Testing Theoretical Communication Strategies on Survey Email Outreach to South Carolina Manufacturing Firms

Survey practitioners have conducted numerous experiments to understand why people participate in surveys. Although there is a significant amount of literature addressing survey response theories, we do not know if these hold for email recruitment. As the internet becomes more widely used in the administration of surveys, it is important to understand how to communicate when soliciting a survey response using email. This paper tests two communication theories – Social Exchange theory and Pre-Suasion theory – on how the subject line and the content of an email affects a person’s willingness to open an email and, ultimately, to join a business survey panel. Results suggest that the subject lines produced according to the Social Exchange and Pre-Suasion theories perform similarly in email open rates. Additionally, both communication strategies perform similarly in converting a business into the survey. There was some evidence that Social Exchange theory was more effective at converting businesses with five or fewer employees, however, conversion rates were low for this experiment.