3 Ways Suzy’s Self-Owned Panel Wins Over Third-Party Panels

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Could Suzy’s unique participant screening process transform your brand’s research quality and customer insights? Discover Suzy's game-changing approach.

Finding the right audience to survey can be tricky, but it’s a critical step in the research process to ensure your results are reliable and unbiased. 

Depending on the tool you’re using, the process for screening for your target audience can vary. For most market research tools, respondents come from third-party panel providers, and screening happens at the start of each survey, using terminate logic to screen out any respondents who don’t meet your criteria. However, because Suzy owns our panel, our screening process works a bit differently and has some distinct benefits that third-party panels lack. 

Screening with third-party panels

Before unpacking the benefits of using a tool like Suzy that has a proprietary panel, it’s important to understand the broader landscape, where most market research tools leverage third-party panel providers. Many market research tools collaborate with separate companies that manage their own panels, which often include specialized panels for industries like healthcare, finance, or emerging technologies​​, which can be especially helpful in accessing hard-to-reach audiences.

However, using third-party panels can present challenges related to quality control and continuous or iterative research. The fragmented nature of third-party panels and market research tools can hinder the efficacy of quality checks, as the checks done by the panel companies don’t communicate with those done by the market research tools. This can make it challenging to ensure data quality, as there’s no visibility into the end-to-end respondent experience. In contrast, Suzy’s self-owned panel means Biotic can analyze respondent behavior across the entire ecosystem: from signup to survey to incentive and everywhere in between. 

Additionally, with third-party panels, respondents must be screened before each study. This leads to a relatively fatiguing respondent experience, as respondents are required to answer the same (or similar) screening questions over and over as they attempt to qualify for research studies. For example, a respondent could have to answer the question of whether they’re the primary grocery shopper for their household before every F&B study. Respondents are often not incentivized for completing these screening questions, which further reduces engagement and data quality. 

Lastly, retargeting capabilities are often limited or even nonexistent when using third-party panels, which greatly reduces the ability to re-engage respondents for longitudinal studies or follow-ups. After a respondent participates in a survey or interview, there’s often no method to recontact that respondent for follow up questions or additional research, leaving researchers with unanswered questions and disjointed studies. 

Screening in Suzy

Before we get into how Suzy solves these challenges, let’s first unpack how screening works with Suzy.

At Suzy, users identify their target audiences using screening surveys. Screening surveys are run 4-6 times per year, and they can be retargeted over and over again for your studies in between, so there’s no need to rescreen for every single survey. This obviously saves researchers time and money, but this benefit is also reflected in the respondent experience, as our Crowdtap respondents aren’t fatigued by answering the same screening questions repeatedly, unlike they do with third-party panels. Additionally, we incentivize our respondents for every screening question they answer, regardless of whether their responses qualify them for future surveys. 

The most significant element of Suzy’s screening method is that you have the ability to retarget respondents. This applies for not just retargeting screening surveys but any survey or action that’s launched in Suzy, allowing for truly continuous and iterative research. Unlike third-party panels, you have the ability to recontact any respondent who has participated in a previous survey, question or live interview, enabling researchers to follow up on interesting insights to dig deeper, gain clarity or collect soundbites.  

We have several demographics built into the profile of every Crowdtap respondent, so there’s never a need to include basic demographics, like ethnicity, age, gender, and income, in screening surveys. Because these demographics are built in, screening surveys can be tailored to your needs to identify any brand-specific criteria beyond our built-in demographics. For example, you can use a screening survey to identify consumers who have purchased your products, who are loyal to one of your competitors, or who are new to your category. You can then retarget respondents who participated in your screening survey based on how they answered questions, and if you need to layer in any demographic targeting, you can do so by just adjusting your targeting settings. 

Because screening surveys play such an important role in how research is conducted within Suzy, it’s critical to ensure they’re crafted with care, intention, and expertise. And because these surveys are launched only a few times per year, they require a bit of foresight to be effective. 

When you’re used to project-by-project work or haven’t put together a formal research plan, it can be difficult to predict the full range of audiences you need to tap into for all your upcoming projects in one quarterly screener. And often, researchers don’t take advantage of the full 20 questions offered by a screening survey, which leads to missed opportunities to engage with nuanced audience segments. 

To help bridge this gap, Suzy offers intensive screener development with our Center of Excellence team as part of the implementation process. In these collaborative sessions, our team is there to help you establish a learning plan for your research, explore the intricacies of your upcoming projects, identify potential target audiences and competitors, and unpack your data analysis needs. At the end of the session, you’ll have a cohesive 20-question survey that abides by market research best practices and targets all your necessary audiences, ensuring no potential segment is overlooked. 

How can AI optimize this process?

Developing screeners is both an art and a science, and getting them just right can be a time-consuming process. Enter Suzy’s AI screener generation. Like all of the tools in Suzy’s AI suite, this feature was developed by market researchers with extensive industry experience to ensure its outputs are comprehensive, accurate, and well-written. The feature asks you to submit a short brief, where you’ll answer questions similar to those asked in live screener workshops. And the best part: even if your brief is simple and can be executed in fewer than 20 questions, Suzy’s AI screener generation will fill gaps and identify other potentially relevant audiences to ensure you get the most out of your screening surveys. 

In a matter of minutes, AI screener generation provides you with a 20-question survey that is pre-programmed and ready to launch. This innovation not only streamlines the screening process but also ensures that every survey is as comprehensive and effective as possible, marking a significant advancement in how companies set the foundation for their research with Suzy. 

The Suzy Difference

Unlike third-party panels, Suzy’s proprietary audience enables us to conduct pre-screening surveys just a few times a year, providing a high-quality, on-demand respondent pool that’s always ready for targeted studies. This setup eliminates the need for repetitive screening and improves the respondent experience, which translates into more engaged participants and better data quality. Not to mention this enables the ability to recontact respondents over and over again, whether it’s in a screening survey or a previously conducted survey or interview. 

Our built-in demographics and flexible targeting settings allow for customized and brand-specific screening surveys that go beyond standard demographic filters, empowering researchers to identify consumers loyal to specific brands, those who have purchased particular products, or individuals new to a category. The ability to retarget respondents based on prior survey responses also makes Suzy ideal for longitudinal or ongoing studies, helping researchers track evolving consumer behaviors without needing to rescreen or lose consistency.

Suzy’s Center of Excellence further enhances this process by offering expert support to develop well-crafted, quarterly screeners tailored to each brand’s unique needs. And with Suzy’s AI screener generation, researchers can expedite the creation of comprehensive, pre-programmed screeners from a simple brief, ensuring that every survey maximizes reach and relevance.

To learn more about Suzy and how our self-owned panel can help create efficiencies in your research, book a demo with our team today.