How to Use Your Survey Results to Improve Your Business

What are survey results?

Survey results contain all the information you collect from individuals when they answer your questionnaire. This is also known as survey data, which is often represented in 2 ways.

• Qualitative data. Qualitative data is non-numerical data, such as gender, demographic data, religion, and marital status.
• Quantitative data. Quantitative data is numerical data, like age, weight, income, scores, and height.

There are several ways to collect data, including through the following types of surveys:

• Online. An online survey is typically answered on internet browsers, making it easier for consumers to respond.
• Telephonic. These surveys require respondents to answer survey questions via a telephone call.
• In-person. Individuals will meet with researchers to answer questions in a face-to-face interview.
• Paper. Paper surveys are filled out manually and are commonly sorted and analyzed by hand.

Survey results will vary depending on the type of survey you use, but the information gathered can be utilized to gain a deeper understanding of your audience.

Often, surveys are inexpensive to make and send to customers, and they don’t require much time to build. There are many affordable survey creation solutions online, like Mailchimp, that enable you to build custom surveys. With our innovative tools, you can create a survey for free in a matter of minutes.

Why is knowing what to do with survey results important?

Knowing what to do with the results of your survey is important because the knowledge gathered can help you make informed business decisions.

For example, say a company sends employees a survey asking them to indicate which amenities they use the most and which ones they would like to see in the future. Depending on the results, the company can save money by removing amenities if they aren’t being used to their full potential.

Let’s take a look at a few of the most compelling benefits below:

Understand your audience

Conducting surveys allows you to understand your audience better, enabling you to make effective marketing campaigns and enhance your business efforts. As you analyze the data you retrieved, you can identify what survey respondents like and dislike about your business.

Surveys also allow you to obtain demographic information that can be used to segment your audience, so you can tailor your emails and advertisements to your contacts.

Obtain honest feedback

Many surveys are often anonymous, allowing you to gather detailed and honest feedback. This feedback can be used to find out more about what your audience wants. For example, you may ask contacts about the products or services they use the least and how they feel about product concepts.

Make sure to state that your survey is confidential and will only be used for research purposes so that potential respondents feel more comfortable.

Benchmarking

By asking your audience questions about how they perceive the competition, you can find ways to improve your business. Surveying enables you to benchmark your results against competitors in your industry, which is valuable for improving products, services, and so forth.

According to Splunk, 55% of organizations have “dark data,” which is data that’s collected, processed, and organized by businesses but never used. In order to maximize survey data and take advantage of the benefits above, you must understand how to analyze and interpret the results of your questionnaire.

How to analyze data from a survey

Knowing how to analyze survey data is vital to ensuring it’s interpreted and used correctly.

To help you leverage survey data, here’s how to analyze it:

Understand your sample size

Sample size refers to the number of subjects needed to make your survey statistically significant, meaning that the results are attributable to something specific rather than chance. Ideally, you want your sample size to accurately represent your audience in order to be precise. If it’s too small, you run the risk of skewed results. You can manually calculate your sample size (which can be time-consuming and challenging) or use a calculator.

Cross-tabulation of customer demographics

Cross-tabulation data analysis, which is also known as contingency table survey analysis, enables you to compare your data by breaking down results into multiple categories. Possible categories include:

• Geographic location
• Age
• Gender

With cross-tabulation, you can easily see your survey data and determine the relationship between survey respondents and their answers.

Spend time to really understand the data

It’s important to take your time analyzing survey data to better understand the results. Otherwise, you may accidentally miss vital details or make an error while calculating your results. To make analyzing data easier, consider using survey analysis software, like Mailchimp.

You can build your survey using Mailchimp tools and measure the results directly on our innovative platform. Plus, you can easily use your survey data to create marketing campaigns based on the answers of your audience and create audience segments.

Keep in mind that the key to using survey analysis at your business is to collect accurate and genuine responses. In order to accomplish this, it’s essential to ask the right questions and build the questionnaire according to your survey’s goals.

What to do once you’ve collected your survey results

So, you spent time collecting feedback and encouraging individuals to complete your survey–now what? Once you’re done compiling survey responses, it’s time to analyze, visualize, and present your data. You also want to determine how you’ll use the information you’ve collected.

Analyze data

There are many ways to analyze your data. For example, you can use specialized tools, software, or cross tabulation tables.

Visualize your data

After analyzing your data, you can display it visually. This can help you identify trends, outliers, opportunities, and patterns more easily and show the information in a digestible format. Visuals can also help you display your findings to audiences who aren’t familiar with the subject matter you’re discussing.

Here are a few ways to turn your quantitative and qualitative data into a visual:

• Pie chart
• Bar graph
• Infographic
• Area map
• Table
• Dashboard
• Histogram
• Treemap
• Line chart

Regardless of the type of visuals you create for your survey results, make sure the information you present is readable. If you’re using a chart or graph, don’t forget to include a key that describes what each color represents.

Determine course of action for results

You can use survey data to help you accomplish your marketing and business objectives. The information you collect from surveys is valuable since it provides insight into the wants and needs of consumers. You’ll have to determine how you want to use this information at your company and create a strategy to put it to good use.

Present results

When you’re done analyzing your data, creating a visual for it, and developing a plan for it, you can present your findings to stakeholders and other decision-makers, employees, or customers. You can turn your results into a comprehensive report that details key data points and actionable steps the company can take to improve. When building a survey report, make sure to include the following:

• Title page
• Table of contents
• Survey summary
• Intent behind survey
• Methodology
• Results

Graphics that can support your data

You can also turn your survey data into a slideshow presentation to make it more engaging and visually appealing to audiences.

How do you begin leveraging your survey report?

A survey is a powerful tool that can help you gather information about your audience, allowing you to gain a better understanding of your customers’ shopping behaviors and desires. Once you're done collecting responses, you can use survey results to enhance your sales and marketing efforts and build even better campaigns.

Not only can you build a survey, collect responses, and automate surveying with Mailchimp, but you can also analyze survey results in a centralized place. As a result, you can create tailored campaigns, boost customer satisfaction, improve products or services, and more. Use Mailchimp for your next survey and learn more about your audience with unlimited responses.