What are survey reminders and when should you send them?

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When to send survey reminders? Survey Best Practices
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In this world where everyone is in a rush to check off their to-do list, a reminder is something that helps a lot of people. Whether it is to drink water, a reminder to wish your friends, paying bills, picking up someone, etc., reminders do help get things done. 

This is why we’re here to tell you about survey reminders or survey reminder emails and when you should send them to your respondents, and exactly how many to send because, of course, you don’t want to spam your respondents but ensure a high response rate, right? 

For a better understanding, let’s start with understanding what a survey reminder is & why you must send it.

What is a survey reminder?

A survey reminder is what you send to your respondents when they forget or delay responding to your survey. The most common is the survey reminder email sent after the survey invitation email.

When to send survey reminders? Survey Best Practices

Types of reminder emails for surveys

There are two types of survey email reminders that you can send to your respondents:

  1. One-time survey reminder emails
  2. Automated survey reminder emails

Let’s understand both types in detail:

One-time reminder emails

One-time reminder emails are sent once, depending on when you want to send them. You can decide to send the emails instantly, or you can schedule them for later. It is advised to send the reminder emails in bulk to more respondents together, making tracking and managing emails easier. 

Automated reminder emails

Automated reminder emails are scheduled to be sent out to the respondents on a fixed day and time. By collaborating with online survey software, you can customize the automated email to send to only those respondents who haven’t answered the survey yet.

Now, let’s learn why they are important. 

Why should you send survey reminder emails?

The most obvious reason is- to increase your survey response rate

Yes, you read that right! Sending survey reminders can increase your response rates by 58%.

Most of the time, survey invitations get lost in the sea of emails. And other times, respondents don’t find it necessary to fill the survey on priority, and the survey gets neglected. This often hampers the completion rates. 

This is why you need to give them a gentle nudge to fill out the survey, and a reminder email just does that!

Survey reminders are also a great way to tell your respondents that their opinion matters to you and that you care about their expectations (as shown in the example above).

With Voxco, you can even set up automated survey reminder emails. It makes it easy to create and schedule an automated reminder email sent to those respondents who haven’t opened your email or haven’t answered the survey yet.

Now that you’ve learned about survey reminders and their importance, let’s circle back to our main point of discussion: when should you send survey reminders? 

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When to send survey reminder emails?

Honestly, it all depends on your response to your survey invitation emails. If you get a response right after sending out your first email, you need not send a reminder. But let’s be honest here- that’s quite rare. 

Sooner or later, you’ll realize the need to remind your respondents to take your survey. Ideally, you must wait the first 24-48 hours. You can neither risk irritating people (who are willing to take your survey) nor can you wait too long to the point where they forget what you are reminding them of.

Here are a few tips that will help you decide the right time to send survey reminder emails:

  1. Analyze the average response time of the previous surveys you sent out. Send your first reminder email during that period. 
  2. Avoid sending reminders within the first 48 hours of sending your survey invitations. 
  3. Send reminders only when necessary, and limit yourself to a maximum of 4 rounds.
  4. If you send your survey invitation on Monday, wait until Wednesday since there’s an overflow of work emails on Mondays, and your survey invitation may get lost. 
  5. Send your first survey reminder within 24- 48 hours but no later than 72 hours. 

Now that you know when to send survey reminders to your respondents, you must also learn just how many survey reminders you should send. We talk about it in the next section. 

How many survey reminders should you send?

You send one survey reminder, then you send another, and another, and still not get a response? Then maybe it is time to stop! 

As important as it is to know when to send reminders for a survey, it is equally important to know how many to send. But how do you know when to stop? 

Simple- Look at the response rate of your survey invitation

👉 If your first survey invitation gets a response that you require or crosses the average survey response rate, you need not send survey reminders or more than one survey reminder to the respondents who haven’t completed the survey. 

👉 If it’s lower than what you require, you may send automated email reminders strategically. 

👉 Confine the number of survey reminders to 4-5 because any number beyond that can get overwhelming, and your survey can easily pass off as spam. 

👉 Establish a clear idea of your response needs so that once they’re met, you can stop with the reminders. 

Now that you know how survey reminders work is conscious enough to not bug your respondents. Additionally, there are certain things that you must & must not add to your survey reminder emails to ensure their efficiency. Quickly hop on to the next section to learn what they are. 

What should you include in a survey reminder email?

To ensure that your respondents do not miss your reminder, you must know how to create a survey reminder email that catches their eye. The following checklist will help you ensure you create the perfect survey reminder email. 

When to send survey reminders? Survey Best Practices

1. Add a catchy subject line

Your reminder email’s subject line should prompt the recipient to open the email, which is why the subject line of your reminder email must be ‘eye-catchy’ enough. Here are some subject line suggestions for your reminder email:

  • Your opinion matters. Share it with us now
  • Hi, [name], could take out a minute to let us know how we did?
  • How does 30% off sound?
  • Win free delivery for a year! Just take this survey!
  • What did you think about our service?

2. Remind respondents that their feedback matters

Ensure that your respondents know their feedback matters; that is exactly why you’re reminding them to take your survey. Tell them how you’re going to utilize their feedback and use it as a measure of the overall customer experience. 

3. Personalize survey reminders

When it comes to emails, personalization goes a long way. A personalized email is more prone to getting a quick response than a non-personalized one. Here’s what you can do to personalize survey reminder emails:

  • Address your respondents in the subject line. 
  • Mention the last point of interaction they had with you or your brand. 
  • Weave in the details you’ve on them to demonstrate that you take every aspect of their experience into account. 

4. Incentivize your surveys

A little reward or offer does not hurt anyone. It can ensure a high survey completion rate. In a study, it was found that people who got a $10 voucher were 11% happier than those who didn’t. This is why we suggest you offer your respondents some incentive as a token of thanks for completing your survey. You can use a coupon, gift card, voucher, or a discount on your next purchase. 

Incentivizing your survey will entice your respondents to take the survey and help strengthen the relationship between you and them. 

5. Be persistent but do not bug

As mentioned earlier, the majority of responses come from the initial survey. Therefore, those who do not respond should not be annoyed with continuous reminders. Also, the email must avoid long explanations and be short and crisp.

Once you tick off all these boxes, you’ll receive a perfect survey reminder email. 

Setting up automated survey reminders is easy with Voxco!

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Feedback matters- and you must do what it takes to gather it!

I think we can all agree on the fact that feedback matters! Whether for product development, performance assessment, or product review, feedback helps set the next course of action and generate actionable insights. So, you must never give up on getting feedback. 

However, you must consider those survey reminders aren’t response magnets. Of course, they help ensure a high completion rate but don’t always lead to one. So, you must not rely on numerous reminders to boost your response rate. Instead, optimize your initial survey invites, and create perfect online surveys. 

And when it’s time to send survey reminders, remember all you’ve learned from this article. 

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