Opt-in populations are how you can gather people that have explicitly expressed interest in hearing about research or feedback opportunities with your organization. You can target this group for projects that make sense for this audience.

Before starting an opt-in program

Consider the following decisions and guidance:

• Define the population, property and opt-in strategy; if they'll need more than one population to support a product/business unit

• Develop the primary questions they need to ask of new panel members to determine eligibility and core segmentation detail, while reserving additional profile properties for a secondary request

  • Determine if they need to collect research participation preferences as part of their sign-up process

• Prepare a strategy for asking follow-up profile data so initial sign-up forms are lighter weight and focused on core eligibility and segmentation criteria (typically a survey-based study in Rally issued to new panel members shortly after sign up)

• Understand if they need any legal consent captured as part of the panel sign up process that's different from research participation

• Know how long a panel member can remain in the panel before they need to reconfirm their membership

• Establish guidance for when the opt-in panel should be used vs other recruiting approaches

• Designate a population in Rally to be an opt-in population
  

Sign Up Forms

Sign up forms are the primary, formal way of building an opt-in population.

Guidelines for Sign Up Forms

• Only ask for the information you really need upfront to determine eligibility and key targeting needs. Each question should have a purpose.

• Ask the fewest questions possible for initial sign up (ideally 10, no more than 20). Use a follow-up survey to gather more descriptive information for better targeting.

• All questions should map to a database property to be useful as criteria to filter and segment later when recruiting.

• Don’t ask for a name or email in the screener/sign-up form unless you need to capture additional name or email criteria. It’s already captured as part of the sign up flow.

• Use referral codes to help track how people signed up from your form.

• Refresh panel membership data on a yearly basis.

Considerations for Setting Up Sign Up Forms

• One or Multiple Sign Up Forms: Although you can have more than one sign up form for each opt-in population, I recommend starting with one to keep things clean and organized. 

• Pre-work: Create the properties for general intake sign up form to:

  • Determine eligibility to be a member

    • if there’s data you won’t ask in the sign up form but know from your database, you’ll need to do a follow-up import to bring in additional eligibility criteria (e.g. registration date, self/dependent/spouse, employer, etc.)

  • Capture key targeting criteria for studies and engagement rules

  • If there’s data you won’t ask in the sign up form but know from your database, you’ll need to do a follow-up import to bring in additional eligibility and targeting criteria (e.g. registration date, self/dependent/spouse, employer, etc.)

• Details: Consider manual vs automatic approval and your process for ensuring you will have all the eligibility data you need to ensure the right people are in the opt-in population and in-eligible people are not.

  • Manual vs Automatic Approval: If your screener and outreach targeting is strong enough to determine eligibility for this form, leave manual approval OFF. If you want to verify all sign-ups before they are available in the population, turn manual approval ON.

  • Manual approval can be helpful if you want to make sure you import additional eligibility data before they are considered “IN” the population.

• Welcome Page: Determine if you need a Welcome (landing) page that would appear when someone clicks the link to sign up

  • Use a Welcome page if you don’t have a microsite or a way to help them learn more about the program before confronting them with form that asks for name and email

  • Adjust the Welcome email or remove it from the Sign Up Form

• Screener: Add all required eligibility and targeting questions

  • Make sure these questions are mapped to properties in your database

• Referrer Code: Determine if you need a referrer code to be included with sign up page link so you can monitor where people were getting the link to sign up

  • This is helpful when you have more than one outreach method for the same opt-in panel and want to track where people are coming from

  • To stay organized, build a spreadsheet to track the different sources and build the links using that spreadsheet (i.e. base form URL + code1, base form URL + code2, etc.)

  • More info about Referral codes in Rally Help Center

• Welcome Email: Decide if you want to include an ongoing-survey or AI moderated study to collect additional profile data. 

  • Everyone that signs up for the panel AND is approved to be in the panel will receive a welcome email with a way to unsubscribe/opt-out.

  • Update this message to include any CTA for “complete your profile” to improve your ability to send them the right studies

Outreach Approaches

Email Outreach through Rally

This approach works around Rally's limitation of not supporting direct bulk email sends outside of studies while still providing the tracking and email infrastructure you need.

1. Create a Survey Study (not just use the form directly) in one of your unverified populations where users already exist or will be imported - Rally doesn't support sending bulk emails outside of a study context

2. Use the "Link to Custom Survey" option, but instead of linking to a survey, link to your Rally signup form

3. Customize the email template in the study to include your messaging about joining the opt-in panel

4. Send the email through Rally's your target population

Tracking Benefits:

• Rally will track email sends, opens, and clicks through the study's outbox metrics

• The signup form itself will automatically create lists showing who signed up (auto-created "signups - [form name]" lists)

• You can see signup progress in the form's management page and track completions

Alternative Option:

• You can also create a public link for the study that can be shared via other “safe” channels if needed, while still maintaining the ability to track engagement.

  • Use a referral code to track where the link was accessed from if you want to track that detail. 

  • Consider this option for in-app, if you need ongoing participant management and follow-up communication for this outreach, like sending reminders to people that might not have clicked the link or completed sign up. Otherwise, use the direct link to the sign up form in-app vs going through a “survey study.”

Membership Monitoring & Health

Opt-in Population Membership Status

No explicit opt-in status property. There is no built-in Rally property or marker that explicitly identifies an opted-in status. Membership in a population in Rally doesn’t inherently mean the participant is opted into that population, since people can easily be added into or removed from populations with the right permissions. 

Determining a participant’s opt-in status depends on how your organization has chosen to request sign-up (e.g. sign up form, verbally asking at the end of a live interview, exit question at the end of a survey or unmoderated test, etc.)

• Sign Up Form: Use the “Form sign up date” and “Form Approval Status” fields when viewing 

  • This is useful for opted-in participants that joined the population through a sign up form.

  • This information is captured automatically.

  • These details are only available when viewing the Form’s overview page and are not available on a participant’s profile or as filters in the opt-in population, yet.

• Custom Property for Opt-in Status: Create a custom property to hold an opt-in status

  • Map this property to an opt-in question you may use in your sign up form, or in screeners and surveys from other Rally studies.

  • Use a segment in all your populations to look for new opt-in participants and manually add them to the opt-in population.

Please note: Anyone who is in the blocklist or who has opted out will no longer be available for recruitment even if they signed up for the opt-in population.

Monitor Opt-in Population Usage & Health

• Use segments in your opt-in population to identify panel members who are or are not exhibiting the participation or attributes you’d like to see, like:

  • Panel members who have not participated in a study in the last ## days

  • Panel members how have not been invited to a study in the last ## days

  • Panel members who have not provided additional profile data for better targeting

  • Panel members with an elevated no-show rate

  • Panel members who have opted out

  • Panel members who have participated in at least 1 study in the last ## days

  • Panel members who have been invited to at least 1 study in the last ## days, but have not participated yet

• Send periodic communications to the opt-in population to summarize how their participation has impacted decisions and highlight what additional opportunities may be coming in the future.

  • Rally can only send communications through the context of a study.

  • These communications can be independently sent quarterly or bi-annually, or they can be combined with a profile refresh request

• Run additional outreach campaigns and efforts to capture new panel members

  • Use email campaigns bi-annually to account for seasonality

  • Use intercept campaigns to target specific product usage to fill gaps or bolster segments you need

  • Request opt-in at the end of studies or surveys as a general practice