The latest survey email went out yesterday, and in the first 24 hours nearly 1,900 responses have been received. This is a bit better than in the past. The goal for this month: 3,600 responses. This will compare with 2,835 responses three months ago, 811 responses a year ago, and 153 responses in November 2005, the first month of the survey. I’m very grateful that quite a few of the people who responded to that first survey are still participating.

The current survey should provide enough data to provide full results for about 65 models and asterisked results for another 55 or so models. This will include the first results for a 2008 model, the Buick Enclave and its sibs. Maybe even without an asterisk for insufficient sample size, but it’s going to be close.

So far so good. But one reason the response rate is looking good is that I just cleared out another 200 email addresses that were no longer valid. While this is just a bit over one percent of the total panel, I hate to lose a couple hundred members every few months just because they did not provide a valid back-up address and did not keep their contact info up to date. There are forms in the Member Center for both tasks.

Free email domains like hotmail are the biggest problem. People abandon those frequently, probably trying to stay a step ahead of the spam. For now it’s okay to sign up with one of these, but then it’s really good to have a back-up.

Email continues to pose other problems. TrueDelta’s email is regularly shunted into bulk or even spam folders, even though we send absolutely no spam. (It does not help that some people sign up and then report the confirmation email as spam.) The links in the emails continue to not work in some email clients. And so forth. Nothing frustrates me more than the task of getting email to people. But, at least currently, there is no better method.