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 small business banking newsletters in �

• Educating, small business clients on business management topics.
• Cross-selling business and trust services as well as personal banking to business clients.
• Generating referrals and leads to increase market share.

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

• More than 63% of the small business audience surveyed recall seeing the newsletter and among these respondents, 74% report seeing every or almost every issue.
• 68% report reading all or some of the articles.
• Over half of the respondents want the newsletter to give them more information about the sponsor.
• More than 18% of respondents who recall the newsletter report that it prompted them to request information, respond directly to an offer or do additional business with the sponsor.

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 63%	No 36%
	No Answer 1%
Small business customers show a high degree of interest in newsletters sent to them regarding services, strategies and products. 63% of respondents recall seeing an issue of the newsletter previously.

Every or Almost Every Issue 74%	1 in 3 or 4 8%	Very Few 17%
		None 1%
Among customers who recall seeing the newsletter produced by First Marketing, almost three in four 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 small business newsletters also deliver a high level of readership. 68% of customers who recall the newsletter say they read all or some of the articles in each issue.

	35% Kept an Article	39% Saved for Another	34% Passed Along an Issue
Small business clients are very likely to retain or pass along the newsletter. Almost three-quarters of readers report that they either kept an article for future reference or saved an article for someone else. Plus, 34% report that they passed along an entire issue to someone else.

Yes 18%	No 71%
No Answer 1%	Not Sure 10%
Another significant question regarding the effectiveness of a small business newsletter is whether it motivates readers to request information, respond to an offer or do additional business with the sponsor. Nearly 1 in 5 of the readers indicate that something in the newsletter prompted them to take action. Another 10% are unsure about the newsletter's effect, 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 249 respondents from the small business market. A sample of this size carries with it a confidence interval between 3.7 % and 6.2% (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 100 200 300 400 500 10%-90% 20%-80% 30%-70% 40%-60% 50%-50% 5.9 7.8 9.0 9.6 9.8 4.2 5.5 6.4 6.8 6.9 3.4 4.5 5.4 5.5 5.7 2.9 3.9 4.5 4.8 4.9 2.6 3.5 4.0 4.3 4.4