B2B survey response rates: what to expect and how to raise them

You sent out the invitations three days ago. Only a small number of people have gotten back to you, and the team is already asking if that's normal or if the study is in trouble.

It all depends on where the sample came from, what you're counting, and who you're trying to reach. This guide looks at what the published research says about B2B and executive response rates, what drives them, and how you can tell whether a low response rate is actually a problem for your data.

How to calculate a survey response rate

Before comparing your number with anyone else's, make sure you're actually counting the same thing. There are three different measures, and they're easily confused:

The key difference between the first two measures is who counts in the denominator. If you invite 1,000 customers and later find that 800 of them were eligible, a response rate uses 800. A participation rate uses all 1,000.

Two other numbers matter just as much once people start:

• Incidence is the share of screener starts that qualify. If it's lower than expected, it may indicate a mismatch between the audience, the screening criteria, and the incidence assumption. Check those before changing the invitation. See how to troubleshoot incidence that's lower than quoted.
• Completion rate is the share of qualified respondents who start the main survey and complete it: completes divided by main survey starts. A low completion rate points to the survey itself, usually its length or a difficult question.

Average B2B survey response rates

Among the most widely cited published benchmarks are reviews of academic management research, where studies routinely report their response rates. They're useful, with one important caveat.

Surveys of organizations, which usually target senior people, came in lower than surveys of individuals in both reviews that compared the two. Rates also vary widely within the same review. In the 2022 review, two journals that publish many surveys of firms, the Strategic Management Journal and the Journal of International Business Studies, averaged 17% and 21% in 2020.

One caveat: these are academic studies, and academic research can differ from cold commercial outreach. Some are sponsored by a university, a professional association, or an employer. The 2022 review lists the relationship between researcher and participant as one of the factors to consider when interpreting response rates. If you're sending a commercial survey to a list of people who don't know you, don't use these averages as a target. None of these reviews gives a benchmark for cold commercial lists.

Executive survey response rates

Executive surveys can be particularly difficult to field. Cycyota and Harrison reviewed 231 published surveys of top managers from 1992 to 2003 and found a median response rate of 32% and a mean of 34%, with rates declining over the period. A 2026 update by Borgholthaus and colleagues reviewed 263 published surveys of executives from 2006 to 2023 and found a mean of about 33%. It found no evidence of a continued decline over that period.

The update also looked at how the surveys were run. Studies fielded through a professional research agency, or in person, reported higher response rates than studies sent by mail. That's a comparison across published studies, not a controlled test, so other differences between them may explain part of the gap. These are academic benchmarks, not expectations for a cold commercial list.

Is it too early to worry about a low response rate?

Responses usually arrive in bursts, shortly after the invitation and after each reminder, then slow down. A few days in, before any reminder, is usually too early to judge the final rate.

Before you send more, check that the invitations arrived:

• Look at bounces and delivery reports. A large share of bounces points to an out of date list.

• Test the link from a corporate inbox. Company email security systems can quarantine messages, rewrite links, or open them automatically to scan them. Automated scans can make your start rate look higher than it is, so don't treat opens or clicks alone as proof of engagement.

• Check that your sending domain is authenticated. Unauthenticated email is more likely to be filtered before anyone sees it.

If the invitations arrived and response is still very low after the first reminder, look at relevance, length, and who the invitation comes from. Those are covered below.

Does a low response rate mean bad data?

Not automatically. The 2022 review is clear about this: "a low RR does not necessarily mean low quality," and "high response rates do not guarantee validity."

The concern is nonresponse bias: respondents and nonrespondents may differ in ways that affect the findings. A 15% response rate from a group that matches your list may produce more useful findings than a 40% rate where most senior people dropped out, though matching known characteristics can't rule out every difference.

Three checks help:

• Check 1Compare respondents with the list on characteristics you already know.

  Company size, industry, region, job level. Differences show where bias may be. If enterprise accounts or senior titles are missing, read the results with that in mind, or weight them if you have reliable figures for the list. A close match is reassuring, but it can't rule out differences in the answers themselves.

• Check 2Compare early and late responders.

  People who answer only after a reminder often serve as a rough proxy for those who never answered. If their answers look similar to the early group's, that's a good sign.

• Check 3Look at who finished, not just who started.

  A long survey can filter out the busiest respondents, who are often the most senior.

How to increase B2B survey response rates

The evidence below comes from controlled trials that test one change at a time, and from reviews of published studies, which compare surveys that differ in many ways at once. Each finding says which kind it comes from.

• Controlled trialsTest one change at a time, with people assigned at random.
• Reviews of published studiesCompare published surveys that differ in many ways at once.
• Stated intentionsWhat people say they would do, not what they did.

Most of the trial results come from the 2023 Cochrane review of methods to increase response, which included 88 randomized trials of electronic questionnaires. It reports results as changes in the odds of responding. Higher odds aren't the same as that many more percentage points: if 20% of people respond, 85% higher odds would bring that to about 32%, not 105%.

How many contacts do you need?

Work backward from the number of completes you need. Suppose you need 300 completes and, as a planning estimate, expect 10% of eligible people invited to complete the survey. You'll need about 3,000 eligible contacts, and 1,200 eligible contacts would give about 120 completes. If instead you have a raw list of 1,200 contacts and only half qualify, expect about 60 completes. To reach 300 completes under those assumptions, you'd need about 6,000 raw contacts. If the study has quotas, work out each group separately, because the hardest quota to fill may determine the total effort.

If the list is too small, you have three options:

• Option 1Reduce what you need. Check whether a smaller base still answers the question, using the sample size and margin of error calculators.
• Option 2Narrow the scope. Fewer quota cells, or one region instead of three.
• Option 3Add panel sample. The supplier manages recruitment and invitations, though you still need to agree incidence, length, and price before fieldwork begins. The B2B cost per complete benchmarks show what drives the price.

Sources

The studies this guide draws on. Each title links to the published paper.

1. Baruch, Y., and Holtom, B. C. (2008). Survey response rate levels and trends in organizational research. Human Relations, 61(8), 1139-1160.
2. Borgholthaus, C. J., Bourgoin, A., Harms, P. D., White, J. V., and Fezzey, T. N. A. (2026). Surveying the upper echelons: An update to Cycyota and Harrison (2006) on top manager response rates and recommendations for the future. Organizational Research Methods, 29(2), 259-280.
3. Cycyota, C. S., and Harrison, D. A. (2006). What (not) to expect when surveying executives: A meta-analysis of top manager response rates and techniques over time. Organizational Research Methods, 9(2), 133-160.
4. Edwards, P. J., Roberts, I., Clarke, M. J., DiGuiseppi, C., Woolf, B., and Perkins, C. (2023). Methods to increase response to postal and electronic questionnaires. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 11, MR000008.
5. Galesic, M., and Bosnjak, M. (2009). Effects of questionnaire length on participation and indicators of response quality in a web survey. Public Opinion Quarterly, 73(2), 349-360.
6. Holtom, B., Baruch, Y., Aguinis, H., and Ballinger, G. A. (2022). Survey response rates: Trends and a validity assessment framework. Human Relations, 75(8), 1560-1584.
7. Seshadri, S., and Broekemier, G. M. (2022). Small business executives' online survey response intentions: The effects of incentives and survey length. Small Business Institute Journal, 18(2), 1-9.