Best Practices to Optimize Customer Lists

Published On: November 6, 2023By

Recruiting from preexisting customer lists is a great way to include current and lapsed customers audiences in research.  These groups can speak to their direct experience with your products services and work equally well in B2B and B2C research studies.

We at KNow have developed a list of best practices to optimize the use of these lists, to ensure these valuable voices have a smooth experience through the recruiting and fieldwork process.

Since these potential participants are un-or-less familiar with market research (compared to traditional panel recruits):

  • Additional vetting and recruitment steps are required
  • More over-recruiting is often needed since lower response rates and/or higher no-show rates are expected

Since studies using these lists are branded and are in themselves a marketing touchpoint for the brand, more care and attention is required to ensure participants have a good experience throughout.

We recommend brands and research teams align on key list attributes at the project’s outset to ensure a smooth and successful process:

  • Origin: How was the list built? A recent survey? Customer database? Have the individuals on this list consented to sharing their contact information in this way?
  • Age: How old is your customer list?  If the data is 3 + years old, it may be too outdated to use
  • Data: What data do you already have on your customers vs. what re-screening questions need to be asked?
  • Size: Are there enough contacts to get the participant number needed for the study?
  • Qualification: Are segments required for the study? If yes, how are the segments weighted in the data?

Once those details are in place send a project-specific opt-in to check if participants are open to being contacted by the agency. Send any lists/files carefully, protecting PII all along the way. Keep the number of quotas and terminating points needed in the scheduling process as low as possible, to make your team look as good as possible (nobody likes to be turned down!).

Have a list of potential participants to include in research? Reach out to admin@knowresearch.com to help us optimize it for your next project!