4 Reasons To Migrate & Relaunch Your Tracking Studies

Trackers in market research are online surveys/questionnaires that run in evenly spaced increments for an ongoing collection of data over time. These types of studies monitor changing trends and metrics so that brands can benchmark and evaluate the success of their brand equity, brand recall, marketing campaigns, brand perception, new product launches, customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, or any other customer insights that are indicative of steady or improved performance. Aside from internal performance, industry tracker studies also let brands know of new and emerging trends in their market that they might want to consider in future business decisions.
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Why are tracking studies important?

Tracking studies allow businesses and stakeholders to stay connected to their target audience in real-time. By continuously monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) - such as brand performance or customer retention over time, brands gain valuable knowledge for future business decisions.

If a tracker shows trends are changing and customer satisfaction is falling - what decisions can a brand make to their product offerings in order to adapt before losing market share? Alternatively, if brand awareness is rising and brand loyalty is steady, it could be a sign that current marketing efforts are working and are something the brand should continue to invest in.

Tracking research is the key to a successful brand strategy, based on real customer feedback that reflects the current state of the market. Without it, brands would be left with outdated insights or worse - gut feel.
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4 reasons to migrate and relaunch your research tracker

If you’re still using outdated research services for your tracking - such as traditional brand tracking studies, here are four reasons to consider migrating your brand tracker to a modernized and automated platform.

1. Technological advancements:

Technology is improving nearly every day. By sticking with your original, traditional tracking provider for the sake of ease, you’re cheating yourself out of the latest tools, survey question types, analytics, automation, and AI-capabilities that could make your insights much richer and more actionable (not to mention, way easier to capture and analyze).

For example, rather than spending hours - even days, combing through cross-tab files and manually inputting data metrics, automation can do all this in mere seconds. AI capabilities (such as quantilope’s co-pilot, quinn) then generate actionable takeaways from your data, sometimes even uncovering insights a human eye might miss.

Migrating your tracking studies to an updated, tech-forward research process ensures your data collection, analysis process, and data visualizations are generating true strategic value for your organization.

2. Changing consumer behavior:

It may sound cliche that consumer behavior is changing faster than ever before, but it’s true. Never before have consumers had as much access to new products and emerging trends as they do today (primarily via social media).

To understand and act on these changed behaviors, preferences, and needs, your tracking approach needs to be agile enough to incorporate changes at any point in time. Many traditional trackers don’t have this flexibility - requiring extensive re-programming, and new reports built from scratch.

Relaunching your tracker on a tech-based research tool allows you to incorporate new variables and metrics without having to start from square one. With quantilope for example, you can ‘hide’ or add any questions at your leisure, and generate new charts instantly with just a few clicks of your mouse. Future data will automatically populate these charts for trended insights - statistical testing included. As a result, your tracker shifts alongside the changing landscape of consumers and remains highly actionable even long after the very first wave.

3. Improved UX (user experience):

An old or bare-minimum research tracker won’t be enjoyable for respondents, and sometimes might even cause respondents to quit your survey before they complete it.

For example, if your research tracking agency or platform only allows for standard usage and attitude questions, without images or dynamic elements (like images, graphics, sliding scales, etc.), respondents are going to get fatigued really early. This leads to poor respondent data, as many will breeze through the survey without much thought simply to get to the last question. Compare this to a modern, tech-based, platform that allows for a more ‘gamified’ survey user experience - with varying question types, video integration, branded colors, and more. When survey takers enjoy the survey process, it shows in the final insights.

4. Enhanced security and compliance:

With modern day data breaches and bots, brands have a right to be concerned about their data - including who has access to it and where it’s stored.

If your current tracking approach doesn’t meet your expected data standards, consider migrating to a platform that has proven it’s commitment to data security and compliance. 
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Best practices and methods for research tracker migration

Once you decide to migrate your research tracker - be it for a tech-forward platform, to consolidate tools, or to seek out new and improved means of tracking, there are certain best practices to keep in mind so you don’t compromise historic data.

The following best practices are designed to help you move your tracking solution to a new system without sacrificing years of hard work. While there are some cases in which you might not be able to compare new data points against trended insights, the benefits of an improved tracking solution far outweigh any downsides.

• Plan and prepare

Start by determining what your current tracking solution’s pros and cons are. Figure out what you like about your current tracking solution and look for new tools that have that criteria. Similarly, make a list of current downsides/frustrations that you hope to resolve with a new tracking tool. You’ll want to take note of how your tracking data is structured, which methods are used, and any other technical components that could influence how and where you choose to migrate.

