••• panel research
Kinesis enhances panel offerings
Improvements target mobile response rates
Kinesis, an Austin, Texas, research software company, is now offering responsive e-mail templates, along with other enhancements, to improve response rates in online panels. The enhanced capabilities are designed to increase response rates among mobile users such as Millennials and automate other panel management processes. Panel managers will be able to launch projects to multiple communities and brands concurrently. This will reduce the setup and test time for invitations and overall complexity of managing a large online panel to multiple audiences and across different panel sub-segments. In addition to simplifying the e-mail process, Kinesis is also enhancing the e-mail design process with responsive e-mails (Web and mobile-friendly) and pre-built design options including for Mobile Short Messages, particularly SMS and in-app messaging.
••• marketing research
Free marketing ROI template
How did your campaign perform?
London School of Marketing has published a free template to help marketers measure the financial return of their marketing campaigns. It is now available for download at http://bit.ly/1PVy6MI. “The digital world is flooded with tools that marketers can use to measure their performance. However, while landing page hits and CTA clicks are useful for tracking performance and growth, senior management teams are generally more interested in the bottom line,” said Gimhani Gunasinghe, head of marketing for London School of Marketing, in a press release. “This is why financial return on investment statistics are so valuable. This template is ideal for simulating campaigns before you actually run them. It will show the potential scope for the ROI and help to optimize it by highlighting costs that could be adjusted. Simulating campaigns can also help you show your employers what your campaign could expect to achieve and thus help secure the budget for it.”
••• research communities
Chatter Zone community debuts
Includes kids, teens, parents
U.K.-based DJS Research Ltd. has launched a parents, kids and teens market research community, Chatter Zone, comprised of 100 kids and teens, aged between 8 and 18, and a further 50 moms and dads, with children within the same age range. Clients who choose to include the community in their market research strategy can choose from a variety of different tasks for participants to complete, such as: forum discussions, consumer feedback, creative tasks, mini-polls, surveys and personal tasks. The tasks will be completed over a four-week period and once finished, the Chatter Zone team will prepare a report including visuals, videos, case studies and infographics, all used where appropriate.
••• mobile research
FocusVision, AOL partner for mobile MR white paper
Best practices for incorporating video
Stamford, Conn., research firm FocusVision has produced a white paper in partnership with AOL that examines mobile video viewing behavior among survey respondents. The paper, entitled Survey Design for Mobile Video, encompasses primary research on respondent behaviors and sets forth best practices for researchers incorporating mobile video into survey outreach. “Over the past two years alone, online video views are up more than 500 percent worldwide, with one-third of viewers accessing digital video via smartphone,” said Denise Brien, senior director of consumer analytics and research for AOL, in a press release. “We felt that the consumer’s preferences and expectations for mobile video had been largely overlooked, so with this research we set out to understand why mobile online viewing has accelerated so quickly and to determine the keys to optimizing the mobile experience from the consumer’s perspective.” The primary goal of the first phase of the research was to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising in mobile video compared to other platforms. The second phase was designed to understand the optimal mobile video experience from the consumer’s perspective. The research initiative covered the consumer’s full mobile video experience, including core elements of both video content and video advertising. Specific data points encompassed video length, content types, differences in video viewing by platform (phone, tablet and computer), app versus browser viewing and more. The white paper can be downloaded athttp://bit.ly/1cVeaxb.
••• hybrid research
20|20 Research offers quant/qual service
Aiming for cross-platform connectivity
20|20 Research, Nashville, Tenn., launched a new service called Quant+Qual, which provides researchers with projectable quantitative data with a qualitative component. By strategically placing application programming interfaces in quant studies, 20|20’s technology is designed to help different survey platforms (including social media) connect and talk with one another, directing respondents to and from panels, other studies or third-party analysis tools. The service will provide survey programming and hosting, sampling and data collection and can handle samplings of up to 500 individuals. Interviews can accommodate approximately 30 questions, which could be either multiple-choice/multiple-answer, rating/ranking, open text, sum text or percentage weight or matrix/grids. The service will also be able to tap into 20|20’s nationwide panel. The new service is intended to provide quantitative data collection for lightweight, tactical quantitative needs in the U.S. only; it is not yet a global service. At this point, it will not include complex quotas or skip pattern logic, algorithms or in-survey calculations or specialized questions/reporting needs such as maximum or conjoint differentials. The research tech firm will also not analyze the quantitative data.
