Reaching Specialized Populations to Support your Product Strategy

Credit card companies, cryptocurrency brokerages, traditional and neo-banks, mortgage loan teams, and other financial institutions need specialized recruiting support to get the right insights and recommendations for product development, to reach business objectives, and hit revenue goals. 

A thoughtful participant profile can make a big difference when it comes to getting the most valuable insights. Sometimes, finding the exact participants for your study can seem daunting - the type of recruit you need is specific and crucial to the success of your user experience program. 

We work with a lot of clients, particularly in FinTech, who are concerned with how difficult the recruits will be to find. Throughout our 17+ years of UX research, AnswerLab has developed best-practices to ensure that we not only find the ideal participants for each research project, but also problem solve recruiting plateaus.

Let’s dive into some considerations when finding the right recruit for your research program seems impossible. 

Talk to the right participants the first time

Within the FinTech and financial services industries, participant attributes need to be validated to make sure the participants fit the study.

Have we asked them the right questions from the start? Are we asking demographic questions that are necessary? Should we be adding more questions to confirm they fit within the target audience?

To solve this, we recommend utilizing effective and well thought out recruit screeners that can be customized to your needs. When custom screener writing, screener review cycles, and opportunities for feedback are built into study timelines, everyone can stay on track.

Here are a few examples of key profiles for financial services research that can be tricky to recruit:

• Business and consumer users of rewards or points systems for major credit card companies and retail establishments to help understand how reward programs could be improved to lead to greater use and retention of customers.
• Decision makers at large enterprise companies who fit specific client-defined personas/titles and have gathered insight on their decision making processes for product adoption.
• Investors with an investable income over $1 million to bring our client insight on this demographic’s expectations, needed services, and trading experiences. 
• Participants who self-identify as being hard of hearing, or having a vision, cognitive, or motor impairment to ensure webpages, mobile access, products, and services are accessible for all and programmed for adaptive technology.
• International buyers and sellers of cryptocurrency to find out how they make decisions to buy and sell, what platforms they use, and how expectations change from country to country. 

We’ve worked with a range of clients recruiting all these audiences and more to ensure they get the insights they need. Ensuring proper profiles and criteria are established from the start and maintaining that communication and alignment throughout the process ensures success. 

>> Case study: How can we foster inclusive services for vulnerable populations when accessing financial and P2P products? 

The more specific the recruit, the more time it may take

If you need to recruit 25-55 year old participants, of any sex or gender, who have had a checking account for at least five years -  no problem! When working within broad parameters around the participant type, it shouldn’t take much time to lock in a solid selection of participants. 

However, if you’re in need of a more specialized recruit, maybe an individual aged 18-24, who has had a high yield savings account (HYSA) from a specific financial institution for at least 3 years - that’s when the recruitment period takes longer because of lower incidence rates and will ultimately take additional time and resources. 

What happens if you want to launch an international research program - why does it take more time? In general, international research is conducted across multiple time zones and languages, sometimes causing a delay in communication and logistics overall. 

International participants are also more difficult to recruit for FinTech companies due to a variety of factors - lower incident rates in certain countries and not as many people using the app or platform compared to the U.S., to name a few. Additionally, the translation of logistics documents, discussion guides, and screeners take time. 

If you’re working on a complex international study, make sure you’re building in ample room into your timeline to account for extra recruit time, translation, and more. We work with trusted local third-party vendors to ensure translation and recruitment goes off without a hitch. Make sure you’re working with an on-the-ground resource you trust for any international study. 

>> Case study: Learn how we helped a client solve usability and compatibility issues prior to launching our product in new global markets

Look for flexibility in the participant profile without sacrificing insights

Let’s say you need to recruit individuals with a high net worth of over $5 million in assets. That may be harder to find depending on the timeline. However, if you’re having difficulty finding enough participants, ask yourself - is there room to adjust the profile and still get you the insights we need? What if we also recruit for individuals with $3 million in assets?

Always look creatively at the participant profile to see where you can shift without undercutting the findings. 

Some other flexible recruiting tactics we recommend include: 

• Evaluating if the age parameters are too narrow: can we expand the age range by a few years? What if we raise or lower it?
• Defining the user journey: do all actions count? When is the journey considered complete? 
• Elaborating on principal parameters, like ‘current user’: do they need to use the product every day? What about every month? 

Sometimes, the initial parameters are just not flexible and the characteristics you’re looking for are a requirement, not a nice-to-have. Whether you’re able to adjust the initial recruit characteristics or not, make sure you’re prioritizing collaboration and clear, consistent communication. Especially if you find that recruiting has stalled, going back to the drawing board and exploring all opportunities for flexibility can keep the process running smoothly. 

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From strict demographic requirements to multiple countries - it can be done. Our Research Ops team is built out with project managers who have extensive experience providing specialized recruiting support for specific demographics and/or within specific industries. The team will work with you to adjust the timelines in instances where additional flexibility is needed to recruit the right people in the right markets

>> Solve complex UX challenges with Research Operations at AnswerLab