People do surveys for a number of reasons, some selfish, some altruistic and it pays to have a range of incentives to attract different people and appeal to different personal urges that members have.  A range of incentives can be as crucial as a range of recruitment methods in ensuring that a panel is representative and so MyVoice offers a complex mix of financial and non-financial incentives to encourage and reward panel members.

- Points mean vouchers – all members get points for completing client surveys.  These can be exchanged for popular high street vouchers (which effectively act as cash).  This has the widest appeal.  Furthermore we do NOT think it fair for members to ONLY be rewarded with prize draws (when they have a very low chance of winning).  The points awarded are approximately in the order of £1 per 5 minutes – more of a thank you than a retirement fund and they have the additional benefit of encouraging loyalty.

- Prize draws – prize draws can be a significant way to distribute rewards to the community but they also provide a little entertainment and dreaming as they are usually substantially larger than the standard incentives available for completing a survey.

- Charity donations – either direct donations or donations of points.  These appeal more to higher income groups.

- Data – some members (especially professionals and business respondents) are motivated by receiving a report that will teach them something about the subject being studied.  Others are keen to receive feedback about how they compare to the rest of the world - this has wide appeal to all groups and is something MyVoice is increasingly developing (though not at the expense of client confidentiality).

- Recognition – simply saying thank you

- Feedback - informing the members how their answers changed an outcome for the better is highly motivating.

- Short surveys – whilst we’ve successfully done stop start surveys of over 50 minutes in length, we strongly believe that under 10 minutes is where the best data lies and ideally under 7 minutes

- Trust / Honesty – we honestly measure survey length and communicate this to members so they know what to expect and can make an informed decision about whether or not to take a survey.

- Product – we are able to send out products (even food and consumables if they are long life or ambient).  This in itself is often a motivating incentive to take part in a survey, especially if it is a new or rare product.