How LinkedIn got me to fill in their survey using these 5 psychological tricks.

LinkedIn sent out emails asking their members to fill in a survey. Even though I got the email in Dutch, I’d like to share my thoughts with you in English. Because to me this is not an ordinary email asking me to fill in a survey, it has some nice persuasion tactics built in to make sure you will be enticed to help them out. I mean, why would you fill in a survey by a corporation like LinkedIn, right? You could use some triggers to help you act on it. And so they did:

1. “Would you share your expertise with us?”

This is the title of the email I received. The way this question is framed changes me from a testsubject, because that is what you usually are in a survey, into an expert. This ofcourse, is a lot more flattering and interesting to me. LinkedIn adresses me as the professional I am, to help them solve this particular problem instead of “could you please fill in this survey”. Asking for my expertise and advice is different than asking me to fill in some boxes.

2. “Invitation to participate in a survey”

This line is the first thing you will see inside the email and it gives the impression that LinkedIn is actually doing you a favor for inviting you, instead of you doing them a favor for helping them out. Also, an invitation is so different from, again, asking “Could you please fill in this survey”.

3. “ You have been selected to participate in a short survey, based on your LinkedIn-profile”

This statement makes me feel even more special. Can you imagine that they actually invited me to give my expert advice, because I have a LinkedIn-profile that is fit for the job. Because not every LinkedIn-member can do this I guess, since I was selected based on my profile (whatever that means).

4. “ First, you will get some questions that will determine if you are eligible to participate in this research.”

So, even though I was selected, I still have to prove that I am actually the right man for the job, show that I am worthy of this noble task. This survey, more and more, seems to be a task for the elite members. Because even when I am selected based on my profile, I still have to prove that I am actually capable of completing their survey. This must be one hell of a survey, judging from this email.

5. “This invitation will expire within two workdays or whenever we have enough respondents.”

Persuasion is not complete without a hint of scarcity. So why not use scarcity in terms of a deadline and limited number of opportunities. Normally you would see only one of the two types of scarcity persuasion, but they went wild and used both. By stating that you only have two days to fill this in, they are taking advantage of my loss aversion again. But they also stated that in this period of two days I could even lose my opportunity to fill this amazing survey in, because they might have enough answers already. This will activate my loss aversion even more.

By using a sense of scarcity, personalization and a lot of reframing, Linkedin managed to turn their copywriting persuasiveness up a notch. Taken these things together, I think LinkedIn managed to make a pretty persuasive email to make people fill in this survey. Cialdini would be proud.