What Is Response Rate?
The percentage of people invited to a survey who actually completed it — completed responses divided by invitations sent.
Response rate is completed responses ÷ number of people invited, expressed as a percentage. Send an email survey to 1,000 customers and get 150 completions back, and your response rate is 15%.
Response rate varies enormously by channel and context — email surveys to a cold list often land in the low single digits to 20-something percent, while an in-app or post-interaction intercept survey (triggered right after someone uses a product or closes a support ticket) can run much higher because it’s timed to a moment the respondent already cares about.
The biggest levers on response rate are length (shorter surveys get more completions), relevance (asking people about something they actually experienced), timing (right after the relevant moment, not weeks later), and how often you’re asking the same audience — see survey fatigue.
Response rate is distinct from completion rate, which measures the percentage of people who started a survey and finished it, rather than the percentage of invited people who responded at all.
Example
2,000 invitations sent, 240 completed responses. Response rate = 240 / 2,000 = 12%.
How to Improve Response Rate in SurveyRock
SurveyRock's response dashboard tracks response rate in real time as invitations go out, so you can see what's working (and what's not) mid-campaign instead of only after it closes.
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