Create and publish surveys

In Acumbamail you can now create and share your own surveys. In this article we explain how to create a survey, how to share it through a url or through an email or landing page, and see the results of it in real time.

In this article:

• Access to features
  • Features according to plan
  • How to increase my survey credits
• Create a survey
  • Step 1: Settings & Design
    • General settings (texts)
    • Style Settings
    • Hidden fields
      • Create hidden fields
      • Enter hidden fields in the survey
      • Give value to hidden fields
      • Customize survey with hidden fields
      • Group responses with hidden fields
    • Preview of the styles
  • Step 2: Edit questions
    • Kind of questions
    • Configure mandatory
    • Edit question text
    • Order questions
    • Duplicate or delete questions
    • Preview the full survey
  • Step 3: Post and share
    • Survey Status
    • Share survey URL
    • Include survey on landing page
    • Include survey in newsletter
      • Associate subscriber email to survey
    • Configure custom domain
• List of surveys
  • Edit survey
    • Edit an already published survey
  • Duplicate survey
  • Delete survey
  • Open survey results
• Survey results
  • Trend charts
  • Graphs by question
  • Hidden field values
  • Export results
  • Real time results

Access to features

You can access Surveys from the left main menu as a new entry, as long as your user has the free plan assigned or any plan linked to a subscription to send emails. These are the features that define access to the features of surveys:

• How many surveys? You can create as many surveys as you want.
• Survey credits. You will have more or less survey credits depending on your plan. Each credit equals one saved response. If you use up your monthly survey credits, the URL associated with your survey will not load the survey form, but will instead send a message indicating that the survey is temporarily disabled. Survey credits renew at the same time as your email credits. If you need to be able to save more replies per month, you'll need to upgrade your plan.
• Acumbamail logo. Given the URL of your survey, depending on your plan, the Acumbamail logo will also be included in the footer of the survey. If you don't want it to appear, you'll need to upgrade your plan.
• URL of the survey. For all plans, a specific URL will be generated to upload your survey under the displaysurvey.com domain. If you have a Pro or Enterprise plan and own your own domain, you can verify it and generate a specific URL to upload the survey under your own domain. It works the same way as when you generate the URL when creating a landing page.

Features according to plan

The following table describes exactly what each user will find based on the plans or plan assigned to them:

How to increase my survey credits

In order to increase the limit of 20 responses per month present in the free and basic rates, there are two options:

• Upgrade your plans to a Pro or Enterprise plan. That way you will be able to save 10000 answers or unlimited answers every month, respectively.
• If you have a basic plan and are not interested in uploading it to a Pro plan, you can activate the surveys module upgrade as an extra. This extra is only accessible if you have a basic plan. For more information about how extras work, you can consult this article.

When accessing the Surveys section, a pop up will appear once per session that will allow you to contract the Pro plan or activate the extra of surveys. It will also appear in case you have exhausted your monthly survey credits.

You will also see a button to see your extras in the Home section, within Surveys, as long as you have an active basic plan.

Create a survey

In the Surveys section, click on the New Survey button.

Enter a name that identifies it and click on the Create button.

Step 1: Settings & Design

In this first step, you'll need to set up the general design aspects of the survey, which are described below.

General settings (texts)

• Survey Name: The identifying name of the survey (the one assigned when the survey was created). This is not visible to the end user.

• Title: Title of the survey. It is displayed on the welcome page and is visible only on the first page of the survey.
• Description: Brief description of the survey. This field can be used to enter a subtitle or a relevant survey detail, etc. Like the title is displayed on the welcome page and is only visible on the first page of the survey.

• Thank You Message: Message to display at the end of the survey, once completed.

• Image: An image that will be displayed on both the welcome page and the thank you page. This field can be used to display a logo or image related to the survey.

To select a new image, click on the "Change image" button. Consider the following:

• You can zoom the image, use the buttons at the top right.
• Supported formats: gif, jpeg, pjpeg and png.
• Maximum size allowed: 2MG.

Style Settings

These fields are all required. If not established, the values shown by default will be taken:

• Font: A font that will be applied to the entire survey.
• Buttons & Interactions: Background color of the forward, backward, start, and end survey buttons. It also applies to some questions (e.g., stars in punctuation-type questions).
• Title - Font size: The size that is applied to the text of the survey title.
• Title - Color: The color in which the title text of the survey will be displayed.
• Description - Font size: The size that is applied to the text of the survey description.
• Description - Color: The color in which the text of the survey description will be displayed.
• Thank You Message - Font Size : Size that is applied to the text of the final thank you message.
• Thank you message - Color : Color in which the thank you message will be displayed.
• Question - Font size: The size that is applied to the text of the survey questions.
• Question - Font Color : Color in which the text of the questions will be displayed.