••• customer experience
Report calls for new methods for B2B CX
Less reliance on surveys
Walker Information, Indianapolis, has released the report, The Optimized CX System, which unveils an approach to customer experiences that is designed to leverage what currently works and overcome the inadequacies that exist. The report calls for B2B customer experience professionals to embrace new methods that create value for their customers and their firms and improve the experiences customers have with the products, people and processes they encounter. This includes reducing the reliance on surveys and taking advantage of evolving analytic techniques. The Optimized CX System uses multiple tools and resources to identify, address and improve customer experiences. It is less focused on the mechanics of traditional customer experience management programs and is more focused on systems that will prompt action and create business impact.
www.walkerinfo.com/optimizedcx.asp
••• qualitative research
Get qualitative expertise by phone
A QRC ECN
Fanaticall Inc., a Washington, D.C., SaaS firm, has launched the Qualitative Research Consultants ECN, an expert calling network (ECN) connecting qualitative research consultants with organizations or businesses seeking their expertise via paid telephone calls. Some researchers included in the initial launch of the ECN include: John Canova of Canova Research and Strategy; Rose Marie Garcia Fontana of Garcia Fontana Research; Nancy Hardwick of Hardwick Research; Ted Kendall of TripleScoop Premium Market Research; Nancy Pelech of Point of View Research; and Terri Sterling Donovan of Sterling Communications.
https://qrc.expertcallingnetwork.com
••• consumer psychology
CivicScience makes happiness study data available
Mine the crosstabs
Pittsburgh research firm CivicScience has made a research study available to the public in hopes of furthering the collective understanding of happiness and its root causes. Called Profiling Happy, the study looks at reported levels of happiness from over 262,000 Americans and their relationship to thousands of other attributes for demographics, lifestyle traits, media behaviors and other characteristics. CivicScience has published the study’s set of aggregate crosstabulations to allow researchers, journalists and other individuals to analyze characteristics that are most correlated with happiness and unhappiness. It is available for download at http://info.civicscience.com/profilinghappy.
••• Briefly
Swedish eye-tracking firm Tobii Pro has redesigned its Tobii Pro Glasses 2, improving the slippage compensation technology to provide more accurate data. In addition, Tobii Pro has enabled a gyroscope and accelerometer in each Glasses 2, allowing researchers to access and analyze head and body movement along with the eye-tracking data. All current Glasses 2 customers will receive the upgrades free of charge via an upcoming firmware update.
Maidenhead, U.K., researcher Nutshell has launched a mobile app, Nutshell Mobile, designed to provide task and diary-based surveys to consumers and then gather data on their experiences via video, image, audio or questions.
Fashion Snoops, a New York trend tracking company, has introduced an online platform to examine the interaction between fashion, style, technology and other cultural influences. It provides trend mapping and video clips that show how trends evolve and forecasts how the trends may impact a business.
Digsite, a Madison, Wis., qualitative online community specialist, has introduced a Digsite Partner Program with 10 inaugural Digsite partners. The partners are research consultants who have trained and worked with Digsite and are now available to help companies in planning, managing and analyzing their Digsite communities.
France-based Ipsos has launched a suite of geolocalized research offerings. The first has launched in North America and uses Google Opinion Rewards, a Google Consumer Surveys app. Utilizing location data of respondents that have opted-in, researchers can measure the satisfaction and loyalty of major retail, restaurant and hotel chains.
Shelton, Conn., researcher SSI has launched the SSI Proximity Sample, a geolocation tool that is part of its integrated mobile survey solution which includes the SSI QuickThoughts mobile data collection app and SSI QuestTest, an automated tool that tests for errors and abnormalities in surveys. The solution, fully integrated into SSI’s technology platform, is designed to provide flexibility by enabling the collection of in-the-moment data.
Influence Search, a dashboard that identifies people, media and brands for specific topic niches, has been launched by Demographics Pro, Carrboro, N.C. The product is available by dashboard or API.
Translation Cloud, Jersey City, N.J., is now offering captioning and subtitling services for videos and films. The expansion is in response to the FCC requirement of all videos to offer both open and closed captioning on the Internet.
www.translation-services-usa.com
Southampton, U.K., firm eDigital Research is now able to embed surveys directly into company survey software and then prompt feedback via beacon technology.
Boston software firm Crimson Hexagon has added the Audience Affinities feature to its ForSight platform. Affinities utilizes more than seven years of social media data to find insights about the interests of customers and target markets. The insights can then be used to improve the ROI of advertising buys, consumer research and brand messaging.
Israeli software firm AppsFlyer has introduced a television attribution tool to track new user installs in a specific area after an ad has run in that region. This will allow companies to track their TV campaigns, analyze performance and adjust its planning as needed.
Luxembourg technology firm Talkwalker has launched a suite of social media data applications designed to provide instant analysis of social media data. The firm opened a New York office in February and hired Todd Grossman as CEO Americas.
Toluna QuickSurveys has introduced a survey platform designed to provide an engaging and interactive experience for the participant. The platform is compatible with all devices and offers over 25 question types aimed at maximizing survey completion rates.
