How Survey Incentives Can Support Your Diversity and Inclusion Efforts

  • author

    Hannah Prince

  • posted

    Mar 07, 2023

  • topic

    Academic Research, Digital Marketing, Market Research

How Survey Incentives Can Support Your Diversity and Inclusion Efforts

Diversity is way more than just a buzzword these days. The influence that it’s having on consumer and employee decisions is growing, and businesses must take notice. No marketer, researcher, or employer can afford to neglect diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, especially with the quick spread of information online and on social media.

Industry predictions everywhere are noting the focus on DEI in 2023:

  • Marketers “need to be careful that their messages, images, voices, and values represent the full spectrum of potential customers and not leave anyone out due to their own unconscious bias,” says digital marketing agency Single Grain.
  • For market researchers, the goal should be to “increase sample diversity, with a greater range of demographics represented and therefore a greater chance for businesses to research the entirety of their target audience,” according to Quantilope, a research platform and BHN Rewards partner.
  • Only 58% of individual contributors say their senior leaders show they are genuinely committed to greater DEI, Qualtrics finds.

Start With the Right Insights

Everyone knows that for insights to be reliable, they have to be representative of your entire customer base, target audience, or staff. That representative data is key to working to be a more equal and inclusive brand or workplace. Survey incentives can help make sure you’re able to collect feedback or opinions from every segment of your audience.

With the right survey incentives tool, you’ll reach more people, boost completion rates, and increase the diversity of your responses. Here’s how.

Offer a Variety of Rewards

To ensure that you get feedback from a wide range of respondents, rewards and incentives can’t be one-size-fits-all. To attract diverse participants, you need diverse survey incentives. Allowing respondents to choose the most compelling reward for them — one appropriate for their geographic location and preferences — helps you get the representative sample you need to make conclusions based on the entirety of your diverse audience.

Meet Your Audience Where They Are

To reach every part of your audience, you need to consider their behaviors and challenges. A good example of this is how you deliver your survey invitations and incentives. For instance, if you need more insights from lower-income consumers, consider using SMS instead of email, since most people today have a cellphone, even if they don’t have internet access at home. Younger audiences may also prefer to receive survey incentives via text, since many use their smartphones almost exclusively and may not even check their email regularly.

Get Responses Across the Spectrum

The people most likely to answer a survey are those who have really strong opinions one way or another. In the case of collecting feedback, it’s called the “squeaky-wheel syndrome,” meaning that your results might skew toward those who had bad experiences. By using survey incentives, you’re more likely to collect answers from not only the very happy or very unsatisfied, but also those who fall in the wide space between the extremes.

DEI isn’t the only 2023 business trend you should know about. Download our e-book to learn about the latest in marketing, research, and employee engagement — and how rewards can help you adapt.

about the author
Hannah Prince

Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.

Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.