Having a good survey response rate is crucial to every type of research. Whether you want to enhance a splendid customer experience or check the satisfaction level of your company’s employees, the higher the response rate the greater the insight you will get.
With this in mind, some of the first questions that may come to mind are: “What is an acceptable response rate in research? Which survey response rates can I expect?”
This article will explain what survey response rate is, how to calculate it, which factors impact it, and how to increase it.
What is average survey response rate and how is it estimated?
The average survey response rate (or a survey completion rate) shows how successful you were in getting people to take your survey. It represents the number of people who completed the survey compared to the number who received it, expressed in percentage.
To calculate it, use the formula:
Response Rate (%) = (Number of Completed Surveys ÷ Number of Invitations Sent) × 100
For example, if you send your online survey to 1,000 email addresses and get 300 responses. Your average survey response rate is 30 percent.
What is a good survey response rate?
If you’ve just started conducting survey research, you’re probably wondering: “How many survey responses do I need? How do I know my survey sample is big enough for my research findings to be valid?”
You should be aware of the fact that acceptable response rates for surveys are not strictly established. Additionally, a statistically valid survey response rate is closely related to your survey sample size. This means that you need to survey a certain number of people to ensure your research results are statistically valid.
So, what is considered a good response rate?
- Average survey response rate goes from 5% to 30%, but everything above 30% is considered good.
- Response rate of 50% or higher is considered excellent.
- For specific types of surveys, such as employee surveys, higher rates (70-80%) may be expected.
Additionally, studies showed that:
- Surveys sent out in B2B industries often have around 10-15% higher survey response rates than those in B2C industries.
- A younger audience is much more likely to answer surveys than an older one, especially when conducting online surveys.
- Internal surveys for employees have much higher response rates than external surveys for customers, ranging from 20 to 40%.
- CSAT and CES surveys usually have higher response rates than NPS (net promoter score) surveys.
What factors affect survey response rates?
Response rates can vary significantly depending on several key variables. Understanding and optimizing these elements is crucial if you want to boost participation and gather meaningful insights. Below are the four most important factors that influence response rates across all types of research:
Survey method
The type of survey you choose—whether it’s online, phone-based, face-to-face, or via mail—directly affects how many people will respond. Today, online questionnaires are the most widely used due to their speed, cost-effectiveness, and global reach. Tools like NPS surveys, customer feedback forms, and employee engagement polls can be distributed in seconds and are easy to analyze. However, each method comes with its own limitations; for example, phone surveys might have higher engagement but are more time-consuming and expensive.
Target audience
Your audience profile plays a significant role in response rates. For example, busy executives or high-level professionals may ignore surveys unless the value is clearly communicated. On the other hand, loyal customers or engaged employees are more likely to participate. Awareness of your audience’s preferences, habits, and trust in your brand or company (brand awareness and loyalty) also influences how willing they are to engage.
Survey length and complexity
A survey that feels too long or too complicated will drive participants away. Keeping surveys short, focused, and easy to understand is key to reducing drop-off. If people feel that answering the questions will take too much time or effort, especially without a clear benefit, they’re more likely to abandon it halfway—or never start at all.
Incentives and invitation wording
The way you invite people to participate, and whether or not you offer an incentive, can dramatically impact response rates. Personalized and well-written invitations that communicate value—what the participant gets in return, or how their input will be used—tend to perform better. Additionally, offering incentives (like discounts, prize draws, or small gifts) can further motivate people to respond, particularly in customer-facing surveys.
Other key factors that are important for the success of any research survey are its tone of voice, how well it is promoted, and whether participants think completing the survey will be of value to them.
Those who want to improve their business through market research should also be aware of customer loyalty and brand awareness.
Industry benchmarks: what response rates should you expect?
Understanding industry benchmarks for survey response rates helps you evaluate your own performance and set realistic expectations. Different types of surveys and target audiences produce very different outcomes, so comparing your results to the right category is essential. Below are standard benchmarks across commonly used survey types:
- Online Surveys: Between 20% and 30%, though this can be lower if there’s no existing relationship with the recipients.
- Employee Surveys: From 30% to 60%, depending on the company culture, level of anonymity, and how results are followed up.
- Customer Satisfaction Surveys: CSAT surveys usually have response rates between 10% and 30%.
- Email Surveys: From 5% to 25%, with subject lines, personalization, and timing playing a huge role.
Tips on how to increase survey response rates
As already established, all of the above-mentioned factors will directly impact how many participants will be willing to share their feedback by filling out your survey.
A low response rate doesn’t necessarily imply poor customer feedback, just as an above-average response rate doesn’t mean you’ll end up with more valuable insights. First, you need to choose the right audience and sample size—one that will be a good representation of your target population.
After that, you need to focus on increasing the response rate. Here are some of the most important tips that will help you improve the response rates.
