Business Objective

• An electric utility wanted to establish a load management program and sought consumer input to understand participation interest, impact of monetary incentives, and expected support.
• Identifying messaging that would best motivate consumer adoption of the program was an important study objective.
• Additionally, the utility wanted to assess consumer understanding of how their individual behavior impacts the grid.

The Challenge

• It was important to the utility that insights would be gathered based on real-life customer experience.

Our Approach

• Schmidt recruited qualified utility customers to participate in a 4-week pilot program. Within that timeframe, those customers received text messages that encouraged reduced energy usage during a four-hour window on specified days.
• Participants were divided into four groups, each receiving different messaging and incentive levels. Energy usage was monitored during the pilot period.
• After the pilot period, participants received a follow-up survey asking them to share their experience and identify opportunities for program improvement.

Business Objective

• An electric utility wanted to create a resource center that would position their organization as a source of credible information on electric vehicles (EVs).

The Challenge

• Prior research conducted by this utility had indicated that consumers did not consider the utility as an information source for EVs.
• Based on these findings, branding and messaging were important objectives of the research.

Our Approach

• Schmidt leveraged the utility’s insight community to identify current and near-term prospective EV owners.
• An online survey was deployed and received more than 1,000 + responses, representing an above-average 24% response rate.
• Monadic survey design was used to evaluate four program names depicted with and without an EV logo (eight designs in total).

Business Objective

• A healthcare client was looking for a single-source recruiting solution that could support the qualitative and UX research they were currently conducting with both consumers and clinicians.

The Challenge

• While recruiting qualified participants was the primary focus, there were a number of other tasks associated with the recruiting process that placed an additional burden on the client’s research staff:
• Technology use/testing
• Working with multiple recruiting providers
• Last-minute participant cancellations
• Tight schedules associated with fast-tracked research and UX needs

Our Approach

• Schmidt was engaged as a partner to support the client’s research team on an ongoing basis with a broad range of recruiting services:
  • Recruiting participants from external panels, client and member lists.
  • Developing recruiting screeners and taking the additional steps to ensure the right participants were chosen for the study through re-screening and articulation by phone.
  • Replacing participants when last-minute cancellations occur, ensuring a full recruit.
  • Providing technology support to participants prior to and during the research sessions.

Business Objective

• During a Special Enrollment Period (SEP), a health insurance client had the opportunity to enroll qualified new members that were ACA-eligible.
• In particular, the health insurer was interested in better understanding potential members who were exiting a group or commercial coverage plan.

The Challenge

• The health insurer did not have a strong understanding of the journey and pain points endured by consumers seeking ACA coverage.
• By learning more, the company would be able to better target their messaging, optimize marketing tactics and ultimately improve conversion.

Our Approach

• Schmidt took a qualitative approach. Recruiting from a client-supplied list, the team conducted virtual in-depth interviews with a target audience of health care decision-makers who had enrolled in an ACA plan via SEP within the past year or were currently shopping for an ACA plan.
• A member of the Schmidt team with deep healthcare insurance and industry experience was utilized to moderate the interviews.

Business Objective

• A national bank wanted to assess the effectiveness of promotional materials displayed in branch locations.
• They wanted to gather customer insight to determine whether the materials were being noticed and if they were creating an interest in learning more about a new product.

The Challenge

• Deployment of marketing materials across the bank’s branches was not uniform, and the placement of materials varied in each location.
• In-the-moment customer feedback would be needed to fully understand the impact of the marketing materials.

Our Approach

• Schmidt deployed in-branch intercept teams that captured the specifics of the marketing placement in each location and observed customer reactions while they were in the branch.
• As customers finished their banking business, they were intercepted by Schmidt representatives for a short survey and quick “in-the-moment” conversation related to the study objectives.

Business Objective

• A retail bank client sought insights on why certain customers were more engaged with the bank than others.
• Engaged customers were defined as those who opened a checking account, actively used the account, and made use of other bank products and services.
• Unengaged customers were defined as those who opened a checking account, had minimal deposit or withdrawal activity tied to their account, and typically did not use other bank products or services.

