How to write a compelling survey introduction—get your response rates to soar

You wouldn’t grab someone in the street and ask them to fill out a survey with no introduction—so don’t do it online with your survey software.

It’s important for the people answering your survey to know who you are before they start, or you’ll be left with a bunch of nonresponses.

Improving your brand recognition is always a good idea. Especially if you want people to do more surveys for you in the future.

But don’t go on and on about yourselves. The more you talk about your own company and how great it is, the more biased the survey will feel.

Simply let people know who the survey is coming from—with a quick explanation of who you are. If they want to know more, you can leave a link to your site—or add it on your Thank You Screen at the end.

Be honest about why you are sending this survey research.

If you’re being vague about your objectives or failing to mention them altogether—your readers will find it hard to trust you.

Try to be as transparent as possible. Not only will this improve your responses, but people deserve to know what they’re taking part of.

People are busy—and time is money. Give an estimated time for completion upfront e.g. “This will only take a few minutes of your time.”

Don’t leave your readers in the dark. If they don’t know if there are five or five hundred questions left, they’ll get bored and impatient halfway through and hit the dreaded X button—or write half-hashed, inaccurate responses. And nonresponses are good for no one.

Let the people taking your survey know how far they are from the finishing line before they even start giving answers.

This is a big deal. You have to be clear and honest about what privacy rights people have.

If the responses you get from a survey are going to be anonymous, then let people know. Emphasize it—’cause you’ll get more honest answers if people understand that their answers remain confidential once they finish.

If you can’t offer anonymity to respondents—then they have the right to know that too.

Be fair with the people taking your survey. No one wants to give personal answers to something—only to have their answers used against them in the future.

Want to keep it short and sweet? You can always include a link to the privacy statement of your company. Give a very quick outline of the policy in the introduction, and give people the chance to learn more if they want.

Be clear about what your readers actually have to do in the survey or questionnaire.

Let’s say that you ask:

On a scale of 1-10, was this the tastiest type of cake?

Is “1” the tastiest score, because it’s number one? Does “10” represent the best cake, because it has a 10/10 flavor?

Who knows? Well, you will—but your readers won’t.

Asking questions like this means you’ll get answers from people in both camps. This means the answers you get will be worthless and your data can’t be used by your research team.

Keep the instructions as clear as possible. Ask someone to take the survey first. If they are confused by the questions, then the people taking your survey definitely will be too

The robots haven’t taken over yet—you’re not interviewing androids. You’re asking real people questions, so speak to them like, well, a human.

Keep the jargon for the boardroom. Speaking in formal, academic or technical language will just confuse most people.

If you open up with “Our company is looking for 100 respondents to answer a market research study on…”, then the survey will seem like some long, dry, serious read.

Try to humanize your speech in your survey intro.

Turn that cold, corporate speech into “We have a few questions to ask about…”.

Simple. Friendly. Human.

Always say thank you—you’re getting something from your readers with this survey.

Besides, if the people taking your survey feel their answers are valued, they’re much more likely to give genuine and thought-out answers

Your readers will appreciate it. Plus you’d make your grandmother proud.

A good introduction is a quick summary of the content that’s about to come up.

It’s the same in any medium, really.

So the best time to write your introduction is at the end of the writing process.

Why? Well, if you’ve gone through the entire process of planning and creating a survey, you’ll have a deep understanding of the content, hopefully.

Writing an introduction early on means you’ll be constantly editing if you make changes to the rest of the study.

If you do it at the end, you’ll have all the other parts ready to go—so this is the simplest time to put everything in a nutshell.

What’s the point of this study? Why should the people answering your questions care about them at all? Why should they spend five minutes on this survey instead of on Buzzfeed?

The best way to do this is to explain how these surveys had made a difference in the past.

Whether you’ve carried out research that led to policy change or simply asked employees about how they felt at work—then adapted the environment to suit them better, it’s certainly worth adding that info.

If you can show your survey isn’t meaningless research for some faceless organization, but rather information that can lead to positive change—then your readers have much more incentive to give thoughtful answers.

Encourage people to be happy to be part of the process.