ESOMAR36

1. WHAT EXPERIENCE DOES YOUR COMPANY HAVE IN PROVIDING ONLINE SAMPLES FOR MARKET RESEARCH? HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN PROVIDING THIS SERVICE? DO YOU ALSO PROVIDE SIMILAR SERVICES FOR OTHER USES SUCH AS DIRECT MARKETING? IF SO, WHAT PROPORTION OF YOUR WORK IS FOR MARKET RESEARCH?

Emporia Research was founded in 2020 by Michael Hess, Jake Roeland and Mark Hannan. The founding team has a background in big data and research from companies like Goldman Sachs, Amazon and Marriott International. Since its inception Emporia Research has provided programmatic sampling for B2B audiences for clients in industries ranging from market research agencies, management consultancies, Fortune 500 corporations, creative and advertising agencies, brand strategy consultancies and more.

2. DO YOU HAVE STAFF WITH RESPONSIBILITY FOR DEVELOPING AND MONITORING THE PERFORMANCE OF THE SAMPLING ALGORITHMS AND RELATED AUTOMATED FUNCTIONS WHO ALSO HAVE KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE IN THIS AREA? WHAT SORT OF TRAINING IN SAMPLING TECHNIQUES DO YOU PROVIDE TO YOUR FRONTLINE STAFF?

Emporia Research’s frontline staff has been hired from leading sample market research companies like Qualtrics and Cint. On average, Emporia Research project managers come into the company with five or more years of programming, sampling and/or project management experience in the market research industry.

3. WHAT OTHER SERVICES DO YOU OFFER? DO YOU COVER SAMPLE-ONLY, OR DO YOU OFFER A BROAD RANGE OF DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS SERVICES?

Emporia Research is a Software as a Service (SaaS) provider offering a wide range of features and functionality to our customers and users. Using the Emporia platform allows users to handle custom recruitment, representative sample methodology, quota management, feasibility testing, programming, qualitative scheduling, quality checks, reporting and incentive distribution all in one place.

4. USING THE BROAD CLASSIFICATIONS ABOVE, FROM WHAT SOURCES OF ONLINE SAMPLE DO YOU DERIVE PARTICIPANTS?

Emporia Research provides unbiased sample, facilitates the search for hard-to-reach sample, and delivers every project with the highest level of quality and customer care. Because we don’t recruit from a static panel, we’re able to leverage our custom knowledge graph to source and field for hyper-niche B2B audiences. Each respondent recruited by Emporia’s recruitment engine is verified against a LinkedIn profile as well as several other quality and security checks.

5. WHICH OF THESE SOURCES ARE PROPRIETARY OR EXCLUSIVE AND WHAT IS THE PERCENT SHARE OF EACH IN THE TOTAL SAMPLE PROVIDED TO A BUYER?

Emporia Research’s panel is not proprietary. What is proprietary, however, is our ranking and recruitment algorithm. Emporia scans nearly 800MM professional and firmographic records and considers 200 attributes on an individual before ranking them by best fit for a study. Respondents are then invited in a programmatic fashion depending on a percent-qualified and likelihood to participate based on historical outcome data from previous projects.

6. WHAT RECRUITMENT CHANNELS ARE YOU USING FOR EACH OF THE SOURCES YOU HAVE DESCRIBED? IS THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS ‘OPEN TO ALL’ OR BY INVITATION ONLY? ARE YOU USING PROBABILISTIC METHODS? ARE YOU USING AFFILIATE NETWORKS AND REFERRAL PROGRAMS AND IN WHAT PROPORTIONS? HOW DOES YOUR USE OF THESE CHANNELS VARY BY GEOGRAPHY?

Emporia does not use probabilistic methods, and does not actively procure sample from affiliate networks or referral programs. We primarily recruit from our proprietary sourcing and ranking engine, which considers a number of public data sources from which to identify qualified candidates for B2B studies.

7. WHAT FORM OF VALIDATION DO YOU USE IN RECRUITMENT TO ENSURE THAT PARTICIPANTS ARE REAL, UNIQUE, AND ARE WHO THEY SAY THEY ARE?

Emporia employs a layered approach to ensure that participants are real, unique and are who they say they are. Our first layer is a primary point of contact through a corporate domain. Our second layer involves a check against LinkedIn that ensures the associated corporate email matches what an individual’s workplace is that the profile has been in existence for five years. Other fraud mitigation techniques include: digital fingerprinting and fraud identification. We also offer fieldwork management to catch respondent anomalies at any point during the data collection process.

