Creating Email Campaigns and Adding Contacts

 Available to all Paid Account Levels.

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 Distribute tab and clicking on Launch It!. Once the Diagnostics are completed, you will be presented with the various Link and Campaign options:

In order to qualify for using our Email Campaigns, you must be CAN-SPAM Compliant. This means that you have a physical address on file under Account-->Summary-->Account Information.

If you do not have a physical address, you'll receive the following error message:

In order to move forward, you'll need to go to  Account-->Summary-->Account Information and change your address

Click "Save Changes

 

 

Now that you've added your email address, you can return to your Distribute tab by going to My Recent Project-->Distribute, and clicking on "Email Campaign".

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.

Once you've finished customizing your email, be sure to customize your Footer Text. This field provides the name of the Company, City, State, and Zip Code the email is coming from as well as an unsubscribe link to give your contacts a way to remove themselves from your mailing list. This footer is required by the CAN-SPAM ACT but is now customizable so you can translate or pretty it up to your hearts content!

NOTE: In order to adhere to CAN-SPAM Act standards, at this time, you will not be able to move forward without including the two merge codes listed there.

The merge codes are as follows:

[account("physical address")]

[invite("unsubscribe link")]

If you do not include the merge codes listed, you will receive the error message you see below.

 

To learn more about this footer text, please visit Email Campaign: Customizable CAN-SPAM ACT Footer Text

Now that you've finished customizing your message, 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 several options for you to choose form when importing your contacts.

You will end up first of all on the "Add/Import" Tab.

Once there, please read the Email Campaign Terms of Service (this is important to ensure both your own and SurveyGizmo as a whole's deliverability).

After you're done reading the Terms of Service, you will be presented with several options in which to upload your contacts.

1. Add a Single Contact
2. Paste from Spreadsheet
3. Import from CSV/EXCEL
4. Eventbrite: You can upload contacts from your Eventbrite account using this integration. Before being able to upload your contacts via Eventbrite, you'll need to authentical with Eventbrite under Account-->Plugins
•  To learn more about this integration, please visit: https://support.surveygizmo.com/entries/20991018-eventbrite-integration
5. Freshbooks: You can upload contacts from your Freshbooks account using this integration. Before being able to upload your contacts via Freshbooks, you'll need to authentical with Freshbooks under Account-->Plugins
• To learn more about this integration, please visit: https://support.surveygizmo.com/entries/20637832-freshbooks-integrations
6. ReadyTalk: You can upload contacts from your ReadyTalk account using this integration. Before being able to upload your contacts via ReadyTalk, you'll need to authentical with ReadyTalk under Account-->Plugins
• To learn more about this integration, please visit: https://support.surveygizmo.com/entries/20970326-readytalk-integration

Add A Single Contact:

Before you can click "Add Contact Now" at the bottom of the contact, please be sure to check the checkbox next to "Required -- This recipient has given me permission to add them to my SurveyGizmo email campaign". This is part of the Double Opt-In that was mentioned on the Manage/Add Contacts-->Add/Import page.

Paste from Spreadsheet

PLEASE NOTE: Before you can click "Map Fields" at the bottom of the screen, please be sure to check the checkbox next to "Required -- This recipient has given me permission to add them to my SurveyGizmo email campaign". This is part of the Double Opt-In that was mentioned on the Manage/Add Contacts-->Add/Import page.

Once you do, a message will pop up:

Click "OK" to move forward.

You will then be prompted to map your contacts to their contact fields.

In this section, go ahead and map your email to email (first name to first name, etc)

Import from CSV/Excel

In the case of the last option, Import from CSV, 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.

PLEASE NOTE: Before you can click "Import Contacts" at the bottom of the screen, please be sure to check the checkbox next to "Required -- This recipient has given me permission to add them to my SurveyGizmo email campaign". This is part of the Double Opt-In that was mentioned on the Manage/Add Contacts-->Add/Import page.

Once you do, a message will pop up:



Click "OK" to move forward.

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!

**PLEASE NOTE** In the Screenshot it mentions that you're an approved spammer. If you have never sent out an Email Campaign with surveygizmo you will have to go through an approval to make sure you are CAN-SPAM ACT compliant. While this can take up to two days (if you send in the request on a weekend) we usually try to get to them immediately

To be CAN-SPAM ACT compliant you much have a physical address on file. You can add this if you do not already have it by going to Account-->Account Summary-->Edit

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!

For more new Email Campaign Features please see the following tutorials:

Spam Score:

Import Logs:

Send History:

Email Campaign Statistics:

Have questions? Want to comment on this? Join the discussion on our SurveyGizmo Support site.