What is the ideal number of reminders to use for a survey? Any industry best practices?

My team typically sends two reminders as well, especially for surveys where we are trying to gauge overall metrics like rNPS. Receiving a larger sample size is important to us to ensure that we are reporting on fair scores.

We usually only send reminders to people who haven’t clicked on the survey link yet to limit “annoyance.” Also, as long as you aren’t getting direct feedback from respondents about being oversurveyed, I personally think 2 reminders is fine. Anything more than that might be excessive though depending on the survey type.

We usually send reminders based on the response rate we have received, but ideally between 2-3 reminders are ideal for any program

@Lisa007 Try show you boss this post: https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/research/tools-increase-response-rate/
Quote: ” When you haven’t heard from a respondent, send between one and three reminders, using refreshed language each time so you’re not simply repeating the original. You need to strike the balance between a gentle nudge to respond and annoying spam. Get it right and you could increase your response rate by up to 36%. ”

I don’t know if a Qualtrics post is good enough for your boss to consider it’s best practice.

@Lisa007 maybe this can also help.

Hi @Lisa007 ,

We usually advise our clients to send 1 or 2 reminders, very rarely 3. It is all very situational but reminders have rapid diminishing return. You have calculated your response per reminder rate and your 2nd reminder is indeed quite high (what we usually observe as a basic rule of thumb is 50% of the previous invitation’s completes: say, initial invitation produces 100 completes, 1st reminder will produce 50, 2nd will produce 25, 3rd will produce 12, etc).

That said, there is no universal rule…

It can depend on context. For example, if irritating the respondent has a high cost risk (say you’re surveying your top 5% clients), you might want to err on the side of safety.

As @Aanurag_QC said, if your response rate is already high enough and your error margins low enough, it might be irrelevant to push for a 2nd reminder. If it’s the opposite, it might be an argument to convince your stakeholder.

You might want to get stats on unsubscriptions linked to each invitation/reminder, it is a telling metric of induced irritation.

You can also explore other ways to increase the response rate of your original invitation and 1st reminder: incentives, alternative subject lines & message content, email personalization, etc.

I would suggest it depend on the requirement and type of audience. If its internal team 3 should be fine, if this is something that needs to be completed you can add more reminder may be every alternate day or every week until they respond. If this is external max to max 3 again based on need and who are the target people.

Others here have all offered good tips; it is all very subjective but important to balance the effort vs return of each reminder.  It’s also something to look at over time; and consider if the same audience gets invites from other programs as well.

Through deeper analysis our team have done we were reduced ours to only 1; as over time response rates diminished the more invites that went out and the associated reminders.  We also AB tested and found those that responded after multiple reminders were giving less detailed responses, so response quality is also something to consider.  So just food for thought to consider with your program.

Thanks for all your tips and suggestions. I just met with my boss/the program owners and shared the data and this helped us agree 2 reminders is good. I was able to tell them that 2 reminders is pretty normal and we have almost no unsubscribes which is a good sign we’re not irritating people so that made them more comfortable.

are 2-3 reminders to non-respondents sent in the context of a 2wk survey period? just want to clarify. if yes, do folks recommend more reminders for longer survey periods or not?

@csulb.spot.6584 IMO any more than 2 is a lot of reminders for a short survey window, however it really is contextual to your program and what you need from it.  Even for longer window’s I’d hesitate, we see substantially diminished returns after the 1st reminder, with very limited uptake on a 3rd or 4th.

You should consider what is the downside/risk to your program/business if you over contact, like if you only contacting these individuals for this one survey - you might not have much to loose, but if they are customers or a contactable base you plan to use again, you can risk them unsubscribing or not completing future surveys etc.  

One thing I have found can work well, if multiple reminders aren’t working - is sending a different survey/email and ask why they haven’t participated instead (learn what you can do differently) or  send a more personalised follow up/reminder from an individual (or appear like it comes from an individual they know) rather than a more generic invite.  Adding an incentive, or increasing it if there is already one - is another common tool (but not always feasible or appropriate).  

Overall - I see reminders as a blunt instrument in our tool box to improve our response volumes, the more you use it the less effective it is.  If it’s reoccurring survey, running an AB test (different versions of invite) can be a better approach, to work out what positioning gets you the best results the first time.