Stockholm software company Cint has launched Engage MR, a tool for improved panel management. It includes panel recruitment features that allow fast calculation of ROI on different recruitment patterns along with a user-friendly interface for panel setup and management.
Adaptive Insights, a San Francisco software firm, has unveiled a new service, Adaptive Solutions, which provides a collection of pre-configured best practices frameworks. The first component, Adaptive Revenue, integrates sales, service and financial data and with corporate goals, quota planning, commission and sales compensation models. The company also introduced over 20 new enhancements to its Adaptive Suite, including the ability to incorporate sales, service and customer data directly into its Adaptive Discovery dashboards.
Mavrck, a Boston specialist in social media influence measurement, has introduced Fan Grader, which will track a brand’s Facebook page to identify its degree of engagement and its top 100 fans. The tool pinpoints fans who contribute the most posts, then analyzes their likes and the replies to their posts to further identify the fans who engage their friends.
Montreal research firm iPerceptions has released its Universal Code to all users of its Active Research Platform. The Universal Code centralizes all of iPerceptions’ voice of the customer research projects into one code, letting users create and manage multiple research projects with almost no reliance on IT resources. Once the script is on all pages of a Web site, marketers can control their own research via the Active Research platform.
Research Now has launched its Dermatology Panel, to provide insights into the practices, treatments and sentiments related to dermatology. This is the company’s seventh market research panel based around therapeutic areas.
Teletrax Inc., Eindhoven, The Netherlands, has launched its new TV Audience Sync product powered by Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings.
Gain Theory, London, has launched as a marketing foresight consultancy that will be led by Worldwide CEO Jason Harrison.
Marketing and Research Resources Inc., Frederick, Md., is marking its 25th anniversary of research work.
SurveyAnalytics, Seattle, has launched a new version of its online research platform, SurveyAnalytics 8.0.
GlimpzIt, a visual dialogue platform based in San Francisco, released its first enterprise product, a platform for marketers to communicate directly with customers on their mobile phones and to receive customer feedback in the form of photos and videos.
Tractica, a marketing intelligence firm based in Boulder, Colo., announced the launch of its new Biometrics Advisory Service, a subscription-based market research and analysis tool that provides strategy insights and market data for companies in the biometrics sector.
SiteZeus, a Tampa, Fla., start-up, is now offering its site-selection services, targeting retail, health care, restaurant and hospitality brands with more than 10 physical locations.
Beringer wine and its agency TWINOAKS are introducing tasting stations, which have been installed in 1,000 Kroger stores across 20 states. The tasting stations allow the customer to taste three varietals of Beringer wine using a single, nonalcoholic flavor strip placed in front of the bottles, in an effort to instill confidence in the consumer's wine selection.
Ipsos InnoQuest, part of New York research firm Ipsos, has launched overnight concept testing with optimization.
Mozilla is unveiling its Suggested Tiles ad platform, allowing marketers to serve targeted ads to Firefox users. The platform involves categorizing Firefox users based on their frequent and recent browsing history and showing users tiles from marketers who want to reach people in specific segments. The program will launch around 30 targeting categories including news, games, movies and automotive. Mozilla will begin beta testing and expects the platform to fully launch this summer.
Apex Ops Group, which has been the operational center for Honeoye Falls, N.Y., research firm KJT Group, handling its sampling, survey programming, recruitment and data processing, is now also offering its services to other firms.
Vision Critical, a Vancouver, British Columbia, customer intelligence platform provider, launched its Consumer Goods Intelligence Suite, a software solution created to help consumer packaged goods companies with business decisions.
Reston, Va., research firm comScore has introduced its Industry Trust Solution for programmatic buyers. It will allow advertisers to include viewability and anti-fraud metrics into their pre-bids. The metrics include attributes such as top properties rankings, viewability ratings and nonhuman traffic ratings. They are the latest offering in comScore's Industry Trust Initiative aimed at alleviating industry issues such as ad fraud, non-human traffic, Internet piracy and promoting “trusted transactions” between buyers and sellers in digital advertising. The pre-bid metrics are available in 44 markets, including the U.K., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.S.
Chicago research firm IRI has launched a suite of software solutions, the Innovation Solution Portfolio, which includes a platform for new product concept testing. It is aimed at reducing the cycle time for testing multiple new products to days rather than weeks or months.
In Surrey, U.K., research firm Bonamy Finch has introduced its BoFiLer, a tool to determine the quality of a segmentation study. The tool provides a single score based on a set of measures and compares the study with others developed for the project as well as other segmentations in the database. The performance indicators capture both statistical and pragmatic properties of a segmentation solution.
Dubai-based online health care specialist 42 market research has launched a new research panel in Bulgaria.