There are several laws regarding sending unsolicited communications via fax and e-mail. They are the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991(TCPA), the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and the Junk Fax Prevention Act of 2005 (JFPA).

The TCPA and JFPA refer specifically to commercial messages delivered via telephone and fax. The CAN-SPAM Act defines commercial messages this way:

1. In general:  The term “The commercial electronic mail message” means any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service (including content on an Internet website operated for a commercial purpose).
2. Transaction or relationship message: The term “commercial electronic mail message” does not include a transactional or relationship message.

Survey research e-mails do not fall under this commercial heading. However, since researchers are likely to be sending bulk e-mail messages, it is in our best interest to follow these best practices when sending out e-mails for research purposes:

• Subject lines or e-mail headers should be accurate.
• Subject lines should be non-commercial sounding.
• Provide recipients with an easy way to opt out in every message sent.
• Avoid HTML messages.
• Use valid e-mail messages to send all messages.
• Do not use BCC to send messages.
• If you are using an outside company to e-mail surveys, make sure they also comply with these best practices.

These recommendations have been adapted from the MRA Email and Spam Best Practices for Survey Opinion Leaders.

Marketing research and marketing are closely related. If you also send non-research commercial messages, check out The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business from the FTC.

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The key to avoiding scope creep is to allow the researcher to gather the requirements up front from all stakeholders involved. Often, when requirements are filtered through only one person, the research provider loses the opportunity to ask questions of the stakeholders that only research experts would know to ask.

Sometimes the requirements collection phase reveals that the stakeholders desire the study to collect a tremendous amount of data. This may increase the number of titles to survey and make the survey so long that respondents bail out before completing it. Experienced market researchers help clients prioritize and differentiate important topics from “nice to know” information. Your market research partner will help you determine which questions will result in data that is actionable. From there, the provider will help you assess if a project should be re-estimated and/or re-scheduled or if others’ expectations must be lowered.

Recently, Market Connections was working with an IT service provider to design a telephone survey that would uncover the decision-making process for purchasing a particular call center application. When meeting with the people that would be using the collected data, we conducted brainstorming exercises to determine a need for many other questions that did not quite fit into scope of the survey to be implemented.

Had we included all the topics desired on the survey, it would have taken the respondent 18-20 minutes to complete. This was beyond the budgeted 12-minute length and would have resulted in respondent fatigue, a higher drop-off rate, and much lower response rates. This particular client opted to complete a second study in six months to address the other topics of interest that did not fit under the original project’s scope.

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That’s certainly understandable. After all, a cardinal rule of selling is to know and lead with your strengths. However, it’s important to not overlook another adage – know and provide what your customer wants.

Our experience providing research to a wide variety of government contractors has clearly taught us that, depending on the product, service, or solution being offered, there can be significant differences between defense, civilian, state and local, and commercial markets in terms of:

- How the agencies define their mission, and by extension, the priorities driving the need for the solution
- The way they define their needs
- How they go through the vendor or solution selection process – who is involved, vendor characteristics that are most important, length of the decision-making cycle

Market Connections recently worked with a design solution company, who came to us for a better understanding of how to market their highly successful commercial sector products to the “public sector,” a category in which they into which they lumped federal, state, and local markets. During our exploratory research with decision makers who buy and use design software, we found that the evaluation and selection process was quite different between federal and state-and-local markets.

For example, federal buyers were much more concerned with being able to customize the solution and integrate the existing design data they currently had. Conversely, state and local personnel were significantly more concerned with the cost of the application and the level of support they would receive when deploying it. Both segments had highly favorable perceptions of the company and its design solution. However, the company quickly recognized it would need to segment sales and marketing messages by market sector.

And, the differences don’t just impact messaging. In recent study for another client, we found that one segment of technology decision-makers in the defense market placed significantly greater value on conferences, trade shows and topic-specific events than their civilian counterparts. Conversely, civilian respondents placed greater emphasis on information from contractors, trade press, and industry associations.

Clearly, long-term success isn’t just about selling your strengths. It’s also about understanding how to prioritize and leverage your strengths to meet each market’s needs. And, that understanding comes from market research.

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Research can reveal if the market understands your product or service and if the messaging is effective. For example, last year one of our clients launched a completely new service to its traditional core audience. After sales for the service languished, they came to us to learn why. It was indeed perplexing, as our client was one of the top market leaders.

Our strategy was to conduct focus groups with members of the target audience. We initially presented the original positioning statement to participants, which tightly aligned the service with our clientís strong and trusted brand in order to leverage its credibility. Clearly confused, the focus group participants didn’t understand what the service was because it was so far outside the realm of our client’s traditional offerings.

