In January, we launched a GlobalTestMarket website and blog satisfaction survey for our United States members. We want to provide features, updates and information that you decide are most valuable for your GlobalTestMarket experience. Your opinions shape the future of our client’s products, so your opinions should shape the future of GlobalTestMarket as well.

As an added bonus, we announced two members that completed the survey would be randomly selected to receive 1,000 MarketPoints. GlobalTestMarket congratulates Cynthia P. and Rosemary P. as our winners. The 1,000 MarketPoints were just added to their GlobalTestMarket accounts.

Again, thank you to the members that participated in the survey. Your opinions will impact our upcoming releases. Expect some exciting GlobalTestMarket additions throughout 2008!

GlobalTestMarket sent money to our payment vendor yesterday. Any member that redeemed during January 3rd through January 9th should expect a check soon. Please remember that checks are mailed from Canada, so members from North America can expect them sooner than our International members.

I will be pestering my PayPal.com contact today and try to get them to speed up their side of things. We will keep you posted.

Many GlobalTestMarket members made glowing comments about the little winter paradise of Sun Valley, Idaho. I spent the last week there and must agree that Sun Valley is fantastic! The skiing was perfect with dry and light snow, and the sun really does shine all the time. Although I did not see any celebrities I was able to peek at some gargantuan homes, and one was for sale at a steal; $47.5 million.

I am in the picture to the right. I added my head from another pic because I was wearing a mask, goggles and helmet. At -18 degrees every inch of skin needed to be covered.

During the vacation many members had this question:

The Interest profiler study generates an error, why?

GlobalTestMarket has been updating every profiling survey. Members in the United States are taking the new profilers now and these do not have the error. Our older profilers have the error, and this should only affect our International members. We are in process of correcting that error, but our International members will see new profiler studies shortly. GlobalTestMarket is localizing and translating all 10 of our profiling surveys. This is a massive project requiring many months for completion. There might be some kinks to work out, but we are monitoring the profiling surveys closely.

What do you know the Sun Valley condo has Internet access. After reviewing a few hundred emails I noticed Finance pinged me today. They were able to clear 2 weeks worth of GlobalTestMarket redemption requests. Members that redeemed between December 20th through January 2nd will be happy to hear their checks should be in the mail in the next day or so.

The GlobalTestMarket team was able to shave 7 to 10 days off our delivery time. This should be the norm for future redemptions. Although, implementation of PayPal is moving along slower than expected we are at least speeding up our current payment process. Great job members!

Redemption checks are on the way for GlobalTestMarket members that redeemed during December 13 through December 19. I also spoke to Finance and expect two wire transfers next week which will impact 14 days of redemptions. GlobalTestMarket is getting a tad faster at sending your money out the door.

GlobalTestMarket is still working on the PayPal.com option. I am waiting on my PayPal.com contact to setup a training session for GlobalTestMarket employees that process redemption requests.

I will not be posting next week because I am off to Sun Valley for a week enjoying some fantastic skiing and boarding. However, my colleagues will make sure operations run smoothly and those payments get out the door. Have a great weekend everyone!

Our Excite members were curious how to add GlobalTestMarket to their email Safe Sender list. We did some research and found the answer. These instructions are from the Excite website:

Add Custom Filters to your Excite Email account.

You can define up to 11 filters to route incoming emails to folders of your choosing by setting up Custom Filtering.

To do so, click on the “Mail Preferences” link on the far right of the upper navigation bar while signed in to Excite Email. On the resulting page, under the heading of “Message Options/Filtering” you will see the following options:

* Filters Summary
* Custom Filters
* Safe List
* Block ListClick “Custom Filters” and do the following:

• Select if you want to filter by Subject, From Name, From Address, To or CC line

o Subject will look within the subject line of an incoming message
o From Name will filter based on the sender name of the incoming message
o From Address will filter based on the email address of the sender of the incoming message
o To or CC line will filter based on the address within the To: or Cc: line of the incoming message

• Select the criteria for matching the filter from either includes, doesn’t include, starts with, contains word/ phrase, ends with, or exactly matches.