8. WHAT BRAND (DOMAIN) AND/OR APP ARE YOU USING WITH PROPRIETARY SOURCES?

We use the Emporia brand for all external communication with qualified candidates and respondents.

9. WHICH MODEL(S) DO YOU OFFER TO DELIVER SAMPLE? MANAGED SERVICE, SELF-SERVE, OR API INTEGRATION?

Emporia offers both a managed service model and self-serve model to deliver sample.

10. DO YOU LET BUYERS CONTROL WHICH SOURCES OF SAMPLE TO INCLUDE IN THEIR PROJECTS, AND IF SO HOW? DO YOU HAVE ANY INTEGRATION MECHANISMS WITH THIRD-PARTY SOURCES OFFERED?

Emporia is a single sample source provider.

11. OF THE SAMPLE SOURCES YOU HAVE AVAILABLE, HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE SUITABILITY OF EACH FOR DIFFERENT RESEARCH APPLICATIONS?

Because Emporia is a single sample source provider and our methodology is reliant on LinkedIn and other verification checks, our model is best suited for niche qualitative and quantitative B2B studies.

12. WHAT STEPS DO YOU TAKE TO ACHIEVE A SAMPLE THAT “LOOKS LIKE” THE TARGET POPULATION? WHAT DEMOGRAPHIC QUOTA CONTROLS, IF ANY, DO YOU RECOMMEND?

The Emporia team utilizes in-house built tools to create custom quota plans and to field niche B2B audiences. Because we can be extremely granular in our targeting, we don’t need to contact a large number of professionals to ‘funnel’ them down to be a qualified candidate – they are likely qualified at the point of targeting.

13. WHAT PROFILING INFORMATION DO YOU HOLD ON AT LEAST 80% OF YOUR PANEL MEMBERS PLUS ANY INTERCEPTS KNOWN TO YOU THROUGH PRIOR CONTACT? HOW DOES THIS DIFFER BY THE SOURCES YOU OFFER? HOW OFTEN IS EACH OF THOSE DATA POINTS UPDATED? CAN YOU SUPPLY THESE DATA POINTS AS APPENDS TO THE DATA SET? DO YOU COLLECT THIS PROFILING INFORMATION DIRECTLY OR IS IT SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY?

Emporia holds profiling information like location, management level, job title, company size, company revenue, industry and key terms as they appear on a respondent’s LinkedIn profile and their company’s LinkedIn profile. These data points are updated monthly and we collect this profiling information directly (it is not self-reported).

14. WHAT INFORMATION DO YOU NEED ABOUT A PROJECT IN ORDER TO PROVIDE AN ESTIMATE OF FEASIBILITY? WHAT, IF ANYTHING, DO YOU DO TO GIVE UPPER OR LOWER BOUNDARIES AROUND THESE ESTIMATES?

Emporia determines project feasibility up-front to set reasonable goals and expectations for any project, collecting detailed information about the audience needed for a survey, length of survey, cross-device compatibility, geographical parameters, languages, time in field and more. We rely on historical incidence rates (IRs) from previously projects and audiences before a study goes into the field to determine the qualifying rate and degree of difficulty in reaching an audience. We also provide population estimates that carefully take into consideration the IR, population size and known quantities of sample to determine a range of respondents who would qualify for a survey within a target geography. We are big believers in running frequent feasibility tests to ensure no surprises once a project is in the field.

15. WHAT DO YOU DO IF THE PROJECT PROVES IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO COMPLETE IN FIELD? DO YOU INFORM THE SAMPLE BUYER AS TO WHO YOU WOULD USE TO COMPLETE THE PROJECT? IN SUCH CIRCUMSTANCES, HOW DO YOU MAINTAIN AND CERTIFY THIRD PARTY SOURCES/SUB-CONTRACTORS?

While a survey is in field, Emporia’s dedicated client solutions associates monitor and send regular updates on progress against key metrics until fielding is completed. If the specs of a project come in differently than was anticipated during planning, there are several approaches we take to complete the project. First we will work with the sample buyer to understand if the project’s audience can be better defined. Next we will look at termination rates and if certain questions are causing an unnecessary terminations and suggest softening screening criteria. If our experts believe there is another vendor that could be tapped to complete the project, we will recommend that vendor to find success. Emporia only recommends GDPR-compliant, reputable panel companies and sample sources.

