BAQMaR – We are all analysts

A day in the life @ Keystone Network

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 by baqmarblog

Employee: Emeline Mettavant
BAQMaR Partner: Keystone Network
Website: www.keystone-network.com

The new business cards have arrived!
When I arrive at the office this morning, there’s a surprise in our pigeonholes: the new business cards have arrived! On these new cards, we feature the key visuals and messages of our brand-new website www.keystone-network.com. Each of us had to choose a visual; I went for ‘Celebrate Diversity’ because I think it sums up very well my life, as an international citizen who’s been living in several countries and loves to travel and meet new cultures. We spend a while with colleagues comparing our cards and commenting on the choices we made. Then I drop a short email to a client to inform her on how the field work went last night.

Create together: a briefing meeting with a client
Then it’s time to head for a client’s premises for a briefing meeting about a brand audit for an FMCG brand. We already received a written briefing two days ago and we are well prepared for this meeting; I spent one hour discussing it with a colleague who’s been doing a lot of this type of research before, and we found out that we could challenge the suggested methodology by using Brand Experience Rooms (a technique we use in fieldwork); but we still have key questions. In the briefing meeting, we don’t just listen to the client’s needs and objectives, but we try to put ourselves totally in their shoes. The approach we suggest is well documented and well received. We promise to deliver a proposal document within the two next days and to prepare a planning for research.

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Look deeper: a debriefing call with a colleague
When I’m on my way back, a colleague calls me. He led an important piece of research yesterday in a services sector and has tremendously interesting findings. As this concerns a sector where I’m more experienced, he wants to share and discuss his findings with me. At Keystone Network, the team and team spirit is very strong, so you are never alone on a project and everyone is willing to help each other out. Moreover it makes me happy to share experiences and expertise with others so we can always go deeper in the analysis of the consumers’ triggers and motivations. I am curious about the results this research will bring and the implication it will have on the sector’s evolution.

Visible results: a presentation follow-up with a client
Back at the office. I have received an email from a client following a recent project about a communication pre-test for a new product launch. The results were presented in a very actionable way, and the presentation was followed by a workshop leading to the communication agency’s debriefing. Now they have reworked the winning route and they ask us to check whether this is in line with the research recommendations. I am excited when clients trust our expertise and allow us to go the extra mile for them; it’s a kind of after-sales services and we promote it vividly at Keystone Network.

Celebrate diversity: preparing for fieldwork abroad
I am leaving to the airport because I have a project starting tomorrow morning in Spain. I use these ‘dead’ airport moments to answer email and redact a few slides for different purposes. But after that, time for knowledge building! I know the Spanish culture quite well but I always want to keep updated, because managing a project in each specific country means much more than just travelling to me. Tomorrow before fieldwork I will quickly conduct a store check in order to know the latest changes in the category I’m surveying. But for today, I take the most of this offline moment in a plane to proceed with my reading of the marketing best-seller Crossumer, Claves para entender al consumidor español de nueva generación.

Tags: BAQMaR, keystone, partner
Posted in BAQMaR, Partner in the Spotlight, Region - Belgium, Region - International | No Comments »

Ethnicity and Geography of Facebook Users

Monday, July 26th, 2010 by Matthew Hurst

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ePluribus: Ethnicity on Social Networks, by the Facebook data science team includes some interesting estimates of the geographic distributions of Facebook users. My guess is that these are not dissimilar to those found in the census data, confirming the team’s suggestion that the ethnic distribution of Facebook users is approaching that of the internet population in general.

Tags: ethnicity, Facebook, geography
Posted in General Marketing, Market Research, Region - International | No Comments »

Heart-Healthy Survey Practices

Monday, July 26th, 2010 by JeffreyHenning

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At the 2010 Vovici Vision conference, Neal Kovach and Paul Theriot of the American College of Cardiology discussed the significant challenges they face conducting online surveys. Surveying doctors is hard enough, but surveying cardiologists requires a relentless focus on best practices with attention to the small details. As Neal said, “The only thing that cardiologists hate more than cigarettes is taking surveys.” While online survey response rates for cardiologists are typically at 10%, ACC has been able to get response rates of 50-60%, by following these practices.

