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 in real time.
In this article:
- Access to feature
- Create a survey
- Listing of surveys
- Results of survey
Access to feature
You can access Surveys from the main left menu as a new entry, as long as your user has the free plan assigned or any plan linked to an email subscription. These are the characteristics that define access to the feature 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 instead will load a message indicating that survey is temporarily disabled. survey credits renew at the same time as your email credits. If you need to be able to save a larger number of responses per month, you will need to upgrade your plan.
- Acumbamail logo. Given the URL of your survey, depending on your plan, the Acumbamail logo will also be included or not in the footer. If you do not want it to appear, you will have to upgrade your plan.
- survey URL. For all plans, a specific URL will be generated to load 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 load 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 depending on the plan or plan assigned to them:
| User type | Answers saved per month | Acumbamail logo in footer | Url of survey with your own domain |
| Free | 20 | Including | It is not possible |
| Basic Plan | 20 | Including | It is not possible |
| Basic Plan + Extra of surveys | 10000 | Not included | It is not possible |
| Plan Pro | 10000 | Not included | Yes, it can be configured |
| Plan Enterprise | 500000 | Not included | Yes, it can be configured |
How to increase my survey credits
To increase the limit of 20 responses per month in the free and basic rates, there are two options:
- Upgrade your plan to a Pro or Enterprise plan. This will allow you to save 10,000 or unlimited responses per month, respectively.
- If you have a basic plan and you are not interested in upgrading 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 works, you can consult this article.
When you access the Surveys section, a pop-up will appear once per session that will allow you to subscribe to the Pro plan or activate extra of surveys. It will also appear if you have used up your monthly survey credits.
You will also see a button to view your extras in the Home section, under Surveys, as long as you have an active basic plan.
Create a survey
In section Surveys, click on the New survey button.
Enter a name to identify it and click on the Create button.
Step 1: Settings & Design
In this first step you will need to configure the general design aspects of survey, which are described below.
General settings (texts)
- Name of survey: Identifying name of survey (the one assigned when creating survey). This is not visible to the end user.
- Title: Title of the survey. This 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 relevant detail of the survey, etc. Like the title, it 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 it has finished.
- Image: Image to be displayed on the welcome page and thank you page. This field can be used to display a logo or image related to survey.
To select a new image, click on the "Change Image" button. Please note the following:
- You can zoom the image using the buttons at the top right.
- Supported formats: gif, jpeg, pjpeg and png.
- Maximum allowed size: 2MG.
Style Settings
These fields are all required. If not set, the default values will be taken:
- Font: Font to be applied to the entire survey.
- Buttons and interactions: Background color for the forward, back, start, and end buttons on survey. Also applied to some questions (e.g. stars on rating type questions).
- Title - Font Size: Size applied to the title text of the survey.
- Title - Color: Color in which the title text of the survey will be displayed.
- Description - Font Size: The size to apply to the description text for survey.
- Description - Color: Color in which the description text of the survey will be displayed.
- Thank You Message - Font Size : Size 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: Size applied to the text of questions in survey.
- Question - Font Color : Color in which the question text will be displayed.
To edit the color, tap on the color icon to open the color picker and select a different color. You can also enter it manually in any of the input fields. The following formats are supported:
- Hexadecimal. Ex.: #000000
- RGB. Eg.: rgb(0,0,0)
Hidden fields
This step is optional. Set it up 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 typically used for two purposes:
- Personalize your surveys texts. This is perceived by the respondent.
- Categorizing or grouping responses. 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 the 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 the custom content tags used in email templates.
Giving value to hidden fields
In the last step of 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 explaining 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 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 about your surveydo, if you already know it beforehand, such as the name, to validate said information during the survey or to 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 as you wish. In the following example, a hidden field labeled "city" has been added, which has been included in the statement of one of the questions in survey. 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 tagging to your survey, creating a hidden field whose value will not be visible in the survey itself, but will be associated with the responses received. Later, when you review the results of your survey you can retrieve it and apply segmentation. This can give you valuable information, for example where the survey performed best if you have shared it in different Social Media.
Preview of styles
On the right side of the screen, you'll find a non-editable preview area. There you can see how survey would look with the styles you select.
Click on each of the menu tabs to see some of the question types with the style applied, 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 on 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 each 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 survey is shown.
- In the right panel, hereinafter Preview, you can edit the text of the selected question.
Types of questions
When creating a new question, you will be able to select one of the following types:
- Short Text : Question with open answer.
- Long text : Question with extensive open answer.
