There are a variety of uses for survey data, and there are a myriad of ways to collect it. As far as survey data tools, you can get your feet wet with a simple online Google Doc survey or expand into the robust data extraction game with Qzzr or Qualtrics.

The following are the six data points that are incredibly important to business owners and decision makers.

1. Customer Segmentation

Customer segmentation is dividing customers into distinct groups. Doing so allows you to develop a deeper understanding of your customers. If you don’t have any knowledge about your target market, it’s like trying to shoot a target at the shooting range blindfolded. With luck, you might hit the target—but you don’t want to base business decisions off luck.

The best way to segment your customers is building out buyer persona profiles, and you’ll want to segment them based on demographics, interests, preferences, buying behavior, income level and education.

The more data like this you can gather, the better you can segment your customers, effectively market to them and keep them coming back.

2. Email List Segmentation

You can use customer data to segment your email list(s). Segmented emails let you send highly-targeted emails and provide more relevant content. From your customer segmentation data, you can break your email lists down to even smaller, more meaningful lists, i.e. geography, age, gender, buying frequency, content format, etc.

Data that gives you more relevant campaigns means better results. When a women’s clothing retailer segmented their emails based on amount spent per purchase, they received a 15 percent increase in annual revenue. And according to recent MailChimp research, open rates of segmented email campaigns were 14.31 percent higher and clicks were 100.95 percent higher than non-segmented email campaigns, while in 2015, 77 percent of email marketing ROI came from segmented email campaigns.

3. Direct Mail List Segmentation

It’s estimated that 269 billion emails are sent per day. Consumers receive a lot of emails, so more businesses are turning to direct mail.

Like with your email marketing campaign, it’s important to segment your direct mail marketing list to maximize its success and gather the right data about customers. Segmenting into sub-groups helps you more accurately track where your sales come from.

Analyze spending behavior and purchase data to find out who should be sent what. After sending your targeted direct mail, record results from them to further segment and send direct mail at the right time to the right customers.

4. Customer Satisfaction

The standard approach to gauging customer satisfaction is sending out customer satisfaction surveys. You can email surveys, create social media surveys or conduct surveys after customer service calls. Surveys are the go-to choice because they’re easier to conduct on a larger audience and easier to analyze and draw conclusions from.

You can also hold focus groups and request customer reviews. In a CIO article, a marketing coordinator from a legal company said, “Focus groups are an excellent way to have a relaxed conversation with your customers. A focus group is a great environment to see how your customer reacts to your product and how they behave while using your product. It is a great way to measure customer satisfaction, gather ideas about customer needs and so forth.” To get online reviews, have a website, create a business user account on Yelp and set up social media sites for customers to leave reviews on. Encourage customers to leave reviews—maybe even entice them with a discount on their next purchase—and then respond to and learn from customer reviews.

In terms of customer satisfaction, here are the top metrics you should be measuring: speed and quality of service, pricing, expectation vs. experience, overall satisfaction, complaints and intent to purchase again. Use the data from your surveys and other methods to create strategies to improve overall customer satisfaction.

5. Product Research

The best way to get product research data is asking for feedback via email with product feedback surveys after a customer buys a product. You can also get quality feedback from phone or video interviews or in focus groups. Whichever you choose, keep it short and simple. Taking five minutes of someone’s time is more likely to get you responses than 10-plus minutes.

Asking for product feedback bodes well for your business. In a recent survey, 74 percent of respondents said they’re likely or very likely to respond to a business’s request for feedback and 42 percent are more likely to buy from a brand who asks for product feedback.

Requesting product feedback doesn’t just give you repeat purchases; it gives you insights to create better products and develop better future offerings.

6. Franchisees

Another customer you can’t forget about is franchisees. Loyal customers and regular employees buy into your brand, but franchisees buy into it wholeheartedly—with a huge time and money investment. As a business owner, you have to get franchisees to trust you by better serving them. That’s what Cheryl A. Bachelder did when she became the CEO of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. She treated her franchisees like her most important customers, and it’s improved the company’s results and relationship between upper management and franchisees.

Another great example is Del Sol, a worldwide tourist-based retail business. Del Sol franchise locations have happy franchisees and miniscule store closure percentages, which they chalk up to the entire corporation giving support to each franchisee, providing proven retail programs and offering consistent training. They better service their franchisees to ensure the franchisee’s and business’s overall success.