Empanel Customers without Their Permission
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Mon, Aug 16, 2010
We have long advocated to those of our customers who building new panels that they should launch a special marketing campaign to encourage customers to sign up for the panel. Let the customers know what to expect from the panel, how often you will survey them, what you will provide them in return, and how they can later opt out if they ever change their mind.
We were wrong.
Just add all your customers to your panel.
By all your customers, of course, I mean all of your customers. Even those that you don’t have permission to email. Bear with me here.
If you don’t do this, your panel will not be as representative of your customer base as it could be. In the ideal world, every single customer should be on your panel. Then you can conduct true probability sampling.
Listen to what EasyJet, the leading U.K. airline, does. At the Research 2010 annual conference, Easyjet Customer Research Manager Sophie Dekkers gave an Ideas Rush session, covered by MrWeb:
[She] outlined her dilemma of needing to react quickly to market changes, while using her research budget more effectively.
Dekkers explained that, as 98% of EasyJet's customers book online, she has access to a ready-made sample for online survey use. Within 24 hours of rolling out a DIY survey on, for instance, when customers plan to take their summer holidays, she can receive and react to the resulting data.
Do you think EasyJet asked these customers to be on the panel? Of course not. If they did, their panel would have a small percentage of their customer base. Instead, by empanelling everyone, EasyJet is able to use random sampling to develop an accurate understanding of their customers’ attitudes.
And, by empanelling everyone, you can conduct surveys of detailed subsegments of customers as well. With a smaller panel, you’re unlikely to have sufficient sample to do such research.
Formal empanelment is a courtesy you likely can’t afford. And it’s a courtesy most companies are skipping. At one recent presentation, to an audience of about 100, I asked for a show of hands of people who had joined a panel: one person raised her hand. I asked how many had ever received an email survey from a firm they did business with: almost every single attendee raised their hand. We’re all on panels we didn’t opt in to.
Oh, and if you don’t have permission to email a customer, because they have signed up for your unsubscribe list, then only show them survey invitations when they log in to your web site. Integrate your panel management system to your CRM system, which should already be integrated to your web site.
Panels are a rich source of quantitative information, provided they are truly representative of your customers. Adding every customer to your panel is one way to make sure they are.