Identify Your Target Audience

Your customers’ opinions and feedback are critical to validating your business decisions. These insights are necessary for you to make significant mistakes that negatively impact the customer experience and your bottom line. The first step to maximizing survey responses is to identify your target audience. It includes identifying who your customers are, what they like, what motivates them to buy, and how they feel about their experience with your product or service.

Depending on the customer satisfaction survey you are conducting, your target audience may be a general group or more precise demographics such as gender, age, education level, income, or political/religious beliefs. Your questions should also be geared toward your target audience to ensure they are relevant and understood. When creating your survey, include a clear call to action (CTA) and an easy-to-find link or button that directs readers to the survey. You should also test the survey with colleagues to check for grammatical errors and ensure correct links.

Design Your Survey

Your survey questions will have a significant impact on the outcomes you obtain. Having the right mix of question types and how you order the questions is essential. Start with identifying what your goal is and build the survey around that. Every question should help you achieve your objective; any that don’t should be removed. Make sure the questionnaire is short and easy to read. A longer survey can intimidate respondents, and a difficult-to-read questionnaire is less likely to yield accurate results.

Consider the use of open-ended questions as well as multiple-choice and scale question types. Loaded questions (those that assume something about the respondent) can lead to survey fatigue and skew your data. Once the survey has been designed, it’s always a good idea to pre-test it with friends and colleagues similar to your intended survey responders. Ask them to read through the questionnaire and let you know if any questions need clarification.

Create a Reminder Email

Many customers must remember to complete your survey, or they may want to provide feedback but were interrupted. Follow-up survey emails are a great way to reach out to these individuals and remind them to participate. In your reminder email, it’s essential to include a clear subject line that clarifies the purpose of the survey. It’s also a good idea to incorporate powerful words like “response needed” to grab your readers’ attention and stand out in their crowded inboxes.

You should also ensure that your reminder email includes a link to the survey that your recipients can click on. It will make it less likely for them to close the window before answering your questions. Lastly, it would help if you also considered adding an incentive to encourage responses (for example, a discount or a gift). It will help to increase your overall response rate.

Follow Up

There’s no denying that low survey response rates are problematic. Not only do they mean that you need to capture the opinions of a significant portion of your audience, but they can also lead to inaccurate and unhelpful feedback. Although various factors, such as the survey’s topic, overall design, and closure or open-ended nature, influence response rates, you can try a few tactics to enhance your overall performance. These little tweaks can go a long way, from simple reminder emails to image-free links and even a survey introduction change.

Additionally, offering incentives for your respondents is a good idea, as this has been proven to increase survey completion rates. Gift cards are easy, but you can offer other valuable rewards like discounts, free samples, and account credits. It helps close the loop with valuable customers and makes them feel appreciated.