Margin of Error - Here's a quick rule of thumb to the question: "What's the best sample size?"

An often asked question is "How many responses do I need to get on my survey to make sure that it is valid?"

Jeff Tranguch, Research Analyst with MGI, prepared a very quick email to one of my clients on precisely this today. A really bright guy, I wanted to share it with you because of its simplicity and brevity.

Here it is in his words...

"As you can see, the number drops as you approach 1000 responses. They will have some direction with about 500 or so responses (obviously they would have better direction with 1,000 or so responses).  

All of the numbers below are calculated at a 95% confidence interval which basically means that if we were to conduct this study 100 times, the same results, plus or minus the margin of error would occur 95 out of 100 times."

Number of Responses	Margin of Error
100	+/-9.8%
250	+/-6.2%
500	+/-4.4%
750	+/-3.6%
1000	+/-3.1%
1500	+/-2.5%

If you have any questions, please feel free to call or email me.

Quick Tip - CAN-SPAM

As reported in the 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, to be released in May, e-mail is one of the Top Three tools used to drive awareness and engagement of members and prospects. To that point, I wanted to share some insight which just came across my desk from our e-Biz group on the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.

First...What is Spam? The word "Spam" as applied to Email means "Unsolicited Bulk Email".

“Unsolicited” means that the Recipient has not granted verifiable

permission for the message to be sent.

“Bulk” means that the message is sent to a list of people, as part of a larger collection

of messages, all having substantively identical content.

A message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk.

What is CAN-SPAM and what are its main requirements?

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is an acronym which stands for: Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003.

The act, which became law on January 1, 2004, was the United State's first attempt at a national regulation for the sending of commercial email.

The CAN-SPAM Act establishes requirements for all commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations. The law applies to both B2B and B2C emails.
If you’re sending commercial email, you will want to be very familiar with CAN-SPAM’s main requirements:

• Never use deceptive headers, from-names, reply-tos, or subject lines.

• You must always provide an unsubscribe link.

• Remove recipients from your list within ten business days.

• The unsubscribe link must work for at least 30 days after sending.

• You must include your physical mailing address.

And here's the kicker...If you violate the law, you could be fined $11,000 for each offense.

Obviously I'm not a lawyer. So when in doubt, lawyer up and get proper advice.

Thanks for reading.  If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

It's only been 12 months...

I'M BAAAAAAACK!!

After taking a year off I'm back and want to tell you about a new blog I'm cowriting with my MGI Research associates, Dr. Adina Wasserman and Jeff Tranguch.

Welcome to The Association Research Blog ( http://associationresearch.blogspot.com/ ) and as the name cannotes, this blog is dedicated to exploring new research ideas, discussing established research procedures and how other association professionals are using the research.

I urge you all to take a look as we have already started posting "sneak peeks" of the 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report.

Enjoy and its great to be back!!