The Challenge

• As part of this study about understanding customer behavior, the client wanted to categorize its customers by key demographics and regions.
• To best understand each customer’s situation and learn what actions could encourage engagement, the bank needed rich verbatims – an important part of the research.

Our Approach

• To gather the robust perspective that the bank client needed, the Schmidt team recommended a quant/qual approach to gather customer insights. The approach included:
  • An online survey that gathered the metrics necessary to understand the engaged and unengaged customer groups better.
  • Phone interviews conducted with 50 engaged and 50 unengaged customers.

• Through this approach, the qualitative team gained a deeper understanding of the behaviors associated with each group as they related to opening accounts and utilization of the bank’s services. These insights would not have been achieved via the online survey alone.

Business Objective

• A sports team wanted to identify and prioritize fan segments that were ripe for business-building opportunities. To do so, they needed to understand what motivated the fan base to attend games so that attitudinal segments could be developed.
• At the time, the sports team only had a ticket-based segmentation of the fan base. These segments were limited to frequency of game attendance and age-based profiling.

The Challenge

• They wanted to understand what motivated loyal fans to attend live events despite the team’s inability to maintain a winning record.

Our Approach

• Schmidt’s advanced analytics experts managed the segmentation process, leveraging the team’s 3,500-member Fan Insight Community to run both qualitative and quantitative aspects of the project. This approach allowed for an accelerated timeline. The work was delivered within a 2-month period, outpacing the typical 4-5-month timeframe usually required for this type of project.
• Schmidt’s approach took client budget sensitivity into account. By utilizing the Fan Insight Community and leveraging the client’s own research team on qualitative aspects of the project, our team was able to deliver the project at nearly half the cost of what might have been expected utilizing research sample from the market.

Business Objective

• As part of a marketing campaign to promote their advantages over key competitors, a four-year college created a series of promotional video ads.
• The client wanted to assess the impact of each video to determine which would be most memorable and create favorable interest in research and enrollment.

The Challenge

• High school students were the primary target of the campaign, but the college also wanted to ensure the ads were approved by parents, as both groups would ultimately contribute to the final college decision.

Our Approach

• Using a qualitative approach, the ads were first tested with the high school students via online mini focus groups.
• Based on focus group learnings, the video ad options were narrowed to three, with some fine tuning of the executional components.
• The three refined ads were then tested with parents via online focus groups. The goal was to ensure a “seal of approval” from this important group.

Business Objective

• Wanting to reverse a two-year trend of declining enrollment, a four-year college focused on better understanding the factors driving enrollment choices among their target audience of high school students and recent graduates who had not immediately enrolled in post-secondary education.

The Challenge

• Understanding the drivers that impact enrollment was essential. Among parents, high school students and recent graduates, the client was unsure which audience should be prioritized since the enrollment decline was universal across all three groups.
• Due to its small footprint, the college was challenged by its small sample size.

Our Approach

• To offset the sample size challenge, the Schmidt team selected sample panels reflective of each of the three targeted groups.
• Intent on fully understanding each target, the Schmidt team developed and executed three separate surveys, custom to each group.
• Results were analyzed both individually and across the three targets. This enabled us to identify common factors that resonated with all target groups, while also noting factors that could help develop an individual approach for each.

Business Objective

• To grow revenue, a popular entertainment venue knew it would need to attract new customer segments and increase visits among existing customers.

The Challenge

• The client didn’t have an extensive customer list or rich customer database to leverage for customer research.
• Without a CRM database, the client was unable to enrich the attitudinal segments created via custom research with demographic, media consumption, and behavioral metrics by appending the data.

Our Approach

• Schmidt enlisted the help of a market sample panel partner that not only offered qualified respondents, but these respondents were already part of Acxiom—the leading third-party targeting database. These respondents were enriched with data profiling variables related to their entertainment behaviors and demographics.
• Leveraging an advanced analytical segmentation approach, Schmidt developed segment profiles based on economic value and interest in entertainment types.
• Media consumption, entertainment habits, and other variables were then appended to enrich the learning and provide for accurate media targeting.