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ProTip: Increasing Survey Response Rates with Super Prizing

By crooky | December 19, 2007

High response rates can be difficult to secure when you run a survey or a customer feedback exercise. I always recommend to my clients that they offer up a prize in a random draw for people who complete the survey. Two reasons:

1. It definitely increases the response rate. I did a consumer survey last year that wasn’t performing very well in terms of completed surveys. We added a prize to it and advertised it on ContestCanada.com and the response rate tripled in a week. I’ve seen similar results with other surveys.

2. To enter the draw, people generally have to give a name and an e-mail address. This list of names and e-mail addresses is your new potential customer database. That kind of data is worth its weight in gold. Just make sure you get permission from these individuals to contact them so that you don’t run afoul of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act.

This is usually enough to convince my clients to do prizing for their surveys. The next question that comes up is - what should we give them?

Here’s my list of popular prizes and why they’re good to give:

1. Digital picture frames

If you haven’t seen these - they’re basically an 6-8″ colour LCD screen with a relatively low-powered CPU running it. You load it full of your photos from your digital camera (most frames accept the most popular camera memory card formats) and then the frame can rotate through your pictures all day or show one static picture. Some of the more advanced models have the capability to show movie files and have small built-in speakers. They’re popular because people are just starting to see them show up in their favourite electronics stores but they’re a little luxury that few people actually splurge on for themselves.

I’ve helped clients give away three of these in the last year and they’ve been a very popular item. I’m unwilling to recommend a particular model because I’ve never owned one myself but if you go through TigerDirect or other online electronics retailers, you can pick these up for anywhere between $150 (for the less recognized brands) to $300 for the better-known brands like Kodak.

2. iPod Touch

I usually tell people to not use iPods as a prize. I’ve changed my tune recently when I won an iPod Touch from a survey draw I was entered in. Where before, giving away another iPod Nano was a silly prospect. Pretty much everyone I know owns at least 2 iPods. I’ve won three in five years. Your respondent market is pretty saturated with these things.

However, the iPod Touch is less of an MP3 player and more of a personal media player in the truest sense. It plays videos, is great for showing photos and it looks cool. I have mine loaded with pictures of my family and when I’m at networking events, I whip the thing out and flick through photos of my kids for people. There’s a big “oooooooooo” factor.

3. Gift Cards

You can’t go too far wrong with gift cards. They’re easy to mail and then the lucky winner of your prize can choose whatever they want. I usually pick gift cards for Starbucks, Best Buy, Sears or any other chain store. Really, you can let your respondents choose where they want their gift card from because they’re easy to pick up. Don’t be cheap though. Make sure your gift cards are for at least $100.

Things that make for crappy prizes:

1. Anything that expires or requires a lot of effort to use

I lump things like free lessons, day spa gift certificates and tickets to a concert on a specific date under this category. You won’t want the person that receives this prize to have to think too hard about how they’re going to collect on it. My wife gave me a flying lesson when we first got married and by the time I tried to reimburse it, the company had gone out of business. Not many people like to go to the spa by themselves so you pretty much have to give a spa certificate for two - which gets pricey and is also a logistical nightmare to arrange for two people to get to the spa at the same time. Tickets to a concert - people’s taste in music is really different and for a lot of people, tickets to the concert is only part of ths expense. There’s babysitting, dinner, cab fare, etc…

2. Your product

It just looks tacky. I’ve seen people give away free courses at their college as a prize. I’ve seen people give away free palm readings when they’re a palm reader. Come on. I know it’s a hook to try and get me to buy more of what you’re selling. Just don’t.

3. Anything super personal or super smelly

Perfume, cologne, lingerie, waxing kits, free rhinospasty, hooker coupons - they’re all either way too personal and something that someone would be embarassed to accept if they weren’t at the sex trade show or they’re something that’s too difficult to match to personal taste. Stay away from these kinds of things.

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So, I hope that helps you when you’re thinking about designing your own survey. Remember, just because you would like to have something, doesn’t mean that everyone else does. LOok to sites like ContestCanada.com to see what kind of stuff other companies are giving away. Sure, some of them are giving away cars, trips and piles of cash - something you probably can’t afford to do but some of them are giving away from smaller, interesting things.

Good luck!

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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Topics: Research Methodologies |

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