15 Brand Awareness Survey Invitation Tips

Over the last several weeks, I have written a series of blog entries on how to plan out a brand awareness research project and discussed several of the alternative brand awareness measurement methods that are available. Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing tips on how to effectively launch a brand awareness survey. In this week’s post, I will be sharing tips on how to write a brand awareness survey invitation that will drive higher response rates.

Response rates are a function of trust, perceived effort and perceived reward.  Therefore, a survey invitation must instill trust, clearly lay out the effort required to participate and accurately identify the compensation or reward that the participant could expect to receive in return for participation.

Response Rate  = Trust + Perceived Effort + Perceived Reward

15 Tips to Boost Response Rates for a Brand Awareness Survey

1. Optimize your subject line, as it may be the only information that a respondent uses to determine whether or not they open your email. Be sure to follow these 2 rules when crafting your subject line(s).
   • Make sure the subject line is clear and concise.  Restrict the subject line of the invitation to 35 characters or less, so as to ensure the whole title appears in email preview formats.
   • Avoid using words, phrases, formats or symbols that will trigger spam filters like “important message”, “free”, multiple exclamation points or an all uppercase title.
   • Avoid pushing the incentive in the title as well as this can detract from the credibility of the email.
2. Use at least 2 different subject lines in your survey invitation and track which respondents were sent each subject line, so that you can see which subject worked best and also ensure that a poor performing subject line will not drive your response rate to zero. This will also provide you with insight into which style subject works best for your audience, so that you can optimize your email invitation subjects for higher response rates in future rounds of the brand awareness survey.
3. Send the invitation from a recognizable email address that will establish credibility as soon as the target respondent receives the email.  It is best to use personal email accounts from a recognized company or a survey tool email account.  This will also decrease the likelihood of the invitation going into a spam or junk folder.
4. Establish survey administrator credibility by providing a short company introduction in the body of the invitation and a link to their website, a mailing address and a phone number in the signature of the invitation. This will instill trust in the respondents and decrease their doubts surrounding the survey compensation or reward.
5. Always personalize the invitation, as this will establish a connection between the surveyor and the respondent and establish a sense of credibility and trust. This will also increase the likelihood that the individual will not immediately categorize your invitation as junk before they begin to read it.
6. Let the target respondent know why they were selected to participate in the study and tell them why their insight is important. Individuals love to hear that they are important and doing so will increase the likelihood that they participate in your brand awareness survey.
7. Indicate how long the survey will take and be realistic. This will let the respondent know the effort required to participate in your study. Exaggerating that the survey is shorter than it really is will result in an increased number of incomplete surveys and a large number of upset respondents. In general, a respondent can complete 4 to 5 closed-end questions per a minute and 1.5 to 2 open-ended questions per minute.  To get a more accurate estimate, have one of your colleagues or peers take the survey and estimate the completion time.
8. Notify the participant that there is an incentive tied to their participation. For raffle or drawing style compensation offers, be sure to inform the participant how many people you intend to have participate in your study, so that they can develop a realistic expectation of the compensation. For more on choosing the right survey incentive, refer to my post on 8 factors to consider when planning-out a brand awareness research project.
9. Most respondents will only read the first few lines of the invitation, so make sure that the link to the survey is in the first few lines of the email. Make sure that the survey link is the first hyperlink in the invitation, so that someone could quickly click through to participate if he/she desires to do so.
10. Thank the respondent in advance for their participation in the survey.
11. Limit the length of the invitation to 2 short paragraphs and utilize short pros that are easy to read, so that someone skimming the email is sure to pick-up the main purpose of the email. Many people will skim these types of emails and making your invite a quicker read will increase the likelihood that the message will resonate with a respondent who is skimming through his/her email.
12. Design an attractive message with images that drive readers to open-up the email when they see it in an email preview window. If the target respondent does not open your invitation, he/she is certainly not going to respond to it.
13. Assure participants that the information that they provide will remain confidential and will only be shared in an aggregated format with the sponsor of the survey. This will increase trust, as it will relinquish any fear that the survey is being used as a lead qualifying exercise.
14. Always provide target respondents with an easy way to unsubscribe or remove themselves from your survey email list and include the physical address of your establishment for CAN-SPAM compliance. Doing so will establish trust with your target respondent and show that you are not trying to spam them.
15. Don’t bother with pre-invitation notifications. Pre-notification messages can improve response rates if they are sent to the respondents via a different medium of communication like a post card or a letter.  However, they are not a good option for brand awareness surveys because the cost per a reminder is high and response rates on brand awareness research are very low.  Thus, the incremental return for the costs is very low and there are almost always better options for allocating resources.

Next week, I will share a few brand awareness survey invitation examples to help you in designing an effective survey invitation.