Marketing in Real Life

I spend a lot of time in this blog taking panel companies to task, but I really liked and appreciated what I saw in this new video from Toluna. They are thinking from a panelist perspective (at least in this video) and what makes it worthwhile to be part of the Toluna community. Nice work.

One of my first posts on this blog was about the way online research panels bombard panelists with requests to participate in research. It seemed like I was being invited to take part in surveys that were not relevant and getting these invitations at an alarming rate. How companies treat panelists came to my mind again last week as I listed to speakers at the Social Media and Community Strategies 2.0 Conference. It seemed like as a research panelist I was only treated as product, not as a part of a community where I had any real control over my own experience. After tweeting out the question “do panel companies think of their panelists as customers?” (I received a nice reply from iTracks saying that they do and I have no reason to dispute it.) There is no doubt an opportunity to get more engagement and insight from people who have agreed to be a part of your panel. Or at least to better understand my preferences as a panelist, but instead I just get requests to take a survey… and re...

Courtesy of Seth Godin's blog... I think the first point is the most important. Asking questions qith precision and with the respondent in mind will make the insights you get back more valuable and keep your customers and prospects willing to participate in research. Five tips for better online surveys (read the whole post here) Every question you ask is expensive. (Expensive in terms of loyalty and goodwill). Don't ask a question unless you truly care about the answer. This means that a vague question with vague answers (extremely satisfied...acceptable...extremely dissatisfied and no scale to compare them to) is a total waste of time. What action will you take based on that? It's smarter to ask, "how much would you say lunch was worth?" Every question you ask changes the way your users think. If you ask, "which did you hate more..." then you've planted a seed. Make it easy for the user to bail. If you have 20 questions (that's a lot!) make it e...

While some people still are still hesitant about online qualitative research, our friends at Maritz Research have layed out some of the most viable options, including their qual-quant Dynamic Insights (powered by Invoke) offering. Certainly there are still times when focus groups or one on one interviews serve the need, but don't forget that as the internet and internet usage evolves it is creating more and more opportunities to get great insights from consumers online. Read the article here.

I remember when I started in this industry how skeptical people were about online research. It doesn't seem like so long ago, but today's news from Kantar below is certainly a sign of how far we've come. Kantar Ops Closes Face-to-Face Panel April 16 2008 http://www.mrweb.com/drno/news8231.htm Kantar Operations – the internal operations division for the Kantar Group – has ditched its dedicated consumer interviewer panel due to the continuing advance of online data collection.The UK panel comprised 400 fieldworkers, who while not directly employed by the division, provided their services to Kantar Operations when project work required. Those fieldworkers affected by the panel closure will be offered the opportunity to work on the division’s specialist face-to-face Random Probability and Transport panels which conduct large volumes of social and public policy research, including large scale continuous projects. In a statement, the firm explained that it has seen interview vol...

Our friends at Greenfield Online (Keith Price specifically) start to examine the issue of data quality in their latest newsletter. Two key things: The first is that it seems that Keith believes as the issues around cheating respondents has been a bit overstated (I agree). The second is that a bad survey will always deliver bad results. That's the issue that drives us at Invoke - creating a participant experience that delivers great insights. A simple rule: Never write or test a survey that ends with you asking "who would take this?" Here's a snippet of the article ( click to read the whole thing): Enter 2007. In the US, online surveys have reached high market penetration, and for most survey respondents, taking an online survey is no longer a "new" activity. As an industry we've gone from questioning under-participation of respondents, to questioning over-participation. We continue to look into respondents that attempt to cheat or game the system to p...

I was just reading an article in this month's AMP Agency Frequency Newsletter that talks about a new automated customer service strategy being used at Ikea (love that store!). From the newsletter:"IKEA Website users are introduced to Anna, an automated online assistant, who not only is helpful but also has a sense of humor. When I asked about warranties, she automatically changed the browser to the correct section of the site. Then, when asked if she preferred cats or dogs, Anna told me 'Thanks for asking, but I’m only here to answer questions about IKEA so I don’t have any outside interests.'” This is one example of an automated process working correctly. In research I have seen a wide array of automated interactions and most fail in my opinion (Like Socrates) because they are following a set of questioning that is supposed to be one on one, leaving little margin for error. That's why Invoke's Engage Open platform simulates a group environment, allowing for qu...