Susan was having a hassled Friday afternoon. She had a pile of work to finish before the weekend hit and was drowning. Mercilessly chopping emails accumulated from the week, she deleted an email titled ‘We want to hear from you’ without even opening it. It was not the best time to send a survey to Susan.
The brand that sent that survey was an eco-conscious startup from whom Susan had bought something recently. Customer feedback was their lifeline, but they suffered from low response rates. If you imagine Susan’s situation, it’s not hard to figure out why. They were sending their survey at the wrong time.
Here’s our guide on the best time to send a survey in 2023. We’ve covered the best time for all surveys, from customer feedback to B2B surveys.
- The Best Time(s) to Send a Survey in 2022
- The Best Time to Send a B2B Survey
- Why the Best Time to Send a Survey Matters
- How to Get More Responses on Your Survey
The Best Time to Send a Survey in 2023: What You Need to Know
This section will focus on B2C surveys, like when to send an NPS or customer satisfaction survey. You can seek guidance on the best time to send B2B surveys. But if you’re sending a survey to a customer, here’s how to go about it.
1. The Best Day to Send a Survey
Before deciding the best time to send a survey, we must consider the best day.
Now, intuitions are not going to guide you well here. People usually think a Friday or Saturday is best for sending surveys since respondents might have more time on those days. As it turns out, those are not the ideal days to ship your survey.
Studies by Checkmarket and SurveyMonkey have found that weekdays are the best for sending survey emails to customers. That sounds counterintuitive because we’re all overwhelmed with work on weekdays. But this is what the studies reveal, folks.
If we had to guess, we’d think it’s because people are more diligent with their emails on weekdays. Some of those extra responses might be people looking for ways to procrastinate on their work. Either way, the results are in on this one. Monday is the best day to send a survey.
2. The Best Time to Send a Survey
The best time to send a survey depends on what kind of survey you’re sending.
It’s best to avoid sending the surveys during work hours if it’s a customer survey. You also don’t want to send out these surveys on the weekends since people are in no mood to fill out surveys.
Multiple studies have revealed that surveys sent to customers between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. get the most responses. People are mentally more complimentary, yet not completely tuned out of their emails. They’re more likely to engage in a light-intensity activity like filling out a survey during after-work hours.
By the way, SurveySparrow can help you schedule your email surveys down to the second. Try it for free.
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The Best Time to Send a B2B Survey: What You Need to Know
We know now that the best time to send a survey to consumers is between 6 pm and 9 pm on weekdays. So if you’re sending an NPS or customer satisfaction survey, you should send out scheduled surveys between those times.
Related: The Ultimate Guide to NPS Emails
The best practices look slightly different for B2B surveys for client feedback or employee engagement surveys. A whole other set of considerations need to be taken into account.
1. The Best Day to Send a B2B Survey
For surveys where your customers are respondents, you could perhaps consider sending your surveys on weekends. But for B2B surveys, though, that’s a big NO.
The best practices for B2B surveys are much like those for any other work email. They should be sent during work hours only.
For B2B surveys, you’re looking strictly at weekdays. If you send an employee engagement survey or a performance evaluation, it should be done during work hours. Businesses that make the mistake of sending B2B surveys outside of work hours will inevitably suffer from low responses.
Out of weekdays, some preliminary data from Checkmarket indicates that Monday might be the best day for a B2B survey. We’re not quite sure why that is, but that’s what surveys are for, folks: to give us results we didn’t expect but can benefit from.
2. The Best Time to Send a B2B Survey
The timing for B2B surveys is different from B2C surveys. Ideally, you want to catch employees during lighter workloads, but simultaneously, you must only send the surveys within work hours. Here’s what we recommend.
You don’t want to send a B2B survey between 12 noon and 3 pm. That’s when employees are either on a lunch break or busy with calls.
The best time slots for sending B2B surveys are either early morning, from 10 am to 12 noon, or later in the afternoon, from 3 pm to 6 pm. Data from multiple surveys indicates that these timings get more responses for B2B surveys.
Why the Best Time to Send a Survey Matters (a Lot)
When we send emails on a day-to-day basis to our colleagues, we’re not mindful of when we’re sending them. After all, our colleagues can reply at their convenience.
