managed to get in quick enough -- still have & use that iPod. ) I have filled out surveys for money, for bonus points that could be exchanged for merchandise and for downloadable white papers or free copies of the survey results (which were going to be offered for sale to the public at a fairly high price).

Rarely, if ever, will I even consider filling out a survey without some incentive. And even with an incentive, if the survey goes on too long or starts asking me stooopid questions or otherwise seems to be unnecessarily wasting my time, I'll skip out in the middle with no qualms. Unless it's a really darned good incentive...

--Torka