The Importance of C-Level Feedback

I was reading up on corporate surveying last week, when I found this article by Karen Gedney, of The ClickZ Network, titled "Executive Survey Invitations: How to Get C-Levels to respond." I though this was a great topic because there is an abundance of information on the web on how to create the "perfect" survey, but what good is the "perfect" survey, if no one takes the time to respond to it? In today's day and age, executive feedback is extremely hard to get, no matter the medium used to gather it, but Karen has some great ideas that will get the ball rolling.

In her article on Clickz she writes...

"All day long, C-level executives make high-level decisions that can have a bottom-line impact of anywhere from a few hundred thousand dollars to millions of dollars. So how can you ask a busy company leader to set aside 15 extremely valuable minutes of their business day to complete your e-survey -- especially during these tumultuous economic times?

To get the scoop on best practices for conducting executive-level online surveys, I checked in with Ellen Sills-Levy and Claire Tinker at ESL Insights, a marketing intelligence firm.

While ESL often recommends that clients conduct in-depth telephone interviews and mail surveys to reach elusive C-suite executives, Tinker outlines their best practices for conducting online surveys.

Your C-Level Survey Invitation

Tinker advises sending out an original e-survey request, followed by a reminder two to five days later, unless field time is an issue.

Subject lines should be very general so that respondents who agree to participate aren't biased. For business studies, simple is usually better. For example, "You are invited to participate in a business study."

The most important point to stress in the survey invitation is the participation ROI (define), what executives will get in return for their investment.

Common techniques are:

A choice of incentives. Try either a personal incentive appropriate for C-level executives or a donation to a charitable organization.

An executive summary of the research findings. This is a popular approach because you're giving C-levels access to valuable intellectual property and industry intelligence, especially since it's gleaned from their C-suite peers.

Other copy points:
- Assure them the information will be kept confidential.
- Highlight the survey deadline.
- Include the survey's length to manage time expectations, but don't spotlighted it since that may prevent busy executives from undertaking the survey.
- Include a sentence that the entire survey must be completed to receive the incentive (to prevent survey abandonment).

The e-mail messages should be short and to the point and should conclude with a note on how important the C-level executive's participation is to the success of the survey and the benefit of the results gleaned.

When the survey findings are complete, send a PDF of the executive summary to all respondents via e-mail with a thank-you note. If it's important that respondents read the executive summary, call out a few interesting insights from the content. You may also want to use the e-mail to invite respondents to a Webinar discussing the findings. This is a good way to keep executives engaged and interested -- and open to future survey requests!"

Hopefully these tips will help the next time you need to obtain executive feedback!