There's no exact rule when it comes to incentivising your research participants - it depends on different factors such as the type of participant you're trying to attract, their motivation to participate in your research, your research budget and more.

If you're recruiting your own participants (by sharing a Wondering study via a link or through an in-product study on your website) and want to incentivize them, you have a range of options available.

As a general rule, it's a good idea to offer your participants incentives, as it:

That said, there will be studies where you don't need or find it suitable to offer an incentive at all.

Here's a list of example incentives that that we've seen customers successfully use to recruit participants:

An incentive that is can be good for teams with a tight incentive budget (and is good for the world) is offering to plant a tree for each response to your Wondering study. Customers using this method simply commit to plant a tree for each response they collect in their studies.

Wondering partners with TreeApp to plant trees for some of the research studies we run.

Example copy if recruiting participants and offer to plant a tree for each response:

Hi [their name],

We're looking for some feedback on how we can improve X, and would really appreciate your feedback.

The study takes 5-10 minutes to complete and can be completed here: [LINK TO WONDERING STUDY].

We’ll plant a tree for each completed response as a thank you for your time, up to 1000 responses. Besides benefiting the environment, your input also helps us Y!

Best,

[Your name]

You can also offer a monetary incentive to each participant that completes your study. This is standard practice when recruiting participants for studies that take longer to complete, such as user interviews. Based on the studies run on our platform, we generally recommend offering ~$45/hour as an incentive if you choose this approach.

Example copy if recruiting participants and offer a monetary incentive:

Hi [their name],

We're looking for some feedback on how we can improve X, and would really appreciate your feedback.

The study takes 5-10 minutes to complete and can be completed here: [LINK TO WONDERING STUDY].

We’ll send you a $X Amazon voucher if you complete the full study.

Best,

[Your name]

If you want to offer a monetary incentive to your participant but you don't prefer to send an incentive to each participant that completes your study, you can offer participants that complete your study to enter a prize draw for an incentive. Make sure to pick a price that your participants will find motivating enough, despite there being a low chance they'll actually win the price.

When using a price draw to incentivize participants, make sure that you include a question in your study to collect the participants email, so that you can send the incentive to the chosen participant.

Example copy if recruiting participants and offer a price draw:

Hi [their name],

We're looking for some feedback on how we can improve X. We would really appreciate your feedback and, as a thank you for your time, we'll enter you into a price draw with the chance to win $150 if you complete the full study. We'll email the winner of the draw on X date.

The study takes 5-10 minutes to complete and can be completed here: [LINK TO WONDERING STUDY].

Best,

[Your name]

Some of our customers have really engaged customer bases that love providing feedback to help them improve their user experiences. These customers find that they do not need to incentivize their participants at all, and still have good response and completion rates for their studies.

To find the best option for your studies, we recommend testing the option above that you feel most comfortable with and think will be right for your company and participants.