So what is the alternative to blasting 1000s of panellists in order to catch just a few good interviews?

Most online panel managers say that recruitment of new panellists is one of the most expensive parts of the process, so it makes sense to do as much as possible to retain those already signed up and to keep them active.  One of the ways that panellists lose interest in panel participation occurs when they continually receive emails with new surveys and then after the first page of questions they are told they don’t fit the criteria and are not needed.  Though emails don’t cost the sender anything, there is a cost in terms of the disillusioning effect of this treatment on the panellist. 

How is it possible to avoid this? Well the answer lies in collecting information about the panellists and then targeting them carefully.  If key answers from previous surveys are retained, a large body of profile information about panellists can be built up and this can be used to better select only those who qualify for a survey.

However all the best profile data in the world still leaves you needing a good tool to select the panellists.  Many companies use home grown databases and rely on technical staff to write SQL code to select sample for research.  As soon as a panel gets significantly large and active the criteria for choosing sample becomes more and more complex and the time required to write the scripts becomes prohibitive.  At that point panel managers start to “loosen” the criteria and send out lots of emails in order to select people as they start the interview.  This type of email blasting for surveys is becoming less acceptable and therefore it is becoming more important to have a good selection tool for issuing a well targeted list for sampling.

MARSC is a tool that allows a non-technical user to select sample by setting up a target matrix and filtering based on which surveys have been answered previously.  It will work alongside any interviewing system and is easily integrated with other panel databases.

For further information please contact Nicky Forsyth at nicky.forsyth@marsc.com or phone +44 (0)1306 621062.