• Keep your email as succinct as possible and focussed on the survey i.e. the survey should not be one of a number of topics on a wider email communication – this significantly diminishes response
• Avoid long subject lines and try to include the relevant brand name.
• For customer feedback surveys the primary message should be the importance and value to the respondent of giving their feedback. Incentives should be a secondary message.
• Avoid the words “win”, “click here” and “prize” – spam filters do not like these.
• Sign off your emails from a person at your company, not just a brand name or “the team”. 

• Keep your welcome text as brief as possible. Lengthy text will encourage a higher dropout rate on your first page.
• Where possible only present one question on the first page of your survey. 
• Keep your surveys as short and focussed as possible. 25 questions per respondent is the recommended maximum for e-surveys. 
• Ensure you don’t ask too many questions per page. An average of 2 – 3 questions per page is advised to reduce page scrolling to improve completion rates.
• Avoid using too many grid questions, especially back to back. 
• Avoid using too many ‘open text’ questions. In a survey of 25 questions a maximum of 5 open text questions are recommended.
• Ensure your surveys display your brand by adding a banner to the to the page header.

• Avoid presenting long lists of answer options. Where unavoidable, it is often best to alphabetise the list and/or present the options over 2 or 3 columns.
• Randomise your answer options where it is logical to do so.
• Avoid presenting big grid questions with many rows and/or columns. These are proven to cause high drop off rates.
• Keep your questions as succinct as possible and unambiguous.
• In any multi-choice question, ensure you provide a range of options that cater for all scenarios by using ‘None of these’ and/or ‘Other (please specify)’. 
• The recommended (and default) setting for open text questions is ‘no response required’. We advise against setting open text questions to ‘response required’.
• Add clear instructions to questions such as “Please select all that apply” for a multi-choice question.
• Use the routing tools (skip logic) to ensure that you don’t ask respondents questions that are not relevant to them.

Provided your survey emails include the opt-out link, it is normally advised that you send reminder emails to people who haven’t completed the survey to increase the completion numbers. We recommend no more than 2 reminder emails.