The Importance of Routing

An email appears in your inbox: “New Survey!”, it reads. “We would like to ask you some questions.” With the promise of money for finishing the survey, you click on the link, and it whisks you away to a series of starter questions. You fill out your name, your gender, your age group, and your income, and the survey begins. You answer a few questions and then, suddenly, the screen goes blank. Now, you’re in front of another set of the same questions! 

Has this ever happened to you? It can be annoying and maybe even drive you to stop taking surveys all together. You may even notice new URLs or changing survey sites, instilling fears of hacking or scam sites. It’s discouraging, confusing, aggravating, and doesn’t seem to make any sense. Rest assured, it’s not a mistake or a scam; it’s just routing.

What is Routing?

Basically, market research companies are hired by a client to conduct a survey. Panelists of these companies take this survey, offer their opinion, and are paid. In reality, things are more complicated. Not everyone may qualify for the survey since usually clients are looking for specific backgrounds or experiences. A survey looking to learn why young women from Alabama are less likely to buy from a certain car brand, for example, isn’t interested in the opinions of older men from Massachusetts who have never owned a car. Luckily, there are many market research companies, each with their own set of clients and surveys. Thus, those older men from Massachusetts may not be able to help out with a car brand survey, but could instead help do research on medicine, coffee, real estate, or something else.

This is the basis of routing. Whenever a panelist fails to qualify for a survey, rather than letting the panelist leave empty-handed, survey sites will instead funnel them into a different survey that the panelist may qualify for instead. Sometimes these surveys are from other clients of the market research firm. Other times, they come from other research companies entirely that pay the original firm for use of their panels, called partner surveys. 

How Does Routing Work?

The process begins when a panelist agrees to take a survey. When they click the link, the URL directs them to the initial survey platform. If it’s a platform that the respondent has been on recently in a different survey, the survey begins. However, if it’s their first time on this platform, or if it’s been a while, their information needs to be checked. They go through a series of screener questions, asking for their demographics. If these demographics match those needed by the survey, the panelist is sent off to complete the survey. Otherwise, they are automatically sent to a different survey. There, the screening process happens again. This is why you may be asked the same demographic questions over and over: each time, you are answering the questions of a different client who may not have your information yet.

Sometimes, the panelist is routed off to a partner who has agreed to pay the panel owner for use of their panel. Here, the partner takes control of the process and may send the panelist to several different surveys. At American Consumer Opinion, our rule states that this may only happen for two minutes. If the partner is unable to find a survey for the respondent within two minutes, they are sent back to ACOP and provided a new survey link to a different partner or client. This is why URLs and sites may change, sometimes very rapidly. 

Why have Partner Surveys and Routing?

The goal of routing and partner surveys, ultimately, is to match a panelist to a survey. It’s an effective process: Only 10% of respondents complete the initial survey they click the link for. With routing, that increases to 20%. The reason the process takes so long is because screening for surveys gets more and more specific. The panelist’s profile starts to be built with the first set of demographic questions they answer. Each time they are rejected from a survey, more profile points are created and a clearer picture of the panelist emerges. The clearer the picture, the closer the panelist gets to being sent to the perfect survey for them.

Market research firms like partner surveys because they benefit everyone. Routing panelists to the right survey helps them get paid, which in turn helps the firm get paid. Routing also rush panelists through dozens of surveys in a matter of minutes. Otherwise, panelists would have to click through several different survey links at random to find the one that’s right for them. Ultimately, it saves the panelist time, though it may not feel like it.

In Conclusion

Routing may seem like a complicated nuisance, but it’s definitely for the benefit of everyone involved. Panelists get paid for completing surveys, firms get paid for facilitating the surveys, and clients get the information they want: everybody wins! 

However, not everyone may be a fan. At ACOP, we’re not able to completely exempt our panelists from the routing process, but we can reduce it. As a member, you can request to opt out of partner surveys. This will restrict the routing process to just ACOP clients and will not send you to surveys conducted by our partners. While it will limit the number of times you jump between surveys, it will also limit the total number of surveys that are presented to you, limiting our ability to find a survey that works for you.

So next time you find yourself stuck in the middle of routing, answering the same questions again and again, we hope you find some patience: you’re that much closer to getting paid!