Engaging Insight Communities by Listening and Acting

Now that we have seen how to build a sense of community to enhance the depth of research achievable through an Insight Community with Escalent, it’s clear how valuable this resource is to have in your research tool kit. We also know that showing community members your firm has indeed acted upon their feedback helps strengthen that sense of community by demonstrating to them they have been heard and are valued. But while “share-backs” on projects are a great start, there are more ways to keep communities engaged.

When most of us think about share-backs, we visualize the research reports developed from projects conducted with the community members. But one important tool that can sometimes go amiss in the share-back process is the member sentiment evaluation survey. This type of  platform allows members to be more open about sharing why they agreed to be a part of the community in the first place, what keeps them motivated to contribute to the research questions, and what topics they are more interested in participating in and how often.

Now that is input that can be acted upon, easily and quickly. In a recent project with a financial services client, we did exactly that for a community of about 15,000 investors. Escalent kept a gentle pressure on the client to push more topical research projects when the demand from the business was less, to balance business needs with member fatigue.

For instance, we designed surveys on topics such as cryptocurrency that were requested by younger members. We even branded the results from these surveys with our client’s research team logo so they could take the results proactively to their business teams. Escalent also advised on topics for specific segments such as women, pre-retirees and self-directed investors, which showed each of these segments their voice was being heard.

This simple effort was very effective at engaging community members and business stakeholders alike. The key message here is that while we are hearing from our community members, sharing results from business actions and launches can sometimes take time. And yet it’s easy to overlook the effective way to act on members’ feedback by paying close attention to what drives them to stay a member of your Insights Community.

Send us a note to learn more about how we design and manage Insights Communities to effectively get our clients the feedback they need to make strategic business decisions to grow their business and their brand.