In the next round of focus groups, we presented positioning statements to focus group participants without the corporate brand name included, and every one of them instantly understood and liked the offering. We got the same result in the remaining focus groups, verifying that our client’s strong and well-recognized brand was actually getting in the way of success. After significantly de-emphasizing the corporate brand and adjusting some of their messaging points in sales and marketing efforts, the service is now selling like hot cakes.

Qualitative research, such as focus groups and in-depth interviews, is typically the most effective method for testing positioning and messaging, as the open-ended format is effective for probing the “why” behind participants’ preferences and opinions.

In the long run, conducting positioning and messaging research prior to a launch can save you time and money as well as help you avoid lost opportunities.

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The most common qualitative methods are in-depth interviews (IDIs) and focus groups.  IDIs are certainly effective, especially if the targeted titles are senior-level executives who aren’t willing to leave their offices to participate in a group discussion.  However, they lack the interactive dynamic of focus groups, where participants often build upon each other’s ideas.

Yet, focus groups can be a challenging and expensive undertaking for companies that serve geographically dispersed markets.  In such cases, Market Connections often recommends conducting focus groups during industry conferences.

Click here to learn some tips for success:

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But we all know that online surveys have become more and more important for market research. So if you are looking for some tips on how to boost the open and response rates for your next online study recruitment…

 Start with a smart “subject” line:  Keep your subject line to no more than 45 or so characters (including blank spaces), and avoid personalizing it with the recipient’s name.  You should consider testing subject lines by sending one option to half of a test sample and the second option to the other half and comparing open rates.  If one significantly out-performs the other, send the winning subject line as a second email to those your entire sample.

 Keep it concise and simple:  Clearly convey in the first few lines of the email the intent and topic of the online study, the type of survey it is (an email questionnaire, a chat room focus group, and so forth), and the approximate amount of time required to participate.  If you’re offering an incentive to participate, such as a charitable donation or a gift card, communicate that in your email text.  Always include the desired call to action, putting live links to the sign-up form in a different color text.  Always include a real name and their contact information in the body of the email in case a respondent wishes to learn more about the study or further assess the validity of the email.   And, of course, always include a means of opting out of future requests.

 Reduce undeliverable risk,?? Due to the high volume of spam complaints and viruses associated with unsolicited emails, spam filters are tougher than ever,?? especially those at some government agencies.  As with any email marketing activity, it is important to ensure your survey recruitment emails avoid the specific words and phrases that many filters block. 

 Track your success,?? Ensure your software will automatically track deliverable vs. undeliverable data as well as open and click-through rates.  Be aware, a high undeliverable rate points to an outdated list, while a low open rate indicates an ineffective subject line.  Click-through rates can be impacted by a variety of factors, including the text and layout of the email as well as the incentive to respond. 

Remember, your online survey success is dependent on an appropriate sample size of the targeted participants.  Ensure that those charged with executing your study have mastered best practices for recruitment emails.  At Market Connections, we’re experienced at gaining the participation of even the most challenging audiences for online research studies.

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Of course, these assessments then drive more intelligent decision-making and performance improvements.  Generally speaking, evaluations fall into two main categories:  formative and summative.

Formative evaluations facilitate exploration

Formative evaluations are a type of exploratory research designed to better define a problem or help strengthen a particular program.  Many associations rely on needs assessment studies to determine if they are providing the services and products deemed meaningful by their constituents.  Government agencies often undertake assessments to gauge the feasibility of a proposed program to deliver specific desired outcomes.  These are types of formative evaluations.

For example, we recently conducted a study for a major government technology solutions provider designed to identify and prioritize the current and future needs of government agencies that provide social and human services, such as social security, welfare, pensions, and workers compensation.  Encompassing the U.S., Canada, and nine countries across Western Europe, the results revealed the commonalties and differences in needs between countries. Using our findings, the client could then effectively tailor and segment its portfolio of offerings based on each geographic market’s agency priorities, funding availability, technology investment strategy, decision-making hierarchies, and so forth.

Summative evaluations measure results

Comparatively, summative evaluations measure outcomes of a particular program. Federal, state, and local government agencies often have mandates to include outcome evaluations or impact evaluations as part of programs or services they deliver.  The No Child Left Behind Act, a national program instituted by the Department of Education to measure school performance, is an example. Associations and government agencies often employ summative evaluations, such as program scorecards and cost-benefits analyses, to determine whether objectives are being met on specific initiatives.

Government contractors also make very good use of summative evaluations. For example, contract satisfaction surveys, a subset of summative evaluations, have helped many of our clients uncover previously unidentified problems on very important, large-revenue contracts.  By prioritizing and proactively addressing the issues,?? both real and perceived,?? the organizations were able to retain the contracts when they went up for re-competes.

