Contest Incentives Pros & Cons

Incentives are extremely important if your goal is to get good data on your customers. Without incentives, very few customers will take any survey, because there is nothing that answers the “what’s in it for me” question. Many customer surveys use no incentive, expecting the customer to be motivated to fill out a survey.

Some are, but those people likely have something in common, because most people are looking for a reason to fill out a survey that benefits them. One of the most common strategies used by large businesses is a contest, such as “all survey respondents are entered to win a $500 gift card” or a new Apple iPad, or something that people like. These are, essentially, contests, and contests are only debatably useful as incentives for customer surveys.

Less Overall Costs Even large contests are likely to have less overall costs than some type of cash payment or product incentive that is handed out to everyone that takes the survey. That is because no matter the total value of the contest, you are likely paying less than you would pay if you had to pay to every individual.

For example, a contest that offers a winner $5,000 is still paying less for 10,000 respondents than an incentive that offers each respondent $1, and since $1 is not nearly enough to get people to want to take the survey, you may be better off with a contest. Higher Numbers to “Sell” the Survey If you’re trying to get people’s attention, $500 looks much larger than $10. From purely a marketing/advertising perspective, it’s easier to get people’s attention when you can throw a higher number around. “Would you like to be entered for a chance to win $1000?” is much more enticing than “Would you like $5?” If you’re trying to sell your survey, these higher numbers are valuable.

No Doubling of Prizes If you go into a retail store and get a survey, there’s nothing to stop you from going back into that retail store and getting another survey to double your incentives. Contests make it impossible to “double up” on your incentives because there can only be one winner, or at the very least it becomes statistically improbable for someone to win twice. For very large surveys, this could help you cut down on the financial costs of double data.

Contact Collection Many companies also use this as an opportunity to capture emails and contact people about products and services. This is a bit questionably ethical because the respondent has done you a favor by completing the survey, so trying to make more money off of them seems somewhat inappropriate. Nevertheless, it has its advantages.

However, even though contests have their benefits, they are not without their weaknesses as well. Some of these weaknesses include: Potential Respondents Know They Can’t Win As much as “win $500” can capture someone’s attention, “opportunities” to win things are available everywhere you turn, and no matter how many contests these people enter they have likely never won. If they wanted to win $1000, they could buy a scratch ticket and likely have better odds.

Knowing that the odds are terrible, many respondents will simply not bother. Appears Cheap Although this doesn’t affect all respondents, some will be aware of customer satisfaction research and the number of respondents you are likely to get. In those instances, your prize is considered fairly cheap unless you splurge. $500 isn’t much of a prize when someone only has a 1/100000 chance of winning it, and many potential respondents know this and won’t bother trying.

You have to increase the incentive amount by a considerable margin if you want people to overcome this knowledge. Not Winning Could Hurt Satisfaction Similarly, it’s possible that not winning could also hurt satisfaction, especially if the survey itself was long or intensive. If someone takes that kind of time to fill out a survey only to find that they get nothing for it (or they have to spend money and only receive a 10% discount, or something small), then they are likely to be displeased.

These are all customers, and so even if only a few customers are unhappy that they do not win, that could affect your bottom line.

There are benefits and weaknesses to using contests as incentives for the modern day business. It’s up to your company to determine what you’re willing to risk. On the one hand, contests are an easier way to run survey incentives, because you do not have to worry about total numbers, whether the incentive is enough, etc.

On the other hand, a hastily thrown together incentive may not be enough to motivate people to take the survey. Carefully consider your incentive options before you decide to move forward with your survey, because it’s your incentive that could make all the difference in your ability to collect data.