What really is panel management?

There is a lot of talk these days about panel management. The use of panels is growing and management of a panel is obviously important, but what really is panel management? Many think of it as a web site for online panellists, creating a community etc, and while these are important activities in running an online community, that doesn’t necessarily cover the whole job of managing a panel.

The aim to create active communities is important for specialist panels which have a natural draw from a specialist interest, but is not necessarily practical for all panel providers because of the need to find enough interesting material to draw a diverse group of people to their site and into a community.

What panel providers are really striving to do is to improve the experience of the panellists hoping it will result in them answering more surveys and staying active in the panel for longer. There are some simple direct ways of doing this which are all too often ignored and it involves controlling the use of a panel for the benefit of both the panellist and the panel provider.

Take for example the recent article in Research in Business magazine “Click Submit” by Richard Young. Amongst other things the necessity to select relevant people for a survey was considered important by respondents. For example: don’t ask someone about motherhood and child-rearing when they have answered a previous survey telling the panel that they are single and have no children. Obvious really! But unfortunately it happens all too often.

Another area of true panel management that gets missed all too often is the need to manage the frequency of sending surveys to individuals. Sending nothing out to an individual for 6 months and then asking that person to fill out 5 surveys in as many days is not going to motivate a panellist to respond. Maintaining a steady trickle of surveys going out to individuals and making sure surveys are appropriately targeted, while running a busy panel – this is true panel management.

This type of control is notably lacking in many panel management systems that focus more on the community building aspects and less on managing what the panellist actually receives. MARSC allows the user to select people on the basis of their previous activity in the panel to maintain that contact frequency: not too often and not too seldom. It also allows users to select people based on their answers to previous surveys thereby keeping the surveys relevant, and it can operate alongside any interview system receiving information from the interviewing process as required.

Do the community building as well, but don’t miss out the important aspects of sample selection in running a panel. For more information about MARSC contact us on +44 (0)1306 621062 or email sales@marsc.com, or visit our web site www.marsc.com.