Chalk one up for Pollfish. With its rapid fire ability to poll and then aggregate millions of responses, the leading global consumer survey network was the first to isolate the “winning line” from the first presidential debate (you can read about it here).
It’s all in a day’s work for Pollfish, perfectly positioned at the intersection of two ubiquitous trends: polling and mobile communication.
From its inception, the company banked on one big idea: that data analytics are the future of marketing — whether it’s for presidential candidates or soft drinks or tennis shoes. And that the smart money would move to mobile to reach people.
Pollfish’s mobile consumer survey network — the largest in the world — reaches more than 300 million smartphone users to obtain the data that leads to actionable insights.
Polling is big business. Brands and organizations spend billions on it — $2 billion and growing in the U.S. alone. Because mobile phones are the primary means of communication for nearly six out of 10 Americans, today 74 percent of respondents reply to surveys on their mobile phones, according to industry data.
Three things single Pollfish out from the crowd.
For starters, early on Pollfish embraced the changing tide and created a mobile-optimized survey platform that meets consumers where they spend their time, thus creating an audience ten times the size of competitors, and growing by the hour.
Secondly, Pollfish has made it a quicker process. Surveys conducted in the morning can be used to fine-tune marketing campaigns launched in the afternoon.
Or, as Pollfish CEO John Papadakis puts it, “Successful companies will adjust to customer needs by extrapolating insights from small-sample data and applying them rapidly to larger populations. Imagine running a five-question mobile survey on a new ad campaign in the morning and then using that data to launch the right combination of images, video, and copy to the larger lookalike audience by the afternoon. This type of instant personalization is imminent.”
Then there’s the hat trick.
The third thing Pollfish has done – and its newest offering to the market — is create “Personas” that dig deeper into the personalities and behavior of the people responding to its polls. This is one of the most advanced machine learning models on the planet — which uses behavioral data and active survey responses to determine and validate user profiles.
Pollfish tracks the proclivities of mobile respondents from “bookworms” (a user that is regularly using their mobile phone to read books, news, or magazines) to “sports fans” (a user that is regularly using their mobile phone to do sports or stay fit) to “productivity boosters” (a user that is regularly using their mobile phone to boost daily productivity) — among other “personas.”
Pollfish can determine the best ways to reach them moving forward. The Personas algorithm even accounts for overlaps, since few people are defined by a single interest or habit.
Pollfish has made it possible to survey millions of respondents in real time, 24/7/365. It’s the kind of market intelligence that provides entrepreneurs, professional agencies, brand managers, and market researchers the data they need to benefit from deeper insights and therefore outpace the competition.
“Engaging your audience members — on their terms — is a crucial step for every entrepreneur, marketer, agency, or business owner,” notes Papadakis. “Mobile surveys are the best way to discover your potential customers’ opinions and perceptions, their likes and dislikes, how to better serve their needs, and get as specific as state and city level targeting — equally critical in this election year and for local market research needs.”
Polls that are mobile, fast, and fine-tuned — it’s the wave of the future. And Pollfish has designed a superb surfboard.
