When to Prompt Surveys to Maximize the Responses?
When a research team invests loads of resources, from the human workforce to finance, it is of crucial importance to accomplish all planned and determined goals. All stakeholders expect a practical outcome which makes a value and concurrently, is reliable enough to put into practice. In this regard, a series of statistical reports have been published and sets of recommendations have been investigated which may pave the path to achieve this goal.
In the first instance, researchers might need to consider the best time to prompt the surveys. According to the literature, the most common time is the last week of the month, especially on Mondays and Tuesdays. In contrast, Sundays are the least popular days for asking participants to complete a survey (QuestionPro, n.d.; Zheng, n.d.). We have not done any research to identify what time of the day is best for sending the invitations; nonetheless, the repeating notifications are better to keep at a maximum of three, between 48 hours and 72 hours after the first notification (Niepewna, n.d.).
Furthermore, different notifications for engaging diverse target groups have been studied. In general, it is best to send surveys on Mondays with about 10% more responses than average (Zheng, n.d.). Tuesdays have the quickest response time to surveys than any other days (Luck, 2022), especially for short surveys (Zheng, n.d.). In contrast, for longer surveys, later days of the week, Thursdays and Fridays, are recommended (Zheng, n.d.).
In terms of planning for distributing surveys, diversity in the target group may have a role. Some of the reports made a precise comparison by considering the variation in target groups. For instance, based on the customer journey, customer-based studies can consider point-of-sales as the best time to ask surveys. Likewise, the workforce showed a peak on Mondays and Tuesdays in responding to surveys. On the contrary, community-based studies did not identify any specific day which has significant differences from other days (Amaresan, 2019; Cleave, 2022).
More specifically, focusing on times of the day, there is a clear peak around 10:00 am, as reported in one report (Zheng, n.d.). In comparison, a different report declared different time points, early in the morning and lunchtime. It correlates with the low-peak time of day for professionals (Amaresan, 2019). Most importantly, highly engaged audiences typically respond faster and quicker regardless of the date or time survey invitations were sent.
Having said that weekends and weekdays may differ in different countries, and also the recommended hours are based on the local timing system, contextualizing these findings is critical.
References:
1- Amaresan, S., 2019. The Best Time to Send a Survey, According to 5 Studies. [online] Blog.Hubspot. Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/service/best-time-send-survey [Accessed 1 May 2022].
2- Cleave, P., 2022. The Best Time to Send a Survey. [online] SmartSurvey. Available at: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/blog/the-best-time-to-send-a-survey [Accessed 1 May 2022].
3- Luck, I., 2022. Best Time & Day to Send Survey Emails. [online] Customer Gauge. Available at: https://customergauge.com/blog/best-time-day-send-survey-emails [Accessed 1 May 2022].
4- Niepewna, U., n.d. How to Collect Feedback Using Email Surveys. [online] Startquestion. Available at: https://blog.startquestion.com/how-to-collect-as-many-email-surveys-as-possible-to-the-database-of-respondents [Accessed 1 May 2022].
5- QuestionPro, n.d. Is there a best time to send out surveys to get the highest responses?. [online] QuestionPro. Available at: https://www.questionpro.com/blog/is-there-a-best-time-to-send-out-surveys-to-get-the-highest-responses [Accessed 30 April 2022].
6- Zheng, J., n.d. What day of the week should you send your survey?. [online] Curiosity at work. Available at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/day-of-the-week [Accessed 1 May 2022].