Why build your market research panel in-house?
Maximize control and insights.
In-house panel management allows you to create detailed participant profiles. You have the means to align the participant profile with your defined buyer persona, which can help you target the right respondents when the need arises for research. This control allows your organization to focus on specific customer segments, ensuring that the data you collect is relevant and impactful.
Research panel
A research panel, also known as a survey panel or respondent panel, is a group of individuals who have agreed to participate in surveys, interviews, or research studies. These individuals are typically selected based on specific demographics, characteristics, or interests that align with the research objectives.
Building panels are a core foundation of market research. Proper panel management is crucial to ensure the quality, reliability, and longevity of the market research panel.
Panel management
Panel management involves creating and maintaining research panels, which are specialized groups of volunteers who participate in research studies.
Panel management involves recruiting participants and regularly maintaining their profiles — so you can bring the right people into the right research project.
Advantages of an in-house research panel
In-house panel management allows you to create detailed participant profiles. You have the means to align the participant profile with your defined buyer persona, which can help you target the right respondents when the need arises for research. This control allows your organization to focus on specific customer segments, ensuring that the data you collect is relevant and impactful.
Creating your panel enables you to gather targeted information that aligns with your research goals. This approach will allow you to gain deeper insights by directly engaging with a group curated to match your research objectives.
Managing your panel in-house is often more cost-effective. You can still offer participant incentives without incurring additional fees from third-party providers.
Setting up and maintaining an in-house panel may require significant time and resources. Still, it offers more control and flexibility, leading to more targeted feedback and cost savings.
1. Data quality and reliability: A well-managed panel consists of engaged and reliable participants who provide accurate and consistent data, increasing the reliability of the research findings.
2. Cost-efficiency: Building and maintaining a high-quality panel can be cost-effective in the long run, as participants need not be recruited for each study, reducing recruitment costs.
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3. Time-saving: A ready-made panel allows researchers to launch research projects more quickly, and this is especially valuable when timely data is needed or longitudinal studies that require tracking changes over time.
4. Targeted research: Panel management offers a versatile approach to research. It enables researchers to target specific demographics or characteristics within the panel, making it easier to research niche topics or specific market segments.
5. Participant engagement: Engaged and motivated panelists are more likely to respond to research requests and remain active on the panel. Effective panel management strategies help maintain a high level of engagement.
Best practices to consider while building and managing an in-house panel
1. Determine your requirement: The first thing to consider is how many participants you need to recruit to your panel. To know that number, you must determine your ideal sample size for any study, the typical response rate you expect to achieve, and the number of studies you intend to conduct in a given time. When planning your research, it’s crucial to consider factors such as geographic quotas and demographic profiles. These considerations are vital in ensuring your sample is diverse and representative of your study population, as this is essential for the validity and generalizability of your study’s findings.
2. Refer to different sources: You can draw research participants from various channels, including your email database, and proactively recruit via your CRM, website, social media, and point of sale.
3. Consent management: To ensure your research panel complies with data protection regulations, obtaining consent from each panelist to collect and store their personal information is essential. You should obtain consent when a person agrees to join your panel for research recruitment and ask for permission again when they decide to participate in a specific project. Moreover, participants should be fully aware of the nature, scope, and purpose of any research activity they engage in, and they must provide their explicit consent before any data collection begins.
4. Reward your panelists: Incentives are essential for panel management and can help maintain high response rates. A vital characteristic of a good incentive is its relevance. Generally, monetary incentives are more effective than gifts. One approach is to use a points system, where panelists accumulate points based on their participation in studies. Please regularly evaluate and update your incentive strategy to make sure it aligns with the preferences and expectations of your panelists.
5. Ensure data security and privacy: As researchers, our role in building trust with panelists is crucial. Assure their personal information is handled carefully and protected from unauthorized access. Comply with relevant data protection regulations, such as GDPR or HIPAA, and communicate the data-handling practices.
6. Monitor panel health regularly: Your role in identifying and removing inactive or unengaged panelists is crucial to maintaining a responsive and high-quality group. It not only saves costs associated with sharing surveys with such individuals but also ensures the effectiveness of our research. Researchers could establish criteria for identifying inactive panelists, such as no participation in the past six months, and launch re-engagement campaigns before removing them from the panel.
7. Screen the participants before enrolling in a study: A screener survey is a precise questionnaire you can administer to determine whether a panelist’s experiences, perceptions, or habits align with the study objectives. This additional qualification step helps ensure the relevance of the recruited sample to a given study.
Best practices to recruit the participants to the panel
1. Make recruitment short and straightforward: Conduct a survey to collect each respondent’s first name, last name, and email address. If you try to ask too many questions in the initial recruitment survey, your participants will be less likely to complete the entire survey and opt into your panel.
2. Send a profile survey after participants join the panel: Keeping your initial recruitment survey short allows you to send a follow-up survey after your contacts agree to join the panel. This profile survey collects additional information about the panel members, allowing you to target and sample them effectively as you conduct your research. Please ask relevant questions that help you align the profile with the buyer persona, enabling you to target the right respondents as needed for research. Adjust this alignment with time to ensure a precise segmentation of participants in the panel.
3. Send a welcome email: Send a welcome email after respondents have joined your panel and taken the profiling survey. This email should remind respondents of the reasons they joined the panel. Take the time to tell them how they can receive incentives or rewards (if you decide to use incentives for your panel), express how their feedback will help your organization, and help them see the benefits that panel membership provides them (i.e., better products and services). Simplicity and clarity are the most critical elements when recruiting your panel. You are asking these people to participate in your surveys on an ongoing basis, so be sure to explain how frequently you’ll contact them. Be clear about what it takes to earn an incentive and how they’ll receive it.
Conclusion
In-house panels offer a unique opportunity to connect with the target customers and understand their preferences, opinions, and needs. With the proper planning and execution, market research panels can provide the data and insights needed to make informed business decisions and drive growth. So, consider using in-house panels in your market research strategy. The best survey platform allows you to build and manage your panel right where you conduct your research, manage incentives, synthesize data, and share insights.
