CEO Message

Toluna and Greenfield Online…
Coming Together to Serve you Better!

You may have known us as Greenfield Online, or you may have worked with us as Toluna. In either case, we’ve come together to serve you better. On June 26, 2009, Toluna plc acquired Greenfield Online Inc. and its subsidiary Ciao surveys from Microsoft.

It has been our long-term mission to fundamentally improve the stability of the supply of online sample to the global research industry. I am pleased to say we now provide access to over 3.7 million panelists in 33 countries, with 17 dedicated local service offices in the USA, Europe and Asia. By integrating the world's largest network of locally optimized panels via a single unified platform, we will be able to offer our clients unrivaled speed and consistency of fulfillment, panel capacity and 24x7 service support.  

It is of critical importance to us that this acquisition improves your experience and helps to add further value to your business.

Here is what you can expect from working with Greenfield Online/Toluna:

• Broader respondent reach - Access to 3.7 million consumer and b2b professionals in 33 countries.
• 24x7 global operations - 17 offices in 10 countries with 30 native language speakers in house.
• Innovative products and tools - Better targeting, faster and more efficient results.

Toluna has a unique panel community network of over 3.7 million members across 33 countries. This ‘community’ based approach to panel management provides unrivalled respondent capacity and global reach, enabling researchers around the world to get in touch with people – anyone, anytime, anywhere – for fast, reliable and representative answers for informed decision making.

We deliver the next generation of research sampling and technology, and clients come to us for quick-turn surveys, online sample and survey programming, media measurement tools, customer experience measurement, IVR/mobile surveys, as well as, our hosted panel community management platform, PanelPortal™.

At Toluna we have three main objectives; to deliver the best quality product and service in the industry, to continue to expand our available respondent pool to meet the business world’s ever-increasing demand for consumer data, and to continue to leverage technology to innovate and help our clients meet not only today’s, but tomorrow’s marketing research challenges.

We’d like to talk to you in person and see how we can help you achieve your business objectives. We have always, and will continue to strive to earn the faith that our clients have placed in us.

Regards,

Frédéric-Charles Petit, CEO, Toluna

Now our North American clients can take the quality and speed of their online research to an even higher level. We’ve rolled out our innovative Web 2.0 community approach to our US and Canadian panels (formerly the Your2Cents Online Opinion Panel, now Toluna), enhancing our panelists’ online experience, leading to higher levels of engagement and more reliable data for our clients. Our panel members enjoy many Web 2.0 features designed to enhance their online experience, such as discussion forums, opinion ratings, and polls, while our clients enjoy higher response rates, more thoughtful responses, and ultimately more reliable data.

What’s different about the community approach vs. traditional online panels? In a traditional panel, interaction is largely one way, with members providing feedback through profile and survey completion. In a panel community, members can also interact with one another by responding to member-created polls and discussions.

Why is a panel community a good thing? In the community approach, members don’t have to wait for an invitation to give their opinion, as they can respond to other members’ polls or opinions, or create their own “research” polls or discussion topics. The good thing about this is that we collect this data and store it, adding to the available depth of profiling we keep on our members. On average, we have 750 data points on each member. For our clients, this means enhanced targeting capabilities, and more accurate feasibility estimates.

The most compelling benefit of the community approach is more reliable data. We have found that the level of engagement increases with the community concept versus the traditional panel model, as measured by higher response rates and longer panel tenure. Engaged panelists tend to participate more often, and provide more thoughtful responses, leading to more reliable data.

What hasn’t changed? Recruiting process and sampling processes have NOT changed as a result of the transition. We are not recruiting from social community web sites. Surveys always have been and will remain by invitation only. Panelists who do not wish to participate in the Web 2.0 community features do not have to do so. They can still be selected for or participate in client surveys.

Need answers to a few questions, really fast? Get answers right away for that client pitch, or to check project feasibility, with Toluna’s new QuickSurveys tool. This innovative, self-service tool allows you to launch surveys of up to five questions to the Toluna panel at any time of the day or night, and receive thousands of responses within hours, with national representation all at a low cost. You can even add images, audio, or video to your survey. You can ask your questions of the Toluna community, or pose the questions to people you know, such as your existing customers. Use it to gather feedback, conduct incidence checks, or prepare for client pitches.

Toluna QuickSurveys provides data in real-time, and questions can be viewed by age, gender, region, education, or income level

As budgets shrink and timelines compress, Toluna QuickSurveys offers a simple, efficient way to get answers when you need them - fast. It's available now in the US, Canada, UK, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Spain.

Visit http://us.tolunapro.com/Default.aspx to learn more, or to launch your own QuickSurvey.

This November, we look forward to launching GoReport™ version 3.0! GoReport™ is our online analytic tool that enables clients to view data online, and create PowerPoint^® presentations with a click of a button, even while their survey is still in field! We’ve heard that many of our clients use GoReport™ to create topline, or field reports, and begin to create analytic plans. This easy-to-use tool is provided to all clients that program their surveys with us.

This version of GoReport™ will provide users with the ability to view and analyze trackers, or multiple waves of data online in real-time.

Greenfield Online has integrated GoReport with the GoClient™ client portal so that all of client information is in one place from bids through project work orders, and now data reporting! GoReport is available on all full service studies in North America, ask your account manager if you’d like to use this powerful tool.

To view a demo of GoReport™ click here. To speak to a representative about GoReport™ click here.

We believe that above all, transparency is the most critical factor in providing data quality. At Greenfield Online/Toluna we want our clients to know what steps we take to ensure data quality.
As a quality data provider we focus on three key areas.

• Pre-survey data quality – Where do my respondents come from? How are they recruited, and what is their respondent experience like?
• During survey data quality – What steps are taken to provide the respondent with a pleasant experience? How do you encourage respondent engagement?
• Post survey data quality – What do you do to ensure that my data is clean?

We’ve created our own standard operating procedures to instill data quality, which we’ve outlined here: www.qualitydataprogram.com Further, we’ve updated the ESOMAR 26 and endorse the newly launched ARF QeP.