Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome back to Bright Ideas. So I have a question for you. Have you ever gone in to start a new research project and you launched it in the field and you start to see completes rolling in, but you're noticing that the number of responses you're getting back are much lower than what you would have expected. And that's even more concerning because you're often working against some really tight deadlines and missing that end date could throw off that beautiful Gantt chart that you've created. So we've all been there. And today I thought I'd spend some time talking through a few tactics that you can try to one, find the people you really want to find. And then to also increase that rate of response a bit, all of which can help get your field date ending quicker and also getting more accurate data. So as I talk through this, I'll cover some different reasons that end up impacting lower response levels. And we'll also talk about some potential fixes to try out. All right. So let's start with the target you're trying to reach. In my past role, we used to have to do surveys among some really defined targets. You know, like an example would be 18 to 24 year old males who are heavy users of the fast food category and also visit certain competitive brands at least once a week. It's a really tough target to find. So not only is it a tough group to track down, but they're also a demographic that doesn't really like doing surveys in the first place. So in a case like that, you'll want to work with a panel partner who's already experienced in finding this target. And then that way you're starting with a pool of consumers who are closer, who are closer fit to your screener needs versus trying to fish for them in that vast pool of the general population sample. When you're using your screener to refine that pool of candidates, also make sure you get the easy questions out of the way first. So for instance, if you want to talk to experienced gamers who, you know, are heavily involved in PlayStation or Xbox games and you want to have them, you know, view some concepts and react to them, get those specific screener questions done first. So ask things like, you know, how they interact with games really early on in the survey. That way you can pull in the right target early and also let the non-qualified people go before they're too invested in the survey. All right, next is your survey length. This is kind of a big one. I've seen it a million times. I've done it a million times. Too often we're going to try to fit way too much into a survey and jam in as many questions as possible because you're thinking, hey, I've already got them and I might as well get as much information from them as I can, right? Wrong. Attention spans are lower and lower these days and we can't expect the average consumer to want to spend 15 plus minutes taking our surveys, which by the way, them taking this survey is a minuscule part of their very busy day. So all I would say is cut the survey down, leave out the nice to know questions and don't ask too much of your respondent because you're going to end up getting much better response rates in the long run. I've said this before, I'll say it again. Before you launch any survey, put your consumer hat on and take it yourself. And if you're the least bit frustrated by the time you reach the end, then it's time to go back to the drawing board and cut more questions because your respondents likely won't even make it that far in the survey and they'll end up quitting midway through. So stick to the questions that you plan to action against from the objectives that you wrote in your project brief. And if you want to learn more about project briefs, check out my prior episode on that. And then that way you can get a better understanding beyond objectives, what you want to put in there. All right, let's get back to this. So you also want to be honest with how long the survey is really going to take. So I recently filled out an online questionnaire where there was a percent complete ticker that was telling me how much was left. And it was great. It was very helpful to have that because I knew what percentage I was done and I knew about how much time I would have to invest to finish this. Once that ticker reached 99%, I probably filled out another eight questions before the survey was finished. So first of all, that was not accurate at all. And second, that's a great way to get people to drop out of your survey early. So if you're using the ticker, just be honest with it. Along with the survey length, it's also about how you ask the questions. And there's a few components to this. So it's up to us to make sure that we don't get too technical in our question wording. We may be living and breathing these brands in our day-to-day work, but you've got to remember that respondents probably don't care nearly as much about it as we do. So I always like to write questions as if I'm having a conversation. And I'll make a point of keeping out the industry jargon because anytime you ask a confusing question that they don't quite understand, you risk the respondent jumping out because they simply just don't know how to answer it. Again, put your consumer hat on and think about what kind of survey you'd like to take. And hopefully by the end of it, you're going to have something that's actually a relatively enjoyable experience for your respondent. All right, next. You want to avoid asking leading questions. So I've talked about this in past podcasts. A leading question is going to indirectly nudge a respondent towards answering in a certain way. And when you do this, you'll end up with respondents who aren't what you're looking for, or while they may end up completing the survey, the data won't be accurate because you biased them up front. So an example of a leading question could be something like, on a scale of one to 10, how much do you hate maple walnut ice cream? I think I know where people are going to lean by saying that. Granted, maple walnut ice cream is not good in my mind. I'd probably give it a one anyways, but that's just me. So a better way to ask that, so it's not biasing, is on a scale of one to 10, where one is disgusting and 10 is delicious, how would you rank maple walnut ice cream? So again, it's unbiased and you're going to get a more accurate answer. Another way to avoid leading questions is to give a list of unrelated options as answers. So this way, they have to specifically choose the answer you're looking for in order to move forward. Okay. You're also going to want to make sure that your survey flow is a logical flow. So that'll help the respondent better recall the events you're trying to learn about. For instance, you would never ask something like the usage of a product before you've captured awareness. That's an obvious one. So just make sure that the flow makes sense. Incentives will always help with increasing response rates, but I've found that it has to be the right one. Something tangible like a $5 gift card we've seen works well, or a free item, and not something like being entered into a sweepstakes to win a free iPad. So just think through what your incentive should be. If you're using an internal database, so maybe it's your loyalty rewards members or a database that you use for targeted emails, you'll want to check the validity of that member data. So give it a little bit of a scrub. You may need to clean out members that haven't been responsive in over a year and may not be using your product anymore, or ones that have missing or incorrect contact information. So do a scrub of that and make sure you're focusing on your active customers for a better response. And then last thing is, make sure your survey is device agnostic. If it doesn't display well on a smartphone, chances are they're going to have trouble answering certain questions, especially in cases where there's an attribute battery where you just have to keep scrolling and scrolling and it's falling off the screen, or there's a matrix of some type that they have to look at to display answers and it can't see it all on a screen, that's going to give them a good chance of wanting to just bail halfway through if they don't have something that's easy to read on their phone. So I'll follow up in another episode on how to write killer screener questions, so stay tuned for that. But hopefully this all helps you in increasing some of those response rates. And then now for the life hack of the day. So I traveled recently and we were in the airport looking for breakfast options and we found a Cinnabon. And if you've ever been in a Cinnabon, you know how easy it is to get pulled in by that aroma. It's amazing. So it got me thinking, how hard would it be to make cinnamon rolls at home? So I started doing some research online and I found a little life hack that when you're working with the dough, you can use dental floss to slice through the dough to give it that perfect cut. You could use this with cookies too, any type of dough you're working with. So I'm going to give that a try next time and see how it goes. And I'll let you know. But in the meantime, have a great day, everybody, and we'll see you next time.