• Enter the text that you would like the filter to match against

• Select the appropriate folder to route messages into. You can select either system folders such as “Sent” or “Trash,” or folders that you created within your account.

Please be sure to check the “Enabled” check box above any filter that you are setting up in order to turn that filter on.

When you have finished setting up all your filters, click on the “Save” button at the top or bottom of the Custom Filter page. If you do not click on the “Save” button, your changes will be lost.

Moving a filter up or down in the Custom Filter Hierarchy

The Excite Custom filters are processed in the order that they are displayed in the custom filter page. If you would like to change the order of these filters, you can do so using the “Move Up” or “Move Down” buttons.

To move a filter one step towards the top of the filter hierarchy, click on the “Move Up” button to the right of that particular filter.

To move a filter one step towards the bottom of the filter hierarchy, click on the “Move Down” button to the right of that particular filter.

You can move a filter multiple steps up or down by clicking the “Move Up” or “Move Down” button multiple times.

Tips for setting up Custom Filters

• To create a new email folder for filtered messages, click the “Add” link next to the “All Folders” header in the right column. Enter the new folder name and click “Add New Folder.”

• Move individual filters higher or lower on the page to establish your preferred filtering priority order. Emails meeting more than one filter’s criteria will be filed by whichever filter has higher priority. (Remember to click Save after reprioritizing your list.)

• You may enter up to 50 characters into your filter’s text box (located to the immediate left of the Move Up/Move Down buttons).

• You may enter only 1 email address or domain name per filter (when using the “From Address” option)

• When entering an email address into your filter’s text box, please use the following format: sendername@domainname.com

• When entering a domain name into your filter’s text box, please use the following format: @domainname.com < @globaltestmarket.com >

Hope that helps Greg and our other Excite users!

Some of our International members have inquired whether or not the GlobalTestMarket Blog is available in foreign languages. The answer is no. The GlobalTestMarket Blog is only available in English.

Why?

I only know English and Spanish. However, my Spanish fluency has declined significantly over the years that I am not comfortable posting in Spanish.

Will the GlobalTestMarket Blog ever be available in other languages?

Possibly. At the moment GlobalTestMarket is directing a majority of our resources at improving the member experience and our survey software engine. I might be able to get a few of my multilingual colleagues to post. Wish me luck.

Our English speaking members have had access to the 2.0 version of the GlobalTestMarket website for a few months. However, we now offer the 2.0 version to GlobalTestMarket members that speak the following languages:

French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Dutch, Chinese Modern and Chinese Simplified.

We plan to add more languages in the near future, so please be patient. This project is a large one and requires a considerable amount of time.

Earlier we reported a bug regarding your survey history listed in your member account. I am pleased to announced this issue has been resolved.

The member history will list the surveys you have completed within the past 30 days. You can access live studies from this section as well. So, if you think you accidentally deleted a survey invite chances are you can access the survey from your account.

What about the “Partially Complete” surveys?

Some surveys might indicate they are partially completed. That means you began the survey, but did not finish the study. Maybe the telephone rang, or you just did not have the time to finish due to other priorities. Some studies will allow you to re-enter the survey and finish where you left off.

However, some studies will not allow this even if the survey is linked in your history. In those cases a message stating you cannot finish that study will pop up like the one below.

I hope this addresses some questions. Thanks for participating GlobalTestMarket members!

International GlobalTestMarket members should review this post to get answers about the Interests profiler survey.

Some comments were sent to the blog asking about sign up costs for online survey companies. I will not comment about other companies, but GlobalTestMarket does not charge any fees for membership.

GlobalTestMarket believes it is important to communicate this message to potential members. Sign up is absolutely free! Just click on the Join button in the top navigation bar.