3 easy ways to increase your survey response rate with personalization

In the digital industry, it's a well known fact that personalization is one of the best way to improve our performances. Digital media display content that you may like before others, ecommerce websites present product you certainly want to to buy on their front page and software adapt their data visualization to your needs.

We do that because we know that by adapting the experience to each user or visitor, the chance that they convert (whatever a conversion means to you) increase. But still, we continue to send the same, neutral and anonymous survey to everybody. As a result, response rate a pretty low (between 8 and 12% in average), and so data are often only coming from really happy or really angry users.

So if you want to increase your response rate and get more qualitative and representative data, here are 3 easy ways to personalize your surveys:

Display who's asking the questions

Several studies have shown that one of the main reason explaining why people don't answer to survey is because they think that their answer won't change anything, that it doesn't really matter for the company asking the question.

When you display who, in your organization, is asking the questions, with the photo, the name and the job title of the person, you users understand that their responses will be read by someone, and that this person really need their answers. As humans, we tend to have empathy for others, and so we want to help each other.

Answering to questions asked by someone is much more important for us than just fill a form. So display who's asking the question and your response rate will increase drastically.

Personalize your surveys with your users information

You would not send a newsletter announcing new features in your product without - at least - starting the email with something like "Hey {firstname}!" since we know it increases open rates and the way people feel about your communications.

And you have a lot of information about your users: their name, their sign up date, their plan... So use them also in your survey! Greet your users in your first question. Use sentences like "Since you are on the --- plan, could you tell me..."

Any information you have about your users is an opportunity to personalize your surveys and make them unique for each of your users. Doing so, your response rate will skyrocket!

Use logic jumps

Making people reply to your first question is quite easy (and even easier if your follow our first two advice). For having them replying to all your questions is much harder. To help that, you must use logic jumps.

Logic jumps are a way to define a specific branch of questions that you'll users will see when they select a response (a button, a score, etc.). For example, if they respond A to the first question, they'll see the question number 2. If they respond B, they'll see the number 3.

Using logic jump is a great way to ask relevant questions to your users. If they told you they don't want an export feature, don't ask questions about export! They'll continue to see questions that are aligned with their experience and will answer more.