CMOR MONTHLY BULLETIN: RESPONDENT COOPERATION

By Harry Heller, CMOR Director of Respondent Cooperation

Hello, everyone. My name is Harry Heller and I am the new Director of Respondent Cooperation. I’m a long-term veteran of our industry, a former Chairman of CMOR, CASRO and a long-time board member of the ARF. I have spoken at many MRA meetings and many of you may know me. I’ve been working at this position since mid-September and I am impressed with the amount of activities already in process when I came on board.

Why did I take this position? Because I really believe that we can do something significant about improving Respondent Cooperation. Notice I say we. I can’t do it alone. There are many issues and problems we have to overcome to get respondents back on our side. All of us have to give time, effort and commitment to improve respondent cooperation. In a way, 2005 is a good time to start this process. Here’s why:

• The Do-Not-Call (DNC) rules have taken many of those telemarketing calls out of the lives of those homes that care not to receive them. The marketing research industry is not part of the DNC rules. That means that we have fewer competitors for the precious free time of our respondents. But let’s not make the mistake of crowding all of our calls into the 6PM to 9PM “family time” of our respondents, a mistake telemarketers have made. Studies presented at CMOR Respondent Cooperation Conferences and Workshops demonstrate that if you give the respondent a chance to reschedule a call or if you pre-invite the sample to participate in the survey and schedule it to their convenience, cooperation rates will rise significantly. (This is the first of many tips I will be providing for you in this bulletin as time goes on, coming out of our research conferences.)

• While we are talking about findings of studies to improve respondent cooperation, let me remind you that the 2005 CMOR Respondent Cooperation Conference will be held in April. I promise you that you will get more knowledge and ideas on how to improve respondent cooperation during this meeting than you can anywhere else. Here are the details:

Title: Protecting Our Assets IV

Dates: April 14-15, 2005 Washington, DC

Location: Hotel Washington

Visit the www.CMOR.org website for registration information

• The industry identifier has been designed, and registered with the U.S. Trademark Office. A policy of how we distribute it to legitimate research companies is being developed. CMOR member companies, and approved member companies of CMOR sponsoring organizations will be eligible to use it in soliciting respondents in person, by telephone, by mail and online. A major Public Relations effort will be constructed to introduce it to the public. We have hired the well known PR firm, KCS&A, to run this campaign. To help in this effort, please send me the names and addresses of any publications in your localities so that we can make sure they are on our distribution list.

• One of the greatest challenges to increasing respondent cooperation is the level and the training of the interviewer, the first line of contact. Companies have always known (and some have had on staff) a small number of interviewers who are experts in converting hard-to-get respondents into participants. I always wondered -- can we clone these interviewers? Clone, no (it’s against the law), but train, yes. At the Conference in April we will hear from our CMOR-MRA task force on Avoidance Refusal Training. This training program will soon be available to all of our members. I think it is probably the most efficient way to receive better respondent participation.

• This training joins the CMOR Introduction to Survey Training Course that is now available, but as our industry survey showed, awareness of this program was not very high by our members. Now that you are aware, please let us know if you want to know more about this course.

• Finally, 2005 is a critical year because our country is at a crossroads. Last year, we saw a divided country of reds and blues. This division has had one positive impact. Americans are realizing how important their opinions are. From my point of view, the opinion and marketing research industry is the equivalent of the town meetings of the 1700’s. The difference is that now we have over 300 million people attending, of all different income levels, geographies, ethnicities, occupations, interests, etc. How do political and business leaders know what our opinions are? There are only two ways: through public opinion research to set priorities and strategies, and through elections and sales results confirming they did the right thing. If not for us, those that have the ears of the decision makers will be the only ones heard. I have always felt that we should think of ourselves as the Ombudsmen of the public’s attitudes. If we don’t get these represented properly and communicated to our clients we’re not doing the job. So when people approach me at a party and tell me they do not participate in surveys, I tell them that it is their right to not participate, but don’t complain to me that they hate these new reality TV shows, or that they don’t like a flavor of soft-drinks, or that they hate certain features in their cars, or their bank’s ATM is hard to use, etc. They refused to participate when researchers asked for their opinions.

I am now putting together the CMOR Respondent Cooperation Advisory Committee, and I may be asking for help in certain areas. I’ll be updating you monthly on all our programs and efforts. In future updates I may be introducing some issues and asking for your opinions. If you have any questions or concerns you want to bring up with me my email address is hheller@cmor.org.

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An explanation of criteria to evaluate the commercial nature of emails is as follows:

• For email messages that contain only the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service (“commercial content”), the primary purpose of the message will be deemed to be commercial;
• For email messages that contain both commercial content and “transactional or relationship” content as set forth in the Act’s definition of “transactional or relationship message” and in the final Rule, the primary purpose of the message will be deemed to be commercial if either: 1) a recipient reasonably interpreting the subject line of the email would likely conclude that the message contains commercial content; or 2) the email’s “transactional or relationship” content does not appear in whole or substantial part at the beginning of the body of the message;
• For email messages that contain both commercial content and content that is neither “commercial” nor “transactional or relationship,” the primary purpose of the message will be deemed to be commercial if either: 1) a recipient reasonably interpreting the subject line of the message would likely conclude that the message contains commercial content; or 2) a recipient reasonably interpreting the body of the message would likely conclude that the primary purpose of the message is commercial. Factors relevant to this interpretation include the placement of commercial content in whole or in substantial part at the beginning of the body of the message; the proportion of the message dedicated to commercial content; and how color, graphics, type size, and style are used to highlight commercial content; and
• For email messages that contain only “transactional or relationship” content, the message will be deemed to have a “transactional or relationship” primary purpose.

While survey research is not commercial speech, this clarification serves to reinforce the notion that survey researchers should take actions to prevent emails from coming across to recipients (or SPAM filters) as commercial.

CMOR guidelines suggest that members always provide a valid opt-out as well as a functional return email address. Also, email messages should not contain false headers or misleading subject line information.

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