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 credit card clients also seek to measure the effectiveness of their newsletters in �

• Increasing usage and fee income.
• Boosting balances and promoting balance transfers.
• Retaining existing cardholders.
• Educating cardmembers about fraud and other credit topics.

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

• 52% of cardholders surveyed recall seeing the newsletter and among those respondents, 73% report reading every or almost every issue.
• 55% of respondents indicate that the newsletter provides them with more reasons and ways to use their credit card.

Almost 17% of respondents indicate that something they saw in the newsletter prompted them do additional business with the issuer.

These highlights reflect just a few of the ways a First Marketing newsletter can support your goals, as a 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 52%	No 36%
	No Answer 12%
Cardholders show a high degree of interest in newsletters enclosed in their monthly statements. More than half of respondents recall seeing an issue of the newsletter sent to them.

Every or Almost Every Issue 73%	Very Few 20%
No Answer 2%	None 5%
Among cardholders who recall seeing the newsletter, 73% report that they read every or almost every issue they receive.

All or Some Articles 68%	Parts 27%
	No Answer 5%
The mix of information and promotional topics featured in cardmember newsletters delivers a high level of readership. 68% of cardholders who recall the First Marketing-produced newsletter say they read all or some of the articles in each issue.

	24% Kept an Article	20% Saved for Another	15% Passed Along an Issue
Cardholders are likely to retain or pass along the newsletter to a friend, family member or colleague. Almost one in four readers report that they kept an article for future reference while another 20% said they saved an article for someone else. Plus, 15% report that they have passed along an entire issue to someone else.

Yes 55%	No 41%
No Answer 3%	Not Sure 1%
When asked if the newsletter provides them with more reasons/ways to use their credit card, 55% of respondents said yes.

Yes 17%	No 55%
No Answer 17%	Not Sure 11%
Another significant question regarding the effectiveness of a cardmember newsletter is whether it motivates readers to respond. When asked, 17% of cardmembers indicate that they have done additional business with the issuer as a result of something they read in the newsletter.

		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 1760 respondents from the credit card industry. A sample of this size carries with it a confidence interval between 1.4% and 2.3% (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 1,500 1,600 1,700 1,800 1,900 10%-90% 20%-80% 30%-70% 40%-60% 50%-50% 1.5 2.0 2.3 2.5 2.5 1.5 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.5 1.4 1.9 2.2 2.3 2.4 1.4 1.8 2.1 2.3 2.3 1.3 1.8 2.1 2.2 2.2