The trends are clear:  As the landscape of America becomes more ethnically diverse, so does the landscape of entrepreneurship in the US.  And that can have big implications for Internet marketers.  Above all, it means you need to use survey research to collect data on the ethnic makeup of your customer base.

Survey research from the census bureau, estimating the changes in the US population between the 2000 census and the year 2007, show big increases in the proportion of the population that is Hispanic.  To a lesser degree, they also show an expansion of the Asian segment of the population.

When we combine these survey data with information on the face of entrepreneurial activity, a picture of opportunity for business-to-business marketers emerges.

According to the Kaufmann Foundation, immigrants were more likely to found businesses than those who were native born in the past–now, their “lead” in founding businesses has grown.

And it’s particularly interesting to note that the rate of entrepreneurship among Hispanics–the fastest-growing immigrant group in the US–is increasing faster than that of any other ethnic or racial group.  And Asians, another ethnic group with increasing visibility, are well known for their high rates of entrepreneurship.

What does this mean for Internet marketers?  It clearly spells opportunity.  As ethnic groups become an increasing proportion of the American population and those groups increasingly found businesses, Internet marketers need to think carefully about how they can market to these burgeoning entrepreneurs.

These trends also highlight the need for Internet marketers to understand the ethnic makeup of both their customer bases and their target markets.  Do you know what percentage of your target market belongs to an immigrant or ethnic group?  Are you exploring opportunities to sell to these growing markets?

One fact is clear:  As the diversity of the American population grows and the face of entrepreneurship changes, Internet marketers need to harness the power of survey research to explore these growing markets.

How do you get a customer to open your e-mail and take action? 

Simple:  Show him or her why the information you’re providing is significant, why it matters for his or her business or life.
That DOESN’T mean

• why it’s significant for everyone on the planet,
• why it’s significant for the Internet marketing world, in general,
• why it’s significant for your target market,
• why it’s significant for your customer base, as a whole.

Because, to put it bluntly, Jill Customer doesn’t care about any of those things.  She cares about what will

• make her more money,
• make her life easier,
• solve her problems,
• ease her pain.

She wants information that’s significant to her.

But how do you ensure that your messages will seem significant to your customers?  After all, you can’t write a separate e-mail message to every customer on your list.

The answer is simple: You focus your messages on particular “segments” of your list.  Doing so can produce dramatic results, because you’re targeting your message at groups of people with similar characteristics.

This isn’t difficult at all to do.  Here’s a simple, two-step process:

First, know your customers–through customer surveys.   To make your messages relevant, it’s particularly important to know such characteristics as the age, gender, race/ethnicity, what kinds of products/services they produce, etc.  Customer surveys, done well, provide that information.

Second, segment your list, using the information that customer surveys provide.  That allows you to target your messages to people with particular characteristics.  You might pitch messages differently to men and women, to people with different kinds of products, to people living in particular geographic areas.  You might also think about crafting different messages for your “frequent buyers” than you do for those whom you’ve not yet turned into paying customers.  You simply collect the most important characteristics in your customer surveys.

So now you know what kinds of information to get in your customer surveys.  The next question is, when do you get the information?

You don’t want to turn your opt-in forms into customer surveys, because asking for too much information will discourage prospects from signing up for your list.

Instead, invite them to take a brief customer survey at some point AFTER they opt in (and after you’ve given them some valuable content).  Give them some sort of reward–like a free report–for COMPLETING the customer survey.

In the survey, you can get basic characteristics about your new prospect, find out what prompted him or her to join your list, and assess his or her needs.

Then, you can use that information over and over again, to target your messages in ways that will show specific groups of your customer base why they should open your e-mails and buy your products.

How do we know this works?  We looked at the data.  Here are some statistics:

• In the first 30 days of an e-mail campaign, open rates for e-mails sent to lists that are targeted or “segmented” in the way we described are as much as 20% higher, on average (Marketing Sherpa, 2008).
• Open rates are more than 12% higher on days 60-90 of a campaign(Marketing Sherpa, 2008) .
• In the first 30 days of a campaign, click rates for a campaign that uses segmented lists are double those for non-segmented lists (Marketing Sherpa, 2008).
• Segmenting your list can quadruple conversion rates (Jupiter Research, 2006)

Bottom line, if you want to increase your sales, use customer surveys to know your market.  Customer surveys can provide the data that let you show your prospects why your messages–and your products–are relevant to them.

In a recent survey, we were shocked to learn that nearly half of the Internet marketers who responded had never written and administered a customer survey in their businesses.  Those business people are missing a vital opportunity not only to “get inside their customers’ heads” but also to build a bond with those customers.

Customer surveys provide a critically important tool for your business.  There’s a REASON that big companies spend millions of dollars conducting customer surveys and ensuring that they conduct them well.

The good news is that you don’t need a huge budget or the knowledge of an expert to do customer surveys well.  With some solid principles, and a little help, you can get the information you need to produce the products your customers want and ensure that your products and services are meeting their needs.

Haven’t started the conversation yet?  Check back here for more information, tips, and products, so that you can start doing customer surveys, right away.

Based on recent poll results, CNN declared the Presidential race between McCain and Obama a “statistical tie.”  How can that be, when the numbers show Obama polling 47% and McCain 43%?

To understand it you have to consider the “margin of error” of the poll.  Polls such as this one use samples to estimate public opinion and, statistically, they place the estimate within a designated range.  In this case, the margin of error was + or – 3%.  That means the actual number of Obama supporters could be as high as 50% or as low as 44%, when we add and subtract the margin of error from the estimate; that clearly overlaps with the range for McCain, which could be as low as 40% or as high as 46%.  Thus, the race is currently a “statistical dead heat.”

What does this mean for you?  It means when you conduct surveys in your business, you need to be very careful not to attach too much meaning to small differences in percentages, particularly if they come from very small samples.  If you find that 44% of your customers either agree or agree strongly that a product is good, but 40% either disagree or disagree strongly that it’s good, the 2 camps are basically equal.  And you may need to look carefully at the reasons that such a large proportion of customers is expressing dissatisfaction.

This recent poll, then, provides a wonderful reminder of why we need to be careful when we interpret our survey data, so we ensure that we’re coming away with the information we need to make good business decisions.

A:  One of our clients asked this week whether he should limit a survey to one response per IP address or permit multiple responses.  With few exceptions, it’s generally best to set a survey restrictions so that it accepts only one response per computer.  This ensures that a given respondent won’t try to “load” the results.

Have a question?  Ask it by posting a comment.