I created a survey using Polldaddy about 3 weeks ago to get a rough idea of peoples attitudes to some of the questions I have about newsletters.

32 people took the survey. I promoted it mainly using Twitter and thank you to a good few people who retweeted the message. I wouldn’t have received the responses without your retweets.

I also promoted the survey a little using a Wordpress plugin called ‘What would Seth Godin do?‘. This plugin allows you to display a short message to new and returning visitors to your blog. I updated the message to ask new users to this blog if they could spare a few seconds to take the survey.

It got 3 people to take the survey as a direct result of this plugin so it was worth the couple of minutes to set it up

Now to the actual newsletter survey results

How many newsletters do you subscribe to?

53% subscribe to 1 – 5 newsletters
40% subscribe to more than 5 newsletters
6% associate newsletters with spam

How long do you spend reading a newsletter?

50% take just a quick glance
43% read for less than a minute
6% read for a few minutes

Does it bother you if the links clicked in an email are recorded?

53% say not at all
34% say it bothers me but I click them anyway
12% are bothered by tracking links and don’t click links for that reason

Do you use a webmail client like Gmail or a client like Outlook?

65% use a webmail solution such as Gmail
34% use an email client such as MS Outlook

Do you preview your emails or read them based on their subject?

This was 50:50 between previewing and reading based on Subject

Do you forward newsletters to someone that might be interested?

68% have never forwarded an interesting newsletter
31% have forwarded a newsletter to someone else in the past

Do you trust an Unsubscribe option?

75% trust a newsletters unsubscribe option
25% believe an unsubscribe option could pass their email address on to another party

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The main question in the survey that I was looking forward to seeing the result of was the last question about trusting the unsubscribe option. I must admit, any time I go to unsubscribe from some email list, I worry that I’ll soon see some new unsolicited emails flying in. There seems to be a healthy trust in the Unsubscribe so I’ll breathe a little easier.

My ongoing research

Rather than close this survey I’ve decided to leave it open for a few months. I’d like to see if a few people will take the survey over time and to see if attitudes change any little bit over time.

I have a couple of other ongoing information gathering projects going on too. I’ve added a link to each of them on the sidebar on the right under the heading ‘My Ongoing Research’.

Doing a survey asking about newsletters, just 7 simple multiple choice questions if you have 30 seconds free. Thank you in advance!