That’s why thinking about the timing of survey emails doesn’t come naturally to us. To get the most responses on our surveys, that’s a shortcoming we must overcome.
1. First Time’s the Charm
The difference between your casual work email and a survey email is that your recipient will probably address the former, sooner or later. On the other hand, with a survey email, if they don’t engage with it the first time they see it, chances are slim that they will ever bother again.
That’s why it’s important to strike at the right moment. To conduct a survey that’s effective in getting the insights you seek, you need to know the best time to send a survey
2. Better Responses at a Better Time
On a hassled Friday afternoon, Susan is not in the mind space to complete a survey. If she does it, she will probably do it passively and without giving it much thought.
The quality of responses will suffer if most of your recipients are tired or hassled. That’s why the best time to send a survey is when respondents are mentally free and have some time on their hands.
3. More Satisfaction, Less Frustration
Have you ever been frustrated as a customer by survey emails? The worst kind are when they call you, intruding on your time whenever they wish to. That’s why SurveySparrow’s non-intrusive online surveys are the ideal solution.
Sending these surveys out at the right time will ensure that your customers aren’t frustrated. Nothing good comes from making your customers suffer. That is why the best time to send a survey is something worth thinking about.
How To Get More Responses On Your Survey
The motivation behind deciding the best time to send a survey in 2023 is to get more responses. But while we’re here, there are also other best practices to keep in mind when trying to get more responses to your survey.
Let’s walk through some of them –
1) Keep It Short
While considering the best time to send a survey is great, you also want to focus on shortening your surveys. In getting more responses, nothing is a more significant obstacle than length. Whether customers, employees, or clients, nobody likes to fill out long surveys.
How do you keep your surveys short and to the point? Having a mission statement for your survey is crucial and does not detract from it. If you’re conducting an employee engagement survey, don’t ask questions about internal communication. Stay on point.
If you have a particularly lengthy survey, it might even be helpful to break it up into two more focused surveys and send them out with enough time in between the two. That’ll give you better chances of getting the number of responses you need than just a lengthy survey.
2) Provide Incentives
When sending a customer a survey, you ask for their time. Why should they give you that time? This is the one question that keeps many customers from answering your survey. That is why it’s so important to take this challenge head-on.
Offering incentives like discounts – or even gamifying your survey – is a great way to compensate customers for their time. A customer will be a lot more likely to fill out your survey if your incentive genuinely benefits them.
3) Hook Recipients With Your Subject Line
Many surveys, whether B2C or B2B, attract respondents using email marketing. You can create beautiful email campaigns using SurveySparrow to lure recipients into answering your survey. The online survey tool has end-to-end support for your surveying journey, from designing your survey to marketing it.
A great subject line is crucial for people to open your survey emails. Once they open it, they’re much more likely to take a few seconds and finish it. Take some time to think of your subject line. After all, it’s the only thing most of your recipients are guaranteed to read.
Related: 20 Email Survey Subject Lines to Make Your Readers Click
4) Design It Well
Do you think the design of a survey matters when it comes to getting responses? We know you must consider the best time to send a survey, but a good survey design is great for getting more responses. At SurveySparrow, we can get 40% more responses because of great design.
By designing it well, we don’t just mean aesthetics, even though those are important. We also suggest thinking about the structure of your surveys, which questions get asked first, and how the survey proceeds from there. A bad structure can create abruptness, leading respondents to lose interest or get confused.
Wrapping Up
If you’re thinking about the best time to send a survey, you’re already well on your way to getting more responses. Following these best practices will ensure that you’re doing everything you can to get the most responses to your survey.
At SurveySparrow, we’re committed to getting you the best responses that can give you valuable insights to improve your business. Our survey design and marketing tool guides you at every step towards making the best decisions for conducting a successful survey. We also have various templates for all your survey needs, from customer satisfaction feedback to NPS surveys.
When sending out a survey next, make sure to use scheduled surveys. Following the best time to send a survey will make your recipients feel less frustrated and more willing to respond. To conduct a successful survey and get plenty of responses, that’s exactly what you’ll need. To get started, check out this quick guide on how to send automated emails.
