Breaking Through Survey Nonresponse: The Atlanta Fed's Approach to Nonresponse Follow-Up

Breaking Through Survey Nonresponse: The Atlanta Fed's Approach to Nonresponse Follow-Up

October 21, 2026

• Article

Survey nonresponse is the thorn in every survey practitioner's side. We go to great lengths to identify appropriate respondents, communicate the value of their participation, and recruit them into our survey panel. Yet response rates can still seem stubbornly low and, even worse, some panelists may not be entirely sure about what they agreed to in the first place. Even the most engaged participants occasionally miss a month, contacts change employers, businesses close or merge, and email servers quietly divert messages into spam. Without steady, proactive follow-up, many otherwise-willing participants would fall off completely and all that effort spent on recruiting a respondent is lost.

For recurring economic business surveys like the Survey of Business Uncertainty, the CFO Survey and the Business Inflation Expectations Survey, each response contributes to a more complete read on business conditions. Hearing from a representative and large enough sample of businesses is especially important. That's why over the last few years we've placed special emphasis on our respondent retention and follow-up strategies. This article outlines how we structure our follow-up process and the practical steps we take each month to keep respondents engaged and maintain a reliable panel.

The fielding and follow-up cycle

Our follow-up efforts are designed with three goals in mind:

1. Improve survey response rates
2. Keep our panel directory accurate and up to date
3. Offer a personal touchpoint

As shown in figure 1, every monthly cycle begins with the initial survey invitation, sent to the full panel by email. Each survey has a two-week fielding period, with automated reminder emails sent throughout: two reminders in the first week and two more in the second. Figure 2 shows the pattern of completions across the email cycle. While about half of all responses are completed after the initial invite email-and we reliably see a lift in completions following each reminder email-reminder emails alone are not enough. They help prompt participation, but they don't address the ongoing work required to keep panelists engaged and reachable.

Prioritizing follow-up

After the second reminder email, we have a clear idea of which panelists require follow-up. At that point, our outreach shifts to individual phone calls-often more than 2,000 a month-which makes it essential to focus our efforts intentionally. Not all respondents require the same level of follow up attention: some are highly consistent and simply missed an email, while others are new and may need more engagement to help clarify expectations. Still, others are inactive and unlikely to re-engage. To allocate follow-up time wisely, we use criteria like length of time in the panel and response history to distinguish which groups of panelists are worth reaching out to, segmenting by behavior over time, not just current-wave response status.

Respondents are grouped into five main behavioral segments (listed in order of priority):

1. New panel members (recently recruited, zero lifetime responses)
2. Previous responders (more than one response but inactive for over two months)
3. Bounced emails
4. One-time responders (one response, inactive for over months)
5. Chronic nonresponders (zero responses after more than 2 months on the panel)

Engaging new recruits quickly is especially important and always the first group we call. Whether they were recruited by our in-house team of interns or by our contracted call center, contacts who are new to the panel often need a hands-on touchpoint.

For newly recruited firms in particular, follow-up often uncovers small but consequential issues that would otherwise prevent a panelist from ever receiving or completing a survey. Some of the most common and easy-to-fix problems include:

• Typos or formatting errors in email addresses
• Spam filtering or blocked domains
• Misunderstandings about survey frequency or expectations
• Uncertainty about whether the invitation is legitimate

Addressing these issues promptly not only "rescues" the respondent for the current wave, it improves the long-term integrity of the panel and hopefully reduces future attrition by offering a personal interaction.

What happens on a follow-up call

Regardless of which behavioral segment a contact falls into (new, previous responders, bounced), our strategy is essentially the same. The Atlanta Fed's team of panel coordinators- undergraduate interns trained on our outreach protocol-receive a call sheet containing contact information and a unique survey link for each respondent.

When they reach a panel member by phone, panel coordinators take a friendly, pragmatic tone. They briefly introduce themselves, remind the respondent that they're already part of the panel, and check whether the survey invitation arrived in their inbox. This small moment of verification often reveals the kinds of issues that follow-up is uniquely positioned to catch-emails landing in spam, a mistyped address, or simply a respondent who overlooked the invitation. If needed, the coordinator offers to resend the individual survey link directly from their own mailbox, which often bypasses the stricter corporate filters that sometimes block Qualtrics-generated emails.

The conversation is intentionally short (typically less than two minutes long). Coordinators mention when the survey closes, confirm participation, and answer any questions about the questionnaire. Panelists will often take this opportunity to ask broader questions-how their data are used, how we protect confidentiality, or even to chat briefly about economic conditions or the Fed-so coordinators are trained to address these curiosities while keeping the call focused. In cases where the respondent has changed roles, retired, or moved companies, the call becomes a chance to refresh our records and identify the correct point of contact. If the respondent is unavailable, coordinators may speak with an assistant to confirm updated contact details or leave a brief voicemail, always followed by an email containing their unique link to maximize the chance of reaching them. After each call, coordinators log the call outcome and correct any information, keeping the panel database clean and current.

Understanding follow-up effectiveness

An ongoing consideration is how much of our final response rate can be credited to follow-up calls versus reminder emails. These efforts work together and their effects overlap in ways that are hard to untangle. Even so, we know these calls play a critical role in maintaining a responsive, well-engaged panel. Over time, experimenting with ways to measure follow-up effectiveness more precisely may help us refine our strategy even further. In subsequent Survey Practitioner's Corner articles, we hope to dig into this and share some of our analysis of and findings around the effectiveness of follow-up calls.

Takeaways for survey practitioners

1. Treat follow ups as ongoing directory maintenance.
   Follow up calls naturally surface outdated contacts, organizational changes, and email deliverability issues. Building maintenance into your process, rather than fixing problems only when they become visible, keeps your panel healthier and more reliable over time.
2. Segment respondents by behavior, not just status.
   Behavior based segmentation helps you focus attention where it's most likely to have an impact, whether that's onboarding new recruits, re engaging respondents who've gone quiet, or checking in on those with sporadic participation.
3. Personal outreach works.
   A brief phone call-or even a voicemail paired with a direct email-can meaningfully boost participation, particularly in recurring surveys where relationships and familiarity play a role.