Earlier this month, we traveled to the Big Apple to attend the 2024 Quirk's New York conference. The sold-out event was brimming with new ideas, innovations, the latest learnings and fantastic networking opportunities. Our CEO and Founder, Andrew Reid, took the stage during the conference to present with ŌURA's Director of Consumer Insights, Kati LeBeaume, on how they are using a mobile-first insight communityon the Rival platformto drive big results.

In case you're not familiar, ŌURA is a giant and pioneer in the wearable tech space. Their industry-leading smart ring translates the body's most meaningful messages - sleep, activity, stress, and heart health - to transform how its 2.5 million users feel every day. With 10 years of research and development behind its revolutionary design and technology, ŌURA continually collects data on over 20 biometrics that directly impact its members' wellbeing.

In a packed room of insights professionals, Kati and Andrew shared about ŌURA's experience launching a research community. I had the opportunity to watch the session in person. Here's a quick recap of what they shared.

The benefits of a mobile-first insight community

Kati and Andrew started their session by answering an important question: why do you need an insight communityin 2024?

According to Kati, it was all about fulfilling an unmet desire to get closer to ŌURA members. Her team wanted to capture ongoing, candid feedback, especially about topics that are sometimes sensitive.

"Bringing members to the heart of decision-making ensures that product, marketing, and member experience efforts are aligned with their needs and preferences," Kati explained.

Choosing the right research partner

Kati shared that they evaluated top insight community platformsbefore landing on Rival. Ultimately they chose Rival for the following reasons:

• The mobile-first capabilities that let them meet ŌURA members where they already are
• A conversational approach to researchthat simulates how people communicate with each other every day in the digital world, making engagement feel more natural and engaging
• Robust research capabilities that make it easy to capture quant, qual and unlimited video feedbackin one learning stream
• End-to-end support from our customer success team, including community and incentive management
• The ability to reach new voices - in particular, to hear from Gen Z consumersand men

Making an immediate and impressive impact

Shortly after meeting us at Quirk's New York 2023, ŌURA's launched its community called Oura's Inner Circle. Today, it has 2,046 members, supporting both strategic, long-range planning and more tactical, near-term initiatives.

The community serves as a key tool for creating empathy, understanding members' passions and incorporating their feedback into the brand's decision-making processes. Insights are shared with executive, product innovation, member experience, marketing, and commercial teams to help guide decision making.

Kati shared 3 stories that highlight different use cases for their insight community:

Business planning cycle: ŌURA leadership sought member-driven insights on several exploratory topics to guide strategic planning. The community provided personal experiences and candid feedback on key topics, according to Kati, which aided in evaluating new business opportunities. This research led to the greenlighting of three new discovery areas, demonstrating the strategic value of member insights.

Android early feature testing: To validate the accuracy of a new feature among Android users, members of Oura's Inner Circle opted in to test the feature at home and provided feedback on various aspects. Insights from this research allowed ŌURA to make iterations to maximize accuracy.

Newly-launched feature evaluation: To measure the success of new feature launches and improve future iterations, community members provided feedback on awareness, usage, perceived accuracy, and usefulness of new ŌURA features. These key metrics informed the feature launch post-mortem and identified areas for improvement in future versions, ensuring that the product continues to evolve based on user experiences.

Increasing research capacity with an insight community

Oura's Inner Circle has become somewhat of a viral sensation within the company. When different departments heard about the community and saw the insights coming from it, they naturally wanted to be involved.

Within the first five months of launch, ŌURA has already seen more than 12,000 survey completes across a growing number of research studies. There's been an increased demand for research-an opportunity that Kati and her team are able to take on thanks in large part to their very engaged community. (On average, Oura's Inner Circle sees a completion rate of 86%.)

Kati also pointed out how using Rival's AI capabilities-including AI Summarizer-and partnering closely with our customer success teamhave helped increase their capacity to do more strategic work.

Driving future research innovations

During the presentation, Kati and Andrew also shared about ŌURA's experience working with Rival Labs, our new innovation division. The team tested our AI Probing feature, an AI-powered tool that follows up on qualitative open-ended questions and prompts participants to share more. The goal was to uncover higher-quality, more thoughtful feedback while still keeping the experience conversational for participants.

During the experiment, ŌURA saw significant improvements in feedback quality and relevance. It resulted in a 293% improvement in thoughtfulness score. (Thoughtfulness score is a way to evaluate open-ended responses based on criteria such as depth of insight, relevance, specificity, clarity, coherence, originality, critical thinking, emotional and empathetic engagement, breadth of consideration, use of supporting evidence, and constructiveness with AI.)

AI Probing also got the thumbs up from research participants. In fact, 94% of participants said that the AI-generated questions they received were relevant and appropriate and 99% indicated that the AI-generated questions were easy to understand.

To wrap up, Kati shared a few best practices for launching a successful insight community:

• Be proactive: Anticipate needs and address them promptly.
• Be human first: Prioritize genuine connections with community members.
• Connect the dots: Ensure insights are actionable and interconnected.
• Relax and have fun: Enjoy the process and foster a positive community atmosphere.

I'd like to personally thank Kati for sharing their story on stage with us at Quirk's New York! And I'd also like to extend my gratitude to all the attendees who dropped by our booth with our sister company, Reach3 Insights.

It was amazing to hear everyone's story of how they're driving market research ROIin their organization. I left the conference inspired and excited for what's coming to our industry. Research leaders like Kati are proving that it's time for change-and our industry is ready to embrace innovation and to drive impact.

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