The ability to gather meaningful responses and valuable data in higher education is entirely dependent on students actively participating in surveys. To explore the issue of falling response rates among college students, we tested whether attention-grabbing marketing techniques or connection-oriented communication strategies would be more effective in improving survey participation among students. We found that students in the connection-oriented experimental conditions were the most likely to open and respond to the surveys. The findings contribute to understanding how different strategies can enhance survey response rates, thereby improving the quality of data collected for institutional decision-making.