Win unmotivated participants for your survey

Insights from Dennis – 07/21

Everybody knows it: We move through the vastness of the World Wide Web and come across invitations to participate in surveys again and again. Usually, however, it’s not because we’ve been waiting to take part in a survey. We are actually looking for information or a product, and one or two other tasks are still waiting for us. So our motivation to participate in a survey is not the greatest.

So we asked ourselves how to motivate people to participate in a survey even though they don’t really want to participate.

Dennis will give you three tips today that will help you motivate more people to participate in your surveys. So let’s start right away with the first Insight.

How to win participants for your survey who actually don’t want to participate?

Tip 1: Start the survey directly

For a classic survey, you either receive an invitation by e-mail or a pop-up window appears on a website. This contains a button or link “To the survey”. Clicking on it takes the participant to the survey’s welcome page.

Here, a standard text usually appears: “Welcome to the survey!”; “Please take a few minutes to answer our questions on topic XY.”; …

This is a relatively long way until the actual survey starts. People who were already not very motivated to participate before the start of the survey are given various opportunities to bail out. You can prevent this by starting your survey directly.

For example, if you want to collect feedback from your users on your website, then the survey should be placed in such a way that it appeals directly to the website visitors. This works, for example, with questions such as: “How are you?”; “Why are you visiting us today?”; “What is your intention?”; … When the user answers this question, he is already in taking part in the survey and the dropout rate decreases.

It works the same way with an email invitation to a customer survey, for example.

Place the first question of your survey already in the mail. For example, you can reproduce the question as a graphic or play with icons. This way, you don’t need a button or a welcome page, but start the survey directly by clicking on the graphic. So you already have the first answer for sure and you have charmingly guided your participants into the survey without them noticing.

Tip 2: Adapt the wording

As a rule, in our introduction to the survey we find one or the other phrase such as: “Please take part in the survey on topic XY”; “Your opinion is important to us”; … The reader thus knows directly where he stands, but this can also be a disadvantage.

If he doesn’t feel like taking part in a survey at this point, or is generally skeptical of surveys, he will probably skillfully ignore the invitation to participate.

But you do have the option of packaging your survey a little differently. Let’s say you have an online store for beauty products. Then why don’t you try including a picture question on your social media channel in which you compare four beauty products from your online store and ask your followers which of the products pictured they like best.

By clicking on the graphic, your follower will be taken to the survey. Up to this point, the term “survey” or “poll” has not even been mentioned, but you have led the person directly to the poll with an interaction. And this is only via the trick of adjusting your wording a bit.

Tip 3: Offer a reward as an incentive

Another way to motivate your potential subscriber is to offer them something in return for answering your questions. This can be a coupon code, a download or even a contest. If the reward is attractive enough for your customers or followers, you will surely increase your participation rate. Because with this, you will also attract those who are otherwise not so motivated to participate in surveys.

Nothing is worse and more demotivating than a poor participation rate, even though you’ve put a lot of effort, a lot of work into building the survey and you urgently need the feedback for internal decisions. Therefore, we hope that we could give you some helpful tips with today’s Insights. Often, even small adjustments can significantly increase the participation rate.

Furthermore, it is always good to make the survey lively and with visual highlights. For example, you can work with backgrounds or colors. You can get creative and – as already mentioned in tip 2 – start the communication with charmingly formulated questions. A survey doesn’t have to be dry, it can be fun. Then the participation rate will increase all by itself. We hope you have fun trying it out.