Cedar Fair Entertainment Company: Collecting Data Where it Matters

We are taking a moment today to highlight a customer and how they are using SurveyPocket to collect data and taking action from these new insights driving the business forward. Cedar Fair Entertainment Company, a leader in amusement parks, water parks and active entertainment manages more than 12 of the most visited Amusement parks in the United States. Some of their parks throughout the United States include Cedar Point which is labeled as The Best Amusement Park in the World, Kings Island and California's Great America. Growing year over year and setting ongoing record attendance numbers makes Cedar Fair an inspiration and leader in the Entertainment business. This year if you and your family are visiting the parks someone may come up and ask your opinion with an iPad in hand. Over the last year Cedar Fair has replaced its old paper driven survey and data collection processes with SurveyPocket running on iPads at all of its parks.

Mike Lott from Cedar Fair had this to say:

"SurveyPocket has really simplified the process. The iPads work great, and the interviewers seem to like them. I'd been looking to do something like this for a while. We had a whole new executive team come on board and it was an opportunity to do everything the way we had always wanted to do it."

They are applying the SurveyPocket application by having interviewers in the park approach guests with an iPad to collect a few questions about the visitors demographics and a secure an agreement from the respondent to participate in giving feedback to the park. Shortly following their visit to the park, the guests get a personalized survey sent out to answer questions about their visit. Hundreds and thousands of these surveys are conducted each year giving Cedar Fair a whole new spectrum of data and insights they did not get before. 

“Some of the interviewers who did paper surveys with us last year said a lot of the guests don’t seem as intimidated when they see someone with an iPad coming toward them than they do when they see someone with a clipboard coming toward them," said Lott. 

Cedar Fair's implementation of this technology is full of positive gains. Now the monthly insight reports at each park are not produced by hand and viewed in hand - they are easily accessed on a streamlined visual reporting dashboard accessible from computers, smartphones and tablets. Groups of staff at each park can access and share their data easier than ever before, making sure everyone is on the same page and they have hit their data collection mark on each target demographic. The data collected by field interviewers can be further analyzed and responses can be categorized in a few simple clicks to view responses by gender, age group and more. This is a reminder of how important it is to listen to your customers, find the voice of the customer, and to leverage your insights to help plan future development.  

Lott Also Added: 

“We used to have to hand-do monthly reports for all of the parks. That’s all gone away now. This year we set up dashboard accounts so a select group at each park has access so they can log on and see the reporting for their park. Everyone can access their own data; they can run their own cross-tabs. It works really well for us. The feedback from the park marketing directors has been really positive.”

View More Case Studies and Customer Success Here

Closing Notes

Gina Yeagley
Director of Marketing
Survey Analytics

Collecting data from your consumers is more important than ever before. There are still many businesses out there relying on traditional methods for collecting data and are slow to adapt the new technologies available today. There are others that do not collect any data or report trends at all. Others are still spending lots of valuable time conducting traditional paper and pencil surveys and scanning all of this data in one by one and taking a lot of time to analyze and write reports. Making this change can not only streamline the way you get valuable insights and report them, but it will give your staff the ability refocus their time to growing the business, and more importantly growing the business together with your customers. Cedar Fair makes a great case of how you can improve the way you listen and learn from your customers and visitors. If you want to see how easy it is to implement this technology, Survey Analytics would love to set up a demonstration specific to your needs, a complimentary free trial and assist you with full support on deploying your first research project.

Ethnography and Technology: How To Use Tablets for Digital Ethnography

Traditional Ethnography and Emerging Technology

Free Webinar: How To Use Tablets for Digital Ethnography

Technology is rapidly growing in modern society across the world, even in communities with socioeconomic boundaries. With technology becoming more prevalent in society, there are many tools and devices that are realistic and will even save money for special research projects. Ethnography in short is the observation of social stories. Traditional ethnography is a qualitative research method of data collection through observation that measures the customs of people, cultures and behaviors. Businesses all over the world have been discovering ethnography over the past decade in hopes of learning and predicting the social, cultural, and political behaviors within communities.

How Can We Bridge Online and Offline Interactions?

