Consultation fatigue occurs when participants, for varying reasons, start to tire of engaging with you and drift away from your database. When trying to avoid fatigue, the objective is threefold:
Maintain interest in current consultations
Reengage old and current participants in upcoming consultations
Reduce churn from your database and keep them engaged for the long-term
But before discussing how to reduce churn and reengage participants, you need to understand what would drive people away and why they would lose interest. Some churn is unavoidable, but participants can be driven away when you don’t:
Deliver outcomes for projects they have contributed to previously or provide a reason why it couldn’t be delivered.
Acknowledge participant contributions or report on the insights they provided.
Provide a consultation summary or report on the impacts and processes of the consultation.
Tailor your email communications to be relevant content only, instead of participants receiving too many emails or emails about irrelevant subjects.
Overall, we can see that participants are more likely to churn when they can’t see the impact their efforts and contributions have made. If engaging with you seems to result in nothing tangible in their community, they will drift away.
Reducing Consultation Fatigue
The key to reducing consultation fatigue is to have a clear understanding of upcoming projects across your organization. If you develop a clear schedule for current and new engagements, you can plan your publication dates and communications to ensure you are not overwhelming your community.
We recommend using various engagement methods to keep your participants interested and to avoid things like survey fatigue.
You should also consider:
Acknowledging contributions and personally following up with participants for deeper engagement.
Share contribution summaries or outcome reports online or offline.
Update contributors and visitors with progress reports and milestones, even if a decision is still forthcoming. People are more likely to engage further with you when they are better informed.
Invite participants for deeper decision-making processes, such as a community panel or reference group.
Email summaries of recent consultation activities, such as tool reports, project updates, or recent in-person events and meetings.
Reengaging Participants for the Long-term
If registrations and contributions have recently declined, you may need these tips to help reengage participants and keep them engaged in the long term.
Consult on projects in which your community members can genuinely influence the decisions being made. If you only consult people to tick a box, they will likely lose trust and disengage with your organization.
Provide easily accessible and prominent information and links about privacy and data policies. State how their information will be used, why you’re asking for it, and how you will protect it.
Inform them about how their contributions will affect outcomes.
Use different tools when appropriate for engagement variety and ask engaging questions. If appropriate, you can also provide incentives.
Close the loop by providing project outcomes and personally contacting contributors with updates or new projects.
Contact participants only when necessary, and keep email content relevant to your participant groups.
Keeping participants engaged can seem like an insurmountable challenge. But if you keep them informed, set expectations upfront, and always close the loop, you’re well on your way to having a reliably engaged community.