Response Rates

Getting a handle on survey response rates.

Phillip Nones Business, Marketing, Marketing Research, Social Media , , , , ,

It turns out, there are some predictive factors.

sgOne of the nice things about the proliferation on online surveys in recent years is that, over time, we’ve come to understand survey response dynamics much better.

Of course, predicting response rates with flawless precision is impossible due to the individual attributes of each individual survey, the sample composition and so forth.  But thanks to a 2015 compilation of “bottom-line” information by content marketing specialist Andrea Fryrear, the following points are good ones for marketing personnel undertaking market survey work.

Surveys aimed at “internal audiences” outperform external ones.

Targeting an internal audience such as a company’s own employee base is likely going to generate higher response rates (in the neighborhood of 35% to 40%, give or take). For surveys of an external audience, it’s more like 10% or perhaps even lower.

The reason is simple: Surveys aimed at internal audiences are likely very-well targeted, whereas with an external audience, often it’s difficult to reach only the right type of respondents.  At least some of them will turn out to be poor targets.

Additional motivating factors.

Other factors that can influence survey response rates include:

  • Customer loyalty – People who feel a connection with the brand conducting a survey tend to be more likely to participate.
  • Brand recognition – Surveys that focus on well-known brands will typically outperform ones from an unknown source or dealing with unfamiliar brands.
  • Perceived benefit – The “WIIFM” factor.  For example, response rates can soar even higher if the respondent population is motivated by serious incentives.  I recall getting more than a 60% response rate on a mail survey and an external sample because the monetary incentive was a $2 bill.
  • Demographics – The reality is that certain segments of the population are more likely to respond to surveys than others.  Think everything from age and gender to ethnicity and geographic location.
  • Survey distribution – Certain audiences are used to interacting on social media … others online … still others offline.  Chances are, you already know which type of research targets those are within your target markets, and it should influence your choice of survey delivery.

Survey length can make or break your response and completion rates.

To achieve the highest response rates, ideally surveys should take five minutes or less to complete. Ten minutes or less is probably OK, too.  But anything longer than that will likely have deleterious effect on your response rate.

How many questions does this mean? On average, respondents can complete five closed-ended questions in a minutes’ time … but only two open-ended ones.

Survey reminders? Yes.

Particularly with online surveys, it’s a good idea to send reminder notices to those who haven’t completed surveys as you get closer to the cut-off date. Sending two or three reminders is a good rule of thumb … and try sending them at different times of the day or different days of the week to that you can reach as many different prospective respondents as possible.

Learning from the experience of the thousands of surveys administered every month should make it easier for marketers to ensure their next survey will generate successful results instead of flame out.  There’s really no reason for failure considering the wealth of “experiential information” that’s out there.

E-Mail Marketing: On the Subject of Subject Lines …

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Creative and Production, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research, Sales , , , , ,

emWith groaning inboxes, is it any wonder why so many e-mail messages get ignored by their recipients?

Indeed, with it costing so little to send an e-mail – especially when compared to the “bad old days” of postal mail – it’s too irresistible for marketers and others to deploy hundreds or thousands of e-mail missives at a pop, even if the resulting engagement levels are so paltry.

And therein lies the problem: The “value” of such e-mails diminish to the point where recipients have a very good idea of their (lack of) worthiness without needing to open them.

In such an environment, what’s the the likelihood of something important inadvertently slipping through the cracks? Not so great.  And so users go on their merry way, hitting the delete key with abandon.

Faced with these realities, anything senders can do to improve the odds of their e-mails being opened is worth considering.

As it turns out, some of those odds can be improved by focusing on the e-mail’s subject line.

We know this from research conducted recently by e-mail platform provider Yesware. As reported this week in Fast Company, Yesware’s data scientists took a look at ~115 million e-mails of all kinds, gathered over the course of a 12-month period, to see how open rate dynamics might be affected positively or negatively by differences in the subject line.

ywThe Yesware analysis was carried by analyzing most- and least-used words and formats to determine which ones appeared to be more effective at “juicing” open rates.

As the benchmark, the overall e-mail open rate observed across all 115 million e-mails was 51.9% and the overall reply rate was about 29.8%. But underneath those averages are some differences that can be useful for marketers as they consider how to construct different subject lines for better impact and recipient engagement.

