E-newsletter survey results
I've spent the last couple of days compiling the responses to our survey on our weekday afternoon e-mail news update. About 70 of our more than 1,200 daily subscribers responded. A quick summary of the findings:
- Not to brag, but we've got a lot of very satisfied customers. That's particularly impressive in that UNhappy customers tend to be much more likely to get in touch than happy ones, all other things being equal.
- Not surprisingly, readers want us to tweak the content, if at all, even more toward local news. That's considered by far the most "useful" part of the content.
- We need to continue to be sure that a headline contains enough info to actually tell the story; "Man dies in Reidsville" isn't especially informative, one reader noted.
- Several folks mentioned they get sports/weather/entertainment news elsewhere and so find it less useful, but at the same time there wasn't much call for dropping them.
- We face a particular problem with sports, however: Midafternoon is just about the least productive possible time in the sports-news cycle for an update. We had a few complaints that the e-newsletter merely repeats what was in that morning's paper, and to the extent that that is ever true (it's not supposed to happen at all), it's more likely to be true in sports than anywhere else. If there's no really breaking sports news at newsletter time, perhaps we should simply plug a local story that will be appearing in the next day's sports section. That would reinforce our local emphasis and get us out of the no-win game of competing with ESPN.com. At least one respondent suggested adding a listing of the upcoming evening's sporting events of local interest.
- Technical issues: 1) A few people expressed an interest in receiving the newsletter in HTML rather than plain text and/or asked that photos be included. Should we experiment with offering the option of HTML? 2) At least one respondent said AOL users have some particular problems following our links (but did not elaborate). This is the first I've heard of that, and I'm looking into it. 3) At least one respondent suggested summarizing the top 2-3 news items right at the top, without links, so they'd show up in Outlook preview panes. 4) We need to make the link from our home page to the e-newsletter subscription form more informative and more prominent.
- Delivery: 1) Most people like the once-daily format, although many said they also would welcome another e-mail any time significant news breaks. One user habit that supports that approach is that most people check e-mail more regularly than they do a Web site (perhaps because it's easier to do that and still look like you're working). 2) Several readers called for more RSS feeds; we've already said we plan to add more. 3) Current users didn't call much for SMS/wireless service. I'm just guessing on this at the moment, but I think we'll probably experiment with it anyway because it might well appeal to a different audience.
Mike Grossman, Mike Fuchs and I will be reviewing the results in more detail before proposing any changes. In the meantime, we welcome any questions or additional comments.