Where Did All the Surveys Go?
As a survey-taker, you might occasionally experience a “drought” in the number of online surveys you’re invited to complete. Perhaps you’ve come across the situation where you’re at your computer, geared up and ready to take some surveys, only to realize you have only a handful of e-mail invitations sitting in your inbox, or worse, none at all!
There are a number of reasons for this and ways to effectively combat this as well.
Problem: Demographics
You have undoubtedly come across the message along the lines of, “we’re sorry but we do not need your opinions at this time” when attempting to take a survey. This type of message will appear when you try to complete a survey where the client is looking people in a different location, age group, who possess different buying habits, etc. It’s nothing personal – it’s simply a case of bad luck more than anything.
Survey panels who have a more sophisticated set up will often be savvy enough not to send you online surveys that you don’t qualify for to begin with, so you won’t even be able to attempt surveys you can’t complete as they will never make it to your inbox.
Solution: Stay patient. At this moment perhaps the opinions of people living in say, Northampton are in high demand but demands change and soon your opinion will be needed too.
Problem: Sneaky Spam Filters
This problem might not be as obvious as you think; it can happen overnight where a survey panel you’ve been receiving emails from suddenly appears to stop sending you anything. You check your “Junkmail” and lo and behold, you’ve got a whack of surveys waiting there for you to complete.
This can quite literally happen from one day to another due to changes that your e-mail provider makes. Services like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, and others can start “flagging” emails from survey companies as “spam”, even when they are not. They update their system, and, boom! Your emails are being filtered to the wrong folder.
Alternatively, you might inadvertently hit the “mark as spam” button instead of deleting an online survey email. This is a simple and innocent enough mistake to make, but this one simple oversight can be enough to make you scratch your head wondering what happened to your surveys.
Solution: Add survey companies to your list of “safe senders” to eliminate the possibility of emails going to your spam box. Also check your junkmail box every week or so to make sure that you haven’t missed any surveys.
Problem: Not Being a Member of Enough Panels
You are probably tired of hearing this one, but it is of high importance! Some market research companies are hired more often than others to complete studies and as such, will not have as many surveys available for you to take. You can boil it down to simple arithmetic:
Member of 10 survey companies equals > amount of surveys than being a member of 3 companies which equals a fewer amount of surveys.
Solution: Cover your bases and become a member of more panels than you think is necessary: not only will this give you diversity in the surveys you take, you can be more choosy about the studies you do choose to complete.
Alternative Solution: You might be a member of a panel that for whatever reason, you simply dislike. Why not drop it then? Leave the panel by collecting your remaining rewards and close your account. We can help you find a panel that you think might be a better fit for you.
A Final Word
These tips might seem obvious to follow as a veteran and savvy respondent, and they are if you can remember to follow them all. That is what separates those who succeed taking online surveys and those who don’t: exercising patience, attention to detail and ensuring variety.
