Email invitations are messages sent to your saved contacts containing a link to your questionnaire and are fully customizable. It is the best way to inform your contacts about your new questionnaire, and at the same time, by using our analytics tools, to track who has opened and clicked on your message.
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This guide will teach you:
- Use Contact Lists
- Set up email invitation
- Use variables to track respondents
- Add a reminder
- View email status
1. Use Contact Lists
You don't need to start inputting hundreds of electronic addresses when you're ready to send out your message. In the My Contacts tab, you'll be able to create your Contact List where you can upload a CSV file with all the details of your contacts. When you're ready, you'll be able to simply select which contact lists you want to send your message to.
You won't be able to change your Contact list once you've added it and saved your work. Make sure to adjust the Contact list before saving.
This means that the contact lists are only updated the moment the email invitation is set up, any adjustments to the list would require you to create a new invitation. If you remove a contact from your list after creating your email, this contact will receive the email and the reminder.
If you add a contact to your contact list after sending out your invite, this contact will not receive it. To send it out afterward, we recommend you add the new contact(s) to a new temporary contact list, set up a new participation request, and send it out to the new contact list. After the message has been sent, you can put them back in the original contact list.
If you have set up a reminder the message will only be sent to the people who have received the original invite. Any contacts that were added to the contact list after the message was sent out, will not receive a reminder (regardless of the condition of the reminder). Any contacts that were deleted from the contact list after the original message has been sent out, will receive the reminder.
2. Set up email invitation
2.2 Build the Email
2.3 Write the email
2.4 Save your email
To create your invite, click the Distribution menu, and then click Email invitations at the drop-down menu.
2.1 Create a new invite
Click the button Create Email to get started.
Now a box will pop up listing all of your questionnaires. Click on the questionnaire for which you want to create the invite. Then click Add Email.
2.2 Build the Email
To build your message, you need to add all the information required.
- Title: you can use the name of your questionnaire or choose any title you want. This will also be the title of the template. If you are creating a few templates, make sure that your titles are clear so you will be able to differentiate between them later.
- Sender name: you can use your name or the company name.
- Sender address: type the address you want to use to send out the messages. The actual message will be sent from our app from [email protected]. If you want your domain as a Sender Address, some DNS (Domain Name System) settings are required by you to set up the white label. Contact [email protected] for more information. In this case, the reply-to address will be the same as the address the message was sent from, so your electronic address.
- Contact list - You can select to add one or multiple lists.
Most people are hesitant to open electronic letters from an unfamiliar sender. Use a name that the respondent will recognize or maybe the name of the CEO to give the e-letter more authority.
If you have not set up DNS settings, it's a good idea to mention in your message a person from your company, that the respondents can contact in case of difficulty or questions, since if they just click "Reply", the message will not be sent to your address.
2.3 Write the email
The next step is to add the message options:
- Subject: Make it catchy! It should be compelling enough to make people want to click and open the questionnaire.
- Body: This is the text of your message. You can make it more exciting by formatting your text (read about the rich text editor icons and learn how to change the color, alignment, add emojis, and more) and personalize it with invite variables. These variables are essential if you want to track which contacts have responded.
- Send the message: Click on the calendar icon to choose a date and time (in hours)! The time zone that will be used is your local time zone.
- Add image: Upload your logo or a picture to brand your survey or liven up your message. Don't forget to add the variable that is related to the image (for example *|image1|*) into the Body.
33% of recipients decide whether or not to open a message based on the subject line alone. Choose an intriguing question relevant to your survey or topic, e.g., “Is [department] the best department at [Company Name], [Name]?” or “Has [Company Name] ever let you down, [Name]?”
Make sure you add the variable that includes your survey link, so you can invite your respondents to complete the survey. Click here to read how to do that.
2.4 Save your email
You have spent some time on your setup, don't forget to save it now. Scroll up to the top and click Save as draft. If the button is greyed out, it's because you haven't filled in all the required information in all of the fields.
If your email invitation is ready and you want to schedule it and send it, then click the Schedule button.
You can Preview all your work to make sure your survey link, images, etc, are all active and working.
