Every once in awhile, it's a good idea to step back and examine our response rates. Here are a few ideas to get you started.
- Switch up your subject lines
- Change the from name
- Check in on the ease of use of your survey
- Shorten your survey
- Tell people how long your survey is in the email (and don't lie)
- Answer the question "What's it in for me?" for the respondents
- Tell respondents what the survey is about
- Survey your customers more often
- Survey your customer less frequently (if you're in this camp, I want to talk to you!)
- Ask less matrix questions
- Optimize your survey for mobile
- Put a plan in place to take action on the results, and tell customers about it! (If customers see their voice being heard, they're more likely to participate next time)
- Give them an open comment box to talk about what they want to talk about
- Speak their language, none of your internal acronyms or jargon
- Double check that your links are correct in emails
- Include a link to the survey in other places customers are (Service Portal, within the product if it's in the cloud, etc.)
- Have a focused set of goals when writing your survey (this helps with #4)
- Send 1-2 reminders to take the survey (don't forget those who abandoned in the middle)
- Warn customers the survey is coming so they'll be on the look out
- Get employees talking about the survey to customers when they call or email support
- Change the color of calls-to-action within emails (sometimes orange is better than blue)
- Offer an incentive
- Don't ask questions you already know the answer to (What product did you buy? Where do you live?)
- Leverage survey logic to only show relevant questions and options
- Use pipe logic to further personalize the survey experience
- Show a progress bar so they know how many questions are left
- Don't ask questions that are too hard
- Let customers share the survey with other customers on social media or by email
- Ask less open ended questions
- Change the header on your survey to be more "on brand"
- Consider making your survey anonymous
- Bring the fun with a few interactive questions
- Include less questions on a page and strategically use page breaks
- Put more questions on a page
What else would you add to this list?
