Suppose your Market Research company is conducting diary surveys. In that case, there is a great chance to have this particular problem – following up with the users, so they stay on track and fill their surveys regularly.

Sure, there is always the conventional way to send them an e-mail, but an example we have noticed that this could work only for surveys that the respondents need to conduct daily or per few days. 

Why is that? Simply, when we send an e-mail, it goes to the user’s mailbox. Then we can bump into several additional factors, like:

• respondent marked the mail as spam (by mistake, or because of spam mark in the past);
• the respondent made a filter for personal e-mails to go to a particular folder and skip the inbox;
• the e-mail provider may decide on automated rules that sending a plethora of e-mails to its users is considered spam. By providing inbox warm-up procedure, market research companies can avoid this, but this can be expensive as it requires a dedicated e-mail team;
• the respondent is busy and forgets to check his/her mail;
• the respondent is away from her/his mail;
• the respondent is not using the provided e-mail actively, daily;
• and so many more.

As an effect, we end up with a survey that is not filled when it should be. And as the majority of the diary surveys are related to medical observation, the factors above reduce the overall diary survey quality. Something the clients don’t like. At all.

We have provided a lot of research on the topic, and at some point, we have figured it out. Since most of the users are using smartphones in our modern world, the closest option to reach them is via their phones, indeed. This approach, however, is related to a lot of other, non-e-mail specific problems, like:

• how to preserve the Data Privacy of the respondent and still be able to send push notification via her/his phone;
• how can the user fill multiple surveys and be notified of these without downloading and installing different apps;
• two major stores – Google Play Store, Apple Store and how to develop a solution for both of these without being over-expensive;
• and the list goes on.

Ok, but how do you find the balance? What we have developed for our Forsta Surveys™ Diary Survey Manager is fascinating in its practical simplicity. We have created a hybrid mobile app that uses Firebase push notifications. This app empowers the respondents to download the app and receive their survey link in this mobile app by providing a unique ID. This ID is protecting their identity, and at the same time, it can be linked lately to the client respondent database used for the survey conduct. The notifications are associated with these specific random IDs. There is a control panel where the clients can define automated messages (daily, in few days, even in a few hours) as well as trigger-based notifications. 

As simple as it sounds, this gives vast flexibility to build a notification framework that truly works for both the clients and the respondents. And to make this even sweeter, we have a simple gamification mechanism like showing a pop-up with motivational salutation when a survey is complete. Combine this with the proven increase stats in the survey filling over mobile devices vs. desktop and the mobile compatibility of the Forsta Surveys™, and we end up with a fascinating tool.

This approach is especially effective for the younger audience, for which the gamification and mobile usage are much more anticipated than the traditional e-mail notification.

Now we have the pleasure to announce that Diary Manager for Forsta Surveys™ is already available for our new and existing clients. If you’re conducting such surveys through the Forsta Surveys™ platform, we encourage you to get back to us at rdi@bright-mr.com, or to visit our Platform page and use the contact form so we can show you a practical example.