When it comes to getting the best insights, it’s important that your market research incentive programs meet your audience where they are. If you want to recruit students for a focus group, you wouldn’t advertise your program in parenting magazines. If you’re seeking survey responses from senior citizens, you may not want to offer only digital rewards.
The point is, you need to think about whom you’re trying to reach, what kind of rewards would best incentivize those people, and how they will want to redeem those rewards.
This is especially true for nonprofit organizations. Not only are they often seeking feedback and insights from marginalized groups, they also need complete, representative data to make sure they’re acting in the best interest of their cause.
Tom Summerfelt, Chief Research Officer at Feeding America, one of the biggest charities in the U.S., says it best: “You can’t be engaged in equity work without listening to the people that you’re serving and having a relationship with them.”
Summerfelt adds that his team puts incentives in a broader context, looking at them as a way of compensating those people for sharing their expertise on their lived experience.
Here are some ways BHN Rewards meets the specific needs of our nonprofit customers to help them connect with their audiences and further their missions.
WATCH THE VIDEO: Feeding America Connects With 27,000 Neighbors Via BHN Rewards and Qualtrics
When philanthropic organizations are looking for feedback from their customers, those customers are often people who are struggling in some way. They don’t typically want or need a branded tumbler or a gift card to Nordstrom. But what they need can still vary greatly, whether it’s help paying for groceries, fixing their car, or buying household essentials — and your market research incentive programs should reflect that.
“That was part of why Feeding America moved toward BHN Rewards,” Summerfelt says. “The opportunity to say, ‘Pick a gift card of your choice, whether it be Amazon or a Kroger grocery store or Walmart or AutoZone — whatever your family needs.’”
It’s also important to remember that these audiences might need or prefer rewards that are redeemable at local retailers. A member of a Feeding America community, for instance, may not be able to travel all the way across town to the Kroger, and they’d rather shop at the Walmart right across the street. Again, offering a choice of digital gift card with BHN Rewards allows them to select the most accessible and convenient option.
Delivering incentives digitally has many advantages for both senders and recipients, namely that it can be done easily, immediately, and for free. Summerfelt says it allowed Feeding America to “reduce all the overhead that existed with physical gift cards, monitoring those, sending those out,” so volunteers can focus their time on distributing food to their neighbors.
Sending rewards via SMS can also be an important option to have in your toolbox, especially when the audience for your market research incentive programs are of a certain demographic. Nonprofits that serve people in need may be trying to reach people who have mobile phones but not regular access to the internet or email. BHN Rewards allows SMS delivery in many countries so you can make sure recipients can easily redeem their incentives.
At the end of the day, these organizations are only trying to better serve their communities and their missions. With the right incentives, they can increase research participation and be sure that they’re getting the representative feedback they need to optimize their programs and services.
“The results from the data that we collect directly from those we serve have led to inputs into strategic planning of the food banks themselves,” Summerfelt says. “It’s led to monitoring what’s happening with our neighbors, how satisfied they are, what’s the net promoter score, and so forth.”
For Feeding America, the incentivized feedback has also led to more tactical actions. “Finding out that the majority of folks in a particular community prefer distribution on Wednesday night over Tuesday afternoon, or really want a particular type of produce or ethnic food — really being able to dig deeper and hear those preferences, and having the data to support that, is incredibly helpful,” Summerfelt says.
Need to make sure your survey responses stay anonymous? Read our blog to learn how to implement market research incentive programs while protecting your participants’ identity.
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
