How Earnest makes Research a strategic driver of product decisions

The challenge: Research was slow, manual, and dependent on other teams

At Earnest, user and market research plays a central role in product strategy and decision-making. But before Rally, launching a study was a heavy, multi-week process that relied heavily on manual outreach. These steps introduced substantial lag time - often two to four weeks before a study could even begin. 

“Whenever we thought about a new product or we wanted to test out a new design, it definitely created a lot of lag time [where] product was waiting on research insights and we just couldn't get it in enough time due to the fact that we were going through these other teams to simply even reach out to users,” said Ellie. 

Even in a research-positive company like Earnest, bandwidth constraints across marketing, legal, and compliance meant research work frequently waited in queue. Researchers were burned out by manual logistics, leaving little time for analysis or strategic contributions. 

The solution: Rally made research faster and more reliable

Earnest adopted Rally to build a customer advisory panel and centralize participant recruitment and management. Instead of manually exporting lists and coordinating across teams, the research team now sends panel invites automatically through lifecycle campaigns, complete with legal consent and consistent user expectations.

With Rally, Earnest can:

• Recruit from a living panel of known users segmented by product, behavior, and demographic profiles
• Launch studies quickly without cross-team dependencies
• Manage incentives automatically through Rally’s Tremendous integration
• Track participation and compliance in one place

“What [Rally] has done is taken away all the kind of manual effort when we want to turn up a study instead of needing to go through marketing and sending individual studies off and seeing if we can get enough participants,” said Ellie. “It also democratizes our process much more, which really helps our team cut down on the timing needed to actually talk to our users."

The outcome: Research becomes proactive and impactful

"We've been able to bring forth ideas even before they become PRDs to our executive team and get those started," Ellie said. "We're now able to do research closer to the beginning of the product cycle, rather than in the middle or towards the end. We’ve become more strategic across the company."

With Rally, Earnest’s research team went from waiting 2-3 weeks to launch a study to launching in a day or less. Rally’s segmentation and sampling tools eliminated manual random-sampling workflows, freeing researchers to focus on asking better questions and generating deeper insights.

Incentive management is smoother too, resulting in higher participation rates and fewer no-shows. Rally’s integrations mean distribution and tracking are automated - no more juggling Amazon gift cards or manual follow-ups.

The impact rippled beyond operations. With more reliable access to users and faster cycles of insight:

• The research team collaborates earlier in the product development process
• Designers and PMs run more frequent user conversations
• Earnest’s research function influences strategy, not just validation

Research is no longer a bottleneck - it’s a competitive advantage.

How Rally shines: Speed, governance, and strategic impact

Rally didn’t just speed up research at Earnest; it fundamentally changed how research happens.

Faster study launches

“I think the last study we did, we were able to kick it off in a day compared to before, to even send the first outreach email, it would take two weeks.”

By embedding approvals and consent directly into the research workflow, Rally gives researchers direct access to the users they need, when they need them.

Less manual work, fewer errors

“You have to think about, 'oh, how do you track the number of interviews? How do you track incentives?' Because some industries have caps on incentives for participants. All these things, you have to make sure that your analytics team can pull that information or else you're really updating a manual Excel sheet every time. It opens up the room for error. It's just not feasible.”

Sampling, demographics, incentives, and budgets now live in Rally, reducing risk and saving time.

Higher participation, fewer no-shows

“Before Rally, if someone [were] to receive an email offering compensation for an interview, some people click it, some people think it's spam. Some people sign up and they don't show. If you send them reminder emails, it's really a manual process. And even if you do, sometimes they just don't show up. I would fear that would happen again if we removed Rally.”

Rally helped streamline Earnest’s recruitment and scheduling process to reduce no-shows, cancellations, and manual operations work. 

Research access without losing rigor

“Our designers use Rally a lot. They're a little bit more trained just because we're closer when it comes to UX, but they do a lot of usability testing on their own with users and find it super helpful. And from all the designers I've heard from, Rally makes the process way more seamless. They're relying less on our researchers, which opens up our bandwidth for other things. And they're also, again, able to get that feedback faster, which is a win for everyone.”

Rally’s templates and guardrails make research easier to scale responsibly.

Transforming researchers into strategic leaders

"Since Rally, we've been able to allocate more time to the strategy piece and actually ideating on a roadmap and ideas and what pitches we want to put forth. So overall, I think it's really been beneficial, not only for me, but also my colleagues who are more junior, but they want to grow in that strategic mindset and not just be bogged down by the operations of things.”

Essential infrastructure

If Rally disappeared, the impact would be immediate.

"Rally has significantly improved the efficiency of our team and become a critical part of our research infrastructure."

For Earnest, Rally isn’t just a tool; it’s what makes proactive, credible research possible.

Ellie summed it up: “Rally's been really great. It's made us more efficient in a lot of ways. I think it's a really smart tool and the UI makes sense. It's obviously built for researchers, which I like.”

If you’re looking to reduce research ops friction and make insights more proactive and strategic, Rally is the platform teams like Earnest trust to get you there. Explore Rally now by setting up a demo.