#011 – 2008 Spring
If you’re having trouble engaging your tribe to respond to your surveys and feedback requests, this Tribal Voice is for you. Our feature article shares some great tips for providing survey incentives easily, legally and to suit your budget.
Small Business September is well underway. There are two great events that you can see and hear Kate talk about how to get to know your tribe:
- Total Business Solutions: A Day Working ON YOUR Business on Monday September 22 at Martin Place – FREE! and places available
- Flying Solo LIVE! on Wednesday September 17 at Australian Technology Park – Sold out
We are also the Featured Business at Last Thursday Club this month on September 25 at The American Club. The speakers will be Scott Farquhar of Atlassian Software Systems and Dr Ken Hudson of The Speed Thinking Zone. The news is so new that it isn’t on their website yet!
If you can’t get to these events we are holding another Customer Feedback: for small business workshop on Tuesday November 18 in the CBD. Click here for more information, or here to register.
I hope to see you during September at one of the the events.
Happy reading!
Kate Tribe
ask@triberesearch.com.au
T | +61 2 9264 4432
P.S Thanks for the support during my Dry July. I raised over $1,000 for Prince of Wales Hospital. Special thanks to Sue Liu at Zulu Communications for selecting Dry July as their Zulu Village’s July winner.
Small Business September
September in NSW is truly the month you can work on (not in) your business, with over 350 events going on to help you grow your business.
Tribe Research is honoured to be involved with two great events and Kate looks forward to catching up with you at them.
Total Business Solutions: A day working ON YOUR business is on Monday September 22 at Martin Place, 9am to 5pm. This event is FREE to attend. Registration is now closed as the event has passed.
This event is being hosted by a mastermind group of 5 entrepreneurs. The group formed in January to support and challenge each other so we can grow our businesses. We spend 2 hours together each month, working on our businesses and now want to spend a day with you so you can do the same. Other than our Kate Tribe, the speakers include:
- Lara Solomon: owner of LaRoo and creator of Mocks. She was recently the NSW Telstra Micro Business award winner
- Dr Ken Hudson: creator of The Speed Thinking Zone and author of two great books – The Idea Generator and The Idea Accelerator
- Kate McCallum: CEO of Multiforte Financial Services, with over 20 years of financial services and marketing experience
- Peter Rogers: Managing Director of Shopping Science International who will explain how to make the most of every customer
Flying Solo LIVE! is on Wednesday September 17 at Australian Technology Park, 8:30-6:00.
This event has sold out now, but we wanted to let you know about it because not only is Kate presenting at it, but the day has been organised from the results that Flying Solo received from their community in a survey Tribe Research conducted with them earlier in the year. They explored, uncovered and used the information to drive change.
Feature Article
Are you struggling to get your clients to provide you with feedback? Get the facts on incentives
Offering survey incentives, such as the opportunity to win a prize, is often a successful way of increasing survey participation rates and minimising ‘drop-outs’ (when a respondent fails to finish a survey – see our Tribal Voice Autumn 2007 Feature Article, Online Survey Completion for more information).
There are a number of options for providing survey incentives, and some are easier and more affordable than others. The best option for you will depend on your survey and your budget, so here are a few tips to help you reduce the paperwork and cost involved in providing an incentive and ensure you know where to go if you do decide to offer a grand competition.
Chance
Survey incentives that involve an element of chance are governed by the rules of trade promotion lotteries. As a result, they may invoke legal requirements such as permits and permissions, that can make something simple quite extensive and time-consuming.
For example, the NSW Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing specifically requires that a business must hold a permit if a prize determination involves an element of chance (Download their PDF for more information). Surveys involving an element of chance must also be free-entry surveys and if you wish to conduct a competition nationally, you may need to obtain a number of permits in various States and Territories.
How to know if your survey incentive involves an element of chance
A survey incentive which involves an element of chance is one in which:
- every participant does not receive the incentive offered for completing the survey;
- a participant of the survey may receive a different prize to another participant of the same survey; or
- the winning competitor is chosen at random from a pool of competitors;
- unless qualified or expert judges are used and the winner is adjudged against a set criteria.
For example, a competition that is decided by drawing a name from a barrel would be considered a “game of chance” since each competitor has an equal and fair chance of winning the competition.
Avoiding the legal requirements
If you do not wish to obtain a permit (for example, if the cost of a licence may be prohibitive), you may consider eliminating any element of chance from winning your survey incentives. This can be carried out in a lawful manner and can make survey incentives much more worthwhile by increasing participation and minimising drop-out rates. Here are some ways you can provide a survey incentive without involving an element of chance.
A survey incentive which does not involve an element of chance is one in which:
- Every participant receives the incentive offered for completing the survey (e.g. “all participants who complete the survey will receive 10% off at our online shop”);
- If you state that the first x amount of participants will win the incentive and you send all emails out at the same time and the emails aren’t staggered, favouring some email recipients over others (e.g. assuming all links to the survey are sent to potential participants at exactly the same time, the message could read: “The first 10 participants to complete the survey in full win an iPod”; or
- Participants fill in the blanks of a word or phrase. This ensures the winner is determined on their skill not chance. A game of skill is a game whereby the competitor is required to exercise skill, talent, knowledge, creativity and/or imagination to compete in the game (e.g. “after you complete the survey, you have the option of entering our competition to win an iPod, simply fill in the missing numbers:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 __, 7,8, 9,10, or “fill in the missing words: Never judge a ____ by its cover”). - Completion of an answer is judged. This means that qualified or expert judges are used and the winner is adjudged against set criteria. It is therefore a competition based on skill, not chance (e.g. “Win $15,000 cash! Fill in the survey and tell us in 50 words or less how much you love Windows Vista. The best response wins!”).
To be clear, survey incentives or prizes that do not involve an element of chance do not invoke legal requirements under the NSW OLGR so we recommend checking other state equivalents if your survey involves other states.
More information
If you are still in doubt about whether or not you need to obtain a permit, select the state you are interested in for their website for more information or contact us to discuss your survey requirements.
Queensland then click on: Charitable Non-Profit Guides > Guide to Category 4 Games (Promotional Games)
South Australia
Western Australia then click on: Trade Promotions Lotteries
Tasmania then click on: Trade Promotions
ACT
Northern Territory then click on: Interstate Trade Promotion or for NT competitions only Trade Lottery Permit