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Pre-testing creative options prior to the start of the campaign can reveal important insights, thereby removing much of the guesswork from the creative development process.  Based on the results, you can make informed decisions on how to best evolve or enhance the most promising creative option.

You (or your ad agency) might wish to conduct ad pre-testing research at the creative concept stage and/or the copy and layout stage.  The creative concept stage, the very important first step in the development of new advertising, focuses on identifying the optimal approach for conveying the strategic message behind the ad.  Typically agencies or marketing departments create several different concepts for consideration, and each one should clearly represent the idea for the ad. 

Though the concept may often be just a headline and a rough visual treatment, it can definitely be tested.  You can verify whether or not the ad concept expresses the underlying strategy,?? and then judge how well the audience understands and accepts it.  And, you can predict the target audience’s reaction to the basic idea which you want to use in the final ad.   

Seek Insights; Validate Decisions

Focus groups or in-depth interviews, both qualitative research methods, are very common at this stage in the game.  Though qualitative research isn’t statistically valid, it effectively garners the “whys” behind participants’ opinions and can be very useful for revealing major problems early, while there is still time to develop alternative approaches.

Once the best creative concept has been selected, testing will follow. This is often called copy pre-testing, meaning various permutations of the ad concept are tested with a larger audience prior to actually placing the advertising in the media.  Though it’s best to show both copy and layout, the most important elements are the headline and accompanying photo or illustration. 

Though pre-testing of advertising has long been associated with the use of qualitative research, many marketers now also seek more quantified predictions of future ad performance before making their no/go decisions.  The direct rating method is a common quantitative approach; it asks respondents to rate alternative ads.  (These types of studies should always use multiple indicators of an ad’s effectiveness, rather than relying on just one.)  The direct ratings are used to evaluate an ad’s attention, read-through, believability, clarity, and more.  Though not a perfect science, a high rating certainly indicates a potentially more effective ad. 

Combine Phone and Web for Faster Results

Certainly, using the internet for this type of testing can be faster and less expensive than in-person focus groups in some situations.  An obstacle, however, is the extent to which online samples are representative of your target audience.  We suggest a hybrid approach.

We do that by programming a site with the ad material to be tested.  Our telephone interviewers then contact, via random sampling, the target respondents.  Respondents are screened, asked to log on to the Web site, and the interviewers administer the questions while the respondents view the ads online.  For qualifying respondents who are not sitting in front of a computer when contacted, interviewers can schedule a call-back.

The level of involvement required on the part of the participant may require that a honorarium be provided to respondents who complete the survey.  However, the incentives can be significantly lower than what would be required for participants in a focus group.

The advertising can be tested either in rough or finished form.  The general purpose is to determine whether or not there are specific components of the ad (e.g., headline, copy, tagline, layout, photo, or illustration) that need to be altered or improved.  This is the time to determine what works and what doesn’t, what could work better; and to select the optimal ad (or series) for media placement. 

Of course, quantitative benchmark studies are the surest means of ascertaining whether or not a marketing campaign,??  including the advertising component,?? actually moved the needle in terms of market awareness and desired attributes.  But, by testing your ads prior to placing them in targeted media, you’ll be much more likely to celebrate your benchmarking results.

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2. Recruiting is a key aspect of focus group success. It isn’t a numbers gameââ?¬â?rather, more importance should be placed on finding the right people for your groups. A conversation with six very qualified participants will likely yield more fruitful results than a session with ten unqualified participants. Participants should be screened to ensure they are qualified and knowledgeable in the topic at hand. Also, incentives are generally offered to encourage participants to attend.

3. Make sure you thoroughly review and understand the moderator’s guide. This is the tool that your moderator will be using to keep the group on track, encourage feedback useful to your research project, and lead conversation. Make sure you are comfortable with everything included in the guide.

4. A good moderator is vital to focus group success. Your research firm will likely have skilled, qualified moderators available for any focus groups you are conducting. Depend on these moderators to keep conversation flowing, and to evoke the “intimate strangers“ feeling among the group.

5. Always plan to attend your own focus groups. There is usually a room available for viewing focus groups. Viewing the participants in real time allows you to hear and see useful insights that may not get captured in the written report, and you’ll be able to request clarification or additional information if something a participant says is unexpected or unclear. However, do be sure to watch quietly, and wait to ask your moderator questions until s/he comes to the back room at specified times. These times should be outlined in your moderator’s guideââ?¬â?if they are not, request that at least one moderator visit to the backroom be added in.

If you are interested in learning more, please go to the Market Connections website and sign up for our free e-course about focus groups.

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