How do I get survey feedback?
From making the survey relevant to the target audience to sharing survey outcomes, here are answers to the question, “What’s one surefire way to get survey feedback?”
- Lead With the Selfish Benefit
- Keep Surveys Short
- Offer An Incentive
- Give Something in Return
- Offer Surveys Across Several Channels
- Give Feedback
- Make the Survey Relevant to the Target Audience
- Share Survey Outcomes
- Reach Out to Engaged Customers On Social Media
Lead With the Selfish Benefit
People are much more likely to take the time to complete a survey if they know that it will directly benefit them in some way.
This can be something as simple as highlighting how their feedback will help them to improve their experience or service they are getting.
Additionally, make sure the survey is short and easy to complete, and that it’s clear what you will do with the feedback once you have received it.
Veronika Schäfer, Head of Learning Science, Zavvy
Keep Surveys Short
I suggest keeping your surveys short. There are instances when you need to send longer surveys, but there are also times you need to keep your surveys brief yet precise. Especially if your customers have yet to be active online, I suggest sending them short surveys (but making sure each question is a gem).
The trick is to ensure each question is relevant to them and covers their pain points.
Tristan Harris, Demand Generation Senior Marketing Manager, Thrive Agency
Offer An Incentive
A proven way to make a survey successful is to offer an incentive when completing the survey. First, this increases participation. When more people are tempted by the prize and participate in the survey, it’s more likely that the data will be representative of the population you’re trying to study.
Additionally, offering incentives can increase the quality and accuracy of the data by encouraging participants to be more honest and forthright in their responses. Thus, you obtain helpful feedback. Incentives also increase the response rate, which is the percentage of people who start and complete the survey.
This can be especially important if you’re trying to reach a specific group or if you’re conducting a study with a low response rate. When deciding on an incentive, consider such options as monetary awards (cash or gift cards), non-monetary (discounts or free products), or big giveaways.
Nina Paczka, Community Manager, Resume Now
Give Something in Return
When asking for feedback, it’s important to remember that people are more likely to respond if they feel like they’re getting something in return. This could be a discount on their next purchase, contest entry, or another incentive.
It’s important to make sure that the incentive is worth the respondent’s time; otherwise, they may not bother completing the survey. You also want to make sure that the incentive is relevant to the survey itself.
For example, if you’re asking customers about their satisfaction with your products, you might offer them a free product as an incentive.
Kate Wojewoda-Celinska, Marketing Manager, Spacelift
Offer Surveys Across Several Channels to Be at the Top
The simplest way to ensure that your survey is received by your subscribers is to send it by email, as you already have their email addresses. Consider publishing your poll on social media or integrating it on pages with related marketing content.
Even using SMS, you can distribute surveys. They will surely remember your survey by the time they see it a second time. When it is brought to their notice for the third time, they can be quite inquisitive and fill out the survey to learn more about your plans.
By connecting your survey replies to your marketing automation, you may prevent spam by excluding survey respondents from getting further mailings.
Michael Koh, Senior IT Director, PropNex
Give Feedback
If those who complete your survey think a real person isn’t reading it, they’re less likely to participate or fill out all of the questions. Once you’ve gathered your survey information, be sure to put it to good use and let them know.
This lets them know you’re listening to them. Especially pursue any negative feedback for that same reason. Giving feedback on feedback offers a multitude of benefits.
Temoer Terry, Partner, Mommy Care Kit
Make the Survey Relevant to the Target Audience
Surveys do best only when they are inherently relevant to the target audience. A survey needs to inform, educate, and spark further interest or action from the reader.
In order to do so, it needs to be hyper-relevant to the target audience, as only then will the readers be driven and motivated enough to provide survey feedback. A disengaged and uninterested audience that doesn’t care about the results of the survey on a personal level will never provide feedback.
Captivate your audience with proprietary survey results that no one has seen before and that also happen to matter to them. We’ve recently published a survey on the state of localization in 2022. It was created with our audience in mind, which directly led to more feedback than we ever hoped to achieve.
Damjan Tanaskovic, CMO, Localizely
Sharing Survey Outcomes Elicits Quality Survey Response
Monetary benefits will elicit a high response rate. But since the monetary incentive is usually tied to filling out and submitting a survey, the responses provided may not necessarily be fully accurate or exhaustive enough.
Sharing survey results and allowing the responder to compare their results with others satisfies our innate curiosity to compare ourselves with others. Alternatively, if the survey responses can shape future outcomes, one would feel more willing to share. The ability to shape the future, even if not directly, is another human driver.
Using these two methods wisely, one can elicit both a higher survey response rate as well as a better quality of survey results since the surveyees will feel a sense of ownership and would be more willing to share their true view.
Nikola Rudic, Director, Protein Ministry LLC
Reaching Out to Engaged Customers On Social Media
Because we regularly share pet health tips and cute pics of dogs engaging with our products, customers frequently share their success stories with us in comments and posts – which we love to share!
But these interactions also provide us the opportunity to share a unique link with them in our responses. We also encourage them to share the link, helping us to reach a broader range of responders.
The key to getting a significant number of responses is by making it convenient, which means ensuring the survey you select is mobile-friendly.
Josh Weiss, Founder and CEO, Reggie
Submit Your Answer
Would you like to submit an alternate answer to the question, “What’s one surefire way to get survey feedback?”