panel management

Research panels have long been an effective and efficient way to conduct agile research, but ultimately are only as good as the participants. That’s not just about who those members are, but how engaged they remain during the life of the panel.

This can look like:
- Designing and structuring to align with business goals
- Creating a compelling value proposition for the members: engagement, contribution, feedback, incentives
- Creating an engaging and compelling user experience
- Monitoring the ‘health’ of your panel over time, and keeping it clean

In our mind, no two panels are alike. And we’ve seen plenty! We’ll partner with you, bringing a mixture of best-practices and years of experience, combined with keeping abreast of the latest technologies and trends, all tailored to the specific context of your panel.

Bespoke is our default. While we can package any combination of services unique to your specific needs, below is a summary of our standard approach.

Why it’s important
Making sure your memberbase is clean, streamlined, and strategically designed – so that it can be a powerful research tool to meet business objectives.

Strategic Workshop
Getting to the heart of what the panel needs to achieve
- How the database fits with the overall goals and strategy of the business - short, mid, and long term goals
- Database composition and target customer definition
- The purpose and benefit of the panel for members
- Recommended recruitment approaches & managing churn over time
- Approach to contacting and conducting research with members, frequency and method of communication
- Rewards design

Panel Assessment & Cleaning
Transparency re: current panel health and composition
- Member assessment and engagement ratesIdentifying types of members & any potential gaps
- Identifying engagement and devising potential re-engagement strategies
- Creating a plan for re-engagement and member culling/streamlining

Why it’s important
Active management of the members and monitoring of panel health is essential to maintain high quality member contributions.

Setup
- Create workflow and organizational infrastructure
- Assist with creation/review of intake survey
- Initial programming and set up of portal
- Review and program introductory language and/or activities

Weekly Management
- Answering participant emails, monitoring tech help requests
- Programming support
- Participant tracking and rewards administration

Monthly Management
‍- Create relevant, topical content for members so that they’re invested in the experience, and share back results and / or the outcome of their contributions (feedback loop)
- Incentive Administration – pay incentives for those who choose to receive payment after earning required points

Monthly Management
‍- Participation rates (e.g. by study, email open rate, inactive community members), contact frequency
- Size & churn (e.g. newly subscribed and unsubscribed)
- Composition (e.g. panel demographics)
- Quarterly recommendations on: increasing engagement, assessment of rewards, panel cleaning

Why it’s important
High member engagement and strategic research implementation means that you can get the most value out of your panel across the business.

Creating a feedback loop: member newsletter.
A newsletter is an easy way to communicate with members beyond surveys, and foster their investment in the experience and topics at hand.
- Keep members up to date with what’s happening with both the research panel, and in the broader brand or business. Create a stronger sense of affiliation with the brand and / or the purpose of the panel
- People are more motivated to participate and contribute when they have visibility to how their feedback is being used, and how their feedback compares to other participants
- Include interesting, relevant content to the category