- Statement : Allows you to include introductory or explanatory text between questions. Here the respondent does not enter any information.
- Single answer : Question with one or more answer options where the user can only select one.
- Multiple choice : Question with one or more response options where the user can select more than one.
- Score : Evaluation question in an interval of 1 to , where n is 5, 7 or 10. You can label what the value 1 and the value n correspond to.
- Email : Open-ended question, where the type of data to be entered will be an email. It can be associated with a list. The email entered will be added to the selected list.
- Telephone : Question with an open answer, where the type of data to be entered will be a telephone number.
- Date : Question with an open answer, where the type of data to be entered will be a date.
- Number : Question with an open answer, where the type of data to be entered will be a number.
Set mandatory
You can indicate which questions in survey are mandatory (except for those of the "Statement" type). That is, when answering survey, if a question is mandatory, the user will not be able to proceed if they have not given an answer. Click on the switch to change 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 the question text
First, you need to select the question from the list of questions by clicking on it. This will make the question appear in the preview area on the right. You will see that in the preview all the texts are editable, so you just need to click on the text you want to change and type the new text.
For question types that have predetermined answer options, apart from the wording, you can also directly enter the text for each option by clicking on it. You can add new answer options (by clicking on the "Add Answer" button) or delete them (by clicking on the icon with a cross).
Sort questions
You can indicate the order in which the questions will appear when asking survey.
To do this, place your mouse over the [ = ] icon of the question you want to display in a different position. Hold down the left button of your mouse and drag the question to the position you want it to be in.
Duplicate or delete questions
You can duplicate a question while keeping the question text and type. To do this, click on the [ ... ] icon to the right of the question statement and select the "Duplicate question" option. You can also delete an existing question by selecting the "Delete question" option.
Preview of the survey in full
While editing questions in survey, you can open a preview of the entire survey in a new tab. To do so, simply click the "Open preview" button.
A warning will appear above survey indicating that survey is in preview mode, and therefore does not work as the real survey would (answers will not be saved even if you complete it).
Step 3: Publish and share
Status of survey
In this step the first thing you will find will be an option to change the status of survey ( active/inactive).
In order 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 automatically become active. 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 as inactive, when the survey URL loads in the browser, it will not be possible to answer, as a "survey disabled" notice will appear instead. You can use it when you have already shared the survey URL, but are no longer interested in receiving more answers.
Please note that even if the survey is active, if you have exhausted your monthly survey credits the survey URL will behave as if it is inactive.
Share URL of survey
In this step, you will be able to view the unique URL generated for your survey. Simply start sharing this URL, where the entire survey is loaded, to start receiving responses.
You can also access the survey URL from the general list of surveys by clicking on the [...] actions button, which will open a drop-down menu where you have to choose the "Share" option. This will copy the survey URL to the clipboard.
Please note that if you have hidden fields set up for survey, you will need to replace the default value ("xxxxx") of each hidden field with the actual value before sharing the survey URL.
| ⚠️ When loading the survey from this URL, the language of the buttons will be selected depending on the language detected in the browser from which the URL is loaded. If it is a language not supported by Acumbamail, the default language is English. |
Include survey on landing page
All of your surveys can be embedded on any of your landing pages. Unlike the generated URL for the survey (where the survey is displayed on a white background with no further decoration), this will allow you to customize the page where you display the survey. To do this, simply go to the CONTENT section of the editor and drag the "Survey" element into your landing page design.
Click on "Add survey" and a pop-up will appear showing all your active surveys. Select the survey and you will see the homepage or welcome page of the survey.
You should note that you are actually only including the homepage or welcome page in the landing page design. When the landing page URL is accessed, the survey is dynamically reloaded. This means that once the survey is included in a landing page, if you subsequently modify the survey the changes will be automatically reflected (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've selected the survey to include on your landing page, check to see what its share URL is. If it includes hidden fields that you want to use, just add them as-is to your landing page URL (remembering to assign each of them a real value by replacing "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
| ⚠️ You can include more than one different survey on your landing page, but you should not include the same survey multiple times within a single landing page. |
| ⚠️ In this case, the language of the buttons will be selected depending on the language detected in the account. |
Include survey in newsletter
Surveyss that start with a single answer, multiple answer, or punctuation question can be embedded in any of your email templates. To do this, simply go to the CONTENT section of the editor and drag the "Survey" element into your email design.
Click on "Add survey" and a pop-up will appear showing all your active surveys that meet the above condition. If you hover over the eye icon, you will be able to see a preview of the survey. Select the survey and you will see how the first question of your survey appears in your email layout.
