Effective Survey Invitations in the Age of Short Attention Spans

An effective survey invitation gets people to click through to the survey itself. That requires, first and foremost, that we get the audience member’s attention. No simple trick to success. People’s attention spans

– Hey, look. A chicken! –

are getting shorter and shorter all the time.

We’ll give some tips for getting through the first gate for a survey response. And maybe some free eggs from Flicka.

According to an article in Time by Kevin McSpadden, our attention spans are incredibly short – about 8 seconds. Shorter than a goldfish:

Notice how well the writer and editor prove the point, albeit inadvertently? These “professional” writers misused “affect” in the very 1^st paragraph. Some attention span! A sign of the Times…

Short Attention Spans & Survey Response Rates

So, back to surveys. Shorter attention spans impact our survey projects since they affect the likelihood that an invitee will complete our surveys – or even start them.

Think about this. How often do you get an email survey invitation that turns you off before you even get to the link? The advertising adage hold true for surveys:

You have to get the person’s attention within the first 10 seconds – or 8 seconds – or you’ve lost them.

But we also have to constantly keep their attention, which means ongoing engagement.

Our interaction with the audience for our surveys must proceed through a five-step process:

Noticed
Opened
Read
Completed
Returned

If the potential respondent doesn’t go through all 5 stages, we don’t get the data we desire.

1. Notice – The First Step to an Effective Survey Invitation

If our invitations aren’t noticed, we’ve lost right away. So, what makes an effective survey invitation via email get noticed?

Timing is the first concern. Consider your email inbox first thing in the morning when you get to work, especially a Monday morning. (Or Sunday morning for my Middle East readers.)

You have this mass of emails to sort through – and you have real work to get to. What jumps out or doesn’t jump out? You probably immediately delete emails that don’t look critical. And let’s face it, a survey invitation is probably not deemed critical.

Ideally, we want the email to pop and get noticed. Some suggestions:

Send out your invitations midday. The invitation is more likely to be noticed if it shows up in the inbox by itself or with a few other emails.
Send out midweek. Mondays and Fridays people are more distracted. An attendee in my Survey Workshops said that Tuesday worked better than Wednesday, which worked better than Thursday. But you should do your own experiment.

These suggestions come from email marketers – and common sense. Spammers provide further evidence regarding the timing for an effective survey invitations. Most of my spam hits my inbox midday and midweek.

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Does This Work for All Types of Surveys?

The above suggestions are particularly tuned to B2B surveys (Business-to-Business) where you have a work email address. If you’re surveying audience has provided mostly personal email accounts, such as gmail, then sending during the lunch hour probably is more effective for survey invitations since that’s when people check their personal email accounts during the work day.

What About Spam Filters?

People filter out less critical emails manually, but that only comes into play if the email invitations gets to the inbox. We have to avoid formal spam filters. Run a search on “spam trigger words” and you’ll find lists of words to avoid in your emails. This list is constantly being updated.

Always run your email invitation through some spam tester. Also, when you send the invitation as a test, send it to email addresses from multiple organizations — Yahoo, your school, AOL, gmail, etc. Then, examine the “long headers” that provide the routing information in excruciating detail. You’ll find a spam score in there.

Something that should scare all us surveyors: “survey” could become a spam trigger word as spammers use surveys in phishing attacks. See the nearby screenshot for one I recently received.

— VA Benefits Survey Phishing Attack

We can never have an effective survey invitation if it doesn’t get to the inbox!

2. Open – Effective Survey Invitations

Okay, the potential respondent noticed your email invitation. Do they delete it or open it? Some critical fields likely decide that. Most folks look at email on their computers using a “preview pane.” Each email client is different but most will display a list of emails with one line for each email displaying a few fields. On a mobile device, it’s even more compact.

