Yes. Prize draws are often a great way for organisations to increase response rates to surveys and are especially useful for engaging potential respondents through e-surveys. This guidance has been created to discuss how to create and run a prize draw with your survey. Within our guidance below we will advise how to set-up and administer a prize draw, in alignment with our survey methods, and with the MRS (Market Research Society) code of conduct (accessible here), which The Audience Agency adheres to.
A note on collecting personal details
Prize draws require the collection of personal details, such as names and email addresses, in order to administer prizes and contact entrants. As questionnaires are designed to be completely anonymous, questions that ask for personal information cannot be included, therefore we can’t facilitate prize draws as part of our surveys. For these reasons, we ask that organisations create and administer prize draws themselves, so that personal data is collected separately to the survey. How this is done depends on your methodology.
Face to Face Surveys (Tablet or Paper)
The easiest and simplest way of administering a prize draw with a face to face survey (either tablet or paper) would be to use a separate prize draw form. Our surveys are designed to be interviewer led, so at the end of each interview, respondents can be asked if they would like to enter the prize draw. Interviewers should be clear that the survey will remain anonymous, as the details given will be kept separately to the survey and will only be used for the purpose of the prize draw, unless otherwise agreed.
Organisations may also wish to collect personal details to enable respondents to sign up to marketing or mailing lists. This should be processed in a similar fashion to the prize draw. The two can be collected within the same form, but the interviewer should be clear which one the respondent is signing up for. We would recommend having separate boxes for prize draw entry and marketing, to ensure that respondent consent for each is clearly recorded.
E-surveys
To facilitate prize draws in e-surveys we ask organisations to create online forms to collect prize draw information themselves. Please note, you will have to have an e-survey set up before the Survey Team can link it to your prize draw form. Forms can be created via a variety of platforms e.g. google forms/survey monkey/survey gizmo, please see an example form here . Once this form has been created, send the html address to a member of The Audience Agency Survey Team who will incorporate this link into the end of your e-survey. You will also need to specify the following information
a) who will administer the incentive;
b) what the incentive will be;
c) when the participant will receive the incentive; and
d) whether any conditions are attached e.g. completion of a specific task
TAA can then append your e-survey with a question such as;
“Would you like to enter [ORG NAME]’s prize draw to have a chance of winning [PRIZE]?
If yes, on pressing submit you will be redirected to their prize draw entry page. The Prize Draw is administered by [ORG NAME], Prize draw winners will be picked on [DATE] and will be contacted by [ORG NAME] directly shortly after the closing date.”
Please note that as this method requires setting up an additional question on your survey, incentivising an e-survey incurs our standard fee for this service: £100 + VAT.
To set up an incentivised e-survey with us, please include a note of this on your survey request form.
Prizes
In accordance with MRS Guidelines, prize draw incentives offered by organisations conducting research should not be related to that organisation’s goods or services, or vouchers to purchase goods or services.
Offering affiliated goods or services as an incentive, the survey could be considered as direct marketing and in addition, it may affect the quality of the research. For example, prizes related to the organisation may encourage those that had positive experiences to provide feedback and exclude users who have had negative experiences, therefore skewing the data. By using non-affiliated prizes, organisations incentivise responses from audiences who have had both positive and negative experiences. As such, our recommendation is to choose an incentive with appeal to a broad range of interests, such as a high street gift voucher.