CEVA are a leading manufacture of animal health products.  They commissioned Insight Track to execute a piece of research  to canvas a significant cross-section of horse owners and enthusiasts, in order to aggregate their collective opinions about Stress and Anxiety in Horses.

The purpose of the research was to gathered feedback to ensure that CEVA’s products best met the needs of horse owners in managing stress and anxiety in horses.

As a result of finding us using a Google Search for Equestrian Marketing Services, our initial telephone consultation helped to scope-out the objectives and expectations of the research.  We responded to Insight Track with a proposal detailing the technical capabilities, benefits and limitations of using email for horse owners marketing and to give the client a fair appraisal and realistic expectations.

Insight Track had not previously used our email marketing service to undertake market research and, neither had we!

Our typical client would send a commercial message promoting a sale, a product or an event, so ‘research-only’ was new territory for us both. But for the campaign to be a success, Insight Track needed responses, and lots of them.

The online survey was 10-pages and included multiple-choice and user-generated answers.  The objective was to record a minimum of 300 completed surveys and we agreed that although this seemed ambitious, given the targeted nature of the campaign and our confidence in the responsiveness of our database members, we were positive that this was achievable.

Usually we encourage our clients to send visually engaging HTML email flyers, with ‘stand-out’ calls-to-action that scream about the ‘Offer’, but this was different, there was no ‘hard-sell’ and therefore no need to poke the reader in the eye with stunning graphics to grab their attention.

This was a campaign that required some empathy with the audience, we wanted their opinions, not their money, there was no ‘hook’, no special offer, no incentive to click, no rewards…  Just a simple thought-provoking question to engage them with the survey.

“Do you have any experience of, or opinions about, stress and anxiety in horses?”

This question, along with a few details about how their responses would be used and a ‘take the survey’ button, is all that was used to get the attention of our audience.

Not only was this our first research-only piece to this audience,  but we had also taken a big risk on a stripped-down, back-to-basics message that, contrary to our usual style, had no bells or whistles about it.

We broadcast the message to a sample marketing list of 10,000 horse owners, 10% of our total database.  This produced approx 30 completed surveys which was exactly on target for our objective of acquiring 300 surveys, so a decision was made to go with the basic message and scrap any thoughts about dressing-up the message.

Roll-out was executed Monday morning and just 24 hours later we had tracked over 1000 clicks to the survey. But had they converted to completed surveys?

By 10.30am on Tuesday, Insight Track contacted us and reported over 500 completed surveys had been received, commenting… [callout2]“many thanks for your help with this survey – we have received 500 responses to date and they are still coming in! Hannah Edwards, Research Manager, Insight Track Ltd“ [/callout2]