With the inexpensive technology available today, we can rethink the basic principles of conducting ethnographic research. By implementing a newer research methodology, digital ethnography, we can gain deeper insights into everyday lives. Using a device such as a tablet; we can gauge new and more accurate insights into people’s everyday lives and needs. 

Free Online Webinar: "How to Use Tablets for Digital Ethnography"

Join Survey Analytics for this webinar Thursday, May 16, 2013 at 10am San Francisco time / 1pm New York time / 6pm London time (and Friday, May 3rd at 3:00am Sydney time).

• What is digital ethnography and why is it important? 
• The evolution of digital ethnography
• How to implement and analyze everyday life using a tablet
• How to leverage the data collected 
• Examples and best practices of this methodology

Don't worry if you're not able to make it at the time of the live webinar. Sign up anyway and we'll send you the webinar video and slides when they become available. The video and slides will also be available on the original signup page and this blog at the conclusion of the webinar.

(Webinar Replay) How to Use Geofencing in Mobile Surveys

Thursday afternoon, over 100 marketers and researchers joined us live for How to Use Geofencing in Mobile Surveys. Survey Analytics CEO Andrew Jeavons delivered a well received presentation about how the technology behind geofencing is evolving and how today you can trigger a mobile survey to a device within a specific radius. Along with the technology, topics in this webinar include privacy consent issues and how social sharing is changing in modern society. Andrew also gave examples of geofencing and mobile survey best practices, and how some of Survey Analytics' clients are using geofencing today. There were great questions asked and to name a few how to get people to opt in to a mobile panel, privacy issues, the direction this technology is moving and more.

In case you missed out, you still have a chance to access the video and slides from the presentation here.

A Brief Overview of Survey Analytics and Geolocation/Geofencing Mobile Surveys

Using Survey Analytics cloud based survey software, you can easily program a mobile friendly survey for the SurveySwipe mobile application. While creating your geofence/geolocation survey, you can upload locations via physical address or by latitude/longitude coordinates for thousands of locations at once from an Excel spreadsheet. After programming your mobile friendly survey, it is easy to gather contacts to setup a mobile panel that will opt in to take surveys based upon location. Our friends at qSample would be more than happy to help you find mobile respondents that are willing to opt in and give consent for your next research project.

Watch the Webinar Now to Learn Even More About The Best Practices of Geofencing and Mobile Surveys

Click the Play Button to Access the Webinar!

(REPLAY) Education Hour: 12 Ways to Improve Survey Programming Efficiency

Yesterday's launch of the Survey Analytics Education Hour was a success. Presented by Survey Analytics VP of Client Services, Esther LaVielle, Education Hour is a monthly training session for clients covering topics selected by customer feedback. The first session was titled "12 Ways to Improve Survey Programming Efficiency," and in this presentation Esther guided us through the process of helping Pawnee, Indiana’s Parks & Recreation Department survey its citizens for a new park they want to build at Lot 48.

Some tips featured in this session include:

• Setting a time zone stamp so that you reach your audience at the best time they are likely to respond
• Using the Ad Hoc Query Tool in Survey Analytics Reporting Features to search the survey database
• How to select frequently used questions from the Question Library allowing you to save lots of overhead time in creating your survey
• Using Global Options to make validation, question code updates, and much more applicable to the entire survey
• And many more programming tips that save our clients 20-30% of time when programming a survey

Watch the Replay and Access the Slides from this Presentation Below:

12 Ways To Increase Survey Programming Efficiency from Survey Analytics

If you are not a current client of Survey Analytics and would like to save time in conducting online surveys, market research or see our powerful Enterprise Research Platform in action - you can try it for free. Thanks for your participation and we will see you at the next Education Hour!

Education Hour: 15 Ways to Improve Survey Programming Efficiency

The First Education Hour From Survey Analytics is Scheduled for Tuesday, April 30, 2013 at 1PM EST

Survey Analytics is pleased to announce "Education Hour," a new monthly online/webinar series for those using the Survey Analytics Enterprise Research Platform. The goal behind Education Hour is to offer a unique training session on the topics that you choose. Education hour is driven by customer feedback and we will be sending surveys each month to gauge future training topics. Our first session, "15 Ways to Improve Survey Programming Efficiency," is scheduled for Tuesday April 30, 2013 at 1PM EST being presented by Survey Analytics VP of Client Services Esther LaVielle. 

