Month: July 2024

What Are Subject Incentive Programs in Market Research?

Posted on by Geoff Miller

What are Subject Incentive Programs for Market Research

Recruiting high-quality subjects for your research studies is time-consuming work. 

Offering and distributing the right incentives to drive participation is half the battle. Saving time and effort on this process allows you to focus on the data and insights you collect. 

Simple high-value offers are the key to research incentive programs. This article discusses incentive options, why you should use them, and the most effective options.

What’s the difference between market research and marketing research?

While they sound similar, market research and marketing research have distinct differences. 

Market research is the broader concept focusing on the market landscape as a whole. It includes user demographics, customer behaviors, market trends, competitors, and similar. Specialized third-party companies, institutions, or individual researchers traditionally conduct market research.

Conversely, marketing research includes activities specific to a company’s marketing efforts. It’s usually conducted or overseen by an internal marketing department. It involves insights into product usage, pricing, and promotional strategies. 

What are research subject incentive programs? 

Research subject incentive programs compensate subjects in exchange for their time in the research activity. Rewards can be monetary or non-monetary. These initiatives encourage participation and high-quality responses during the research process. 

What are the different types of subject incentive programs? 

Marketers use a variety of different types of incentives for research subject incentive programs. Researchers may offer cash, gift cards, discounts, raffles, gear, and more.

Entries to win raffle prizes are also common but less effective than guaranteed compensation. Statista reports that recurring discounts, free samples, extended product warranties, and one-time coupons only appeal to up to 36 percent of the population. 

While these types of incentives have some appeal, they don’t attract the majority of potential respondents.

Why should researchers use subject incentives for customer surveys? 

Researchers increase the likelihood of customer survey participation by providing subject incentives. Incentives combat common challenges for researchers, including small sample sizes, low response rates, and ineffective data.

Subjects expect compensation for sharing their insights through research activities. Making incentives as clear and attractive as possible is critical to success. As the saying goes, time is money. 

How much are the rewards in subject incentive programs? 

The compensation for market research activities varies widely based on the supply of qualified respondents and the participant’s time and effort.

The National Business Research Institute (NBRI) suggests incentives ranging from $10 to $50 per respondent to improve market research response rates and data quality for smaller populations and achieve a representative sample.

NBRI differentiates strategies for larger populations of potential respondents (greater than 500). It recommends smaller incentives when capturing a representative sample is easier. 

Increasing the value of rewards improves participation when there aren’t enough potential respondents, but it isn’t necessary for large samples with high participation.

What type of market research incentives are the most effective? 

Several factors increase the effectiveness of market research incentives. Cash and its equivalents (checks, prepaid debit, and gift cards) are more popular than non-monetary rewards.

Even a small financial incentive improves success. NIH reports significant improvements in the outcomes measured—a common market research trend with compensation for subjects.

We know increasing the amount moves the needle, but the delivery method is also essential. Researchers commonly mail checks, and subjects may be wary of dealing with banking transactions.

Bulk gift cards are simpler and safer to distribute than cash. They offer transfer flexibility you don’t get with checks, making this approach attractive to the widest range of participants.

What types of market research are suited for bulk gift cards? 

Bulk gift cards are an excellent option for market researchers seeking high participation from large sample sizes.

This reward is suitable for improving response rates for both qualitative and quantitative research, including online surveys, mail-back questionnaires, focus groups, and clinical trials. They’re ideal for projects with low response rates or data quality concerns.

Besides being particularly effective for market research projects involving large-volume groups, bulk gift cards are ideal for researchers who need cost-effective incentive distribution.

Furthermore, this approach accommodates participants from locations with different currency requirements. 

What are the risks of using research incentives? 

Marketers frequently debate the bias risk of research incentives. There are ethical arguments suggesting incentives skew research data.

For instance, participants may be dishonest about their eligibility or rush through the questions without giving honest and accurate responses just for compensation. The same risks exist for research without incentives.

On the other hand, the risks don’t outweigh the positive outcomes. Experienced researchers mitigate concerns of bias or oversampling with quality control measures. 

Ultimately, the argument in favor of incentives comes down to three main points: 

  1. Gift cards are commonplace and generally expected
  2. Gift cards are a fair and valid method to thank subjects for their time
  3. Gift cards are the fastest way to satisfy sample size and quality criteria

Conclusion: Bulk gift cards for subject incentive programs

Offering PayPal, Venmo, Mastercard Prepaid and Visa Prepaid are all good choices when respondents expect cash-like options. Certain verticals, like health care and doctor panels will require these incentives. Simple, high-value offers, such as cash and bulk gift cards, should enhance participation significantly and are key to successful research subject incentive programs.

Gift cards are particularly effective for large-volume groups and projects requiring high participation rates. The benefits of using incentives to attract and retain participants overwhelmingly support their use, improving both response rates and data quality.

While there are many incentive options when conducting online surveys, focus groups, and polls—bulk gift cards benefit the subjects and researchers the most.

Are you ready to boost your participation rates with digital rewards? NeoCurrency is your doorway to bulk gift cards in over 140 countries for 20 global currencies. 

Request your demo to see how NeoCurrency will simplify your research subject incentive programs. 

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Increasing Participation of a Major Global Market Research Study

Posted on by Geoff Miller

If you’re going to be one of the biggest, most expansive global market research panel platforms in the world, you’re going to have to be able to incent respondents in places where delivering payments can be a little tricky, like Latin America.

How Do Businesses Use Bulk Gift Cards for Sales Promotions?

Posted on by Geoff Miller

How to use bulk gift cards in sales promotions

Promotions featuring brand rewards and gift cards offer an easy, efficient, and flexible way to drive sales and build your brand without discounting your product or service. 

