Sticky note pads.
And they must be
(1) yellow,
(2) square (about 4cm by 4cm)
(3) with a handwritten request
(4) and finished off with a thank you.
When social scientist Randy Garner wondered of the effectiveness of sticky notes stuck on top of a covernote of a survey form as opposed to one with just the cover note he came to some astonishing conclusions. The additional little yellow square thing made a positive difference of about 39%.
The ones with the sticky note had a 75% response as compared to the one without which only had a 36% response. The reason being that it added a personal touch to an appeal where people recognised the extra personalised effort and felt more compelled to respond. And that’s not all – the respondees who got the sticky note also responded on time and their surveys had more details to questions which meant they paid more attention to the request. The lesson learnt in persuasiveness is that the more personalised the request, the better the overall response.
