Profitable dot-com having record year
- Publication: The Morning Call
- Date: 2001-12-10
- Author: Christian Berg
- Page: B7
- Language: English
Powerfeedback.com surveys Web users for companies that want information on customers.
Scott Gingold is president of his own Internet company, but he doesn't approach business with a dot-com attitude.
Gingold believes in old-fashioned values such as providing a quality product at a fair price, delivering on his promises and maintaining the highest standards of customer service.
And if you take the Internet out of the equation, what he does isn't very high tech at all.
He helps companies conduct surveys.
Gingold, a successful sales and marketing consultant, is president of Powerfeedback.com. He founded the company in 1997 as a way to help his clients track industry trends and keep their fingers on the pulse of employees and customers.
Four years later, Powerfeedback.com boasts a client list that includes Air Products and Chemicals, Audi, BBC America and the state of Colorado.
Last month, Powerfeedback.com was named to Interactive Week's Interactive 500, a list of the biggest Internet companies in America. Powerfeedback.com ranked No. 454, with annual online revenue of $250,000 and a profit of $65,000.
"This has been a record year for us, and we have grown tremendously," said Gingold, 44, who runs the company out of an office in the basement of his Forks Township home. "We've become a global leader in online surveys."
His wife, Denise, also is involved. She is Powerfeedback.com's vice president of administration.
Online surveys appeal to many businesses for several reasons, Gingold said.
For one, they are an effective alternative to mail surveys, which often end up in the garbage bin. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent anthrax scare. he said, many companies are even more hesitant about using mail surveys, because they know many people will not open unsolicited mail.
"Now, perhaps more than ever, what we do is crucial." he said. "People are leery about what comes in the mail these days."
Powerfeedback.com also provides an alternative to telephone surveys, which are often met with a hang-up.
"Phone surveys are never convenient," Gingold said. "It's typically in the third bite of dinner."
With an online survey. he said, respondents can provide information when it's convenient to them. Clients can either provide a survey to Powerfeedback.com or have Gingold and his team design one.
Once the survey is ready, Gingold said, clients can e-mail invitations to invite key people to participate. He said clients also like that they can access real-time survey results on the Internet.
"We don't want our clients to react. We want them to act," he said. "We provide intelligence that allows them to be proactive."
Although Internet surveys can be fast and convenient, some critics contend that online surveys are unscientific because not everyone has access to the Internet. That makes it difficult for online surveys to guarantee a truly random sample that crosses all demographic boundaries, critics say.
Gingold disagrees. He said more than 80 percent of Americans have access to the Internet at home, work, school or elsewhere, such as the local library.
He also said Powerfeedback.com can guarantee the integrity of its survey results by using passwords and other safeguards to ensure there is no double voting or other tampering.
"I can tell you in all the years we've done this, we've never once had a case where somebody was intentionally sandbagging a survey to skew the results," he said.
Stephanie Drake, a marketing manager with BBC Worldwide Americas in New York, said she is pleased with a recent survey Powerfeedback.com designed for fans of the science fiction program "Doctor Who."
BBC didn't want to spend the money to develop its own survey software. Power-feedback.com offered a cost-effective alternative. Drake said.
The Web site, www.votedoctorwho.com. has been online for about three months and has attracted about 3,600 responses.
The survey asks "Doctor Who" fans to vote for the top three episodes they want to see on DVD and what features they are looking for in "Doctor Who" products.
"Because it's not on the air, we do really well selling the videos and the DVDs. We wanted to get a better idea about what kind of products these fans would like to see," Drake said. "At the same time, we're getting personal information from them so we can e-mail them in the future."
BBC was so pleased with the "Doctor Who" survey that it enlisted Powerfeed-back.com to help design another marketing site, www.bbcamericashop.com. which offers TV-related merchandise.
Caption: Scott Gingold, Powerfeedback.com founder and president, runs the business from his Forks Township home.
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- APA 6th ed.: Berg, Christian (2001-12-10). Profitable dot-com having record year. The Morning Call p. B7.
- MLA 7th ed.: Berg, Christian. "Profitable dot-com having record year." The Morning Call [add city] 2001-12-10, B7. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: Berg, Christian. "Profitable dot-com having record year." The Morning Call, edition, sec., 2001-12-10
- Turabian: Berg, Christian. "Profitable dot-com having record year." The Morning Call, 2001-12-10, section, B7 edition.
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