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Email Invitations
Today most Web-based surveys are completed by invitation. Typically, you invite people to participate in the survey through an e-mail. The invitation is a very important element in the success of a Web-based survey. When you develop your invitation you should keep the following things in mind:
- Keep It Personal - Add the personal touch by including the
individual's name in the invitation. You should be able to
accomplish this using the mail merge functionality in your
e-mail or office software. If you’re planning on using a
unique code or embedded code in the URL for managing access
to the survey, you are going to have to do a mail merge
anyway—so it is very little extra work and it will
definitely improve your response rate.
- Source Identification - Let the people you are inviting know
from where you got their name and e-mail address.
With the increase of e-mail spam, you should include
this at the beginning of your message.
- Incentives - Whether to include an
incentive or not depends on the type of survey you are
conducting, the length of the survey and motivation of the
invitees to complete the survey. If traditional research is
any guideline, a small incentive will work well. But don't
get carried away - increasing the incentive may not increase
the response rate. A straight cash incentive is still the
best option; drawings and raffles do not work very well.
- Opt Out
- Make sure you provide an opportunity for the respondent
to opt off of the mailing list you are using. Be sure to
follow through - never e-mail someone a second invitation who
has opted-out.
- Follow-ups - If the response
rate is low should you re-send the invitation?
This can be an unusual situation, and should not happen if
you follow all the steps and do your homework when you
develop the sample list. If it does, there may
be a problem with the invitation, or the
sample. Re-sending to the same sample probably won't work, but it
is not too expensive and sometimes worth a second try. Keep
the offer the same, but try it on a different day and at a
different time.
- Length & Content - Keep the invitation short. No more than
two paragraphs. Get to the point quickly and provide a
motivation (not just the incentive) to respond. Make sure
the URL is clearly visible in the body of the message and
that the link is accurate. Make sure you test the link.
- Timing
- When is the best
time to send the
invitation? Our research shows that Monday and Tuesday evenings are the optimal
time to send out the invitation to business
prospects. For consumer studies you should follow your
own experience/instincts. Business prospects will receive the invitation
Tuesday or Wedensday morning and have the remainder of the
week to complete the survey. You should have
approximately 50% of the responses within 24 hours. Unless
you want the survey to be ongoing, there is
typically no need to go beyond four days.
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