Creating Email Invitations & Adding Contacts 3.0

SurveyGizmo has revamped and redesigned the entire email invitation and email contact system to better assist users in sending out survey invitations via email. For users of SurveyGizmo 2.x, there is a quick section at the bottom about relevant changes and making the transition.

Creating an Email Invitation

To create an email invitation, the very first step is to Launch your survey by selecting the Publish tab and clicking on Launch It!. Once the Diagnostics are completed, you will be presented with the various Link and Campaign options:

Select the Email Campaign link to start your new campaign and you will be presented with the main Email Campaign screen:

Write Your Emails

In the above image, the arrow is indicating the location of the edit icon (pencil) to edit the content of your email invitation. This includes the subject, the from name, reply-to email address, and the HTML and text body. Select the edit icon to edit the content of your email invitation:

You will notice that on the left side is the Merge Codes helper, allowing you to quickly access these special codes that will dynamically be changed to the unique value for that particular contact. For instance, the merge code [contact("first name")] placed in your email will be delivered to the recipients with the merge code replaced with the contact's first name.

The most critical merge code can be found in the message content by default: [invite("survey link")]

This merge code is replaced by the unique survey link you will configure shortly. It should be in every email invitation, most reminders, and can be excluded from an email campaign's thank you email. Click Save and Back to return to the main Email Campaign Overview.

Back on the main Email Invite Campaign screen you will also find links to Send a Reminder Message as well as Setup your 'Thank You' Message (Pro and above plan levels). A reminder is automatically sent to only those contacts who have not yet completed the survey. or sending it X number of days after the initial invitation. The creation of reminders and thank yous is the same as editing your initial email invitation.

Link Settings

Before continuing to adding contacts, select the left tab called Link Settings:

Within this interface, you can setup the different settings for the survey link that will be dynamically added into each of your email invitations within this campaign. For Enterprise customers, you can setup a secure (SSL) link, while every paid account will be able to setup the overall status, language, and more. This should be configured before moving forward with adding contacts and testing your email campaign.

Campaign: Add Email Recipients

Back on the Campaign tab (top-left), you will find a Manage/Add Contacts button. Clicking that button will bring up a view of all current contacts in the system. Select the Add/Import tab on the left and you will be presented with three options:

• Add in Bulk (copy/paste)

• Add a Single Contact



• Import from CSV/Excel

In the case of the last option, Import from CSV/Excel, you will want to export your spreadsheet from Excel, OpenOffice Calc, or Google Docs as a Comma Separated Value file (CSV) so it can be uploaded to your email campaign. There is a tutorial available on saving as a CSV.

Be aware that SurveyGizmo automatically removes any duplicate email addresses when importing them into your campaign. Only 1 entry within a campaign for each email address is allowed.

Test & Send It

The final step is to send out a sample invitation to yourself to ensure proper formatting, deliverability, and to review your invitation. You can use the Test Invitation to provide an email address to receive the test email invitation. Once testing is completed, click Send Now to bring up the Send email invitation dialogue:

Make sure to place a check next to the invitation you would like to send and finally click Send Selected Messages at the bottom to be prompted a final time before the email invitations are sent. Once an email campaign has been sent it cannot be stopped, so be sure you have tested and are sure you are ready to proceed!

Finally, contacts are eligible to receive thank you or reminder emails only if they have received the previous reminder and/or invitation message.

For example, if 5 contacts are added to a new campaign, the initial invitation can be sent by checking the appropriate box below and clicking Send Selected Messages. If you were to add a reminder and return to this screen, there would be 5 contacts pending for the reminder message and 0 for the initial invite. If, before sending the reminder, you added 3 new contacts to the email campaign and returned to this screen, you would find 3 contacts pending for the initial invite and 5 still pending for the reminder. The 3 new contacts could not be sent the reminder unless they were firstsent the invitation. Campaign messages are sent as a funnel from top to bottom in Step 2 of the previous screen.

Monitor Your Progress

Once an Email Campaign is sent, you can then monitor your Progress on the main Email Campaign Overview tab at the very bottom. This will provide the following information:

• Completed Responses
• Total Emails Sent
• Date of Last Send
• The Number of Emails Pending (i.e. eligible contacts to receive that message)

Congratulations, you've successfully completed a SurveyGizmo Email Campaign!