Mail Me on a Monday: Best Time for Survey Response

Online survey professionals need to choose the right day and time to send invitations to potential respondents, according to a study by Lightspeed Research. Invites sent on a Monday afternoon got the best response rates (up to 39%) while for Friday afternoon mailings the rate fell to 28%.

Lightspeed says the first twenty-four hours give a very good indication of final response rate, with around two thirds of responses coming in during this initial period. If responses are low to begin with, they are unlikely to increase significantly over time.

The firm sent invitations to an online survey to 7,440 respondents from its GB panel, over the course of a week, as part of its ongoing 'Research on Research' programme. David Day, CEO of Lightspeed Research says the results show that research companies must 'know their panellists well and take their lifestyle into consideration when planning surveys. Younger people with an active nightlife are unlikely to answer surveys on Saturday morning, whereas working mothers might best be targeted in the early afternoon before their children come home from school.'

Specific events are also likely to impact – and skew – the response. A major football game on a Wednesday night meant that only 11% of male invitees from the Wednesday 5.30pm invitation group responded to the survey, compared to 31% of women. As Day puts it, 'it's best to avoid clashing with major cultural events if you want balanced survey response rates.'

The study also showed that the older members are more likely to respond to invitations, and tend to respond quicker than younger people. Among 18-24 year olds, 9% responded within 12 hours of the invite being sent, with 14% taking 48 hours plus. Among 55-65 year olds, however, the figures were 29% and 22% respectively.

'Respondents are more likely to take part in a survey shortly after having received the invitation than keep it in their inbox and come back to it later' says Day. 'This does suggest that if the time for fieldwork is short, then deploying studies later in the week should be avoided... It also suggests that it is important to understand if the 'missing' responders have a different set of characteristics...' – the latter can be managed using quota controls.

Lightspeed is on the web at www.lightspeedresearch.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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