Better response rate: direct email questions or an online survey?

April 3, 2013 2:15 PM

I would like to follow up with participants from two recent leadership workshops, to get an idea of how they have incorporated what they learned, or how they have moved up in their careers (librarianship, if it matters), etc. Would I get better results if I emailed each participant directly and asked for their input via email, in a narrative form, or ask them to complete an online survey?

I have two reasons for asking for their input. One, I would like to find folks to take part in a panel presentation at an upcoming conference, to talk about their experience and encourage colleagues to do the same. Two, I want to be able to get outside sponsors to fund this event, and if I have concrete examples of how people have taken advantage of this opportunity and moved up to become leaders (or, in this case, "people who might be able to purchase goods from your company"), I might be able to persuade vendors or organizations to support this event.
The pool of folks to contact is quite small, less than 50 people, who participated in the first two leadership workshops we hosted in 2010 and 2012. Which path (or one I haven't thought of) might yield the best results? thanks

posted by crepeMyrtle to Grab Bag (9 answers total)

Best answer: If this is something you're planning to keep doing, it might be worthwhile to try to figure it out experimentally.

Set up a simple survey online, and email that to half the participants, selected at random. Send the other half individualized emails. See which group has a better response rate, and which gives more useful feedback. Then, next time around, you can just use the method that got you better results.

You might also find this 37signals blog post about customer satisfaction surveys interesting.
posted by duien at 2:38 PM on April 3, 2013

I agree with duien that an experiment might be worthwhile, but in general, the fewer clicks you are asking them to make, the better. If you can get the info you need in a simple response to your email, rather than asking them to click through to another site, I think that's usually going to be better.
posted by fingersandtoes at 2:44 PM on April 3, 2013

Too late for this project now, but in general by far the highest response rate is if you have a response form right there at the workshop that you hand out prior to the workshop and then collect at the end.

Either of your options is likely to have a very low response rate. One way to boost it, BTW, is to come up with some kind of prize and draw a winner from those who complete the survey.
posted by flug at 2:56 PM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

I vote for email. And make it sound personalized, not like a form letter.

I do similar things for the non-profit I work at and for a really good survey the recipients really care about, we get around a 25% response rate. But if we send out an email from someone important at the organization, we can get a lot more than that.
posted by tacodave at 2:57 PM on April 3, 2013

Use an email that directs respondents to an online survey. People are used to this, and using an online survey is much more efficient for eveyone involved.
posted by KokuRyu at 3:37 PM on April 3, 2013

Best answer: Sort of following up on KokoRyu and the research perspective, if it isn't too administratively burdensome, why not give participants the choice? Set up the survey and provide the link (and include some free form response boxes at the end, perhaps), and put questions and the link in a personalized email and invite the respondents to reply in the way that is easiest for them, stressing that it is their feedback that is important. This will 1) let you see which method most people choose for the future and 2) still allow personalization. I wouldn't recommend this for large groups or as on-going practice since dealing with the responses will get a little tricky, but for a one-off it seems like it might be fine to split the baby.

(Generally, if it is a lot of questions, or questions that are yes/no/maybe, a survey is going to be easier both to fill out and aggregate response. If it is just a couple questions to take temperatures, a more narrative approach might be all you need. A lot depends on your final product.)
posted by HonoriaGlossop at 5:18 PM on April 3, 2013

If it's really less than 50, and you intend to persuade respondents to become speakers, I'd just use the phone and, after a quick confirmation they might be suitable ("we were just wondering what you were up to these days"), start with the request to speak. This way you can flatter/charm them - "We're so pleased you chose to work with us to support your career goals. We think our junior librarians could learn so much from you about [x], and wonder if you might consider sharing what you've learned at an event we're" yada yada.

This way you can ask more open-ended questions/probe (with say just 1-3 skeleton questions). That might give you enough information for your purposes. If they're not ideal speakers, you could just go right to the questions.

If you need specific answers they might have to research (for e.g. an internal audit or what have you), now you've made personal contact and reminded them who you are, they might be more likely to answer if they get an email that day. (You can just ask them on the spot if you could follow up with a short survey.)

50's not that many to cover. You could call five a day - will probably reach two, for a five minute conversation each - and work your way through the list over two weeks.

(also you can just quickly check LinkedIn to see what they're doing in advance, to cut time)
posted by nelljie at 6:09 PM on April 3, 2013

(Also, this way you can more of a sense of whether they did actually get value from the workshops, and can serve as enthusiastic speakers.)
posted by nelljie at 6:17 PM on April 3, 2013

Response by poster: thanks for the ideas -- I think I'll go with the "choose your own adventure" solution suggested by HonoriaGlossop. Kind of a best of both worlds option. To answer another question, we did ask for feedback at the time, but since leadership tends to be something that happens over time, we thought it good to catch up with folks after a couple years as well.
thanks again
posted by crepeMyrtle at 1:27 PM on April 4, 2013