The findings from Yesware’s subject line analysis point to several practices that should be avoided:

Subject line personalization actually works against e-mail engagement.

It may seem counterintuitive, but adding personalization to an e-mail subject turns out to suppress the open rate from 51.9% to 48.1% — and the reply rate goes down even more dramatically from 29.8% to 21.2%.

Yesware surmises that this seemingly clever but now overused technique bears telltale signs of a sales solicitation. No one likes to be fooled for long … and every time one of these “personalized” missives hits the inbox, the recipient likely recalls the very first time he or she expected to open a personal e-mail based on such a subject line – only to be duped.

“First time, shame on you; second time, shame on me.”

Turning your subject line into a question … is a questionable practice.

Using a question mark in a subject line may seem like a good way to add extra curiosity or interest to an e-mail, but it turns out to be a significant turnoff for many recipients. In fact, Yesware found that when a question mark is used in the subject line, the open rate drops a full 10 percentage points (from 51.9% to 41.6%) – and the reply rate also craters (dropping to 18.4%).

It may be that turning a subject line into a question has the effect of reducing the power of the message. Yesware data engineer Anna Holschuh notes that posing a question is “asking a lot of an already-busy, stressed-out professional.  You’re asking them to do work without providing value up front.”

On the other hand, two subject line practices have been shown to improve e-mail open rates – at least to a degree:

Include numbers in the subject line.

Subject lines that contain “hard” numbers appear to improve the e-mail open rate slightly. Yesware found that open rates in such cases were 53.2% compared to 51.9% and the reply rate improved as well (to 32%).  Using precise numbers – the more specific the better – can add an extra measure of credibility to the e-mail, which is a plus in today’s data-rich environment.

Use title case rather than sentence case.

Similarly, Yesware has found that the “authority” conveyed by using title case (initial caps on the key words) in e-mail subject lines helps them perform better than when using the more informal sentence case structure.

The difference? Open rates that have title case subject lines came in at 54.3%, whereas when using sentence case in the subject line resulted in open rates at just 47.6%.

Similarly, reply rates were 32.3% for e-mails with subject lines using title case compared to 25.7% for e-mails where the subject line was sentence case — an even more substantial difference.

Generally speaking, e-mail marketing succeeds or fails at the margins, which is why it’s so important to “calibrate” things like subject lines for maximum advantage. The Yesware analysis demonstrates how those tweaks can add up to measurable performance improvements.

What’s the very latest on e-mail open rates?

Phillip Nones Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Here’s an interesting factoid to consider: there were an average of 247 billion e-mail messages deployed each day during 2009.

With the plethora of commercial e-mail communications – accompanied by groaning inboxes and all – it’s only natural to wonder if what’s happening to the ones you send correlates to the experience of others.

The Direct Marketing Association helps answer that question with the results of a survey it just completed. The DMA’s 2010 Response Rate Trend Report, conducted with ~475 respondents in March and April, is the group’s seventh annual survey. It found that average open rate for e-mails sent to a company’s “house” e-mail database list is just under 20%, while the clickthrough rate from the e-mail to a web landing page is ~6.5%.

And the average “conversion” rate – taking whatever additional action is desired – is ~1.7%.

[Those figures are for “home-grown” e-mail databases. The percentages would be lower when working with outside/purchased lists.]

How does e-mail performance compare to response rates encountered in direct mail marketing pieces? The DMA research studied that, too. These days, direct mail response rates are running about 3.5% for house lists … but less than half of that (~1.4%) for outside prospect lists.

Commenting on the survey findings, Yuri Wurmser, the DMA’s research manager, said, “Traditional channels are holding their own in terms of response, but it is a multi-channel market out there where everyone is using a lot of different channels,”

Amen to that.

The DMA survey also found – not surprisingly – that while response rates for B-to-B campaigns tend to be higher than consumer campaigns, e-mail tactics are used less often for direct sales compared to postal mail. Which goes to show that despite their added costs and longer lead times, traditional direct mail marketing techniques still have a role to play in the marketing mix.

And what about telemarketing? The DMA survey reveals that outbound telemarketing to prospects provides the highest response rates — around 6% — but also the highest cost-per-lead at more than $300.

A full report is available for a fee from the DMA, and can be ordered here.