How to: Email Invite Survey

Introduction

An Email Invite Survey invites respondents to a survey directly via email. It also has the facility to track progress and send reminder emails to those which have not yet responded. This can be a great way to increase response rates and personalise the experience for your respondents.

Steps to building an Email Invite Survey

1. Set up survey questions.
2. Set up questions to be prefilled by data import i.e. email address, name, any departmental info etc (these will be used to contact invitees, personalise emails and filter reports later on).
3. Navigate to the Advanced tab and select the [+ Prefills] option near the bottom of the page.
4. Navigate to the Prefills tab and select [+ Add Questions]. Locate the questions to be prefilled by data import and mark these as:
   1. Hidden
   2. Imported Prefill
5. Under the “Emails” tab, add the desired Respondent Emails and input your text. Make sure a unique link to the survey is included in the Respondent Welcome Email by including a } and/or substitution within the body of the email text, these will provide unique links for the recipient to access the survey (see example below):

   Hello,
   
   At SocialOptic we value the employee experience. As such we aim to measure how our employees are doing by sending regular surveys.
   Please respond to the survey by clicking the button below.
   
   
   {{{button}}}
   
   Or paste the link into your browser: {{url}}
   
   Note: your link is unique to you and should not be shared.
   
   
   Many thanks,
   
   The Board
   

6. Set the To Field Question to the respondent email address question.
7. Add name prefills for personalisation if desired using appropriate null. For further information on how to do this, please refer to “Appendix 1” at the end of this document.
8. If you would like to add your company logo, upload it using the image upload feature in the editor. Note that the email template set up in your system may already include branding.
9. Repeat these steps for the Reminder emails if desired. You can also input text for the Completion email.
10. Now that your emails are set-up, the data for the imported prefills needs to be imported. Navigate to the Advanced tab, select an identifier question under the Respondent Fields section. In most cases, either the respondent email address or an alternative identifier such as an employee number will be most suitable.
11. Before importing the target data, it is sometimes helpful to import a test file containing your own details for example to test and see how it looks. This is also an excellent opportunity to test your survey. Please refer to the “How To – Testing Your Survey” document for further details.
12. Create and check your test file of target data. This should be in csv format, with accurate email addresses. To import a target file, select [Import Responses] in the survey editor.
    1. go to the import tab on the responses page and drop your csv file on the box provided.
    2. when you have dropped the csv file, the system will look at the fields and guess which field should be imported to which question. Using the question mapping fields which are generated, check these guesses and make any amendments necessary.
    3. check the number of fields tallies with your expectations - xx new responses, xx duplicates and/or xx updates. Duplicates will only be imported once; updates will overwrite any records already in the survey unless you choose 'ignore updates'.
13. To test the emails, the survey must be published. Navigate to the Responses page, select a desired response to open the actions menu above the responses table. Select [Test email]. Test emails of each configured respondent email will be sent to your user email address. Confirm the emails arrive and look as expected.
    Then select [Bulk emails] to open the bulk emails dialogue box. Select [Send x welcomes] to send welcome emails to the imported email addresses.
14. Click on the link to take the survey. Once the test is completed, the test responses can be deleted from the responses page by using the [Delete permanently] button when selecting the response.
15. Create and check your file of target data. This should be in csv format, with accurate email addresses. Import the file using the same steps used for the test file.
16. To send your email invites, select [Bulk emails] on the Responses page, Responses tab and select [send x welcomes].
    
    Reminder emails are sent using the same [Bulk emails] menu. Reminder emails will only be sent to non-completed responses which have already been sent a welcome email. This is similar again for 2nd and 3rd reminder emails, only sending to those non-completed responses which have received the previous reminder email.

Appendix

Personalising Emails using substitutions

Personalising emails can be a great way to enhance the respondent experience. SurveyOptic makes this possible through its inbuilt substitutions.

Steps to Personalising Emails

1. Set up survey questions, including any prefill-questions i.e. email address, name, any departmental info etc (refer to steps 2. – 4. above for guidance).
2. In the “Questions” tab, identify the prefill-question that will hold the desired data (most likely Respondent Name). Open that question and select [Copy ID] to copy the question id to your clipboard.
3. Navigate to the Emails tab and find the Welcome email for respondent email editor.
4. Paste the copied question ID into the text editor. You will see a string appear that looks something like this: q-b43de5c5-e104-4b12-ace4-c8c765bbe91d.
5. Surround the question ID with two pairs of braces (curly brackets or moustaches) like this: . This will draw the Respondent name from the data that you will import.
6. Position the bracketed question ID where desired in your email text. Your end result should look something like the below.

   Dear {{q-b43de5c5-e104-4b12-ace4-c8c765bbe91d}},
   
   At SocialOptic we value the employee experience. As such we aim to measure how our employees are doing by sending regular surveys.
   Please respond to the survey by clicking the button below.
   
   
   {{{button}}}
   
   Or paste the link into your browser: {{url}}
   
   Note: your link is unique to you and should not be shared.
   
   
   Many thanks,
   
   The Board
   

Unsubscribe link

The respondent welcome, reminder and second reminder emails all attach an “unsubscribe link” to the footer of the email. When a respondent clicks on this link they will be added to a ‘DNC’ (do not contact) list.

Permit list

An email pemit list can be added to an email invite survey. This list will limit the email sending to only those listed in the permit list. This acts as a ‘safety net’, ensuring emails are only sent out to addresses that use the permitted company domain. Please see our "email permit list" document for more information.