Outlined below are four tips to consider when crafting your invitation to participate in your next survey 

1. Clearly state the purpose of the survey.  This is your chance to answer the respondent’s natural question….”what’s in it for me?”   Explain why you are doing this survey and why this is relevant to the respondent.

2.  Confirm with respondents that their responses will be confidential and that they will not be re-contacted as a result of completing the survey.  You may want to use a wording along the lines of…”your responses are completely confidential.   Results will only be shown in an aggregated format.”

3.  I usually send out three or four reminders to respondents who have not completed a survey.  To avoid annoyance, be sure to remove the email addresses of those who have already responded.   When I send out the final reminder, I put “final reminder” in the subject line.   This is usually sufficient to motivate those who have been putting off completing the survey.

4.  Typically I do not include a cutoff date in my invitation. There is some empirical evidence to suggest that having a deadline may actually work against you and hurt your response rate. Having said that, when it comes to closing the fieldwork on a survey I usually provide respondents with a deadline.