MFour Abandons All-Mobile Panel in Favor of "Beeper Technology."

Stating emphatically, "Mobile is dead...the return of the beeper is near," MFour CEO Chris St. Hilaire announced today the company will immediately close its 600,000 active person, mobile panel in favor of beeper-respondants wearing "super cool" belt clips.

While recent statistics indicate that more than 75% of Americans carry smartphones and that more people access the internet through smartphones than online desktop computers, even more Americans own belts, and there's hardly anything to attach to them, according to St. Hilaire.

"I own one smartphone and four belts. I have a blue one, two blacks ones and a reversible one that I grew out of after the kids were born and I stopped having time to work out...but that's not important right now," said St. Hilaire.

The new four-step methodology is brilliant in its design: First, respondent attaches a beeper to their belt and waits for a "beep beep." Second, they hear a "beep beep" and immediately head to the nearest phone booth. Third, they insert a quarter and dial the number back. Fourth, they take the survey.

MFour expects the technology to take hold even quicker than online panels are dying. For questions about our super cool beepers, open your rolodex, look up our number, head to a phone booth and give us a call. Either that or fax us. Happy April 1st everyone.

Want 20+ Minute Mobile LOI's?
 You'll Have to Do Better Than This

What you see above is something that literally drives survey respondents to distraction -- a deeply flawed mobile survey format that's guaranteed to frustrate and alienate. Not only does it look bad, but the technology that's being employed leads to even more frustration and alienation. Basically, it's forcing mobile respondents to use their smartphones in a banal, unsatisfying way: connecting to a website to take an online survey.

The poor display you see above, coupled with outdated survey technology, f is responsible for one of market research's biggest myths: that mobile surveys have to be kept very short.

Truth is, mobile respondents are perfectly willing to engage for 20 minutes or more, if you give them the kind of rewarding smartphone experience they enjoy and expect. It's all about the user experience: if it's clunky, respondents give up. If it's fluid, they finish -- even at LOIs of 20 minutes or more.

Accomplishing longer, deep-dive research projects is well within reach. The key is using the right technological platform for the Smartphone Era. It's now possible to embed surveys instantly in panelists' phones by using a native app. Respondents love apps, and in-app surveys ensure that they won't have to depend on a cell signal or wifi, which are vulnerable to interruption and slow load-ins of survey questions.

To illustrate the point, here's the data  from a comparative study that tested engagement with  a 20-minute survey launched in three separate mobile formats: Native App, Mobile Optimized and Mobile Friendly.

Source: 2,139 surveys, 713 on each platform. Each survey ranges between 200 - 1,500 responses. Surveys conducted March 2014 - December 2014.

As you can see,  native app engagement eclipses "mobile optimized," to the tune of five times fewer drop-offs. And drop-offs were 14 times higher for the "mobile friendly" approach. To learn more about advanced, in-app mobile survey technology and the research solutions it provides,  just click sales@mfour.com.