Sometimes, the best way to understand what your audience wants is simply to ask them. That’s where surveys come in. A strategically crafted survey can put you way ahead of the competition, helping you gain key marketing insights with just a handful of questions. In today’s review, we are taking an objective look at, yes, you guessed it, SurveyMonkey.
It is not uncommon for people to go online, find mixed reviews about products, and stay confused still. This is why we do the review segment every week – to offer you clarity on whether a marketing tool is worth investing in or not. So, without wasting another moment, let’s go!
What is SurveyMonkey?
SurveyMonkey is an online platform where you can create, distribute, and analyze surveys and questionnaires. You can use it for conducting surveys for various purposes, including market research, customer feedback, employee engagement, academic research, and more.
SurveyMonkey offers customized surveys using a variety of question types including multiple-choice, open-ended, and rating scales. Besides, it provides tools to help you distribute your surveys through various channels, such as email invites, social media, websites, and more. Respondents can complete the surveys online, making the process convenient and accessible.
With the introduction out of the way, let's take a look at what you can do with SurveyMonkey.
1. Survey Creation
As a platform dedicated to surveys, SurveyMonkey provides an intuitive user interface for creating surveys from scratch. And the best part is - customization, lots and lots of it. You can add different types of questions specific to your needs, customize the design and layout of your surveys, and even add your own branding.
As a beginner, you can surely take advantage of readily available templates. Yes, they have got tons of them – all sorted by categories. Does not matter if you want feedback on your website, app, or an event, collect customer data such as contact details, or evaluate your employees, SurveyMonkey’s pre-built templates have got your back.
All surveys are secure and mobile-responsive, which is great for a seamless experience on all mobile devices. And if you have the SurveyMonkey mobile app, you can even respond to surveys offline. Your responses are later synced when you are online again. Besides, you can utilize the platform's advanced logic and branching features to create dynamic surveys that adjust based on respondents' answers. This helps create a personalized and relevant experience for each respondent. Quite useful, wouldn’t you say?
2. Survey Distribution
Now, what is the point of building a survey if you can not get it across to your intended audience? SurveyMonkey allows you to distribute your surveys across different communication channels. You can share them via email invites or social media, embed them on your website for your audience to engage with, or generate QR codes for a quick scan. Well, this kind of flexibility makes way for reaching an audience far wider.
3. Response Collection
For a process that sounds as simple as response collection, SurveyMonkey does not run out of options either. You can fully control and manage survey responses – by setting response quotas, limiting access as to who can view them, and scheduling surveys to be open or closed at specific times.
But wait! There is more! You can even set up automatic email notifications to receive alerts when responses are submitted, making quick follow-ups easier and more accessible.
4. Data Analysis
To make sense of the responses collected through surveys, you need robust analysis features - which SurveyMonkey thankfully comes equipped with. You can gain useful insights into the collected data, identify trends, and deduce decisive conclusions. There is impressive support for real-time tracking of submitted responses, which is handy for guessing the response rate or tracking the overall survey progress.
With techniques like cross-tabulation, you can identify patterns and correlations within the data. And if you want, you can even filter out some data subsets to focus on what you need from the collected responses. For example, you can segment survey responses based on specific criteria, such as demographics. This segmentation can help you understand how different groups of respondents differ in their feedback. In a nutshell, you can do comparative analysis, statistical analysis, text analysis, trend analysis, and more.
5. Data Reporting
Inside SurveyMonkey, you can generate customized reports that showcase the most relevant survey results. These reports can include selected questions, charts, and graphs to highlight key findings. Besides, the platform offers practical tools to represent the data in a visually appealing way. There are different chart types to choose from, such as bar charts, pie charts, line graphs, and more. Not to mention the export support for popular formats like Excel and SPSS.
6. Third-party Integrations
Now, this is nothing major. Almost all marketing and business tools today offer support for third-party integrations. And so does SurveyMonkey.
You can integrate it with other tools and platforms, such as CRM systems, email marketing services, and analytics tools - to streamline your workflow and data management.
7. Collaboration
Collaborative features make a huge difference for teams with shared objectives. With SurveyMonkey, multiple individuals or teams can work together on the same survey at the same time.
Thus, all team members can share access and collaborate in real time. Pretty smooth, right? Also, you can invite members to leave comments or feedback on your survey projects.
8. Pricing
When it comes to pricing, SurveyMonkey offers decent flexibility. You can choose from three pricing sets – Team Plans, Individual Plans, and Enterprise. Team Plans feature three plans – Team Advantage ($25/user/mo), Team Premier ($75/user/mo), and Enterprise. Similarly, Individual Plans also feature three plans – Premier Annual ($119/mo), Advantage Annual ($39/mo), and Standard Monthly ($99/mo). Enterprise plans are customizable as per the client’s needs.
If you are a student or an educator, you can take advantage of additional discounts on the pricing.
Final Verdict
SurveyMonkey is an excellent survey and data collection tool if you consider features like multiple language support, customizable templates, advanced analytics, and real-time collaboration. But let’s be honest here, paying for this service only makes sense if you need features that are not already available with free options like Google Forms.
At the end of the day, it comes down to how much customization you need. If your business heavily relies on surveys, you may benefit from investing in SurveyMonkey. Be warned though - it is not cheap.