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 surveydo can continue completing the survey comfortably.
If you have set up hidden fields for survey, in the popup, after choosing 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 (this is optional, you can also leave them empty). Remember that you can also use custom field labels here, depending on the fields you have included in your recipient list.
When you add a survey to an email, the HTML for the first question is included. 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, those changes will automatically be reflected in the survey that's opened in a new tab. However, if you make any changes that affect the question visible in the email (text color, text size, or question wording), you'll need to delete the survey from the template and add it back in order to reflect the changes that affect the question visible in the template itself.
| ⚠️ You can include more than one survey in your email template, whether it's the same one repeated several times or different surveys. |
Associate subscriber's email with survey
When you create a survey that you want to send by email to your subscribers, you have the option of associating it with the subscriber's email address, which you already know. To do this, you have two options:
- If you want your subscriber to have the option to edit the email, all you need to do is add an "email address" question to your survey. When your subscriber opens the survey from the received email, they will see the question asking for an email address, but it will be automatically filled in with the subscriber's email. They can then decide whether to edit the email address or go directly to the next question.
- If you want to associate the email address you already know with survey without it being noticeable to your subscriber, instead of adding an "email address" type question to survey, what you should do is add the "email" key as a hidden field to survey in step 1 when creating or editing it. In this way, when you export the results of your survey, you will be able to observe that the email address you already know of your subscriber is saved as an additional hidden field associated with each answer.
Setup custom domain
Similar to creating a landing page, it is possible to customize the URL of the survey. This option will only be available for 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 will need to:
- Enter a domain you own and click the "Verify" button.
- Enter a slug, which will be the specific path within your domain where the survey will be loaded.
- Click the "Save" button at the top right of the screen.
You must keep in mind that the domain + slug combination must be unique. That is, there cannot be two surveys associated with the same domain and slug, as this would generate a conflict when loading the URL. And this can be extended to other sections of Acumbamail where you are using that domain. For example, if you already have a landing page associated with https://mydomain.com/my-slug, you will not be able to select that same domain with that same slug for the URL of a survey.
If you leave both fields empty and hit save, a standard, unique URL will be generated for your survey under the domain displaysurvey.com.
Listing of surveys
From the menu, in the Surveys section, you can access the list of all the surveys created. From here, you can perform the actions described below.
Edit survey
To edit an existing survey, you have these options:
- Click on the name of survey, in case it still has 0 questions.
- Click on the number in the "Questions" column (this will take you directly to the editing questions step).
- Open the [...] menu under the "Actions" column and choose the "Edit survey" option (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. In case you entered it into a landing page or email template, you will need to delete and re-add it in order for the new styles to be applied to the survey cover page or the survey first question, respectively.
- When editing 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 the URL of the survey is loaded. In the case of a survey that has been added to a landing page, it will not be necessary to add it again to the landing page for it 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 the first question, which is the one 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 a survey appears exactly like 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 results for survey
To view the results of a survey, you have these options:
- Click on the name of 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, a summary will appear with the following information:
- Attempts: Number of times the survey has been started.
- Responses: Number of times the survey has been completed.
- Response Rate: Percentage of completed surveys compared to those started.
- Average time: Average time to answer the entire survey.
At the top right you can filter the results by selecting a specific time period. By default, all results since the survey was created will appear.
Trend charts
This section contains the same parameters described in the previous section but distributed over time (Attempts, Responses received, Response rate and Average time each day).
Additionally, a abandonment funnel is also included, which allows you to check which question survey is abandoned for those users who do not complete it.
Charts per question
In this section you can view the responses received for each question, and you can choose the question of interest from the selector located in the upper right corner.
For single-choice, multiple-choice, and score questions, a graph will appear indicating how many times each option has been selected.
In the case of text-type questions (with open answers), the list of responses received will appear in paginated form.
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 show information about all attempts and all responses received (one row for each attempt/response). It includes the following information:
- Date on which survey was started and ended.
- Email associated with survey, if it has been identified.
- Country, browser, operating system and device from which the survey was completed.
- Last question visited (in case it is an incomplete attempt).
- The answer given by question.
- The value of hidden fields, if hidden fields have been created for survey.
To do this, you need to click on the "Export CSV" button. Please 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 generate the CSV again by clicking the "Regenerate CSV" button.
Real-time results
For surveys that have collected less than 10,000 responses, the results are displayed in real time. For surveys with a large turnout and that have collected more than 10,000 responses, counters are used that are updated every 4 hours. This allows the results view to load much faster.