1. Choose a reliable platform with which to make your online survey
When making an online survey, choosing the right survey software is very important. With SurveyPlanet, you will get everything you’re hoping for and more.
We offer you unlimited survey questions and responses, captivating pre-made themes, and numerous pre-made questions that you can use in your next research project. Along with that, you can make white-label surveys, embed them in emails, filter and export results, and much more.
Explore our pricing plans and features, then choose the one that best suits your needs.
2. Make the survey appealing to your target audience
This is especially important for surveys whose goal is to improve your business through customer feedback, such as customer satisfaction surveys or product research surveys. Knowing your target audience—and being on the same page as them—will increase their interest in your survey.
Start by making your surveys visually appealing. You can do this by choosing one of our numerous pre-made themes or making your own custom theme.
The visual aspect of surveys should be engaging—as should their language. Make sure you get into the mindset of your customer and use the correct tone of voice when asking the right questions.
3. Offer different incentives for completing the survey
Offering an appealing incentive for participation can increase your response rates significantly—by 10-15 percent according to some research. The incentives you offer can be trivial to you but perceived as rather attractive to respondents.
In market research, when conducting different product or customer satisfaction research, you can offer survey incentives in the form of discounts, coupons, or prizes like free product samples. You don’t need to give them to all your customers by arranging a drawing for winners—the so-called giveaway.
4. Make sure the topic of the survey is relevant to your respondents
Material benefits are not the only type that exists. Some research shows that the most important incentive for many respondents is simply the importance a certain topic holds for them.
In market research, the most important motivation for your customers to fill out the survey will be knowing that their opinion will be heard and make a difference. If a customer feels like sharing their thoughts on a certain topic will improve your performance and their experience, they are much more likely to take the time to actually fill out the survey.
For current or potential business partners or fellow researchers interested in your research topic, the most appealing type of incentive is valuable and useful information. In this case, you can offer to provide them with a copy of your final results.
5. Pay attention to the length of your survey
The length of your survey can drastically affect your response rate. The longer the survey, the more likely survey response rates will be lower. The reason is that people seldom want to waste their time filling out surveys. The longer they are, the more boring they can get.
This is why your surveys should be short and on point and include only the most relevant survey questions.
6. Make it easy for your participants to complete the survey
Easily accessible surveys have far greater survey response rates. You can make surveys more accessible by embedding them on your website and in emails or sharing them through social media.
This way, customers can give their feedback by simply answering the survey on the spot instead of being redirected to a survey link.
7. Make the survey personal
When sending out a survey via email, always address your customers by their names instead of “Dear customer.” This will give them the impression that the email is intended for them specifically rather than being just another chain email sent out to thousands of other participants.
Also, always introduce yourself. Customers are more likely to respond to an email sent by a person than a company or an automated system. People are social beings and like to be in contact with other people, not businesses and corporations.
8. Choose the right time to send out the survey
When conducting a survey, timing is everything. That is why much research has been undertaken to establish the best time to send out a survey to get the highest survey response rate, with particular focus on the day of the week and time of day.
The right answer largely depends on the daily schedule and habits of your customers. However, some research concludes that it’s best to send out surveys on workday mornings, between 6:00 AM and 9:00 AM (with Monday as an exception).
Sending your surveys out on workday evenings can result in quicker responses but lower overall response rates. If you send out a business-related survey after 3:00 PM on a workday, don’t be discouraged by your response rate until the following workday.
9. Send a reminder email
Our in-boxes tend to get very crowded. We are constantly getting new emails, as are your customers. Surveys can easily get lost and go unanswered.
That is why it’s wise to email everyone who hasn’t taken the survey a reminder. It’s best to do this 7 to 10 days after the invitation or near the closing time.
Reminding your participants to fill out the survey can increase your average survey response rate by up to 15 percent.
How long should you wait for survey responses?
Experience shows that more than half of the responses to surveys usually arrive on the same day the survey was sent out. However, the number of responses gathered in the following week or two should not be neglected.
If you are sending out a survey to your employees (such as employee satisfaction or work-life balance surveys), make sure it is open for at least two weeks, since some of your employees may be on vacation during that period.
Best practices for a good average survey response rate
Finally, here is a short summary of the best practices that will bring excellent online survey response rates:
- Pay attention to the preferences and needs of your audience.
- Address your participants by their names and introduce yourself.
- Highlight the benefits to them of completing the survey.
- Make the survey appealing.
- Keep your survey short and make questions easy to understand.
- Offer incentives like giveaway prizes, coupons, or discounts.
- Remind participants to complete the survey by sending a follow-up email.
Keep in mind that increasing response rates doesn’t guarantee you more valuable customer feedback or more accurate results. In order to achieve these goals, you need to choose the right sample size, ask the right survey questions, and analyze your data correctly.
Once you’ve understood these important steps, you can start implementing the recommendations found in this article. Combining these practices will provide you with optimal response rate numbers.
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Photo by Lucas Kapla on Unsplash