No aspect of your job should ever be called a “nightmare.” But for market researchers, manually managing survey rewards frequently becomes just that.
Case in point: Farm Journal is a leading data insights company that collects first-party data to serve every audience in the agricultural industry. Managing and deploying quantitative and qualitative research for clients is a key aspect of Farm Journal’s services. However, providing incentives to drive more survey responses was quickly becoming a huge drain on time.
Running hundreds of surveys per year — including juggling spreadsheets to manually track which respondents have received their gift card — can quickly become a full-time job.
That was the experience of Amy Mills, a market research associate at Farm Journal who was spending hours and hours sending thousands of rewards a year.
She used Amazon to fulfill all their gift card needs, describing the process as “just a nightmare.” Due to the large volume of rewards, her team frequently hit the maximum spend limit on Amazon, which restricts gift card purchases to $10,000 per customer per day.
Faced with that daily obstacle, along with frustrated survey respondents awaiting their promised reward, Mills says the process “has taken a lot of time and energy and was such a headache.” So she and her team turned to BHN Rewards.
The Farm Journal researchers were left rewarding survey participants on an ad hoc basis and trying to keep track of it all. “You never knew if the gift cards went out, if the survey respondent got it, or who didn’t,” says Mills.
Not anymore.
Mills can prefund her BHN Rewards account and set up the number of rewards she’ll need for each campaign in minutes. Then, she can see whose rewards have been sent and whether each reward has been claimed.
And she’s not the only one excited about this change to automated incentives. The Farm Journal accounting department now has full visibility into reward costs. Mills says it’s “very transparent,” and accounting can see how much is spent per campaign, per person. Plus, if a respondent doesn’t claim their reward, Farm Journal receives those funds back in their BHN Rewards account.
With all their original obstacles removed, Farm Journal now has the piece that was missing with their incentives — immediate satisfaction.
In addition, integrating digital rewards into an existing tool only makes the delivery that much faster. Farm Journal tied BHN Rewards into Qualtrics, which the team uses for market research programs.
To ensure a smooth setup of the integration, Farm Journal met with BHN Rewards and Qualtrics prior to launch. Mills was shocked at how easy it was to automate incentives after she used to spend hours of her time on manual fulfillment.
“BHN Rewards integrates really nicely with Qualtrics, and we have no problems with it at all,” Mills adds. She simply sets up the incentives campaign in BHN Rewards and lets the integration take care of the rest.
Mills is beyond relieved to put her focus back on her work, now that she has cut down on her rewards admin time by an estimated 75%. “I’ve been able to take on new things because I don’t have that chunk of time spent” on manual incentives.
Additionally, Farm Journal’s clients benefit from faster response times to surveys. Before, “there was no incentive or hurry to complete the survey,” she says. With instant reward delivery, “we get responses within a few days.”
“I love BHN Rewards. It has been an amazing tool,” says Mills. “I wouldn’t be able to continue doing my work if I didn’t have it. It has been a lifesaver.”
Ready to see how BHN Rewards can improve your research programs while saving you time? Request a demo today!
Chelsea is a multifaceted marketer with nearly 10 years of experience spanning strategy development, product marketing, and content. She now focuses on customer engagement and success.
Chelsea is a multifaceted marketer with nearly 10 years of experience spanning strategy development, product marketing, and content. She now focuses on customer engagement and success.