16. DO YOU EMPLOY A SURVEY ROUTER OR ANY YIELD MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES? IF YES, PLEASE DESCRIBE HOW YOU GO ABOUT ALLOCATING PARTICIPANTS TO SURVEYS. HOW ARE POTENTIAL PARTICIPANTS ASKED TO PARTICIPATE IN A STUDY?

Because Emporia is a single sample source we don’t currently employ a router or yield management techniques.

17. DO YOU SET LIMITS ON THE AMOUNT OF TIME A PARTICIPANT CAN BE IN THE ROUTER BEFORE THEY QUALIFY FOR A SURVEY?

Participants are not spending any time in a router.

18. WHAT INFORMATION ABOUT A PROJECT IS GIVEN TO POTENTIAL PARTICIPANTS BEFORE THEY CHOOSE WHETHER TO TAKE THE SURVEY OR NOT? HOW DOES THIS DIFFER BY THE SOURCES YOU OFFER?

As part of our unbiased, agnostic sourcing approach, we fully disclose the client-specified public project description to participants. We also include the methodology, length of survey/interview and the incentive amount being offered.

19. DO YOU ALLOW PARTICIPANTS TO CHOOSE A SURVEY FROM A SELECTION OF AVAILABLE SURVEYS? IF SO, WHAT ARE THEY TOLD ABOUT EACH SURVEY THAT HELPS THEM TO MAKE THAT CHOICE?

Participants who have not participated in an Emporia engagement before are only shown information about the study they are being invited to. Participants who have successfully completed a past survey or interview are shown in a participant portal active studies that they might qualify for based on their professional work experience.

20. WHAT ABILITY DO YOU HAVE TO INCREASE (OR DECREASE) INCENTIVES BEING OFFERED TO POTENTIAL PARTICIPANTS (OR SUB-GROUPS OF PARTICIPANTS) DURING THE COURSE OF A SURVEY? IF SO, CAN THIS BE FLAGGED AT THE PARTICIPANT LEVEL IN THE DATASET?

Emporia allows sample buyers to increase or discrete incentives offered to participants at any time throughout the fielding process. This is flagged at the participant level in the dataset.

21. DO YOU MEASURE PARTICIPANT SATISFACTION AT THE INDIVIDUAL PROJECT LEVEL? IF SO, CAN YOU PROVIDE NORMATIVE DATA FOR SIMILAR PROJECTS (BY LENGTH, BY TYPE, BY SUBJECT, BY TARGET GROUP)?

Emporia prioritizes respondent experience and as such actively manages it using metrics such as conversion rates, dropout rates, and quality of responses.

22. DO YOU PROVIDE A DEBRIEF REPORT ABOUT A PROJECT AFTER IT HAS COMPLETED? IF YES, CAN YOU PROVIDE AN EXAMPLE?

Throughout the entirety of an Emporia-run project sample buyers have access to powerful reporting portals that provide metrics on study performance – LOI, IR, drop rate, incentive amount and anticipated costs.

23. HOW OFTEN CAN THE SAME INDIVIDUAL PARTICIPATE IN A SURVEY? HOW DOES THIS VARY ACROSS YOUR SAMPLE SOURCES? WHAT IS THE MEAN AND MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF TIME A PERSON MAY HAVE ALREADY BEEN TAKING SURVEYS BEFORE THEY ENTERED THIS SURVEY? HOW DO YOU MANAGE THIS?

Emporia utilizes deduplication technology to ensure participants are not entering the same survey multiple times. Because of the nature of Emporia’s targeting, in many cases respondents are engaging with us for the first time. Unless clients specifically require that a respondent not participate because of recency in another engagement, respondents are qualified for invitation.

24. WHAT DATA DO YOU MAINTAIN ON INDIVIDUAL PARTICIPANTS SUCH AS RECENT PARTICIPATION HISTORY, DATE(S) OF ENTRY, SOURCE/CHANNEL, ETC? ARE YOU ABLE TO SUPPLY BUYERS WITH A PROJECT ANALYSIS OF SUCH INDIVIDUAL LEVEL DATA? ARE YOU ABLE TO APPEND SUCH DATA POINTS TO YOUR PARTICIPANT RECORDS?

