Yesterday I sent out the second follow-up to this month’s survey email. Each time I send these, I get nervous. How many people will respond? How many will decide that supplying an odometer reading is too much trouble, and that they aren’t interested in participating after all?

So far this month the response rate is up to 37 percent. Which is about exactly where it was at this point three months ago, the last time a response was required from all owners in the active panel. Which means that the response rate will likely top out around 42 percent. Update: it reached 43 percent.

Market research pros tell me this is a very good response rate. Response rates for general purpose panels tend to be in the single digits. Only about one out of every six Consumer Reports subscribers submits a survey. And in a recent round of its Vehicle Dependability Study (VDS) J.D. Power’s goal was a response rate of 23 percent.

Still, I feel that the response rate to TrueDelta’s survey should be much higher. After all, everyone joined knowing that the survey would be required of them, not purely voluntary as it is with Consumer Reports. It’s not as if this survey just turned up in the mail one day, as with J.D. Power. Everyone who signed up wants the information this survey will provide. So it would only make sense to provide the data.

One problem may be that the connection is not clear to everyone. Two people dropped out because TrueDelta wasn’t providing results quickly enough. In both cases, they themselves had never responded to the survey. Somehow they expected me to provide the results without receiving any data from them.

Another definite problem, since the response rate is based on the number of emails I send out rather than the number people actually receive, is that many of these never get read. In hundreds of cases the supplied email address was never valid or is no longer valid. In other cases, hyperactive spam filters misidentify TrueDelta’s email as spam.

To deal with these email issues, down the road I’ll probably have to require a one-time registration fee of $10 or so from new panel members. This would give people an incentive to provide a valid email address, properly discipline their spamware, and supply changes of address. The fee is probably at least a year in the future, and won’t be charged to anyone who signs up beforehand. So of course advise friends and family who may be interested in helping out to sign up now, while it’s totally free.

Another issue: many people think the surveys require a lot more effort than they actually do. So they put them off and put them off and never complete them. The odometer reading survey takes just seconds, but you have to actually complete one to know this. I’ve said many times that the surveys take very little time, but perhaps this is something that must be experienced to be believed.

I’m constantly tweaking this and that to hopefully boost the response rate. For example, I just revised the email to place the links to the surveys much closer to the top. If you have suggestions, please contact me directly or post them here. Then go submit a survey. Aside from improving the quality of the results, it will help me relax.