3. Use variables to track respondents
Invite variables allow you to personalize your participating request message using the information from the contact lists. Increase your response rate by addressing the respondents by name.
You can address respondents by name and include their personal ID. Adding variables enables you to see who has clicked and opened the message (only when you send it out through Pointerpro). Just sending out a survey link from your own electronic communication system without using the survey participation request feature will not show you which contacts opened or clicked.
In order to track respondents' progress, you must make sure to insert a questionnaire link or clickable link that includes the contact's unique ID. The unique ID is allocated automatically once they are added to My Contacts. Inserting a link to the survey which includes the unique ID is essential if you want to send reminders, so the system can track who needs to be sent a reminder. This allows you to view names and electronic addresses in the Responses view of the Results tab and is also necessary if you want to use the Save and Continue feature.
To set up an invitation for your white label link, you need a not-clickable link, with your domain and the UID parameters. So your link will be s.[yourdomainname].com/yoursurveysuffix?rid=UID_*|contact_unique_ID|*
Choose to insert one of the two links circled below to fully track respondents' progress:
To add Invite Variables, click the circled icon:
Now you'll have a drop-down menu with several different variables - first name, last name, personal ID, and different options on how to add a link. You can either add the field directly to the text (e.g., "Hi *|contact_first_name|*), or Insert a link so you can write a message and choose which word to make clickable, for example, ask respondents to click "here" to access the survey.
Let's take a quick look at how to insert a link and make one of the words clickable.
- Choose your Invite variable. In our example, it's the link with the Personal ID. When you have selected it from the drop-down list, it will be copied into your text.
- Click the icon to Insert link.
- Now take the Invite variable text that you just inserted, and cut and paste it into the box for URL.
- Choose which word from the text you want to make clickable. In this example, we have written "please click here to begin" and the word "here" is clickable and will take respondents to the survey.
Add an Unsubscribe link, making your message compliant with GDPR regulations. You can add it as a variable. Those respondents who unsubscribe will show in the Contacts list with a "V".
4. Add a reminder
It's so much easier to set up your reminder now than having to remember in the middle of your data collection to remind people who haven't yet participated. At the bottom of the page, click Add a reminder.
Most options are the same as for the initial setup. You'll see an extra option, to choose from the drop-down menu that should trigger the reminder:
You can add as many reminders as you wish. Just click add a reminder and repeat the same steps. Now don't forget to save all your hard work!
You don't want everyone to be sent reminders, only those who have not yet completed - so make sure to insert the questionnaire link which includes the contacts' unique ID so that the system can track who needs to be sent a reminder. More on that in the previous section
It is important to Sync your results by pushing the Sync button, before the reminder is scheduled and after your email invitation is sent, to make sure that the invites have the correct status. This is because the reminders are only sent out if the invite has the status "sent", so it is crucial to have the actual email status.
5. View email status
At the top of the new window that you're working on, click on the second tab Analyze emailor. Click the arrow to choose which invitation you want to view the details for. You'll be able to see the details of all the messages that you've sent but also if the messages have been received, opened, and whether or not the respondent had clicked on the links.
The original invitation is irreversible (i.e. once the message has been sent out, you can not undo it). Therefore, if you delete a contact from the contact list after sending out the invitation, the person who was deleted after sending will still receive the message.
By default our email provider stores the information about clicks, opens, and delivery status for one month. This means that you need to sync your results before that, in order to update them at the email analytics.
What's next?
- Email templates feature allows you to send emails to your respondents based on their selected answers or a quiz/survey score. This is a great way to keep your respondents engaged! Email templates are so useful because each email can be customized according to each respondent's answers or score using editor variables.
- PDF Scheduler: The reports sent out by the scheduler are aggregate reports with all data totaled, as opposed to personalized reports with just one set of information. You can use PDF scheduler if you want to send a PDF report to specified contacts on a regular basis, send team members a weekly report, etc.
- Email notifications: When you want to receive a notification every time the survey was completed, you can turn on Email notifications. Enter your email address and the email addresses of colleagues who need to receive the emails as well.