Announcement « Precision Polling

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Log into Precision Polling, and seamlessly access SurveyMonkey too

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

In our last post we shared the exciting news about Precision Polling becoming a part of SurveyMonkey, the biggest web survey provider in the world. Today, we are excited to announce a new feature that gives you easy access to both services: shared logins.

Now, when you create a Precision Polling account, we’ll also setup a free SurveyMonkey account for you behind the scenes. Use the same username and password combination to log into both sites, and when you log into one, we’ll also automatically log you into the other.

Many Precision Polling users already use SurveyMonkey for running web surveys, and this change makes it seamless for them to use both. More importantly, this is a first step towards deeper tie ins between the two sites so you can get access to world class web surveys, and phone polls in one place.

All new accounts starting today will have access to this feature. If you’re an existing user, then please check your email; we sent you simple instructions on upgrading to take advantage of shared logins. If you have any questions, please drop us a note and we’ll get back to you in a jiffy.

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We Won a “Rising Star of Politics” Award!

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

risingstar

Campaign & Elections’ Politics magazine today announced our CEO, Gaurav Oberoi, as one of the 2010 Rising Stars of Politics. One of the most prestigious honors in politics, the award goes to people 35 or under who have already made a significant mark in political  consulting,  campaigning  or  advocacy.

The magazine chose 15 Democrats, 15 Republicans and 11 nonpartisan leaders this year out of a pool of several hundred nominees. Gaurav was awarded one of the nonpartisan awards for his work on Precision Polling. Past Rising Stars include Karen Hughes, George Stephanopoulos, David Axelrod, Paul Begala, Donna Brazile, James Carville, Rahm Emanuel, and Laura Ingraham. The Rising Stars will be honored on June 12 in Washington D.C.

We’re honored and grateful for the recognition, it motivates us to work harder at reaching our goal: to make polling accessible to everyone, even the smallest of campaigns. It’s only been ten months since we started the company, but now with dozens of customers (including the DNC), validation from renowned pollsters (Mark Blumenthal), and two political awards under our belt (we also won a Pollie), we’re beginning to feel like we’re on the right track.

Once again, our thanks go to our customers for shaping the product into what it is today: an easy-to-use, fast, and affordable polling solution that helps consultants, pollsters, and campaign managers win races.

Posted in Announcement, Awards, In the News, Politics | No Comments »

Change Question Phrasing with Variations

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

We are pleased to add an easy-to-use interface for variations. These allow you to randomly rotate between different phrasings of the same question. This technique is used to address potential ordering bias by putting different options first, or for other methodological reasons.

variation

Our interface makes it easy to add a random variation. When editing your poll, just click on the new “variation” button, and a dialog pops up letting you provide an alternate phrasing. You may map between the variation’s options to the original answers (e.g. pressing “1″ in the original survey means “520 Bridge”, whereas pressing “2″ in a random variation might mean “520 bridge”). When you call in to record your survey, we will prompt you to record a variation just like any other question, e.g. “Please record question 2 with variation 1 at the beep..”

When someone takes a poll, we automatically pick between the original question and any random variations. For example, if a question has two random variations, one third of people will hear the original verison; one third will hear variation #1, and one third will hear variation #2. Later, when you dump your raw results, we will tell you who heard which variation.

Posted in Announcement, Dial-in Surveys, Dial-out Surveys, Technology | No Comments »

International Polling

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

We’ve been getting a ton of questions about using Precision Polling outside the United States. We’re as excited as you are, and are pleased to say that Precision Polling now works in Canada, Puerto Rico, India, Australia, and the UK - with many more countries coming soon.

We still keep or same pricing model of charging per-call, but the amount varies by country (and by number being dialed, since in some countries there is a huge cost difference between calling a land-line vs. a mobile number). Click here to see our rates.

We hope this not only serves customers across the world, but also helps firms reach across borders to talk to customers, perform market research, or gather public opinions.

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Partying and Polling with Publicola

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Seattle is a hotbed for new media experiments, and Publicola is no different. It’s a politically focused blog run by former editors of The Stranger, has attracted a series of investors, and in just a year is read by everyone in Washington politics.

Last year we sponsored a poll that Publicola did for the Seattle Mayor’s race. It got so much coverage in other local media, and such a large surge in traffic to Publicola, that they decided to start running polls on a regular basis. So last night, at Publicola’s 1 year anniversary party at the Crocodile (with some great bands), we jointly announced plans to feature polls once or twice a month on Publicola’s website. A respected local polling firm, EMC Research, will help design and analyze results, and yours truly will be the engine that powers it all.

We love helping new media find cost effective tools to be able to compete with the big guys. The local TV stations can afford to purchase surveys from SurveyUSA, but until we arrived on the scene, innovative blogs like Publicola had no retort. Now they can participate too, and readers benefit from better reporting all around. We’re just happy to make it easy and affordable for anyone to gather data from the phone.

Posted in Announcement, Dial-in Surveys, Events, New Media, Politics | No Comments »

Howdy world!

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Today we’re officially opening the doors to Precision Polling - welcome! Now anyone can signup for free and start running surveys in minutes. We even throw in 20 free calls for every new account to experiment with.

It’s been six months since we started work on Precision Polling. In that time we’ve gone from a concept that we described to potential customers, to a product that they love to use. Today we serve research firms, non-profits, political campaigns, and businesses of various sizes.

Our mission is to make it as easy to gather data over the phone as it is on the web, while also making it affordable and fast. Today’s launch is the first step in that direction, and we have many more exciting things planned. Stay tuned by checking back here. Watch our video below to learn more, or click here to sign up now.