Todd Hollander Market Research

A common mistake made by those conducting online surveys is failing to send reminder emails to potential respondents. Another common mistake is to send out too many reminders. Here is some advice that will help you develop an effective reminder system.

Failing to send reminder emails to potential survey participants can result in unacceptable response rates. Conversely, annoying respondents by sending too many reminders can adversely affect both the response rate and the quality of the data collected. Therefore, it is important to send the right number of reminders with the right wording at the right time.

One of the reasons some researchers fail to send reminders is that they think the reminder should be sent only to those who have not yet completed the survey. The problem is they don’t know how to do it. Although it is possible to identify those who have already completed the survey, the tactics for doing this are risky and can be viewed as underhanded (see “How to calculate response rates for online surveys“).

The good news is that you can send an email reminder to everyone on the mailing list without annoying those who have already completed the survey. Here’s how…

1. Forward the original invitation
2. Change the Subject Line to: Reminder: [original invitation subject line]
3. Add this text at the top of the message: If you have already completed the survey, thank you. If you have not, please see below.

That’s all you need to do. Nine times out of 10, one reminder at the mid-point of the data collection period does the trick. Occasionally, a second reminder is needed. Important: Never send more than two reminder emails - it will only annoy people.

The bottom line: Some people will take your survey as soon as they receive the invitation email. Others will need a follow-up email reminder. One reminder at the mid-point of the data collection period is best. Never send more than two reminder emails.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Invitations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.