To edit the color, click on the color icon to open the color picker and be able to select a different one. You can also enter it manually in any of the input inputs. Supports the following formats:

• Hexadecimal. Ejm.: #000000
• RGB. Ejm.: rgb(0,0,0)

Hidden fields

This step is optional. Configure it if you need to pass additional parameters to the survey url. Hidden fields are key-value pairs that contain information you already know and are often used for two purposes:

• Customize the texts of your surveys. This is perceived by the respondent.
• Categorize or group the answers. This is not perceived by the respondent.

Create hidden fields

Add the keys by entering the label that will identify the field and press "Enter". You can enter up to ten hidden fields.

Enter hidden fields in the survey

Where? (Optional) You can insert hidden fields in the survey title, description, thank you message, and question statements.

How? Type the character "*" to display the list of available fields. Then select one. Once inserted, you'll see that the syntax is similar to custom content tags used in email templates.

Give value to hidden fields

In the last step of the survey, the "Share" step, you will find the URL to share the survey. Before sharing it, you must modify the generated link, replacing the default value ("xxxxx") with the real value of each hidden field.

In the section where it is explained how to share the survey, you can expand the information regarding the value of the hidden fields, depending on whether the URL is shared, the survey is included in a landing page or it is included in an email template.

Customize survey with hidden fields

Using hidden fields, you can get different texts to appear for the same survey. Some examples:

• Incorporate information from your respondent, if you already know it beforehand, such as the name, to validate that information during the survey or make it more personal.

• Incorporate other types of information, to adapt the same survey to different sectors, on different dates, different cities, etc. You can use it at your convenience. In the following example, a hidden field labeled "city" has been added and included in the statement of one of the survey questions. Two URLs have been shared, one has been assigned the value "Madrid" and the other "Barcelona".

Group responses with hidden fields

You can apply a kind of labeling to your survey, creating a hidden field whose value will not be visible in the survey itself, but will be associated with the answers received. Later, when you review the results of your survey you can retrieve it and apply segmentation. This can give you valuable information, such as where the survey worked best if you've shared it on different social media.

Preview of the styles

On the right side of the screen, you'll find a non-editable preview area. There you can see how the survey would look with the styles you select.

Click on each of the tabs in the menu to see some of the question types with the applied style, the welcome page or the final thank you page.

Finally, once all the styles have been selected, click on the "Save Draft" button to save the changes and stay in this step or click on the "Next" button to continue to the next step saving the changes.

Step 2: Edit questions

In this step you can add all the questions that make up your survey. To do this, click on the "Add question" button every time you want to add a new one. You will be able to distinguish two sections:

• In the left panel, hereinafter List of questions, the list of questions that make up the survey is displayed.
• In the right pane, hereinafter Preview, you can edit the text of the selected question.

Kind of questions

When you create a new question, you can select one of the following types:

• Short Text: Question with open answer.
• Long text: Question with extensive open answer.
• Statement: Allows you to include an introductory or clarifying text between questions. Here the respondent does not enter information.
• Single Answer: Question with one or more answer options where the user can only select one.
• Multiple answer: Question with one or more answer options where the user can select more than one.
• Score: Assessment question in an interval of 1 to n, being n 5, 7 or 10. You can label what the value 1 and the value n correspond to.

• Email: Question with open answer, where the type of data to enter will be an email. It can be associated with a list. The email entered will be added to the selected list.

• Telephone: Question with open answer, where the type of data to be entered will be a telephone.
• Date: Question with open answer, where the type of data to be entered will be a date.
• Number: Question with open answer, where the type of data to be entered will be a number.

Configure mandatory

You can indicate which survey questions are required (except for the "Declaration" questions). That is, at the time of answering the survey, if a question is mandatory, the user will not be able to advance if he has not given an answer. Click on the switch to switch from No to Yes or vice versa.

If a question is marked as mandatory, an asterisk (*) will be displayed at the end of the question text.

Edit question text

First of all, you must select the question in the list of questions, by clicking on it. This way, the question will appear in the preview area on the right. You will see that in the preview all the texts are editable, so you just have to click on the text you want to change and write the new text.

For question types that have default answer options, apart from the statement you can also directly enter the text of each option by clicking on it. You can add new answer options (by clicking on the "Add Response" button) or delete them (by clicking on the icon with a cross).

Order questions

You can indicate the order in which the questions will appear at the time of the survey.

To do this, place yourself on the icon [ = ] of the question you want to show in another position. Press and hold the left button of your mouse and drag the question to the position you want it to be.

Duplicate or delete questions

You can duplicate a question by keeping the text and type of the question. To do this, click the [ ... ] icon to the right of the question statement and select the "Duplicate question" option. In the same way you can delete an existing question, selecting the option of "Delete question".

