Thanks to everyone who participated in our first Dark Daily reader survey earlier this month. We got a fantastic turnout for our first survey and got some great feedback which we will certainly be able to use to improve Dark Daily. As promised, we wanted to share some of the results with you.
• 44% of our readers found out about Dark Daily from The Dark Report, 20% found out from a colleague of theirs, 14% from a Web search, and 13% from the Executive War College.
• 50% of our subscribers have been with us for less than 6 months! Only 10% of our subscribers have been with us for over a year.
• The vast majority of our readers are likely to read their Dark Daily e-briefings Monday through Friday, but not on Saturdays or Sundays.
• 85% of Dark Daily readers thought the frequency of Dark Dailies was just right, with an even split of the rest of our readers thinking there were too many or too few Dark Dailies.
• Our Dark Daily readers’ favorite category was, by far, Laboratory News. A close second was Laboratory Management and Operations. Other notables were Laboratory Sales & Marketing, Laboratory Compliance, Legal & Malpractice, and Laboratory Managed Care, Contracts, and Payer Reimbursement. None of Dark Dailies categories had less than 35% of our audience feeling that the category was not useful.
• The distribution of our laboratory readers is fairly evenly spread among those that work for hospital laboratories, small independent laboratories, large independent laboratories, and laboratory chains (such a Quest Diagnostics and Laboratory Corporation of America).
• We were surprised to discover that some of our most vocal readers are from outside the United States and have requested more items that pertain to an international audience. We will try to comply as we see relevant international laboratory news!
• A number of our readers cited their favorite Dark Dailies as the e-briefings based on the continuing issues resulting from the exclusive national contract between United Healthcare and LabCorp (see Judging the UnitedHealth Decision to Drop Quest Diagnostics in Favor of LabCorp and United Health Disrupts the National Contract Status Quo Between the Two Blood Brothers).
As always, we welcome your personal responses to the survey results, your ideas for other reader surveys, and your ideas for new Dark Daily e-briefings. Thanks again for your participation!
Your Editors,
Robert Michel and Sylvia Christensen