Survey reports make recommendations based on a careful analysis of data tallied and organized from survey findings. A good survey report requires you to systematically move from a big-picture summary down to your specific recommendations. How you write it determines whether you convince others to follow your advice or you are ignored.
Summarizing Your Findings
Your survey report’s summary section provides a broad overview of the entire report. It includes the date the surveys were distributed, the methods used for calculating and tabulating responses and a list of some key findings. Think of the summary as the entire survey report in miniature; this section should be about two pages long, and it should be written for someone who might have an interest in your report but might not have time to read every line.
An executive summary is necessary if you're looking for funding for a project based on the survey results. It differs from a standard summary in that it includes a brief business plan and outlines the opportunity that exists for potential investors. It's important to make sure the executive summary does not read like a sales pitch, however. It's not meant to be advertising, but instead an accurate reporting of information and conservative estimates of what the figures mean. Anyone with money to invest is smart enough to recognize overly-optimistic projections.
Providing Background Information
Introduction, background and objectives sections provide information about why you conducted the survey and composed the report and what you hoped to gain from your research. A half-page introduction should detail the problem or question you sought to address with your survey and subsequent report. The one- to two-page background section elaborates on this problem with additional context, such as what population was surveyed and what types of questions were asked. The half-page objectives section should highlight your specific goals in administering the survey and composing the report.
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Detailing the Methods and Results
Describe your survey administration and tabulation methods in a three- to five-page methods section and your results in a five- to 15-page results section. In your method section, include the survey you administered, as well as an explanation or analysis of why you asked the types of questions you did. Describe what you did with the information generated by the surveys, and explain how you tallied and grouped the responses. In your results section, show these tallies and groupings, either as spreadsheet-styled columns or pictorially as charts and graphs. Provide additional explanations of what the different tallies and groupings of responses indicate and why they are tallied and grouped the way they are.
A survey results template has about as many variations as surveys themselves. How you present your data depends on the amount and content of that data, and the results you're trying to show. Microsoft Word and Excel have a number of built-in templates you can use so you don't have to format your survey results from scratch. There are also many examples online.
Analyzing Results and Recommending Solutions
Conclude your report with a brief two- to three-page discussion section and a brief half-page to one-page recommendation section. In your discussion section, analyze the implications of your results section, specifically examples of tallies or groups that seem out of the ordinary, such as a disproportionate number of respondents answering “yes” to a survey question you thought would get more "no" answers. Following your discussion, offer five to 10 specific, actionable recommendations based on your results. These recommendations should be clear and brief.
Survey Report Tips: Writing the Executive Summary or Setting the Stage
August 20, 2019
Feedback & Surveys
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By Cvent Guest
Yesterday I gave you some tips about what to include in your next survey report. The first tip was to Set the Stage. Of course, this is meant to remind you that you cannot just launch into the survey responses and the data collection results but need to start at the beginning and walk down the survey report creation path. You need to provide the report reader with some general background information about the survey project. It's unfair to expect those reading your report, these are probably the decision makers, to just understand what the survey research was about, let alone the goals of the project. Writing a survey report is not that much different than other types of reports. It's important to give the reader an executive summary in the beginning. In many cases, the executive summary may be the only thing management reads so it's important it exists - and that it makes a strong case.
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To get you started Setting the Stage, here are a few pieces to include:
What caused you to want to create a survey? It's a good idea to explain to your audience (aka the decision makers) what prompted you or your team to create a survey. Shedding light on your motivation will help readers understand the importance of the results because they understand why an online survey was needed in the first place.
What were the goals and objectives? This is a pretty easy task. I'm sure that you wrote down goals and objectives when you began planning your survey - it is the first step in the market research process. It may be a good idea to create an itemized list and separate out those goals that were met, and those that were not.
What was your survey methodology? Let your readers know what data collection techniques were used - online survey, in-person interviews, paper questionnaires, telephone surveys, etc. Be sure to include if a data collection service was used or which data collection software system you chose. This is a good time to include information about your sample size such as how many email invitations were sent, did you send email survey reminders, who were you targeting? Consider including information about your survey analysis techniques.
What did you find out? Briefly explain some of the findings from the survey research. You don't need to give away the farm here just highlight a few important, unusual or surprising results. There will be the time and the place for an in-depth discussion of the survey results later in the report.