Preview the full survey

While editing the survey questions, you can preview the entire survey in a new tab. To do this, just click on the "Open Preview" button.

A warning will appear on the survey indicating that the survey is in preview mode, and therefore does not work as the real survey would (the answers will not be saved even if you complete it).

Step 3: Post and share

Survey Status

In this step the first thing you will find will be an option to change the status of the survey (active/inactive).

For the survey url to be accessible, it must be "active". In order for it to be active, it must have at least one question. When you go from step 2 to step 3, it will be activated automatically. You can also change its status (active/inactive) from the general list of surveys, by clicking on the switch in the Status column.

If you leave it inactive, when the survey URL loads in your browser, it will not be able to be answered, as a "survey disabled" notice will appear instead. You can use it when you've already shared the survey URL, but you're no longer interested in receiving more responses.

Note that even if the survey is active, if you have used up your monthly survey credits, the survey URL will behave as if it were inactive.

Share survey URL

In this step you will be able to see the unique URL generated for your survey. Just start sharing this URL, where the entire survey loads, to start receiving responses.

You also have the URL of the survey accessible from the general list of surveys, by clicking on the button of actions [...], which will open a drop-down menu where you have to choose the option "Share". This will copy the survey URL to the clipboard.

Keep in mind that if you've set up hidden fields for your survey, you'll need to replace the default value ("xxxxx") of each hidden field with the actual value before sharing the survey URL.

Include survey on landing page

All your surveys can be embedded in any of your landing pages. Unlike the URL generated for the survey (where the survey is displayed on a white background without further decoration), this will allow you to customize the page where you show the survey. To do this, you just have to go to the CONTENT section in the editor and drag the "Survey" element to your landing page design.

Click on "Add survey" and a pop-up will appear where all your active surveys will appear. Select the survey and you'll see the survey's cover or welcome page.

You should keep in mind that in reality only the cover or splash page is being included in the design of the landing page. When the landing URL is accessed, the survey is dynamically reloaded. This means that, once the survey is included in a landing page, if you later modify the survey the changes will be reflected automatically (replacing the embedded HTML corresponding to the welcome page with the latest version of the survey).

If you've set up hidden fields for the survey, you'll need to move them to the landing page URL. Once you have selected the survey to include on your landing page, check what its URL is to share. If it includes hidden fields that you want to use, you just have to add them as they appear to the URL of your landing page (remembering to assign each of them a real value by substituting "xxxxx"). An example:

https://displaysurvey.com/survey/attempt/84ccc1c8-111d-11ed-87dd-009876bdd123?source=xxxxx&name=xxxxx

⬇️

https://showlanding.com/page/20acc1c8-072d-11ed-87dd-666056bdab73/

⬇️

https://showlanding.com/page/20acc1c8-072d-11ed-87dd-666056bdab73?source=xxxxx&name=xxxxx

Include survey in newsletter

Surveys that start with a single-answer, multiple-answer, or score question can be embedded in any of your email templates. To do this, you just have to go to the CONTENT section in the editor and drag the "Survey" element to your email design.

Click on "Add survey" and a pop-up will appear where all your active surveys that meet the previous condition will appear. If you hover over the eye icon. You will be able to see a preview of the survey. Select the survey and you'll see the first question of your survey appear in your email design.

How does the survey behave within the email? Only the first question will appear in the email and when the user clicks on one of the predefined answer options, the survey will open in a new tab with the answer already selected. This way, the respondent can continue to complete the survey comfortably.

If you have configured hidden fields for the survey, in the popup, after choosing the survey, a second step will appear. All the existing hidden fields for that survey will be listed and you can assign a value to each of them (optional, you can also leave them empty). Remember that here you can also make use of custom field tags, depending on the fields you have included in your receiving list.

When you add a survey to an email, you are including the HTML corresponding to the first question. When your subscriber clicks on the question, it will open in a new tab, where they can complete the survey.  So, if you make changes to the survey after you've included it in an email template, they'll automatically be reflected in the open survey in a new tab. But if you make any changes that affect the question visible in the email (text color, text size or question texts) you will have to delete the survey from the template and add it back to reflect the changes that affect the visible question in the template itself.

Associate subscriber email to survey

When you create a survey that you want to send by email to your subscribers you have the possibility to associate it with the subscriber's email, which you already know. To do this, you have two possibilities:

• If you want your subscriber to have the ability to modify the email, all you have to do is add an "email address" question to your survey. When your subscriber opens the survey from the email received, he will be able to see the question where he is asked for an email address, but this will be automatically populated with the subscriber's email. He will then be able to decide whether to edit the email address or go straight to the next question.
• If you want to associate the email address you already know to the survey without this being noticeable by your subscriber, instead of adding an "email address" question to the survey, what you should do is add the key "email" as a hidden field to the survey in step 1 when creating or editing it. In this way, when exporting the results of your survey, you can see that associated with each answer is saved as an additional hidden field the email address that you already know of your subscriber.

