The First Marketing Newsletter Readership Study is designed to evaluate recall, readership, reader behavior, topic preferences, attribute ratings and demographics for our clients. Perhaps most importantly, our financial clients also seek to measure the effectiveness of their consumer banking newsletters in �

• Building depth in consumer relationships by cross-selling products and services.
• Increasing balances and fee income.
• Supporting customer service goals and highlighting lower-cost delivery channels.
• Reinforcing customer's choice to aid in retention.

The results included in this market report clearly demonstrate the power of professionally produced, custom newsletters to achieve the specific consumer banking objectives. Highlights include:

• More than 71% of the customers who responded recall seeing a copy of the newsletter and among these respondents, more than half report reading every or almost every issue.
• Nearly 83% of readers say they are interested in more information about the sponsor and more than one-third say the newsletter provides more reasons to choose the bank for their personal finances.
• When asked if something they read in the newsletter prompted them to call or do additional business with the sponsor, 33% of the respondents answered "yes."

These highlights reflect just a few of the ways a First Marketing newsletter can support your goals, as part of an integrated communications program. For a full report, including statistics on topic preferences, attribute ratings and demographics, please contact us and mention the market you are interested in.

Yes 71%	No 28%
	No Answer 1%
Customers show a very high degree of interest in newsletters sent to them regarding bank products and services. More than 71% of respondents recall seeing an issue of the newsletter. This compares to a 68% awareness level for all First Marketing-produced newsletters.

Every or Almost Every Issue 56%		1 in 3 or 4 21%
No Answer 2%	None 4%	Very Few 17%
Among customers who recall seeing the newsletter, 56% report that they read every or almost every issue they receive.

All or Some Articles 68%	Parts 28%
	No Answer 4%
The range of topics and editorial approach featured in consumer banking newsletters also deliver a high level of readership. 68% of respondents who recall the newsletter say they read all or some of the articles in each issue.

	30% Kept an Article	19% Saved for Another	16% Passed Along an Issue
Customers are likely to retain or pass along the newsletter to a friend, family member or co-worker. Almost half of the readers report that they have either kept an article for future reference or saved an article for someone else. Plus, 16% report that they have passed along an entire issue to someone else.

Yes 33%	No 57%
No Answer 1%	Not Sure 9%
Another significant question regarding the effectiveness of a customer newsletter is whether it motivates the reader to respond. 33% of respondents report that something they read in the newsletter promoted them to call, visit or do additional business with the financial institution. Another 9% are unsure about the newsletter's effectiveness, but did not answer "no".

		Survey Instrument The survey instrument is self-administered and consists of standard and custom questions and scales. Responses are tabulated along two axes: marginal counts and cross-tabulations. All closed-ended questions are analyzed by number of responses and percent of responses. The statistics on these pages represent a sample of 1022 respondents from the consumer banking industry. A sample of this size carries with it a confidence interval between 1.8% and 3.1% (see chart below). Margin of Error Standard error is a statistical term that describes the likelihood of achieving the same result in a similar study. At the 95% confidence level, we are assured that if we were to do this test n times, the same result + or - the appropriate confidence interval would occur 95 out of 100 times.

		Data Split Cell Size 700 800 900 1,000 1,100 10%-90% 20%-80% 30%-70% 40%-60% 50%-50% 2.2 3.0 3.4 3.6 3.7 2.1 3.0 3.4 3.6 3.7 2.0 2.6 3.0 3.2 3.3 1.9 2.5 2.8 3.0 3.1 1.8 2.4 2.7 2.9 3.0