User Recruiting Tips and Tricks

User recruiting in the research process is an essential component of creating a well-developed and successful final product. Here are 4 proven effective methods of user recruiting, along with highly recommended tricks and tips. 

Email Automation

In recruiting, email automation can be a powerful and consistent tool that can reach users or newsletter subscribers. Email automation allows you to send the emails when convenient, while also meeting important timing deadlines such as high online traffic hours or daily set times. Set your automation timing on certain days and times that align with proven data-driven traffic numbers to maximize your visibility. 

Setting up your email automation for a specific time daily can benefit you. When your emails go out at a regularly scheduled time, your users can expect when to receive your emails and it follows a consistent online presence for your brand. Instead of trying to remember daily to send out your newsletter or email content, automation takes the thinking into this out of your responsibility.

Tools like Mailshake that place your emails into a drip campaign sequence, allow you to reach your audience consistently in a follow-up style. Utilizing a drip campaign can benefit a brand by boosting engagement, increasing brand awareness, promoting current content, and even re-engaging users that have lost interest. Even if someone from your audience doesn’t open the email or doesn’t engage with it, this follow-up sequencing allows you to look into their inaction. 

Facebook and LinkedIn Groups

Facebook and LinkedIn groups are a great and affordable way to recruit users for usability and research testing. With Facebook groups we can find a more specific community rather than just organizations, for example, you can search for groups within specified mental health communities or groups with shared specialized hobbies and interests. It’s important that when joining these communities, rather than jumping right into your ask you introduce yourself and provide a reason why they should care about your request. Including an incentive with your ask to conduct user research can also garner traction among these communities. Facebook groups tend to be a very underutilized resource in user research recruiting but can be a great method for finding more niche communities and subject interests. Similarly, LinkedIn groups have the same function as Facebook groups, it’s just a different platform that gives us access to perhaps another database of users for recruiting. 

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a sales intelligence platform that enables sales professionals to grow and maintain their relationships with buyers. Sales Navigator provides the most current data and acts as a virtual sales team using technology like customer relationship management or also known as CRM software. LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator allows you to focus on aspects such as geography, job title, company capacity, and other details like that. With Sales Navigator, you can specifically search users based on even further details such as what your relationship on LinkedIn with them is, any job changes they may have made that are relevant, and more in-depth filters for your targeted user searches. When you can identify your targeted users to fit your product or service in a fast and efficient way you can focus on other important aspects of marketing your product.

Various key features aside from the advanced searchability utilizing detailed filters would be giving access to extended networks, spotlighting opportunities, real-time tracking, and providing personalized messaging through InMail. Additionally, spotlighting opportunities lets you automatically navigate through noteworthy opportunities, spotlighting users that may have changed jobs, sharing common ideas through their posts, etc. Sales Navigator ensures active tracking for crucial developments of targeted accounts. Developments such as choices or decisions users have made, intentions to purchase products or services, and opportunities as they open. Another key function of LinkedIn Sales Navigator is that of direct personalized messaging with these targeted prospects, where InMail can be greatly utilized.

Scripting

Scripting is crucial to setting up your request to conduct research with users. Often we are focused on what we need from these users and what questions we need to be answered, but what’s in it for the users? As we mentioned before, even providing something as simple as an Amazon gift card or some form of repayment can create more of an appealing experience for your users. You’re essentially creating an incentive for users, which oftentimes leads to more interest from a variety of users. 

Providing context for your users can also be a determining factor in their participation. If your users are unaware of the context and purpose of your user testing they are less likely to want to be a part of that research. When your users clearly understand the subjects being discussed and the information you need from them they can provide thorough and insightful answers. 

Justifying Personas

It’s important to continuously challenge your clients, asking if the target audience they’re focused on going to provide the most insightful and useful information for their product or service? Does this target audience align with their persona? Questioning who is spending more money on your product can be critical to your overall research results. Quantitative data and understanding who might have the greatest impact on your business rather than a setlist of personas we need to interpret from could lead a business down the wrong path of research. 

In Conclusion

In user recruiting it’s important to utilize as many resources as it takes to have a well-encompassing group of users for your research and usability testing. Taking into account each method we’ve provided you can recruit a good number of users while also maintaining a budget. Remember to always factor in different groups of users and pay attention to the audience your client may have provided and challenge your clients' selection provided to ensure they get the best results from your research. You want to find users that will essentially provide the most value to your client’s business.

Check out our article on Website Usability: Reduce Dropoffs with a UX Audit.

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