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A Panel is a group of people who have signed up to be a member of a community for the purposes of participating in surveys.
If you intend to do any research online, you must utilize a Panel. You can’t just send email to people who have not previously agreed to participate. That is spam, and it will get a very negative reaction and potentially damage your company’s reputation. So you have to find people who have already said they’ll take surveys when you want to conduct an online research project.
Since you have to invite people from an existing Panel, you can only conduct surveys with the kinds of people who are already in Panels. If you want to reach the general public (or some large subset like adult women), you probably don’t need your own Panel—you can purchase access from companies who have national panels. But, if you want to reach a more specific group (like, say, your own customers) there is no existing Panel that has them ready to participate! In that case, you need to build a Panel of those people ahead of time. Customer panels are the most common type of Panel we manage at TroyResearch. In addition to the research/spam issue, having your own Panel also lets you build a relationship with your customers as you gather their opinions, give them rewards and inside information, and show them how their involvement has made a difference.
Managing a Panel requires three things: tools, time and expertise. You’ll need tools to be able to create and maintain the online community environment for your panelist (website, interactive login area, prize catalog, etc.) and you need a response center to respond to and track communications with panelists. You’ll need time to interact with your panelists—especially if they are your existing customers—so they feel appreciated and get responses quickly. And you’ll need expertise on the nuances of survey programming, lottery and sweepstakes rules, referral network strategies, privacy policies and similar issues in order to answer questions from your Panelists. |
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