Think of this as an informal spam filter. We scan the fields shown and “read or delete.” Here are suggestions for the fields typically shown:

From: Should be a real name or an organization’s department the recipient will recognize. An invitation From only a first name – e.g., “Kathy” – is immediately suspect.
To: The recipient’s name must be here.
Subject: The first few words must grab the attention – in a good way. Subject lines get truncated in the preview pane, so really focus on the first 15-20 characters. Experiment with different subject lines and see what works for your application area. However, what works today may not work next year. Marketers suggest different types of subject lines. HubSpot outlines the different approaches in this article. Consider which approach will work best for your audience.

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How About Reminders?

The first invitation should not be the only invitation. Consider sending out multiple reminder invitations. Each one increases the likelihood of it being noticed and opened. Hopefully, each may garner around 5% additional responses. We seldom find people get angry with multiple reminders. Consider slightly changing the wording, especially the Subject line, for each reminder.

3. Read – the Effective Survey Invitation

Great, the person has gone to the actual text of the survey invitation in the preview pane or has clicked on the email on their mobile device. Continue the engagement with concise copy that leads to a Call To Action (CTA), which in this case is to click to the survey webform. Some suggestions to accomplish this:

Don’t bury the lede: skip the logo. I’ve seen companies where the marketing department dictates that the company logo must go at the top of all emails for branding purposes. But does it engage the potential respondent? Not me! I’m hitting the delete key. Branding shouldn’t come at the expense of engagement. Opportunities abound just seconds later for branding.
Personalize. “Dear Fred” is a much better salutation than “Dear Valued Customer.” My thought when seeing the latter is: “If I’m so valued, why don’t you know my name?” Make sure the first (given) name field in your data base is accurate without any nonsense entries, like “unknown”.
Pitch the lede concisely. Now comes your “elevator pitch” for why the person should give you 5-10 minutes of their time to take your survey. Concisely state the benefit to the respondent – not the benefit to you, the surveyor. Remember that a healthy percent of your audience will be reading the email on their mobile devices. Be concise.
Call to Action “Above the Fold”. Ideally, we want the link to the survey webform visible in the preview pane – “above the fold” in journalistic parlance. That can be tough. But try. Information that isn’t part of the CTA can go on the first webform screen after the invitee has clicked through. That first screen serves as an Introduction.

Embedded 1st question makes for an effective survey invitation

Hook them with the first question. Survey invitations have a recent innovation: put the first survey question in the HTML email, as in the nearby screenshot. In a customer survey, this is typically the “likelihood to recommend” question, affectionately mis-termed the NPS question. The scale is visually presented. When the person clicks on their response, the survey is launched, usually with this first completed question displayed on the first screen.
Incentives. Some incentive can motivate the less self-motivated person to take the survey. The incentive should be stated in the email, but be sure the incentive offer doesn’t include spam trigger words! That can be difficult.
Don’t encourage procrastination. Many invitations include the date when the survey will be closed. Why? Telling someone they have three weeks to take the survey is an invitation to procrastinate. Survey invitations are a “do or delete” email. Only in the final reminder note should you give the closing date.

All of these elements help make for a good, effective survey invitation.

4. Complete & 5. Return the Survey

If we’ve gotten the person to the survey webform, by definition we have an effective survey invitation. Now, don’t blow it! Continue to engage the respondent. Here’s something not to do:

Do not repeat information from the email Invitation in the Introductory web page – except that first “hook” question if you’ve taken that approach. Repeating information from the Invitation to the Introduction just encourages skimming and destroys engagement.

Alvin, one handsome cat.

Finally, we’re into the meat of the survey. The survey questionnaire should be engaging and well designed to generate valid data that will address your research objectives.

Come to our Survey Workshop to learn the details behind that.

What About Other Survey Administration Methods?

The predominant survey administration method today is still an email invitation with webform survey. However, the same logic applies regardless of how the invitation is extended, be it a telephone, QR, intercept, store receipt, or text survey invitation. Engage the respondent.

And why the cat photo? Isn’t it obvious? Alvin is one handsome tabby. As we’ve learned from Facebook, cat photos engage. Sorry, no videos. Alvin demands royalties for those.