In many instances, using bulk gift cards is the simplest and most cost-effective way to build a prize pool to excite your target and incentivize purchase, participation, or whatever behavior you want to achieve.

Here are a few strategies to help you think through the opportunities bulk gift cards offer for promotions.

What kinds of promotions use bulk gift cards?

Many different types of promotions leverage bulk gift cards because they offer flexibility and provide consumers with something they really want—especially when you build a prize pool with a lot of choices. Some of the most common promotions that effectively use bulk gift cards are sweepstakes, games, instant wins, rebates, incentives, and buy X get Y promotions.

Why would I use bulk rewards in a sweepstakes?

There are a lot of reasons to use bulk rewards in just about any sweepstakes promotion. You can use them to build excitement around a large, aspirational grand prize while providing many smaller prizes to increase the chances of your target audience actually winning something.

In many instances, the promotion can also be themed around your grand prize. This makes choosing the appropriate brand or brands you offer very important from a messaging standpoint. And that should drive the rest of your prize pool.

With bulk rewards, creating a prize pool with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of prizes available is easy. This makes more people feel good about participating and expands the demographic reach of your promotion, depending on the partners you choose. It depends on your budget, but offering prizes in the $1-$5 range is typically less expensive than you might imagine.

Sweepstakes are also popular with consumers because there is a very low barrier to entry. In many cases, they are automatically entered to win as soon as they purchase the key item of the promotion. No forms to fill out or receipts to send in. It’s simple for them—and you. Even redemption is easy since the prizes can be delivered digitally.

What is the benefit of using bulk rewards in games or instant win promotions?

The benefits of using bulk rewards in games or instant win promotions are fairly obvious when you think about the world we live in—people like games. And people love instant gratification. This is particularly true of young adult consumers but pretty much everyone expects whatever they want to show up now.

When you use bulk gift cards that can be redeemed digitally, not only will consumers know that they won, but they’ll be able to have their prize in their hands almost immediately. This is a huge benefit all around. For the consumers, they get their prize. And for you or your partners, the prize can be redeemed right away, driving immediate sales.

While it’s possible to have a game-based promotion or an instant win promotion, many times the two tactics work together. Think about the classic Monopoly® at McDonald’s promotion. There was an overall grand prize, a game board and pieces to collect, which drove repeat purchase. At the same time, many of the pieces also added an instant win which was typically a free food item available right in-store.

How exactly you structure your game or instant win promotion should be determined by what you and your partners are trying to accomplish.

Why would I use bulk gift cards as rebates or incentives in promotions?

The main reason to use bulk gift cards for rebates and other incentives is they essentially let you add value to your product or service without actually discounting it. And to be sure, once you start discounting your offering, it’s a slippery slope into the bargain bin and very difficult to rebuild that value in either price or brand equity.

One of the best types of bulk gift cards for rebates and incentives is prepaid cards. Essentially, they function as dollars off and give consumers the flexibility to spend it however they’d like. Of course, you can deliver messaging or structure your promotion to encourage consumers to spend that prepaid card with you—in-store or online.

These types of promotions are popular with many electronics manufacturers, wireless carriers, big box stores, and even national restaurant chains. Here is an interesting case study if you’d like to see how one mobile phone company executed its promotion.

Are bulk gift cards effective for buy/get promotions?

Bulk gift rewards can be very effective in a number of buy X get Y promotions, but you definitely need to understand your audience. The reason for this is buy/get tend to be more specific offerings than many of the other promotions we’ve discussed here.

As the name says, the name pretty much indicates why: if you buy this, you get that. In some ways, this could seem limiting. But it also gives you the opportunity to really hone in on a message and an offer you think will drive a very targeted audience to respond positively. It all comes down to the size of the prize, who it’s from, and the required purchase.

Of course, one popular way to keep the basic mechanics and strategies in place while providing more choice to the consumer is to offer prepaid cards again with a significant value.

How can NeoCurrency help you drive sales and build your brand?

One of the benefits of working with NeoCurrency to help develop an effective promotion leveraging digital bulk gift cards is we’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting for you already. Our catalog has rewards available from thousands of brands worldwide, from the big ones you’d expect to some very targeted ones unique to us.

1. Rewards planning

Many brands don’t get involved with promotions that offer bulk gift cards or virtual rewards simply because it seems difficult. People think it’s expensive, the process has too many layers to work through, and so on. It can be all those things, but that’s why we’re here.

We like to say that we’re marketers that just happen to provide rewards and prizes. With our long history of strategic rewards and prize pool planning, we can secure partnerships that normally take months to get approved much faster.

We simplify the entire process. We’ve negotiated everything—even creative challenges.

2. Prize pools

We have many different ways to help you develop a prize pool featuring bulk gift cards.   We can help you create something strategically focused on one brand or many, with as many prize tiers that fit your strategy.

Our experts are here to help you create an appropriate prize pool, regardless of whether your promotion is a local, regional, or global effort.

3. Fast and simple bulk gift cards

NeoCurrency’s wholesale pricing is fixed with no hidden fees. You can manage everything from our intuitive reward dashboard or simply integrate it with our single gift card API.

Partner with NeoCurrency for your next promotion

NeoCurrency’s global catalog of digital rewards for over 2000 brands provides plenty of opportunities for you to run a successful promotion, regardless of the kind of program you want to run. We’ve been doing this for a long time and would love to put our experience to work for you.

Request a demo to get all the details about how we’ll help you develop and execute your next promotion featuring bulk gift cards by leveraging an extensive variety of brand rewards.

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