What should we do now? Even though a more in-depth section should be dedicated to summarizing the survey results and making recommendations should take place at the end of your survey report, it's also a good idea to briefly let your readers (aka the decision makers) what your recommendations are up front.
At the end of the day, the executive summary should be given just as much attention as the survey itself. You created a survey to help you make changes; you need to share the information you found out with decision makers. We said it in the beginning, but we'll say it again: the executive summary may be the only part of your survey report people read.
Surveys have an important role to play in thought leadership marketing. If they answer questions your clients are pondering in a field in which you have expertise and provide services, they create interest, credibility and leads. Also, if the results are novel and believable, journalists will often report on them as they’re easy to turn into stories. Journalists love easy, and their editors love numbers as they indicate that the author isn’t just opining.
But surveys also are easy to do badly. There are many survey reports that get no traction in the marketplace because they don’t say anything that anyone wants to read.
Here are five things to do to make sure your survey will be a hit:
1. Do make sure you pass the “so what?” test
Here are two key findings from recent surveys on social media that will catch people’s attention: “Companies with the greatest benefits from social media have multiple functions working together on it”; “The most effective consulting marketers train their consultants in how to use social media.” These findings are ones the audience is not likely to know, and tell them something they can do to improve their performance.
And here are some key findings (their claim, my italics) that no-one is going to care about: “71% of online adults use Facebook”; “Social media is a critical data source”; “Everyone is a mobile consumer.” These findings are irrelevant, or obvious, or both.
For your survey to grab people’s attention, you have to pick something interesting to investigate at the outset.
2. Do nail your hypotheses before you write the questions
A good survey should be easy for the respondent to answer. Perhaps because of this, people often think that good surveys are easy to write. They’re not. A good survey is one that asks questions that confirm or refute individual hypotheses (e.g. companies that manage risks well in emerging markets do certain things that others don’t) that sit under an overall hypothesis (e.g. emerging markets present a unique and potent combination of risks) that align with services the company can provide, and address a problem its clients have. These questions can’t be written in an afternoon. In fact, you have to work that whole sequence back the other way: client problem > firm’s services > overall hypothesis > individual hypotheses > questions. You have to do it that way, that is, if you want the data you collect to tell a story. And, of course, you do.
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3. Do make it multidimensional
A single set of questions directed at an undifferentiated population can lead to interesting results. If, however, you can compare those results across industries, or geographies, or those companies which use CRM versus those that don’t, or those who are selling versus those being sold to, you can often make unexpected discoveries. Questions that let you separate the results to make those comparisons are called banner questions. All surveys should have some.
4. Do distinguish the leaders from the laggards
Executives don’t really care what percentage of companies use an enterprise risk management system, or whether that percentage is growing (though of course ERM vendors do). They might care, however, what companies that manage risk really do differently from those that don’t, and whether they are more likely to use an ERM. You can answer that question if you build in one or more banner questions to distinguish the leaders from the laggards. For instance, ask how many incidents have caused losses over the past year, and then (perhaps normalizing for revenue or industry), compare the habits of the quartile with the least losses (your leaders) against the quartile with the most (those poor laggards). As a double check, you can ask respondents how well they think they manage risk and divide them that way, too.
5. Do make sure it’s statistically valid
Most surveys ask a sample of people (say 100 IT managers) and draw conclusions about all of them (tens of thousands in the US alone). How reliable the findings are depends critically on how big the sample is. A sample of 1,000 has a margin of error of ±3%, but a sample of 100 has a margin of error of ±10%. A sample of 20 has a margin of ±20% (unless there are only 20 altogether; for example, CEOs of large auto companies, in which case the error is ± zero, presuming the CEOs aren’t lying). So make sure you have enough respondents that your conclusions will be reliable, especially if you plan to cut the data with banner questions – that will always give smaller samples, each with a bigger margin of error.
And here are five things to avoid:
6. Don’t ask questions we already know the answers to
If you care how many people use LinkedIn for work, ‘tis but the work of a moment to find the answer on Google. Or do a mental review of 10 friends. In which case I am sure the answer will be 80%, or as close as makes no difference. We have seen a veritable torrent of surveys asking people if they use LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook for several years now. We don’t need to augment the flood.
