NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Auditing Discussion Lists
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Auditing Discussion Lists
Donna Dolezal Zelzer (djz_at_efn.org)
Tue, 21 Jan 1997 08:25:47 -0800
At 1:07 PM -0800 1/20/97, Sean Pfister made this statement of rare insight:
>I would do exactly what magazines do:
> take a random sample of the maillist and email a survey to that sample.
> Have a questionnaire that probes for readership habits. (If the population
> to be studied is small, there is a technique called finite population
> correction to deal with small universes.) Such a survey would provide
> projectable audience data, which is what makes advertisers salivate...
Why not just send the survey to the entire list? There are no postage or
printing costs to make it cost prohibitive. And it's a no-brainer to send
it out to everyone, since you're already set up to do that with the
newsletter itself.
Why go to the trouble of pulling out a sample and emailing to them, when
it's easier to email it to everyone? Plus, the responses you get would be a
sample of your entire subscribership, rather than a sample of your random
sample. Wouldn't that be better? Is there a reason to prefer a ramdom
sample when it's possible to work with the whole thing?
(One possible reason is the potential problem of working with the large
amounts of data that might come in. But i don't see this as a problem. For
one thing, if responses are e-mailed, they're already computer readable,so
it becomes fairly trivial to get them into a database for analysis. For
another, I would guess that the subscribership of most e-mail newsletters
is much smaller than print magazines.)
A oouple related points. Keep the survey as short as possible. And remember
to ask about pass-on copies. Several of my subscribers have mentioned in
e-mail that they share the obcnews with friends. Some print it out and
bring it to work to share with interested co-workers.
Donna
---------------------
Donna Dolezal Zelzer <djz_at_efn.org>
The Online Birth Center (pregnancy, birth, midwifery, breastfeeding)
http://www.efn.org/~djz/birth/birthindex.html
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