How Do You Get Suppliers to Respond to EcoVadis?

Improve EcoVadis participation by reaching the sustainability or EHS owner instead of relying on an old ERP purchasing contact, sending a clear request with a deadline, following up consistently, and applying commercial escalation where appropriate. Track delivery, acknowledgement, assessment progress, and completion separately. There is no reliable universal response-rate benchmark for an EcoVadis supplier campaign.

Why do most suppliers ignore the invitation?

• Wrong contact: Invitations go to commercial or finance contacts who do not own sustainability.
• No internal function: Mid-market suppliers may have never heard of EcoVadis.
• Effort: First-time assessments can require input and evidence from several departments.
• No consequence: One customer among many, no belief that silence costs them business.
• Assessment fatigue: Large suppliers juggle EcoVadis, CDP, and custom forms from dozens of customers simultaneously.

A sustainability lead at a Fortune 500 medical device company described the contact problem: “A lot of our purchase orders give us access to the financial folks. But those people change roles, they leave the company. It isn’t a sustainability person. So they just ignore the emails we send.”

How should you prioritize the supplier list?

Do not campaign everyone at once.

• Tier 1: Highest spend, highest ESG risk, chemicals/raw materials/heavy manufacturing.
• Tier 2: Moderate spend and risk. Often the bulk of the list.
• Tier 3: Long tail. Address after Tier 1 and 2, or skip initially.

Choose a batch size your team can support through the deadline. A large invitation list without follow-up capacity creates a large silent list.

Who is the right contact at each supplier?

• Sustainability Manager or Director (ideal at larger companies)
• EHS Manager (common at manufacturers without a sustainability title)
• Quality Manager (overlap at some companies)
• General Manager or Owner (small suppliers)

Do not rely on the ERP contact. Contact discovery becomes its own project when a campaign covers hundreds of suppliers.

What should the initial email include?

Keep it under 200 words. Suppliers need three things immediately:

1. What: “We are requesting that your company complete an EcoVadis sustainability assessment.”
2. Why for them: “Scores are used in procurement decisions across our industry and are visible to all EcoVadis customers, not just us.”
3. When: A specific deadline that reflects the assessment work and your reporting cycle.

Also include: your company name as their customer, a direct EcoVadis link, and an offer to walk them through the process if they reply with questions.

What follow-up cadence works?

Touchpoint	Timing	Action
Initial invitation	Day 0	Clear instructions and deadline
Follow-up 1	Day 10-14	Resend to same contact
Follow-up 2	Day 21-28	Alternate contact if no engagement
Follow-up 3	Day 35-42	Escalation (see below)
Final notice	Day 49-56	Documented consequences for non-response

A Senior SQE described the failure mode without a cadence: “You reach out 2, 3, 4, 5 times. Nobody responds. You just give up.”

What escalation levers help with non-responders?

Executive-to-executive: Your VP Procurement or CSO to their leadership. Use for strategic suppliers.

Commercial consequences (most effective):

• EcoVadis score required for contract renewal
• Weighted criterion in RFP evaluations
• Supplier scorecard inclusion
• Escalation to sourcing team with documented non-response

Reframe the ask: One EcoVadis assessment serves all customers on the platform. “Do this once, share everywhere” beats “do this for us.”

What do you do with permanent non-responders?

• Document every touchpoint for audit and stakeholder reporting.
• Use spend-based or industry-average estimates for portfolio-level Scope 3 where frameworks allow.
• Surface chronic non-participation to procurement as a risk signal.
• Decide whether and when to retry in the next cycle.

Frequently asked questions

Does EcoVadis send the invitation automatically?

Yes, but the platform invitation alone is not enough. Your direct outreach to the right contact with context and deadline drives response.

How is CDP different?

Same dynamics, narrower topic (climate/environment). Some suppliers already have a CDP score from investor disclosure, which simplifies the ask.

Should you offer to pay for the EcoVadis assessment?

Some companies do for strategic Tier 1 suppliers. It removes the cost objection but does not fix wrong contacts or missing follow-up.

Where Bridgecurrent fits

Bridgecurrent handles two labor-intensive parts of an EcoVadis campaign: finding the sustainability contact at each supplier and automating follow-up until they respond or are flagged for escalation. See Scope 3 Supplier Engagement: How to Build and Run the Program for the wider program around the campaign.