7. Don’t ask them what they think
One of the weaknesses of surveys is that they are records of what people think is going on. Even if you ask folks something as concrete as how many customer complaints they had last month, you can only reasonably expect an estimate – no one is going to rummage through the files to find an exact number for your survey. That’s OK so long as you recognize that’s what you’re getting. But you will exacerbate this problem if you ask people what they think about something for which they have little or no data, such as how important social media will be next year.
It’s cheaper and just as informative to ask your kids.
8. Don’t ask self-serving questions
My pet peeve in this department is questions that ask people which way their budget is trending and whether they will outsource more next year. These questions are staples of companies that sell technology or augment clients’ staffs with their consultants. Recent examples; “CIOs at midmarket and large companies in Europe and the U.S. will spend 4.5 percent more on IT products and services this year,” and “The expected future state of all business functions will show an increase in outsourcing.” Vendors ask these questions to support their own budgeting processes. In addition they’ll flaunt the results in their reports if the numbers show an upward trend, both to please their own investors and make clients feel like laggards if they don’t spend more. I once heard a CIO say that these kinds of findings have an aroma he calls “vendor stink.”
9. Don’t rely on the data alone
A commentary based entirely on survey data makes pretty dry reading. That’s because about the best that a survey can do is tell you what is going on. It can tell you that consulting firms are cutting back on their social media spending, but it can’t tell you why. For that you have to pick a few respondents who did cut back and ask them. You might also support your discovery of a reversing trend with historical data and for that, if you don’t have a five-year history of doing the same survey, you might need secondary research. Combining all three – the survey, interviews, and some public data, you could pull together a pretty good story. Don’t cop out of the story and substitute a fad-ish infographic. Dull data doesn’t suddenly become interesting because a graphic designer got all creative with it. Check out this fine example if you don’t believe me.
10. Don’t give up ownership
Maybe you’d like to run a survey but you don’t have the resources so you’re thinking of engaging a third party to do it for you. There are several who can but who will insist on “co-branding” the report: CFO Magazine and EIU are two. But as Chris Koch of SAP said in an interview he did with us earlier this year, “The problem with that is that it only builds credibility for CFO or EIU. It creates goodwill . . . but not demand-generation because it’s not your survey, it’s the EIU’s; it’s not your thinking, it’s theirs.” Instead of a company that’s going to plaster its own name on your survey, use a panel research company such as ResearchNow or SSI that can take your survey design, build and field the survey, and return the results for you to analyze and report on. Their name need not appear on the report. Nor ours if you work with us. Thought leadership should make you look good, not your paid help.
In this age of SurveyMonkey and email, surveys are easy to construct and to field. But they are still hard to do well. People often hope or presume that they will discover insights when they trawl through their data. It doesn’t work that way. To get interesting insights you have to anticipate them, or at least have an idea where they might be lurking, when you design your survey.
There’s nothing in these 10 Do’s and Don’ts that has to do with how you analyze, present or communicate the results once you have them. This is all about the prep-work. As Abe Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Sharpen well and you’ll not only fell a tree, you‘ll build a first-rate bridge to your customers, too.
Before you ask what sections should be contained in a survey paper, you should first understand what is a survey paper. What it is *not* is simply a core dump of a bunch of papers in a common area.
Think of a survey as a research paper whose data and results are taken from other papers. This means that you should have a point to make or some new conclusion to draw. And you'll do so by collecting data from a broad collection of previous works.
As a previous responder has said, you should have a thorough and deep knowledge of the field that you are surveying. This knowledge should be sufficient to be completely aware of the the main themes, directions, controversies, and results in that field.
The point you will make will determine the organization of survey paper. The structure of the main sections of the paper will reflect the structure of field. Some possible example structures (which of course depend completely on the topic) might be:
1. Increasingly complexity or scale: There may be a spectrum of solutions and you might organize them by complexity or scale.
2. Static vs. dynamic: Many field organize by static techniques, dynamic techniques, and even hybrid.
3. Partitioning the design space: Lots of systems are made up of components, so maybe for an compiler paper, you could divide by the classic scanner, parser, symbol table, code generator and optimizer.
