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SurveyMonkey eyes Asia

SurveyMonkey has plans to leverage its recently opened Australian office as its entry point into the Asian market, including China, Singapore, Japan, and Korea.
Written by Aimee Chanthadavong, Contributor

SurveyMonkey has recited that Australia is one of the company's "best markets" next to the UK and Canada, and it hopes to leverage its antipodean connections to open its next office in Japan.

The Silicon Valley-based online questionnaire firm opened its first Asia-Pacific office in Sydney in May to cater for the Australian demand for its products.

Brent Chuboda, SurveyMonkey vice president and SurveyMonkey Audience general manager, told ZDNet that one in 10 Australians are taking a SurveyMonkey survey every month, and for that reason it made sense for the company establish itself first in Australia.

"I think it's a great market in that there is a commonality in lifestyle, there is a commonality in the acceptance of technology products, and the Australian consumer is not too dissimilar to American consumers in terms of their demand for internet applications, cloud applications, the usage of mobile, the acceptance of Apple and Android platforms," he said.

"It's one that in some sense has little less risk, and it's also a big market. While it's not big as the US or the UK, it is a great market and a lot of internet companies have better penetration in Australia compared to Germany and Japan where there's a lot of challenges despite being very big GDP markets."

Chuboda went on and said the next stop for the company will be the Asian market and believes Australia is "great entry point" to China, Japan, Korea, and Singapore.

"In terms of growth in the Asian region, we are talking to people in launching an office in Tokyo, Japan on its own. There are no plans for Singapore or China but that will be informed by the people we put in place in Australia, and where they see opportunities and see logical steps to place people next."

The company is still currently hunting for senior candidates to run its Australian office, and hopes to complete the search by end of the "next couple of months".

Meanwhile, the company continues to rollout its full range of SurveyMonkey products in the Australian market, announcing the launch of SurveyMonkey Audience on Monday.

SurveyMonkey Audience is a market research and analysis tool that provides businesses access to a pool of survey respondents that they may not be accessible using their existing internal mailing lists.

Since June, SurveyMonkey said it has recruited nearly 7,000 respondents onto the Audience platform, with hopes to build that up to 15,000 by end of the fourth quarter.

Chuboda said Audience provides businesses with "quality data" so they are able to make more resourceful marketing decisions based on a range of targeted criteria from gender, age, location, household income, to technology, industry, and education.

"Audience is a way for our customers to access quality data and to find the respondents they need to take their survey in a balanced and reliable way," he said.

It is the third product out of the full range of SurveyMonkey products to be launched in Australia, following Enterprise and Contribute.

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