• Audit your tracking data

Before migrating your tracker, audit existing data to identify inconsistencies or unnecessary metrics. If there are questions that no longer serve your tracking goals, or that are programmed inefficiently, you won’t want to carry them over to your new solution. Keep your tracker tight and lean, so you can add to it later on without it getting overwhelming for survey respondents. 

• Have a backup plan

Before you initiate the migration process, make sure there’s a backup system in place to safeguard your tracking study and insights. In the case that there’s a technical hiccup during the migration process, you’ll have peace of mind that your original tracking study isn’t compromised. This is a best practice for really anything technology related; always have a backup plan - be it a hard drive copy, cloud-based copy, or some other means of data storage.

• Train your team

After you migrate your tracking study to a new solution, you’ll want to make sure your team members who will be using the new solution are well-trained on how it works - including it’s interface and functionalities. Conduct training sessions and keep detailed documents for any new team members in the future to facilitate a smooth transition. This might involve experts from your new solution in your training process, either in-person or via a training webinar session.

• Test in parallel

You’ve migrated your research tracker to a new system! Now it’s time to run parallel testing by using both the old and new systems simultaneously. This is an important step in the migration process to ensure that your old and new ways of tracking provide similar and comparable findings. If they do, you can feel confident proceeding with future waves of your tracking study, knowing you can refer back to historic data as you would if you had stuck with your original tracking method. It’s important to test this before you’re actually due to run the next wave of your study, to catch any inconsistencies ahead of time.

• Customize your shiny new tracker!

The best part about migrating your tracker to a new and improved system is the flexibility to customize and add new metrics as needed. Traditional means of tracking are rigid - requiring a lot of work to add new questions, re-program, and visualize new charts. Modern tech-forward tracking platforms make it easy; after all, with consumer behavior changing as fast as it does, you need to be able to tweak and update. Otherwise, you end up with a tracker that has outdated insights, simply for the ability to keep it consistently trended; that’s not helpful for brands and that's not how brands grow.
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Migration methods

There are a few ways to go about actually migrating your tracking study. Below are a few common methods, depending on your capabilities and needs.

• Gradual migration:

  A gradual migration process means moving over tracking studies incrementally rather than all at once (i.e. gradually building your tracking study on a new platform over time or incrementally merging data sets). The benefit of gradual migration is that it can be done over a longer period of time, making it a good solution for teams with limited capacity or less urgency (still allowing teams to run trackers on the old system in the meantime).

• Big bang migration:

  A 'big bang' migration is a one-time execution, merging all data from an old system to a new one. Big bang migrations are certainly more efficient than gradual migrations, but might require more resources at once to ensure everything is moved over swiftly and smoothly. In some cases, this type of migration might also lead to a bit of downtime in the ability to run new waves - with the need to make sure that the new system is up and running properly.

• Hybrid approach:

  A hybrid migration approach combines elements of gradual and big bang migration strategies. This might look like transitioning entire tracking studies for certain teams or departments at once, and others in a more gradual fashion. Additionally, this could mean transitioning certain elements of tracking (like a survey or historic data) in one swift go (big bang) and other elements slowly (gradual).

• API integration:

  An API (Application Programming Interface) can automate the data transfer between the old and new tracking systems. This method is great for teams with large datasets or complex surveys, where the risk of human error is high.

By adhering to the above best practices and selecting an appropriate migration method, organizations can navigate the complexities of research tracker migration with confidence, ensuring a successful and seamless transition to a more efficient and effective tracking solution.
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Migrate your research tracker easily with quantilope

quantilope's Consumer Intelligence Platform offers the largest suite of advanced research methodologies, customizable survey templates, an industry-praised brand health tracking approach, and an AI co-pilot to assist in survey creation, analysis, and reporting.

Migrating your study to quantilope’s platform is made simple through the use of API integrations, drag & drop survey building modules, and a dedicated team of classically-trained research consultants. quantilope provides researchers with the flexibility to adjust, add, or remove questions at any time. When you move your tracking study over to quantilope’s platform, you can expect an intuitive survey creation process, real-time data monitoring of your target demographics and total sample size, automated charting, automated data cleaning flags, and AI-generated trended chart insights. quantilope is also ISO-27001 certified, proving it’s commitment to best-in-class data security.

The decision to migrate and relaunch your research tracker (brand tracking survey, advertising tracking study, etc.) is a strategic choice that can significantly improve the success of your market research efforts. By embracing technological advancements, adapting to changing consumer behavior, improving user experience, and prioritizing data security, you can ensure that your research tracker remains a valuable asset indefinitely.

To learn more about migrating your research tracker to quantilope’s platform, get in touch below!