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Attendee surveys
 My company conducts an attendee survey at its annual client event, but the response rate has been consistently lower than we’d like. We ask a few multiple-choice and ratings-style questions, and always offer an opportunity for open-ended feedback. Over the years, we have tried a number of things to boost our response rate, like making the survey available online, and e-mailing a link to attendees a week or two after the event. We have tried offering incentives, too, such as a drawing to win a free registration to the following year’s conference. But our response rate is stuck at around 15 percent. What can we do to increase participation?
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Revamp your survey
A 15-percent response isn’t necessarily bad for a post-event attendee survey, but if you want to improve it, here are some tips for doing so:
 Personalize the prize. Typically, attendees’ companies pay for the cost of their conference registration, so offering them a free or discounted registration for the following year’s conference might not be enough to prompt them to participate. Instead, consider giving survey respondents a more personal incentive that they can put to immediate use, such as a $5 gift certificate to Starbucks or a $25 restaurant certificate. If you buy in bulk from places like Restaurant.com and other vendors, you’ll typically save a good deal of money on gift certificates.
Respect attendees’ time. Limit your surveys to no more than 12 to 15 questions. Then, in your survey invitation and on your survey cover page, be explicit about the number of questions you’re asking respondents to complete. Also tell them approximately how long it will take to complete the survey. For best results, you should aim for five minutes. Be sure to do several test runs of your survey before sending the invitation so you know that you’re providing attendees with a realistic estimate.
Meter their progress. Another effective way to discourage respondents from bailing mid-survey is to use an online survey tool that includes a “meter” option. On every page of the survey, or as attendees respond to individual questions, a meter shows respondents how close they are to completing the survey — a great way to keep people focused on the finish line.
Avoid open-ended questions. While open-ended questions may seem like a good idea because they allow for unvarnished feedback, they are actually a sign of poor survey design. Why? Respondents hate them because they take too much time and effort to answer. In addition, the results gleaned from such questions are famously underused by almost all of the companies that collect them. Most companies that ask open-ended questions, in fact, never read or study the answers in any depth. That’s because companies simply do not have the time or resources to sift through all those responses and compile them into any kind of quantifiable or quantitative results. My advice is to devote time on the front end of the survey-creation process to develop strong closed questions (e.g., true or false, multiple choice, etc.). Doing so will pay off in the form of better response rates and more useful feedback.
Share the results. How many times have you taken a poll on a Web site just because you wanted to see the results and find out how your answers compared to those of the other respondents? If your event attendees take the time to provide you with feedback, they want to know what their peers had to say, too. Many companies are reluctant to share their survey results out of fear that they will release sensitive information or data that reflects poorly on them. The answer is to compromise. Pick your least sensitive questions and tell respondents that you will share partial results. You might even go so far as to mark certain questions within the survey for which results will be shared. More than any prize or gimmick, this is a key driver to dramatically increasing survey response rates.
 Dean Wiltse,
chairman and CEO,
Vovici Corporation,
Dulles, VA
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HIT THE 48-HOUR SWEET SPOT
At Blackbaud, we host two annual user events, called the Conferences for Nonprofits, for our customers who head their organizations’ fundraising efforts. For years, we struggled with the same problem. After making some modifications to our survey, however, our response rate doubled, shooting up from only 25 percent to 50 percent. Here’s how we did it.
We used to send attendees a link to our post-event survey a week to 10 days after the conference had ended. The problem was that by then, too much time had passed. We found that once they got back into the busy routine of daily life, attendees were less apt to reply.
We also tried conducting the survey on site, in our Internet café — which didn’t work for us either. (I can count the number of survey responses we received this way on one hand.) When attendees were on site, they were too busy attending sessions and networking with their peers to devote time to completing our survey — which is a good thing. We also realized that conducting the survey on site didn’t make sense from a data-integrity standpoint. People tend to be reactionary, so if attendees have a bad session or a bad experience at a specific conference activity, they might fill out the survey just because they need to vent, rather than doing so out of a genuine desire to provide feedback that will help us to improve future events.
Finally, we found the “sweet spot,” timing-wise, for our attendees. We now send the survey within 48 hours of the event’s conclusion. This way, attendees are still on a high from the conference, with the experience still very fresh in their minds, and can give us detailed and actionable feedback.
Marketing and promoting the survey opportunity like any other event element also helps. We promote our survey every chance we get leading up to and during the event. Our pre-event e-newsletters always include a heads-up blurb about the survey, reminding readers that the conference is their event and the survey is their opportunity to tell us what we can do better for them in the future. We also plug the survey during the event’s welcome reception as we are getting the attendees psyched up for the week, and we reinforce the opportunity during the opening plenary with our CEO.
In the survey invitation, we assure respondents that we will take their input seriously and commit to using it to improve the event. Then, we make good on that promise. When we begin sending out reminders and save-the-date e-mails promoting the following year’s event, we are diligent about pointing out exactly how we improved the conference based on answers to the prior year’s survey.
 Allison M. Werb,
event marketing manager,
marketing, Blackbaud Inc.,
Charleston, SC
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Dangle a different carrot
I’ve found taking a low-tech approach can considerably increase response rates. My company’s solution to dismal response rates was to distribute a single-sheet hardcopy survey during conference sessions. While we continue to conduct online and e-mail surveys as well, we have significantly improved our response rates, despite the fact that they’re more arduous than online-only versions.
You might also consider dangling a different carrot altogether. After our annual event, copies of PowerPoint presentations from all conference sessions are made available online to event attendees. Prior to logging in to access these presentations, attendees are required to fill out a brief event survey. This has resulted in higher survey scores and improved response rates. What’s more, this incentive doesn’t cost us anything more than we’ve already invested. However, we are careful to consider the motivations of these respondents, and always bear in mind that they may not be filling the surveys out completely honestly, and might just be clicking through quickly to get to the carrot at the end of the string.
Lydia Janow,
director, conferences and
exhibitions/tradeshows,
Aviation Week, New York
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