Configure custom domain

Similar to when you create a landing page, it's possible to customize the survey URL. This option will be available only to users with a Pro or Enterprise plan.

In step 3 when creating the survey, a section will appear where you can customize the URL. To do this, you'll need to:

• Enter a domain you own and hit the "Verify" button.
• Enter a slug, which will be the specific path within your domain where the survey will load.
• Hit the "Save" button at the top right of the screen.

You should keep in mind that the combination of domain + slug must be unique. That is, there cannot be two surveys associated with the same domain and slug, as it would generate a conflict when loading the URL. And this extends to other sections of Acumbamail where you are using that domain. For example, if you already have a landing page associated with https://midominio.com/mi-slug, you won't be able to select that same domain with that same slug for a survey's URL.

If you leave both fields empty and hit save, a standard, unique URL will be generated for your survey under the domain displaysurvey.com.

List of surveys

From the menu, in the Surveys section, you can access the list of all the surveys created. From here, you can do the actions described below.

Edit survey

To edit an existing survey, you have these options:

• Click on the name of the survey, in case it still has 0 questions.
• Click on the number in the "Questions" column (this will take you directly to the step of editing questions).
• Open the menu [...] under the "Actions" column and choose the option of "Edit survey" (this will take you to the first step).

Edit an already published survey

If your survey is active and has already received responses, you should consider what will happen if you edit it:

• When editing styles: If you edit the settings and styles in the first step, these changes will be automatically reflected when you upload the survey URL. If you've entered it on a landing page or email template, you'll need to remove it and add it back to apply the new styles on the survey cover page or the first survey question, respectively.
• When editing the questions: If you edit, or more specifically delete questions (or remove options from a single answer, multiple answer or score type question) what will happen is that it will no longer be visible in the results section of the survey. These changes will be automatically reflected when you upload the survey URL. In the case of a survey that has been added to a landing page, it will not be necessary to add it back to the landing page to detect the changes. In the case of a survey that has been added to an email template, it will not be necessary to add it again by dragging it to the email template (unless you have changed just the first question, which is the one that is embedded in the email).

Duplicate survey

To make a copy of your survey, open the menu [...] under the "Actions" column and choose the "Duplicate" option. You will see that an exact survey appears to the original, keeping its styles and questions.

Delete survey

To delete a survey, open the menu [...] under the "Actions" column and choose the "Delete survey" option. This action requires confirmation as it cannot be undone. Once deleted, you will not be able to upload the final survey or view the collected results.

Open survey results

To view the results of a survey, you have these options:

• Click on the name of the survey, in case it already has questions created.
• Click on the number in the "Answers" column.
• Open the [...] menu under the "Actions" column and choose the "View Results" option.

Results of a survey

First of all you will appease a summary with the following information:

• Attempts: Number of times the survey has been initiated.
• Responses: Number of times the survey has been completed.
• Response rate: Percentage of completed surveys compared to those that have been initiated.
• Average time: Average time to complete the survey.

At the top right, you can filter the results by selecting a specific time period. By default, all results will come out since the survey was created.

Trend charts

In this section appear the same parameters described in the previous section but distributed over time (Attempts, Responses received, Response rate and Average time each day).

Additionally, it also includes an abandonment funnel, which allows you to check in which question the survey is abandoned for those users who do not complete it.

Graphs by question

In this section you can view the answers received per question, being able to choose the question of interest in the selector located in the upper right corner.

For single-answer, multiple-choice, and punctuation questions, a graph will appear indicating how many times each option has been selected.

In case of text-type questions (with an open answer), the list of answers received in a paginated form will appear.

Hidden field values

There is a third section where you can list the value received for each hidden field.

Export results

You can export a CSV containing the results of your survey. It will display the information of all attempts and all responses received (one row for each attempt/response). It includes the following information:

• Date the survey was started and completed.
• Email associated with the survey, if it could be identified.
• Country, browser, operating system, and device from which the survey was completed.
• Last question visited (in case it is an uncompleted attempt).
• The answer given by question.
• The value of hidden fields, if hidden fields have been created for the survey.

To do this, you need to click on the "Export CSV" button. Note that the selected time filter will be applied.

Once the CSV is ready, a second "Download CSV" button will appear, which will allow you to start downloading the CSV. If you want to generate a new CSV with a different time filter or with new results, you will have to regenerate the CSV, for which you must click on the "Regenerate CSV" button.

Real time results

For those surveys that have collected less than 10,000 responses, the results are displayed in real time. For surveys with a large call and that have collected more than 10000 responses, counters are used that are updated every 4 hours. This allows the results view to load much faster.