4. Major techniques in a field: For example, in fault tolerance, you see fail stop vs. fail forward, or logging vs. hot-backup. In concurrency control, there is a natural divide between optimistic vs. pessimistic techniques.
5. Historical: sometimes the course of development of a field has a clear linear nature and is intrinsically interesting in itself. This is an over-used techniques in many cases where it really doesn't add understanding.
There are lots of possibilities for a given topic and it is this organization that is the hardest part of writing a survey paper. (I'm sure that many of you can give good examples of organizations that have worked well for you.)
You'll have written a successful survey paper if you can communicate not just the list of results, but more important, your understanding of the structure of the field.
This is a high bar to set. And it is also why I never ask students in my graduate classes to write such papers; they just don't have the experience and perspective to write a good survey.
hile there are many tools available, it’s still a good idea as a business to rely on various types of survey methods to discover what customers want. Whether it’s a market research survey, customer feedback survey, or audit survey, businesses know these kinds of questionnaires can make all the difference in determining success or failure.
Let’s dig a little deeper into what different types of surveys there are and how they could help you grow your business.
2 Types of Survey Instruments
First of all, you should know that when we speak of “surveys” there are actually two types of survey techniques or approaches that people use.
You have the questionnaire, which is the paper (old-school!) or digital list of questions that a respondent can answer individually. Usually, these surveys are built with closed-ended questions, but there are questionnaires that allow open-ended questions to explore more elaborate answers.
The three most applied methods using a questionnaire are the self-administered, the group-administered, and the household drop-off. Among the three, the self-administered survey method is often used by researchers nowadays.
Interviews are the second approach, which are usually more personal and probing. A researcher has the opportunity to ask follow-up questions to gain deeper insights, but the downside of the interview is its time-consuming nature.
The three most applied methods for the personal interview are called the phone interview, the face-to-face interview, and the online interview.
So you’re probably wondering: what different types of survey are there?
In this article, we’ll focus on the first, the digital questionnaire.
So let’s look at the 9 most commonly used types of surveys that could help you improve your business…
1. Market Research Survey
Do you want to determine how and where products are purchased?
Are you trying to discover customer needs?
Curious about the level of competitive positioning you have within a certain industry?
These questions can be answered through market research surveys. It allows you to find out “what your market thinks”.
This type of survey can be applied when no data is available yet: For example, to measure how your target audience feels towards a new product you’re about to launch.
Or when you want to build upon previously gathered data in your market research dashboard. When you’re starting from a certain benchmark, you can conduct a survey to measure, for example, how well that same new product is received a year after its launch.
Keep the types of survey questions in mind that:
Ask about the need/opinions towards a certain product or service.
Measure what features in a product are important to the respondent (Pricing/Quality/Popularity/Availability
nearby/…)
How a market research questionnaire can grow your business:
It’ll give you quick and accurate insights into what people think about your products or services.
The data is collected in a structured way, which enables you to make well-founded decisions to base your strategies on.
You’ll be able to identify your product’s strengths and weaknesses as well as a course of action.
Discover more advantages of market research surveys here.
types of surveys - marketresearch(Click the image to try a market research example)
2. Employee Satisfaction Survey
This type of survey method is used to gauge whether employees are happy and satisfied with their work environment. Positive results in employee satisfaction surveys can indicate a higher level of employee motivation and a strong team spirit.
During the questionnaire, employees are asked to give feedback or voice concerns and frustrations they have with their company. Keep in mind that these questions are related to the atmosphere of the company and how an employee feels within a team.
This is different from the job satisfaction survey, which we’ll talk about in the next point!
Questions that you could ask in an employee satisfaction survey could be for example:
How many times a week do you feel stressed at work?
How meaningful is the work that you do to you?
How well do coworkers pay attention to your input at work? Do you feel valued?
It’s important to ensure the respondent’s anonymity when they’re taking this survey. It will lower the threshold to be
honest and upfront. Employee satisfaction surveys work best when they are administered over a longer period of time. For example on an annual basis.
How an employee satisfaction survey can grow your business:
These insights can provide specific recommendations that will help improve the company.
Results can point out areas that might need improvement.
Employees can be included in the process of improving the company, having their voices heard will boost morale.
By administering this type of survey on a regular basis, you can track the improvement of satisfaction over time.
