Episode 73 - What Yields More Engagement - Surveys or Contests

In this podcast episode from FI GROW Solutions, CEO Meredith Olmstead and Senior Vice President of Marketing Nida Ajaz discuss the comparative effectiveness of contests versus surveys for engaging clients. They share results from a recent test involving the same audience and prize but with different formats: a simple contest and a more detailed survey. The results highlight how surveys can significantly enhance engagement over contests by providing value through participants' opinions. 

• Effectiveness of Surveys Over Contests: Surveys tend to engage a larger number of participants compared to contests, even when both are offered to the same audience with the same rewards. 

• Strategic Integration of Marketing Insights: The data collected from surveys can be strategically used for more than just engagement. It provides valuable insights into the customer base, which can aid in product development, targeted marketing, and overall improvement of services. 

• Leveraging Small Incentives for Big Results: Even nominal prizes can significantly increase participation rates in surveys and contests. Highlighting these incentives effectively, such as in email subject lines, can attract more attention and participation, demonstrating that minor tweaks in marketing tactics can lead to substantially better outcomes.

Transcription:

Meredith Olmstead:

Hi there. I'm Meredith Olmstead, CEO and founder of FI GROW Solutions. We work with credit unions and banks on digital marketing and sales enablement. And I am here with our senior vice president of marketing, Nida Ajaz. Say hi, Nida.

Nida Ajaz:

Hi everyone.

Meredith Olmstead:

So Nida and I were just talking, and Nida, I hear it. Say hi again. That was a little bit... I couldn't quite hear you.

Nida Ajaz:

Oh, okay. Hi everyone.

Meredith Olmstead:

There you go.

Nida Ajaz:

Nice to be here again.

Meredith Olmstead:

So, Nida and I were having a really interesting conversation this week, actually with the entire team, about an experiment, I guess. I don't know if you want, a test, whatever. She was testing something for several clients and specifically for one client. And the results were so interesting that we decided we needed to hit Record and share it with you guys.

So really the topic is, what works better for clients contests or surveys. And I know they're both really different and you can do them for very different reasons, but we were really blown away by the difference in a contest-versus-survey that was shared with almost the exact same audience for a client, in the exact same way via email to an existing customer or member list. And the results were crazy different. And so Nida wanted to kind of talk about it because I think there's a lot of takeaways for marketers, for banks and credit unions.

So first thing we need to understand is one or the other, contest versus surveys, when you're picking, it's going to depend on the goal of what you're trying to achieve. So first, unpack that for us, Nida, when you mean, what do you mean by different goals for these things?

Nida Ajaz:

So it's interesting that initially whenever someone's trying to run a contest, usually it's like, let's get more engagement on social or things like that. So we do want people to focus on this goal a little bit differently. Like, try to see if there's ways that you can still run a contest, but then also gain insight for something about your customer list that you didn't know about already. So in that case, a survey is a great way to tie people in, still offer that prize that you were looking for, but then also get this added insight from-

Meredith Olmstead:

Interesting.

Nida Ajaz:

Your customers about what they're [inaudible 00:02:46].

Meredith Olmstead:

So, it's almost like a nuance. Like, you want to drive some engagement potentially on social media or some other channel that you're communicating with people on, but you're going to layer in the idea of capturing some information about your customers that you could use in the future to influence your marketing, maybe your product development, how you're going to communicate, how you might target to get in front of new people in the future. Okay, that makes sense. So go ahead and give the results, then, for the example that you just encountered over the last few months.

Nida Ajaz:

The example we dealt with was, first we ran a contest about what's your favorite vacation destination. And the goal for that was to get more followers on Instagram. But we do offer all contests for all of our clients across the board. We make a landing page with a form, so not only you're just looking at comments on Facebook or whatever, it's engaging them after the fact. So if someone's interacting, then you can kind of send a follow-up email. So we always recommend having a landing page. So we set that up for the contest, we sent it to the 13,000 members that this organization has, and then we had the same $250 prize. And it was one question, honestly. It was just, "Share your vacation destination and enter to win." And we got in two and a half weeks, around 237 entries to that contest versus the next, right after those two and a half weeks ended, from mid-May to end of May.

