The Gallup Poll is offering real-time updates on presidential polls through a deal announced this month with Alerts.com.
Alerts.com, Raleigh, NC, sends daily notifications on presidential polls via e-mail, cell phones and other wireless devices.
The Gallup Poll, a group of the Gallup Organization, will update www.gallup.com as soon as presidential polls are released. Alerts then will deliver poll results within minutes, representatives said.
People can sign up for the service at Gallup.com and Alerts.com. Notifications are customized according to device. A user can receive an update, for example, via e-mail in html or text form, or have it formatted to a cell phone's character capabilities.
Michael Jones, president/CEO of Alerts, thinks presidential candidates can benefit from the service as much Internet users.
“Receiving poll information an hour or two later is a huge difference in making a decision for [the politicians],” he said. “Knowing within minutes so they can execute their plans for political strategy is very critical.”
Jones said Alerts' technology monitors its clients' Web sites and instantly delivers e-mail alerts when new content is posted.
Alerts wants to help The Gallup Poll build its brand recognition with a younger demographic, build customer loyalty and drive more traffic to its Web site, Jones said. Web sites using Alerts service average approximately 40 percent response rates — or click backs to their Web sites — through the messages, he said.
Meanwhile, this is the first time The Gallup Poll is alerting its customer base via e-mail, said Eric Nielsen, senior director of media strategies at The Gallup Poll.
“We wanted to get our news items and articles out to as many people as possible and in as many formats as possible,” Nielsen said.
The alert service for the presidential polls is the first of two phases in the agreement, Nielsen said. In a few months, the two companies plan to customize the e-mail alerts according to users' political interests, he said.
“People can put in as many keywords as they want and they're always going to get that information whenever we do some polling on it,” Nielsen said.
Nielsen hopes the partnership with Alerts will help The Gallup Poll serve as a complimentary news source for its customer base.
“They'll be able to receive an e-mail from The Gallup Poll to see what the public thinks about an event that's interesting to them,” Nielsen said.
