Boosting Response Rates: How Incentives Impact Post-Purchase Surveys

At UserLoop, it’s our mission to foster better understanding between merchants and their customers. The cornerstone of this connection is undeniably the survey response rate, something we work hard to optimize every day.

When it comes to surveys, we focus on 3 things: posing the right question to the right customer at the right time. Yet, one feature above all others has impacted response rates for our merchants- the power of incentives.

Enticing customers with incentives to participate in surveys initiates a mutually beneficial - merchants receive valuable feedback, while customers enjoy perks such as discount codes that tempt them to place their next order.

But does the allure of incentives tangibly influence survey response rates? We delved into this question through an exhaustive analysis.

We assessed millions of customer survey responses across the UserLoop platform, investigating the effect of incentives on survey completion rates. 

Our goal is to help merchants build surveys that customers love completing and that deliver high quality data that helps you to get to know them better.

Our research shows some of the best practice that merchants on UserLoop are using to super charge their response rates - and boost their store’s AOV.

Does offering an incentive make a significant impact on survey response rates?

So, does throwing an incentive into the mix really boost survey response rates?

To unpack this, we took a deep dive into the post-purchase survey response data from UserLoop merchants spanning the last 6 months.

Here's what our analysis looked like:

• The average number of questions asked by merchants? Three. But don't be fooled; some merchants really delved into the details with surveys scaling up to a whopping 30 questions!

• The preferred spot for surveying customers was the Shopify order confirmation page, with email surveys sent seven days post-purchase coming in a close second.

• We set our sights solely on the incentives created through the UserLoop Discount Generation feature for this analysis. Why? Because it spits out a unique coupon every time a customer wraps up a survey, letting us track redemption rates.

Now, for the big reveal: Did incentives make a difference? You bet! 

When an incentive was in play, survey response rates got a serious boost. In fact, for surveys where customers answered at least one question, we noticed a substantial 26% hike in response rates. 

Here’s a breakdown of how many customers responded after placing an order, and what impact having an incentive had.

Response rates with no incentive present

Response rates for survey with an incentive

As you can see, there’s a notable leap in the response rate from 48% to over 75% when an incentive was introduced. 

This substantial hike did more than just beat the baseline (which is already above the industry average) response rate; it enabled the merchants to harvest a wealth of customer data.

What does this tell us? 

Incentives act as a powerful catalyst motivating customers to engage with your survey. 

They're not just a nice-to-have but can play a major role in gathering more intel about your customers - their origins, their preferences, and what makes them tick.

How many questions do customers answer in a survey, and what impact does an incentive have?

Next, we looked at the completion rate of surveys, comparing those with incentives to those without.

And the results were as expected. When a tasty incentive was on the table, customers dove deeper into the survey, answering more questions.

But that's not all – the influence of incentives went beyond just a few extra answers. 

We noticed a whopping 80% surge in the number of customers who chose to complete the entire survey, rather than stopping after the first question, when an incentive was offered.

In short, incentives don't just tempt customers to start a survey, they also nudge them towards wrapping it up.

Here’s how having an incentive impacted response rate drop off over 10 questions.

Number of questions answered with no incentive

Number of questions answered with an incentive

Impact of making an incentive clear on the first question.

We discovered a significant correlation between response rates and clearly communicating an incentive right off the bat – in the very first question.

We looked at the shift in response rates where merchants utilized a question subheading to outline the incentive. This spells out to customers exactly what's in it for them, enticing them to respond.

Here's an example of a subheading that nails this tactic: “Fill out the survey to get 20% off your next order!”

Simple, clear, and very effective. With such a tempting offer front and center, customers know right from the start that their feedback comes with a sweet reward.

Although it might seem like a no-brainer, explicitly informing your customers about the reward they'll receive for survey completion is an absolute must.

The impact of this simple message was quite impressive in our study. When merchants made it clear about the incentive up front, we recorded an average surge in response rate of 30%.

It's worth mentioning that a majority of merchants using UserLoop already implement this best practice, contributing significantly to the headline boost in response rates attributed to incentives.

So, when in doubt, be clear about the perks - it can make all the difference!

How much additional revenue is driven by incentives?

Because incentives are generated on demand and unique to every customer in UserLoop we’re able to look at how many customers eventually redeemed the coupon and if it increased LTV.

Typically, industry average redemption rates for coupons is around 1%. When looking at a window of 30 days after the coupon was generated, we saw an average of 8.5% being redeemed by customers on a follow-up order.

We can be confident none of this is down to coupons being shared on coupon sites as every discount code is unique to a customer.

Types of incentive offered by merchants

We took a look at the types of discounts typically offered by merchants for completing a survey and there are few key trends.

Percentage based discounts
The most popular kind of discount we see offered across merchants on UserLoop is a % off an order. The vast majority of merchants were offering a discount of 10% or less.

Free shipping
The next most popular type of discount we saw was to offer free shipping on orders above a certain value.

100% Money Back
This is an interesting one which we saw several merchants in the health and beauty sector using for longer and more complex surveys. 

Typically these were used for in-depth customer research surveys which had over 20 questions and asked for detailed responses, including customer uploaded video. 

For these longer surveys it’s not uncommon to see the merchant offer a discount equivalent to the entire original order value. 

It’s worth noting that surveys which included this incentive edged close to an astonishing 100% completion rate - customers were hyper-motivated to get the money back on their order so were willing to answer lots of questions!

Key lessons

So based on our analysis, we’ve put together a list of best practice for incentivizing customers to complete your surveys.

1. Incentivize! The first and most obvious thing to do is add an incentive to your survey. It doesn’t have to be a huge cost, even incentives under 10% off make an impact - and from our research we know you can expect around a n 8% redemption rate on any incentive you do offer.

2. Signpost your incentive. Make it clear to customers on the first question of your survey what they’re going to get for completing it. If you don’t tell them about your incentive, you’re not going to get the biggest boost to your response rate possible.

3. Use bigger incentives for larger surveys with more questions. If you’re running a periodic in-depth customer survey it pays to increase your incentive. When you’re asking customers to complete 20 + questions or upload video content a bigger incentive can take you to 90%+ response rates and help you collect the most valuable data

 

After all that if you're eager to get started with surveying your customers you can sign up to UserLoop and start free today!