Survey Invitation Practices

“Invitations are key to the success of your effort. Play to your organization’s strengths and assets,” said Paul.

Optimize scheduling based on past completions. Neal and Paul studied the time stamp data of past surveys to learn the habits of respondents. They learned that cardiologists typically completed surveys between 10 am and 2 pm Tuesday through Thursday. They now schedule their surveys for this window: “Strike at the best time, even if it means waiting.”
Use influential senders to elevate the importance of invitations to surveys. Neal and Paul received permission to send out survey invitations under the name of the president of the College (they use the email campaign report to monitor for bounce backs). They have also sent surveys out under the CEO’s name.
Use an image to reinforce the brand. ACC uses the logo of the American College of Cardiology Foundation. Graphics are great, keeping in mind one important warning: using too many images can lead your invitations to the Spam folders of recipients.
Alter subject lines with each reminder to enhance participation. Rather than simply sending out each survey reminder with the same subject line as the initial invitation, Neal and Paul found that they got a higher response rate by tweaking the subject line.
Personalize invitations. Not only do they personalize email invitations with a tailored salutation, they also provide the name and email of their personal contact within the ACC in regards to surveys. This provides better customer service to members.

Long-Term Health

cardiac monitor

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Cardiologists themselves are about encouraging their patients to do what’s right for their long-term health. Similarly, Paul and Neal consider each survey in the context of the effect it will have on the long-term health of respondents’ experience with the ACC as well as their willingness to take future surveys.

Make sure surveys can be completed in 10 minutes. Since response rates will suffer if surveys are too long, they work hard to keep questionnaires short. They diligently use skip patterns and advanced branching to route cardiologists around questions that don’t apply to them. Some of these are driven by filter questions, others by hidden fields: they often preload data behind the scenes, based on profile information they have about the cardiologists, their subspecialty and the size of their medical practice.
Use end-page teasers to let them know about next month’s survey. The thank-you page of the survey also gives respondents advance notice about the upcoming survey topic.
Look at panelist health scores. “Understand who is responding, how often, and how that compares with other areas of engagement.”

Panel Practices

Even after implementing all of these best practices, the ACC had a greater need to improve the feedback process and increase engagement. Their improvement goals included:

Manage the increased desire for feedback (survey proliferation)
Increase the falling response rates that were emerging from the “research callus”
Neutralize the disproportionate level of engagement (missing feedback from key audiences, especially cardiologists running their own small businesses)
Maintain a pulse on member attitudes and concerns and validate strategic initiatives and direction
Increase revenue

As a result, the ACC made the decision to build CardioSurve, a monthly panel that is representative of the U.S. population of cardiologists. They randomly selected potential panelists from their membership, but stratified the sample so that panelist demographic data strongly reflected the ACC US membership base. Panelists who agreed to participate were asked to complete an Enrollment Profile that could be used for precise targeting of surveys, as well as to keep future surveys short. “Over a four month period of recruitment, we attained 350 panelists out of 1100 recruits. The panelists are loyal, with our average number of completes at 185 per month.”

What have been the results? “CardioSurve has resulted in fewer member touches/surveys, increased panel satisfaction, provided timely access to feedback and given us opportunities to showcase findings. Panel research results have been showcased in presidential presentations, meetings with legislators, professional magazines and journals, and have been used to guide strategy.”(If you have any questions about the CardioSurve panel, feel free to contact Paul Theriot at .)

The next time you’re concerned about improving response rates, remember that even cardiologists can be persuaded to take surveys, through diligent and professional application of “heart-healthy” survey best practices.

Tags: healthy, heart, survey
Posted in General Marketing, Market Research, Region - International | No Comments »

Experienced qualitative researcher [m/f]

Monday, July 19th, 2010 by baqmarblog

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TNS Dimarso is the reference in Belgium when it comes to opinion and market research. We deliver business insights to national and international clients across all the major business sectors. We are part of TNS, an international network of market research agencies, based in 75 countries. In Belgium we make a turnover of nearly 18 million euros, with a team of 100 collaborators. Our specialised qualitative business unit, is looking for a new colleague.