Getting more responses to your surveys

This article is about diagnosing a low response rate inside FeedbackRobot and fixing it. If you’re after industry benchmarks and what a “normal” rate looks like, see survey response rate benchmarks by channel.

A survey invitation has to clear four gates: it has to arrive, get opened, get started, and get finished. Most workspaces lose people at one gate, not all four. Find the gate first, then fix that one thing.

Find the gate

Insights → Response rates shows the funnel for a period: Sent → Delivered → Opened → Started → Completed, with the drop at each step. Filter it by survey, location, or channel to see whether one property or one survey is dragging the average down.

Below the funnel, Where people stop lists each question with how many respondents reached it and how many left there. The Recipients list shows every person the survey went to and how far they got, so you can see who opened it and never answered.

The banner at the top names the biggest leak and links to the matching section below.

Gate 1: it never arrived

If Delivered is well below Sent, mail is bouncing or being rejected before anyone sees it.

Send from your own domain. Mail from [email protected] with your name on it works, but mail from your own authenticated domain gets through more often and looks like you. Settings → Sending Domain, add the three CNAME records, then check the Deliverability section until SPF and DMARC both show Passing.

→ Sending email from your own domain

Pick a human sender address. Once your domain is verified, the Sender email and Sender name fields appear on the same Settings → Sending Domain screen. feedback@ or a person’s name beats no-reply@, and the sender name should be your business or a person, not “The Team”. Some customers reply to the email instead of clicking; those replies are often the best feedback you get, and a no-reply address throws them away.

Clean your list. Bounces from addresses that no longer exist hurt the reputation of every email you send afterwards. In the report, set the Recipients filter to Bounced: each row shows the reason. Open the customer and delete them, or fix the address under Settings → Customers.

Gate 2: it arrived, nobody opened it

If Delivered is healthy but Opened is low, the email is being ignored or is landing in the Promotions tab.

Rewrite the subject line. This is the single biggest lever. Settings → Email Templates → Survey Invitation → Subject. Short and specific wins: How was your stay on Tuesday? beats We value your feedback. Avoid anything that reads like marketing: no exclamation marks, no “offer”, “win”, “exclusive”, or “limited time”. This is a question from a business, not a campaign.

Use the pre-header. Most inboxes show it next to the subject. Takes about a minute is a good use of it. Repeating the subject is a wasted line.

Stay out of Promotions. Gmail sorts on signals, and survey emails trip several of them. Keep the invitation text-first: one button, no images, no footer full of social icons, and a sender name that is your business or a person (set on Settings → Sending Domain).

Send close to the visit. A same-day invitation outperforms a polished one sent two weeks later. If you send by hand, send the day people were in. If you have a booking, POS, or e-commerce integration, let an automation send it for you the moment the visit ends.

→ How to send a survey

Turn on reminders. Settings → Survey Reminders follows up with anyone who hasn’t completed the survey. Set Reminder Interval to two or three days, Max Reminders per Customer to one or two, and choose the channel under Reminder Channels. The reminder email has its own wording under Settings → Email Templates → Survey Reminder. Reminders reliably recover a share of non-responses; three reminders do not recover three times as many.

Gate 3: they opened it and didn’t start

If Opened is fine but Started is low, people read the email and decided not to bother.

Say why and how long. The Body Intro field should do two things in two sentences: why you’re asking, and how long it takes. Thanks for staying with us. Two quick questions so we can do better next time is enough.

Make the button say what happens. CTA Label: Share feedback or Answer two questions beats Click here or Take survey.

Greet them by first name. Use {{customer.first_name}} in the Greeting. A full name reads like a form letter.

Check the preview. The Preview tab renders the whole email with your changes. A broken variable or an odd line break is enough to lose someone.

→ Customising your email templates

Gate 4: they started and gave up

If Started is healthy but Completed is low, the survey itself is the problem. Where people stop tells you which question.

Cut questions. Three or four questions will substantially outperform twelve. Open the survey under Collect → Survey Builder, and for each question ask whether you would change anything based on the answer. If not, delete it.

Fix the question people quit on. If the drop is concentrated on one question, it’s usually one of: a long free-text box too early, a question that needs information the customer doesn’t have, a required field they’d rather skip, or a scale that changed direction. Move it later, make it optional, or reword it.

→ Writing survey questions people answer

Lead with the easy one. A star rating first, the open question last. People who have already answered two questions finish; people faced with a text box first leave.

Remember everyone sees every question. Surveys don’t have skip logic, so a question that only applies to some customers is a question everyone else has to get past. Split it into a second survey or drop it.

Write for a phone. Most people open the invitation on their phone. Short labels, few options, nothing that needs scrolling to understand.

Change the channel

Email is the hardest channel to get a response through: it has to clear spam filters, the Promotions tab and a crowded inbox before anyone sees it. If the funnel leaks at Gate 1 or Gate 2 no matter what you change, move the ask somewhere else.

Send by SMS. Text messages are opened within minutes and almost never filtered. Turn SMS on under Settings → Sending Channels, and pick it under Reminder Channels on Settings → Survey Reminders so the follow-up goes by text even when the invitation went by email. You need a mobile number on the customer record; Settings → Customers shows who has one. Compare the two in the report’s By channel tab after a week.

Put a QR code at the point of service. A card on the table, a sign at reception, a sticker on the receipt. The customer scans while the visit is fresh and there is no inbox to get lost in. Create one under Settings → Touchpoints, download it from the touchpoint’s QR code, and give each location its own so the report can tell them apart.

Ask on a tablet or kiosk. For a front desk or a checkout, a kiosk touchpoint runs the survey on a device you own. Nothing to deliver, nothing to open.

Embed it on your website. For customers who come back to your site anyway, an embedded survey catches them without an email at all.

Let an automation send it. Whatever the channel, the moment matters more than the wording. A booking, POS or e-commerce integration can send the invitation as the visit ends, which beats any batch sent days later.

→ How to send a survey → QR codes for touchpoints → Embed a survey on your website → Automation recipes

Then check it worked

Change one thing, wait a week of sends, and reopen Insights → Response rates with the previous period for comparison. If the leak moved to a later gate, that’s progress. Work down the list.

What next

• Sending email from your own domain
• Customising your email templates
• Writing survey questions people answer
• Choosing who receives a survey
• Automation recipes for sending at the right moment without doing it by hand