SPONSORED CONTENT
For the past year, Precision Opinion has been diving into the world of SMS/text messaging to understand how it can be used as an additional method of data collection. We knew from the start that mobile devices were the optimal choice to connect and engage with respondents, but we were in search of how to legally reach non-opt-in individuals in all areas of the United States to conduct market research surveys through SMS without sacrificing quality and results. In addition to maintaining quality, we also wanted to look at the integration of big data and user experience behavior to grab the most well-rounded insights while asking the fewest questions possible to keep the survey short and concise. After months of research, testing, legal consultations and developing technology that adheres to and exceeds the standards of compliance for the market research industry, we are ready to reveal to the world our latest product, Gather. What does Gather mean for market research? Let’s dive in!
Text messaging statistics for the modern age
The majority of Americans prefer to communicate via text message – a 2019 study from TextMagic.com found that texting is the No. 1 method of communication for Americans aged 50 and below, with 97% of Americans texting at least once per day. Additionally, 82% of text messages are read within five minutes of being received, compared to the 1 in 4 e-mails that are actually opened by a recipient. “Consumers prefer to open texts on their mobiles rather than receive e-mails or calls,” Text Magic reports. “This may indicate that texting is viewed as a more trustworthy channel than e-mail or phone calls, which are more likely to be affected by robocalls or spam. Also, consumers prefer texting to e-mail when it comes to getting time-sensitive notifications.”
That being said, it’s clear that using text messages in order to capture insights from a more well-rounded group of individuals is imperative. It’s a direction that our industry must take in order to prevent skewed data from the few that still answer phone calls on their mobile device or the quickly fading landlines (roughly 10% of the U.S. population still has a working landline; phys.org, 03/2019). Additionally, while phones are still a viable way to capture respondents, e-mail is becoming increasingly difficult due to the amount of spam messaging and bad actors that interrupt inboxes. So, what does one do? That brings us to our software, Gather – an SMS market research tool.
SMS in market research
Gather is a 100% TCPA-compliant SMS market research software that allows surveys to be sent to non-opted-in respondents across the United States. To validate the efficiency of and need for our software, we put it to the test by running a parallel study of SMS vs. cellphone and landline dialing to see if the quality and results kept in line with the standards we expected.
A comparison of landline/cellphone/SMS deliverables
Precision Opinion ran an independent comparison survey to better understand the difference in time in field, cost to collect and demographics of respondents between landline, cellular and SMS methods of data collection. The survey instrument was designed to be 12 minutes long and contained a variety of current news and events questions. A national RDD sample was pulled from voter files and population quotas were based on the U.S. Census. Data collection took place over a consecutive four-day period of Thursday through Sunday.
At the end of the data collection period, 301 surveys were completed by landline (+/- 5.65% at a 95% confidence interval); 108 surveys were completed by cellphone (+/- 9.43% at a 95% confidence interval); and 578 surveys were completed by SMS (+/- 4.08% at a 95% confidence interval). In total 987 surveys were completed (+/- 3.12% at a 95% confidence interval).
Key discovery
Understanding price and time in field are key components in the delivery of unbiased balanced data, and as a result of conducting an analysis of our 12-month in-field study of SMS protocol it is our opinion that adding the verified Precision Opinion TCPA-compliant SMS methodology to landline calling gains the best of both worlds of predictive data and cost efficiency. The cost of cellphone dialing in this comparative document is 4.85 times more expensive and takes 39.5 times more hours in the field than does SMS. The other key discovery is Precision Opinion’s Gather software can stand on its own and has produced unimpeachable findings in media testing, ad testing, tracking, messaging, issue/crisis management, likely donor score and more.
Productivity comparison
SMS delivered the shortest field time by a wide margin. It took only five hours of production time to produce 578 completed interviews – a rate of 115.6 completes per hour. Cellphone took 197.79 hours in the field at a rate of .55 completes per hour while landline predictive dialer production was at a rate of 2.45 completes per hour.
Using an example rate across the board of $24 per hour, the cost per completed interview would be $43.95 for cell, $9.80 for landline and $9.05 for SMS.
Demographic Comparison
Overall the percentage delta of core demographic measurements was steady across most all subsets. The only category that fell outside the margin of error yet is weighable was an 11% delta in the high school education box with SMS producing 9% of the respondents versus 20% for landline and cell respondents.
Political Comparison
Allowing the sample to fall out naturally with no quotas or weighting, we found each comparative category to be balanced. In landline/cell versus SMS, the only segment outside the margin of error was “Liberal,” receiving an 8% higher representation from the SMS data collection versus landline and cell.
While we initially dove into the world of SMS as a way to find new data collection methodologies that could replace online and expensive mobile phone calls, we discovered something far greater – a holistic approach that utilizes phone and SMS to better capture insights than ever before. Additionally, with public policy research in particular, Gather is able append SMS data to registered voter files to discover more insights into an individual’s actual voting patterns.
With the use of SMS, telephone, online and in-person research methodologies, Precision Opinion is now able to establish well-rounded consumer behavior strategies that allow for insights like never before.