Engage survey participants

Engage survey participants with Spark Chart

In order to achieve a satisfactory response rate for a survey project, it is important to plan how to engage survey participants and motivate them to complete the survey.

The first thing to consider is a target response rate. The target will depend on many factors, including the nature of the relationship between the respondent and the subject or organization that the survey is about.

The target audience will influence the response rate

In general, there are two basic audiences for any type of survey: Internal and External. It’s important to know who is your intended audience for your survey.

An internal audience is typically made up of employees or people that belong to a particular organization. Surveys sent to internal audiences tend to have much higher response rates compared to those sent to external audiences while external surveys tend to have much less engagement.

Let’s say a company issues an internal survey to its workers to learn what their challenges are. In this instance, it’s easy to see how the employees may be eager to provide this feedback. It’s a chance for workers to tell management what can be improved. Also, if they help the company make more money, then maybe they will see some of it.

An external audience will be drawn from a more general population, such as customers or suppliers. Getting an external audience, like customers, to respond to surveys is typically more difficult. Their motivation is likely to be lower than an internal audience.

External audiences may not see the benefit to them in completing a survey. Even when targeting specific groups of customers (such as those who made a purchase in the last 30 days) and offering a reward for their participation, you still might not receive strong response rates. It’s possible the customer isn’t interested in the free gift you’re offering, or that they already own something similar.