And then from right when that ended, we started a survey that was another initiative, a goal of the organization to go into understanding a little bit about their market, what kind of age do the members... What are the age ranges of the kids, what are the goals for the next six to 12 months, things like that.

Meredith Olmstead:

Gotcha.

Nida Ajaz:

So it was a little bit lengthier survey. So I would say around seven questions, seven different sections, and we have them laid out where only one question shows at a time, so it's not overwhelming. And it still had the same prize, $250.

Meredith Olmstead:

Okay.

Nida Ajaz:

With, and it ran the exact, 200-

Meredith Olmstead:

Two and a half weeks.

Nida Ajaz:

Two and a half weeks, exactly. And then so far we've had for them, and this is still running this survey, so it's going to go another week, because we're going to lengthen the time. But so far I took the two and a half weeks to compare it exactly with the contest, and it was 2000 people. So 200 for a contest, versus 2000. The same exact prize and the same exact length of time.

So it just tells you a little about the psychology of humans in general. We feel so okay with giving our opinions on things, but then we are kind of taken a little bit behind when it comes to a contest saying to ourselves, like, oh, I'll never win that. Whatever, let's not enter this. But for a survey, a human psychology is like, okay, at least even if I don't win, I'm giving them something of value.

Meredith Olmstead:

Yes. That so funny.

Nida Ajaz:

It's an interesting, fine-

Meredith Olmstead:

Yeah. Interesting.

Nida Ajaz:

I wasn't that... Like, I was expecting the service always to do better, because we've done it for other clients, but I was blown away with the proportion for the same exact price, same exact audience to see. And I was like, this is a good recommendation for anyone who's out there trying to say, hey, I want to engage more people with contests. But this takes it a bit further for you. Now you can take this information, present it to the Board, to the CEO, and have some valuable insight that you can get from your audience that helps achieve other departments and remove those silos internally too, right?

Meredith Olmstead:

Yeah.

Nida Ajaz:

So if there's someone trying to experiment, we had another client last year who was trying to see if high yield checking is going to apply for their audience. And they actually asked, what of these features would you like in a high yield checking count? And they offered, well, is it removing overdraft fees? Is it rewards? Is it higher rate, this and that? And because of that, they actually made a change on their product, and they're introducing a new high yield checking account this year. So some of that insight can go above and beyond what you're trying to do and actually help with your product offering.

Meredith Olmstead:

Yeah, super interesting. So I think really the main takeaway here is that you can add a very nominal prize to help kind of incentivize, or even just it almost the prize, the number, probably gets people's attention, like win $250, put something like that in a subject line, that might get people to open the email or pay attention to the offer. But then, really when they see, oh, just a straight contest, they're going to be like, I'll never win. Versus here's five questions, seven questions. We really want to know what you think about X, Y, or Z. And they're ready to jump in on that and tell you. Interesting.

And then I like to, can you just tell us really quickly when you talked about what are your six to 12 month goals, can you remember off the top of your head, what were some of the options that people were sharing and that you were then able to use for marketing in the future?

Nida Ajaz:

Yeah, so usually we get, number one, their age range. So where are they at in the market? Even though you have the age of all of your members, it'd be good to see, based on age range. And then we ask them what are the goals for the next six to 12 months? And the reason we limit it to six to 12 months, because if you ask them anytime, of course you need a house or a car eventually, but six to 12 months is very key here, because within that time range, you get a segmented list of people who might be in the market. So some of the questions were, are you in the market for buying a new house to a better house downgrading to a smaller house, like retirement goals? And then there was first auto goals funding your kids' college goals. So a lot of this insight based on your audience, you can now segment your list and give them targeted messages based on that, based on what they're asking.

Meredith Olmstead:

Yeah, great. Great stuff. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing. I know it's a small little tidbit and a very small kind of difference in positioning, but it's very similar amount of effort to get a sizably better result. So I think it's definitely worth the effort. I appreciate you sharing that with us, Nida. And if you want to learn more about marketing or sales for your financial institution, please visit us at figrow.com. We have lots of other blogs, case studies, lots of other podcast episodes that give great tips like this. So we'd love to see you on the website at some point in the near future. And otherwise, let's just all get out there and make it happen.