Emporia maintains participation history, date of engagement(s), sample source (which is only Emporia at the moment), LinkedIn profile information and contact information. We are able to supply buyers with high level exports of profiling that do not include PII but rather descriptors like job title, years of experience in a role, etc.

25. PLEASE DESCRIBE YOUR PROCEDURES FOR CONFIRMATION OF PARTICIPANT IDENTITY AT THE PROJECT LEVEL. PLEASE DESCRIBE THESE PROCEDURES AS THEY ARE IMPLEMENTED AT THE POINT OF ENTRY TO A SURVEY OR ROUTER.

Emporia uses advanced digital fingerprinting and fraud identification technology that examines potential respondents before they are engaged in a survey, ensuring that the participant is not a bot, known fraudulent person or a duplicate. Our first point of contact for any participant is through a corporate domain that is mapped to a corresponding LinkedIn profile.

26. HOW DO YOU MANAGE SOURCE CONSISTENCY AND BLEND AT THE PROJECT LEVEL? WITH REGARD TO TRACKERS, HOW DO YOU ENSURE THAT THE NATURE AND COMPOSITION OF SAMPLE SOURCES REMAIN THE SAME OVER TIME? DO YOU HAVE REPORTS ON BLENDS AND SOURCES THAT CAN BE PROVIDED TO BUYERS? CAN SOURCE BE APPENDED TO THE PARTICIPANT DATA RECORDS?

Emporia is a single sample source.

27. PLEASE DESCRIBE YOUR PARTICIPANT/MEMBER QUALITY TRACKING, ALONG WITH ANY HEALTH METRICS YOU MAINTAIN ON MEMBERS/PARTICIPANTS, AND HOW THOSE METRICS ARE USED TO INVITE, TRACK, QUARANTINE, AND BLOCK PEOPLE FROM ENTERING THE PLATFORM, ROUTER, OR A SURVEY. WHAT PROCESSES DO YOU HAVE IN PLACE TO COMPARE PROFILED AND KNOWN DATA TO IN-SURVEY RESPONSES?

Emporia employs technology that tracks a respondent’s rate of activity across the market research ecosystem, which is helpful in flagging and blocking professional or otherwise undesirable survey takers (e.g. survey cookie deletion), which in turn positively impacts data quality. While a survey is in field, we use tools to actively track a respondent’s engagement in real-time.

28. FOR WORK WHERE YOU PROGRAM, HOST, AND DELIVER THE SURVEY DATA, WHAT PROCESSES DO YOU HAVE IN PLACE TO REDUCE OR ELIMINATE UNDESIRED IN-SURVEY BEHAVIORS, SUCH AS (A) RANDOM RESPONDING, (B) ILLOGICAL OR INCONSISTENT RESPONDING, (C) OVERUSE OF ITEM NONRESPONSE (E.G., “DON’T KNOW”) (D) INACCURATE OR INCONSISTENT RESPONDING, (E) INCOMPLETE RESPONDING, OR (F) TOO RAPID SURVEY COMPLETION?

In addition to the tools mentioned above, the experts at Emporia build logic into surveys to help eliminate undesired in-survey behaviors such as red herring or trap questions, and monitor behaviors like straight-lining or junk open-end responses.

29. PLEASE PROVIDE THE LINK TO YOUR PARTICIPANT PRIVACY NOTICE (SOMETIMES REFERRED TO AS A PRIVACY POLICY) AS WELL AS A SUMMARY OF THE KEY CONCEPTS IT ADDRESSES.

You can find our Privacy Policy here and our Respondent Terms of Service here.

30. HOW DO YOU COMPLY WITH KEY DATA PROTECTION LAWS AND REGULATIONS THAT APPLY IN THE VARIOUS JURISDICTIONS IN WHICH YOU OPERATE?

Emporia has appropriate contractual obligations in place where required by law. We have developed policies and procedures to ensure information and security obligations are met as applicable.

How do you address requirements regarding consent or other legal bases for the processing personal data?

Emporia relies on the appropriate legal basis by region and maintains a strict GDPR and CCPA compliant framework when asking consent for processing of personal data.

How do you address requirements for data breach response, cross-border transfer, and data retention?

