Write a Better Survey Invitation
Survey invitations are like elevator pitches. You’ve got 30 seconds (or fewer) to grab attention and convince a reader that it’s worth investing time to take your survey. Survey response rates are declining, but there are easy ways to cut through the clutter and boost your own.
Here is a before-and-after example of a survey invitation from Russell Investments, presented last week at the 2014 Corporate Researchers Conference:
BEFORE
After sending this invitation, they had reached just 20% of their response goal. So they brought in some additional expertise from the their marketing and design colleagues, and revised it to this:
AFTER
These are partial views, but you get the idea. They wrote a headline that gave the what, the when, and the why. They added survey links and buttons in multiple locations to provide a prominent call to action. Once they did this, along with other revisions to their outreach, they exceeded their goal.
This example offers three great pointers on how to write better survey invitations:
- Tell respondents what they get
- Make it super easy to say “yes”
- Keep the pitch short and punchy
Fielding a successful survey means going beyond the mechanical task of sending e-mail letters to a huge list of recipients. It takes effort and thought and an artful approach.
Many thanks to Laura Crystal and Carolyn Holtzen at Russel Investments for sharing this fine example!