3. Job Satisfaction Survey
The job satisfaction survey is very similar to an employee satisfaction survey.
It is part of a series of surveys that measure satisfaction overall. But where employee satisfaction is a survey that can be taken by all employees in a company, a job satisfaction survey type will look at the personal views of an employee to see how satisfied they are with their job.
Measuring job satisfaction is said to have a direct influence on employee morale. Did you know that companies with satisfied, engaged employees outperform those who don’t by 200%?
Questions for this type of survey could be:
How meaningful is your work to you? (From not at all meaningful to very meaningful)
How likely are you to look for another job outside the company?
How proud are you to work for your company?
To make sure that you get the results you want, it is important that you point out the confidentiality aspect of this kind of survey. And then it’s time to find out what part of their jobs are keeping your employees happy or excited. Or where there’s room for improvement!
(Click the image to try a job satisfaction example survey)
How a job satisfaction survey can grow your business:
Get clear & direct insights into how a colleague feels and operates within their team.
Build actionable targets for employees based on the input to improve their communication skills, teamwork, ambition
both for themselves and the company.
Data will help you visualize where additional training or guidance is needed.
If your employees are satisfied with their job, it’ll show in their work and their representation of your company.
4. Exit Interview Survey
In this type of survey, employers are looking to find out why valued employees choose to leave their company. There are hundreds of reason why people leave their job: Personality conflicts with other employees or management, a lack of
advancement opportunities, financial or additional benefits but sometimes it’s due to reasons unrelated to the job or work environment.
That’s what makes an exit interview survey such a great accessory to the exit interview. If it’s done systematically it will allow you to pinpoint why people leave the company.
That’s why it’s important to include different kinds of survey questions such as:
What’s your reason for leaving the company?
How would you say were your opportunities for growth/your satisfaction on the job/your financial benefits for the job? (Rate on a scale from “very bad” to “excellent”.)
Other questions on a scale that consist of: Team spirit, workplace, relationship to a manager, stress level, …
How even an exit interview can help you grow your business:
Aside from discovering why employees decided to leave your company, it’ll give you a strong indication of improvements that can be made within the job description or overall satisfaction of the employees.
Regular surveying will reduce your employee turnover, by tackling the smaller irritations in an early stage, it will help you increase productivity and engagement.
Lower your high costs that come with the turnover by using your data cleverly to anticipate other employees happiness on the job.
5. Customer Satisfaction Survey
Of all the different types of surveys, the customer satisfaction survey is probably the most widely used. Whether you’ve encountered in the grocery store, where you were asked to give a smiley rating to the quality of the vegetables. Or if you received a short questionnaire via email after you’ve had an online shopping spree, we’ve all seen them at one time in our lives.
This kind of survey can help companies and organizations quickly and accurately measure how pleased their customers are
with their product, service, event or with the company in general. Collecting customer feedback can even increase sales.
Your survey should have questions such as:
Was your issue resolved today? Did you get what you came to the store for?
How would you rate your shopping experience/customer service representative/purchase?
Unlike your employees though, you cannot “force” your customers to fill out your surveys. So it’s very important to ask the right questions in your customer satisfaction survey. And of course, to make it fun, inviting and quick to fill in.
Measuring customer satisfaction is the first important step towards building a foundation on which your company can grow:
It is a strong indicator whether or not your consumer is loyal to your brand and if they have the intention of repurchasing your product.
Knowing and making sure that customers are satisfied will reduce churn and increase customer lifetime value.
Measuring the satisfaction and tackling any negative input, will reduce the voicing of negative feedback in more public spaces like social media channels & fora.
Retaining your customers will cost you less than acquiring new ones!
Respondents indicating they are very satisfied with your product or service can make excellent “brand ambassadors”.
types of surveys - customer satisfaction(click the image to try a customer satisfaction survey)
6. Brand awareness survey
While you may know your brand inside and out, this might not always be the case for your customer. People being aware of what your brand stands for, what the meaning of your company name or logo is, simply being “memorable” is what keeps you competitive in your market.
Creating brand awareness is one of the first steps when building an audience. This survey type, combined with your market research data, you can set up different kinds of marketing messages that can communicate your brand name and the products or
services that are tied to it.
