Survey response rates: what to expect and how to get more

It depends on the channel, so compare yourself to the same channel only.

SurveyMonkey publishes averages from surveys sent through its own tool. Here are the ones for how a survey reaches people (SurveyMonkey).

Read these as rough. They come from surveys sent through one vendor's tool, and the same page contradicts itself in a few of its industry figures, so don't hold a small list up against them. The shape is the useful part: a message sent to people who know you does far better than a pop-up they didn't ask for.

Your own past rate on the same kind of survey to the same kind of people is a better yardstick than any average.

Divide the number of people who answered by the number you asked.

The numbers below are invented to show the method. They are not from a real survey.

Say you emailed 200 people and 46 sent a reply. Worked out with that formula, 46 ÷ 200 = 23%. If 12 of those 46 skipped the written box, 34 gave a written answer, which is 17% of the 200.

Track both numbers. The first tells you who opened the door. The second tells you how many gave you something to read.

Not by itself, though it does raise the risk that the people who answered are different from the people who didn't.

Pew Research Center's phone surveys are an example. Their response rate held near 9% for several years, then fell to 7% in 2017 and 6% in 2018. Pew's own studies found "little relationship between response rates and accuracy". It also says a low rate means the risk of error is higher, so it shouldn't be ignored (Pew).

Pew is estimating what a whole country thinks. If you are hearing from a few dozen people about why they stopped using something, the question is different. You don't need a rate that represents everyone. You need enough written answers that you can see what repeats. Our post on how many survey responses you need goes through that difference.

The strongest evidence is a Cochrane review of 481 randomised trials of postal questionnaires and 32 of electronic ones. It reports odds ratios, where anything above 1 means better odds that a person responds (Edwards et al.). For electronic questionnaires:

• Shorter questionnaires: odds ratio 1.73.
• A more interesting topic: 1.85.
• Including a statement that others had responded: 1.52.
• An offer of the survey results: 1.36.
• Personalising the questionnaire: 1.24.
• Giving a deadline: 1.18.

Two findings point the other way. Odds were lower when "Survey" was mentioned in the email subject line (0.81), and when the email carried a male signature (0.55). The review notes that those figures come from only a few trials each, and its trials ran before 2008 and were mostly health research, so treat them as direction, not a promise.

For postal questionnaires the same review found that follow-up contact raised the odds (1.35) and so did pre-notification (1.45).

Length is the one lever you fully control. SurveyMonkey calls length "the most consistent predictor of survey abandonment". It suggests aiming for under 10 questions, and five or fewer for a short pulse check (SurveyMonkey).

The invitation counts too. Formbricks, which sells a survey tool, advises putting the estimated time in the invitation, with wording like "This will only take 3 minutes", and sending the survey while the experience is fresh (Formbricks). That is practical advice from a vendor, not a study.

A few habits that follow from the evidence:

1. Send it from a named person. SurveyMonkey says people respond more to a sender they recognise than to a generic alias.
2. Say why you are asking and what you will do with the answers.
3. Ask for one written answer, not a grid. See exit surveys that people actually answer.
4. Send one reminder. SurveyMonkey warns that more than two reminders brings diminishing returns and can leave a bad impression.
5. Tell people what changed afterwards, so the next survey gets answered. Our post on reporting results back shows how.

On incentives, SurveyMonkey says they can help with audiences who don't know you, and can bring rushed answers in an ongoing feedback program. The Cochrane review found monetary incentives raised response in postal surveys (odds ratio 1.87), but those are trials from before 2008, so they say little about a link in a message today.

There are three honest ways to get more replies and read them.

• By hand. Send the survey from your own email and keep a sheet of who you asked and who answered. It is free, personal and works well for a few dozen people. It gets slow when you want to read hundreds of written answers.
• A general AI chat such as ChatGPT. It can help you tighten the invitation and the questions. It can't send the survey or tell you who has answered.
• A survey tool. Google Forms, Typeform and SurveyMonkey all collect replies. The Google Forms comparison shows where Enform differs.

Enform writes the survey from a description of what you want to ask, so a short one is quick to make. You share one link, it reads every reply, and it counts what people said. Every count opens to the replies behind it, so a low rate still gives you something to read and check. It won't raise your response rate by itself. A reminder and a real sender do that. See pricing for what is included.