The head of the ADS Agency has released a new article for the Marketers Guild, on the topic: Recruiting Respondents by Client's database. What are the key challenges of working with a customer base? Why isn't ADS recruiting on a customer base?
As practice shows, when working with a customer base, it is impossible to guarantee the result and one hundred percent turnout of respondents. Why this happens, we will try to tell in more detail using the examples that we give below.
Each respondent who came to our database personally contacts a specialist of the Agency. He is recruited and advised that later he can be invited to any research which he is potentially suitable for. When a suitable study arises, we contact the person and he understands that we are the company that recruited him earlier and is not afraid that they want to sell him something or somehow cheat him, and is happy to make contact. This applies to those respondents who were previously recruited to the base in shopping centers, these people have more trust compared to respondents from the customer base. The fact is that the customer base is replenished by the method of the so-called "cold contact", where a person is not warned in advance and he is unexpectedly offered to take part in a survey. Often these people hang up immediately and are negative about the fact that we want to invite them to the survey. Even if such clients agree to take part in the survey, the result is a large non-appearance of respondents for the survey. Confused by surprise, a person begins to consult with friends, tell where he was invited and what participation he will receive a bonus for. Many people mistrust this, dissuade him from participating in the survey, and the person eventually cancels the meeting.
Very recently, we had a project with a well-known Russian IT company, whose employees conducted an online survey and at the end of the survey asked to indicate the data of respondents who were ready to take part in the study in the office or remotely. Subsequently, when we called these respondents, they knew for sure that they were being called from an IT company, familiar to them and whose services they use, and were not afraid to make contact, unlike the audience described above. As a result, the turnout for the poll was 100%.
Is it important to analyze how relevant your base can be before starting recruiting?
You need to understand that if you have your own database, you will be able to interview only your direct customers, the so-called "loyal users" who are consumers of your product, and you will not be able to find out the opinion of respondents using your competitor's product. But their opinion will often be more significant, since they can give you a more objective assessment, you will have some insights with which you can improve your product. Without using the resources of the recruiting agency, the algorithm for attracting participants to the study looks like this: you conducted an online survey, respondents wishing to take part in the next survey left information about it at the end of the survey questionnaire - according to statistics, this is about a quarter of people from the online survey. Next, a specialist contacts them, realizing that later there will be those who change their minds, those who do not answer the phone call, this is about 30 percent of the initial number, then, when the study itself appears, the percentage of those who will not reach it remains. who will change plans, total minus another 20 percent. That is, working with your database can justify itself if the database is of very high quality and the majority of respondents are your loyal users and they are who will eventually reach the research. Another disadvantage of this project is that you do not receive important information from those who are less loyal to you, but nevertheless use the products of your company. Why is this happening? The fact is that your base is people who often do not understand what marketing research is and, in principle, have no initial interest in taking part in it.
With the resources of our recruiting agency, the reach of your audience can be increased.
We recruit respondents in advance to our database and describe in advance how the survey is conducted, what it is, what is the amount of remuneration for participating in the survey and be sure to tell that a person can contribute to market research. As a result, people are more willing to attend polls, are interested in it, they are more responsive and willing to express their opinion, which sometimes turns out to be very interesting and useful. The level of the NPS-index for determining the commitment of consumers to a product or company to your product will be higher. I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that the sample when working through a recruiting agency is random, which increases the validity of the study and helps to get a more reliable result.