In this Education Hour, you can expect to learn shortcuts and save the overall time it takes to program a survey. These tips from Survey Analytics have proven success, with some clients saving 20-30% of the time it takes to program a survey. It is important to catch programming mistakes early and prior to deployment of a survey. These tips will assure your survey is setup right, and help you reach your goal of getting higher response rates. The Survey Analytics account management and support team have years of valuable experience in the survey programming field and are exited to share the best practices in the industry. 

So far based upon the customer feedback we have received, the lineup for upcoming education hours will cover the following educational training topics:

• Turn Your Survey Into an Interactive Survey
• How To Recruit People Into Your Panel
• Field Projects Made Easy with SurveyPocket
• How to Run Mobile Survey Projects
• Run A MR Study Using Multiple Deployment Strategies

If you are unavailable to join us live, sign up anyways. We will be sending an e-mail to all registrants after the session and also include a replay of the presentation through multiple social media channels including this blog and our YouTube channel. 

Upcoming Webinar: How to Use Geofencing in Mobile Surveys

Make your Mobile Surveys more powerful using Geofencing Best Practices

Join us for this webinar Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 10am San Francisco time / 1pm New York time / 6pm London time (and Friday, May 3rd at 3:00am Sydney time).

What is Geofencing?

Geofencing is the ability to place a virtual fence around a geographic location such that when a mobile device enters the radius, a survey can be triggered. In this webinar you will learn how to use geolocation to make your surveys more powerful and reach a larger audience.

Today there are many applications that track location using GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. Geofencing is a newer and better tool that allows companies to send targeted alerts to opted in mobile devices to consumers in a specific barrier. Geofencing can trigger a survey to consumers at the location you desire.  

Using geofencing and geo-targeted messages, you can be more effective and likely see consumers will take action. Using an opt-in audience in combination with location gives you the power to drive more consumers in. A great way to use geofencing wold be to trigger a survey and when complete give a reward or credit for them to drive return attendance higher. 

Survey Analytics will be presenting a cost-efficient way to engage your consumers using geolocation. From timing the message to composing the message we will explain how your business can benefit from using geofencing to trigger mobile surveys. 

Topics in this webinar will include: 

• An overview of geofencing and scenarios in which you would use it 
• How you can send surveys to someone at a store or particular event 
• How geofencing triggers a notification within the desired boundaries 
• The best practices of geofencing in mobile surveys 
• Why geofencing is important 
• The future of geofencing and location sharing 

Don't worry if you're not able to make it at the time of the live webinar. Sign up anyway and we'll send you the webinar video and slides when they become available.

How to do Ad Testing on Tablets and Smartphones: A Webinar Replay

In our latest webinar, we demonstrated how to conduct ad testing, and specifically how you can do ad testing on tablets and smartphones. Learn the traditional ways of testing ads and get introduced new ways to test ads on your mobile devices.  Advertising today is more innovative and risk taking than ever before. It is important to collect data and make sure that you are sending the right message to the right demographic in advertising. Taking your ad testing mobile can help you achieve this and have better insights on how to effectively advertise.

Up until recently there were limitations to testing ads on mobile devices. You may be asking yourself questions such as - Why test ads on mobile devices? Why not test ads the way it is already being done? A lot has changed in the past several years, and mobile devices are a huge part of our lives day in and day out.  With ad testing on tablets and smartphones, you can test the reaction to advertising in the moment and collect feedback from your target audience. You can verify who is responding to your ads by actual seeing them in person, and being able to tell that they are who they actually say they are. Most importantly, you can see the return on investment from your advertising and methods used to test your various types of media.

If your ads are sensitive materials, there is no need to worry. Your information will not get into the wrong hands because you can instantly delete the mobile device of content – something you can’t do with computers.

We invite you to watch a replay of our webinar and access the slides from the presentation below.