Emporia, to the extent applicable, has appropriate breach response processes. Emporia’s clients are obligated to ensure cross-border transfers and data retention for any personal data collected as part of their projects as programmed.

Have you appointed a data protection officer?

Yes. Mark Hannan has direct responsibility for maintaining Emporia’s data protection and information security policies and procedures.

31. HOW CAN PARTICIPANTS PROVIDE, MANAGE AND REVISE CONSENT FOR THE PROCESSING OF THEIR PERSONAL DATA? WHAT SUPPORT CHANNELS DO YOU PROVIDE FOR PARTICIPANTS?

Emporia abides by all Right Know and Right to Delete laws. Participants can at any time request information on the personal data being processed through any of our email or chat bot support channels.

32. HOW DO YOU TRACK AND COMPLY WITH OTHER APPLICABLE LAWS AND REGULATIONS, SUCH AS THOSE THAT MIGHT IMPACT THE INCENTIVES PAID TO PARTICIPANTS?

Emporia works with a compliance consultant and legal counsel in both the United States and European Union to track applicable laws.

33. WHAT IS YOUR APPROACH TO COLLECTING AND PROCESSING THE PERSONAL DATA OF CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE?

Emporia does not collect or process the personal data of anyone under the age of 18.

Do you adhere to standards and guidelines provided by ESOMAR or GRBN member associations?

Emporia adheres to the standards and guidelines provided by ESOMAR and GRBN member associations.

How do you comply with applicable data protection laws and regulations?

Emporia has appropriate contractual obligations in place where required by law. We have developed policies and procedures to ensure information and security obligations are met as applicable.

34. DO YOU IMPLEMENT “DATA PROTECTION BY DESIGN” (SOMETIMES REFERRED TO AS “PRIVACY BY DESIGN”) IN YOUR SYSTEMS AND PROCESSES? IF SO, PLEASE DESCRIBE HOW. DATA PROTECTION BY DESIGN” (WHICH MAY ALSO BE REFERRED TO AS “PRIVACY BY DESIGN”) IS AN APPROACH THAT REQUIRES THE CONSIDERATION OF PRIVACY AND DATA PROTECTION ISSUES AT THE DESIGN PHASE OF ANY SYSTEM, SERVICE, PRODUCT OR PROCESS AND THEN THROUGHOUT THE LIFECYCLE. UNDERSTANDING A SAMPLE PROVIDERS USE OR LACK OF USE OF “DATA PROTECTION BY DESIGN” CAN HELP YOU UNDERSTAND ITS DATA PROTECTION COMPLIANCE POSTURE.

Data protection and privacy regulation compliance is intrinsic to the way we do business and Emporia only collects data elements as needed for each client’s specific project. However, we do not employ ‘privacy by design’ in our engineering process.

35. WHAT ARE THE KEY ELEMENTS OF YOUR INFORMATION SECURITY COMPLIANCE PROGRAM?

Emporia implements the following security and compliance standards:
- Firewall
- LDAP or Active Directory (AD) authentication
- Anti-virus protectionPassword authentication
- Strong password enforcement
- Automatic blocking after 3 failed log-in attempts
- Logging of access attempts
- Encryption of media (USB, harddrives)
- Auto web session termination after specified time
- Media Access (USB, hard-or CD drives) disabled or available on an authorized basis
- Reassessment and Re-Accreditation on a regular basis (Review and reassess the security of information systems and networks and reaccredit the authorized access for users and make appropriate modifications to access privileges, security policies, standards and procedures)
- Role based access for users and administratorsLeast privilege—only rights required to do the job
- Confidentiality—only disclose sensitive data to authorized personnel in line with applicable regulations and laws
- Logging of access attemptsIntrusion detection and prevention
- Cloud Model: Single Tenant (ON REQUEST)
- Datacenter and Storage inventory checks and procedures

Please specify the framework(s) or auditing procedure(s) you comply with or certify to. Does your program include an asset-based risk assessment and internal audit process? Information security frameworks such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2 are accepted and recognized frameworks for information security compliance.

Emporia doesn’t have audit policies in place but anticipates auditing to begin in 2023.

36. DO YOU CERTIFY TO OR COMPLY WITH A QUALITY FRAMEWORK SUCH AS ISO 20252?

We are not ISO 20252 certified but we closely align with this framework.

ESOMAR36

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