Great response to questionnaire puts tabulation efforts in motion

By LORI COPE | East Texas Edition

Feb. 10, 2005 - We are astonished at the response from our subscribers!

In late January we mailed each of you a questionnaire asking for your ag production or rural enterprise information, and for you to specify which features in Country World you read regularly, occasionally, or never.

We asked that you return the questionnaire, or fill it out on our website, by Feb. 9.

The goal of the questionnaire was to supply us with information so we can be sure Country World is meeting your informational needs, and providing you with entertaining features. As they say in marketing, we were trying to "better identify our reader" and therefore create a product that meets their needs and expectations.

Most experts say you can expect about a 3 to 4 percent return on a questionnaire such as we presented. Well, over 35 percent of Country World subscribers returned their forms or completed it online.

As a way to say "thanks," we offered questionnaire responders an additional month on their current subscription. (The last section of the questionnaire provided space for you to include your name and address so we'll know which account to add the extra month.)

We are currently tabulating the questionnaire results. So in the coming months, you may see some changes to the paper; but of course, we're not going to fix what isn't broken.

One comment offered by several subscribers is the date they receive their Country World in the mail. Just so you know, we meet our delivery deadline to the U.S. Postal Service each Monday afternoon, in hopes subscribers will receive their Country World by Thursday each week. Once the paper is out of our hands, we have no control over the postal system's delivery timeliness.

The staff and management of Country World appreciate each of our subscribers and readers, and for those of you who took the time to fill out and return the questionnaire, thanks a million ... well, or at least 35 percent of a million!