Step four of Creating a Session is shopper selection
The "Shopper Matching" step of the Scheduler Wizard helps you find shoppers based on their proximity to the locations being scheduled.
First, you determine the number of shoppers you want to find per location by filling in the appropriate Shopper Target inputs. In this example, we specify that we'd like to find between 20 to 250 shoppers per location; the wider a range you select, the easier it will be to zero in on which locations are going to present scheduling problems. The first number (minimum acceptable shoppers) can be at MOST 100 shoppers, and the second number (maximum acceptable shoppers) has to be at LEAST 50.
Next you'll need to select the Shopper Matching method.
TIP: For all sessions in the USA, we highly recommend using the SmartMatch by Geocode Method and allowing the system to automatically select the ideal matching method for each location.
After submitting the initial page, you will be presented with the highly useful Shopper Match Report, which will alert you to Danger locations, those that are in danger of not getting filled.
When you're satisfied with your Match Results, click the Good Enough ! Move On! button
Locations on Target: The green row tell us we found our target number of shoppers (20 to 250) for 3505 locations. The next column specifies exactly which methods were used to achieve the target number.
Too Few Shoppers: The orange row shows us that 62 locations had fewer than 20 shoppers matched. These are our danger locations, the ones that may be hard to fill. Keep in mind for each of these too few shoppers locations, the system searched 100 miles from each location and still failed to find enough shoppers.
Having the list of locations where there are too few shoppers can be a very helpful tool for determining where you should focus your shopper recruitment efforts.
TIP : If you click the number of matches you can see a list of the emails for those shoppers; handy for making direct contact with those shoppers for those hard to fill shops.
TIP : In desperate situations, you can use the retry option to choose a wider search method such as Area Code or State, but this is generally not recommended. You will certainly get more shoppers matching, but since they will all be more than 100 miles away from any location you're probably adding shoppers that will never do those shops anyway and just giving yourself a false sense of security !
Too Many Shoppers: There will be a blue row that shows locations that have too many shoppers, even within a 10 mile radius of the location. In this case, it may be useful to retry with Zip Code Zone as a way to pare down the number of shoppers.