There are 6 main metrics that you should keep in mind when you want to start measuring your brand awareness:
Brand recall measures how well your audience remembers your brand from memory.
Brand recognition measures how your audience recognizes your brand if they see it.
Brand identity gauges the opinions towards your logo and branding elements.
Brand image shows what customers associate with your brand.
Brand trust indicates how trustworthy people find your brand. Especially important in case of a crisis.
Brand loyalty is the final and probably most important metric for growth, it will indicate if customers will return to you when their next purchase has to be made.
Some growth benefits of measuring brand awareness are:
You can use this survey type of research to see how well your strategies and marketing investments are paying off. The gathered data is perfect to calculate effectiveness and performance.
Spot new associations that people make with your brand to take on new (and sometimes unknown) business opportunities.
Prove that the perceptions of your brand fit the way you want to position your brand… OR discover where there’s room for improvement.
Types of surveys - brand awareness survey(Click the image to try a brand awareness survey)
7. Training Evaluation survey
Employee training is an invaluable investment to keep your company on top of the latest trends and to stimulate growth in both your company and your employees.
There are different types of survey techniques used when giving pieces of training, this specific method enables your employees to voice their opinion on the quality of the training, its relevance and perhaps
indicate how well the presenter did as well. It’s an automated way to determine if important course topics have been correctly understood and to tackle possible issues as soon as possible.
In fact! By using a training evaluation form, an instructor could use the instant feedback to
address specific points in the middle of a class.
Your survey should have questions that:
Ask to rate the quality of the training/classroom/presentation/presenter.
Ask what topics during the training were useful and which weren’t.
How the training can be applied on the work floor.
How training evaluation surveys can help you grow your business:
It will help you ensure the quality of training and evaluate trainers as well as trainees.
Increase attendee satisfaction and productivity.
Continuously improve all aspects of training and align efforts of your training staff.
types of surveys - training evaluation form(Click the image to try a training evaluation survey)
8. Event Evaluation survey
A questionnaire to evaluate your event is a more specific type of survey method. Especially when your company organizes their own events it’s important to measure its success afterward.
But even after attending an event where you had your own booth, it could provide you with useful information to ask attendees how they experienced your setup.
Keep in mind that while you might think every aspect of your event was a success, this might not be the case for some of the attendees. Challenge yourself to keep your event evaluation survey as short and to the point as possible, while still offering the possibility of evaluating every aspect of the event. They don’t have to be boring! Keep the tone of voice the same as the atmosphere of the event itself. (Works well for brand recognition too 😉 )
Use questions such as:
How would you rate the venue/program/catering/…?
What was your favorite aspect of the event?
Would you recommend a follow-up edition to friends or colleagues?
Take a look at this very successful example by KAABOO Del Mar and how they used an event evaluation survey for their festival.
Use event evaluation to grow your business and your event:
Capture honest and in-the-moment perceptions and opinions from attendees.
Give your audience an outlet to interact with your brand.
By keeping the survey short and easy, you’ll get more honest and simply more responses with invaluable data that’ll help you improve your next event.
9. Lead generation survey
Last but not lead… least!
A lead generation survey might actually be the most valuable one when you want your business. In a couple of simple questions, this type of survey method will gather both contact information and some preferences about your target audience.
Enough for you to build a list of possible prospects that are interested in your product or services.
Types of survey questions to think of:
A couple of form fields to gather contact data. Keep this to a minimum! Email addresses are what’s most important, perhaps the first name too. Other details can always be asked later on in the communication process.
An opt-in so that you are allowed to contact them via their shared email address.
Any kind of question that captures their preferences on your product or service.
Here’s a secret tip to make this last survey type even better: While the regular, but sometimes “boring” survey still can get you the insights and the data you need. There is a better way to get more leads!
By creating interactive, playful quizzes, you lower the threshold for people to participate, you increase the level of engagement AND you provide a respondent with something valuable… They learn something about themselves!
Take a look at how lead generation quizzes work here.
A good lead generation survey will get you:
LEADS! Contact data of people who are interested in your product or service.
Qualification of those leads, by asking a couple of questions about their preferences you’ll know how ready they are to purchase and what they’re looking for.
Permission to contact new prospects when they opted in on your survey.