NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Email Newsletter Demographics
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Email Newsletter Demographics
Marshall Hays (marshall_at_hays.net)
Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:53:24 -0600
Darren Cook wrote:
>. We have been
> sending out a free monthly email newsletter since last November and now have
> over 3500 subscribers.
> But
> when I mentioned it to some of my other clients who run web sites the first
> thing they asked was "Demographics?"
>
> 1.If we add more questions to the form, what are the important ones? Age and
> sex? Hobbies? Job? Location? Web browsing habits? Income?
>
> 2.If we get say 200 'full information' subscribers, can we justify that
> these demographics are typical of our entire readership? If not, how many do
> we need to justify this?
----------------------------->
Our experience with mailing lists is that advertisers want to know
everything, but not only that, they want to only send to the demographic
they are interested in. The survey to join our mailing lists asks:
(http://www.thekiss.com/survey/survey_form.html)
name,
email,
zipcode,
country,
sex,
age,
gender,
education
(We pulled off income level since 66% of our users are 14-25 years old.)
I would suggest putting up some other survey (have a contest) to get an
idea of what your demographics are so that you have an idea of what type
of questions to ask.. You DO need to get a feel for what users you
have. Also, take a look at what advertisers you want to approach and
even ask them what is important to them if they are interested in the
data you do have. The questions have to have MEANING. 3Com wants to
know users' modem speed, Kellogg's doesn't.
In our survey, the fields are optional, but we don't tell the viewer.
All of this data is collected in our SQL Server, so that now we can
target ads more efficiently. I even have a webpage where i can run
queries in real-time based on any combination of the variables. We
essentially now can target LOCALLY, by just targeting particular
zipcodes or domain names. The good/bad aspect of the web as an
advertising model is the data collection available. Let's say someone
wanted to target students (we had this request) and they only want .edu
accounts. Seems easy enough, but now we come back and say "what about
the students using AOL? AOL users count for 35% of our userbase" We
could target the AOL users between ages 14-20. This kind of specific
targeting is more attractive than just an overall demographic
description of a mailing list. Of course, don't let this make you feel
out of the running. What will happen as it does in all media is that
the rates will vary according to tightness of the group. Sending ads to
women whose last name starts with K and live in 75214 will cost more per
user than the whole group. So if you lower your rates enough, you will
find someone interested in your Japanese mailing list if you can 'tell
the story about your users'.
I believe it is in your best interest to collect at least the minimum
demographics of your users, so the advertiser believes that it is a REAL
list of names and not some you culled off of the web.
Marshall Hays
President
Hays Internet Marketing, Inc.
http://www.hays.net
ph:214-887-8881
-------> creators of http://TheKiss.com <-------
---> viewers: high school and college women <---
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