Duncan Nulty has written an interesting paper titled ‘The adequacy of response rates to online and paper surveys: what can be done?’.

In this paper Nulty explores some of the issues involved in deploying surveys and improving response rates. While the surveys that Nulty refers to are being deployed in an academic setting there are some useful tips for survey deployment in all situations.

Five of the key factors identified are:

1. Push the survey
2. Provide frequent reminders
3. Persuade respondents that their responses will be used
4. Provide rewards
5. Create surveys that seek constructive criticism.

Below I have taken these 5 key points along with my 10 cents.

1.Push the survey.

This basically means make it easy for participants to access the survey by, for example, providing them with the survey URL in an email sent directly to them.

I have covered this before and believe you need to take it one step further. Merely pushing the survey mat not be enough to get the magic response rates you are after for your survey. Often you may need to sell your survey. What do I mean by sell your survey you may ask? (or you may not). In a nut shell selling your survey is making the benefits of the survey quite clear to your respondents.

2.Provide frequent reminders.

Three reminders are suggested. I think caution should be used when using multiple reminders especially three which is quite a lot. If you take into consideration the initial invitation email it is conceivable found emails that you may be sending to one individual. I would generally reserve such a large number of invitations for an internal audience, i.e. staff, members etc and would hesitate at bugging customers with so many emails due to the possible irritation this may cause.

There comes a point in time where you may need to accept the fact that some respondents are doggedly determined that they will not answer your survey.

3.Persuade respondents that their responses will be used.

The issue here is whether respondents believe that their feedback will be taken seriously and acted upon. There is a number of ways to achieve this but all involve some active demonstration to respondents that feedback is valued and acted upon.

4.Provide rewards.

While we may not like to admit respondents are humans and the question that many respondents have in ther minds is”What is in it for me?”. Now this isn’t always the case as often your survey may have some greater benefit to the respondent, but offering an incentive to complete the survey can have a dramatic impact on your response rates.

There is a downside to incentives that should be noted. Thoughtful participation is best achieved by ensuring the survey is worth respondents’ time, and that using extrinsic motivators may bias the sample to include more responses from those who need that form of encouragement.

5. Create surveys that seek constructive criticism.

If a survey does not demand constructive criticism—for example if all the items require a simple numerical rating—then there will probably be less engagement with the survey because the survey itself sends a message that the participants feedback is not wanted.

While incorporating these five factors with your next online survey may not get you to nirvana (i.e. a 100% response rate) it should help to generate higher response rates and a more focused survey deployment.