Surveys, The Missing Link

While Bronto does allow you to build a survey into the body of an email message, occasionally there are times where inserting a link to a survey page is a better choice.  Due to the restrictions of many email clients, surveys will simply not work and your contacts must click to take the survey using the online version of the message (see previous blog post Working With Surveys In Email).

So what are the steps in Bronto for creating a survey message and linking to it in an email message?  Well first let me say that if you want to send an email message with a link to a survey, we highly recommend a dedicated survey management tool such as SurveyMonkey.com.  A limitation to creating a link to a survey message in Bronto is that any survey responses that are returned will not have the email address information of the person that filled out the survey.  You will receive the answers to the survey questions, but they will all come in as anonymous.  If this option isn’t what you are looking for, stop reading this blog post now and venture over to SurveyMonkey.com for your survey needs.

If you’re not concerned with who filled out the survey and just want the quantitative results, then let’s start going through the steps to setting up your message in Bronto.

Settings in Bronto

First, we need to make sure that the setting which restricts contacts from submitting multiple survey responses is turned off.

1. Log into your Bronto account and click Home->Settings.
2. On the left column menu, click the Survey link.
3. Under the Multiple Submissions section, uncheck (if checked) the box next to, “Restrict contacts from responding multiple times.”  Since you are linking to the same email survey message, you must make Bronto allow multiple submissions of the same message.
4. Click Save to save the settings.

Creating The Messages

Sending out a survey link email message will require you to build two emails in Bronto, one message containing the survey, and another message that you will send with a link to the survey.   If you need assistance on how to create a survey message in Bronto, please consult the video help library in the Help tab for further information.

Bringing It All Together

Once you have created your survey message, you will need to send it out of Bronto in order to “activate” the tracking and to obtain the link to the online version.  Create a test list with an email address you have access to, and send the survey message to this address.  When you receive the email, click the link to view the online version.  When the message opens up in your web browser, copy the URL in the address bar.

Jump back into the message you plan to send to your contacts and create a hyperlink to the survey using the URL you copied from the web preview of the survey message.

The message is now ready to send out to your contacts with a working link to your email survey.  The tracking results for the survey will be available in the survey message, not the message you send out containing the link to the survey.  In addition, the responses will come into Bronto as anonymous as mentioned earlier.

Recap

Just a quick recap of the steps involved to setting up an email linking to a survey message in Bronto:

1. Go to Home->Settings->Survey and make sure the Multiple Submissions checkbox is unchecked.
2. Create a survey email message.
3. Send the survey to an email address you can check.  Once the survey has been sent out, use the View Online Version link to open the message in a web browser. Grab this URL and create the link to the survey in another message.
4. Create your main email message.  Create a hyperlink to the survey message using the URL you copied in the previous step.
5. Send out your main email message.  The survey results will show in the survey message tracking results page, NOT the results page of the main message.  All results will be anonymous and no email address will be captured.

Initially the process can seem intimidating as it does contain quite a few steps, and Survey Monkey or another online survey tool might ultimately be a better solution for you.  As always, if you have any questions setting up your survey emails in Bronto, don’t hesitate to contact Bronto support to help guide you through the rest of the process.

Rob Slade
Client Support Specialist

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Tagged as: Bronto, linking to survey, missing link, survey, survey link, survey tool