Tutorial: Email Invites – Dynamic Custom Fields for a Single Email Address

One of the great features of SurveyGizmo’s email invitation system is the ability to update the associated data with a particular contact (identified by email address) by updating that contact within any email invite and the contact details will be reflected in all email invitations throughout your account and surveys. In other words, the First Name, Last Name, Organization, and 5 custom fields associated with an email address are universal throughout your account.

Some customers, however, need to send an invitation with different and dynamic custom field information to the same email address, typically within the same survey and a short period of time. For instance, one might wish to use the Custom1 field to specify a particular project name and send the project leaders each a survey to ask about their experience related to that project. However, if bob@bob.com was the project leader for multiple projects, he would need to be sent multiple invitations with the Custom1 field altered each time. Not only will the email have to be added to different invitations within the same survey (as an email address can only exist once within a single invitation list), but it may be necessary to change the design of your survey and your email invitations to facilitate this situation.

The following method uses the contact’s Custom1 field at the time the invitation is sent. To use this method, make sure you create your invitation and add your contact as detailed below, send out the invitation, and then create the extra email invitations one at a time with the new contact, sending each one prior to creating and uploading another which will also change the Custom1 field. Also, the following method is not compatible with using the Reminders and Thank Yous.

Changing the Email Invitation

The first step is to setup the email invitation to pass the Custom1 field to the survey through the link provided in the email invitation. This is done by adding it as a query string value.
In the image below, we are making the variable name ‘custom’ for simplicity. We are also only assuming in this tutorial that there is only 1 unique custom field (Custom1 in this example) that needs to be dynamic.

In the above image, you will notice that it is recommended to send both an HTML and TEXT version of the email. This will ensure the least problems for respondents clicking the link and the data not properly being passed to the survey. After the [%%Survey Link%%] merge code you will add a question mark ( ? ), the variable name (‘custom’ in our example), and then the merge code for the dynamic field. In our example, we are using Custom1 and thus the merge code (from the right side of the email invitation editor page) is [%%Custom1%%] . The final result in the example is:

[%%Survey Link%%]?custom=[%%Custom1%%]

It is important that your custom value be either a single word or that it is urlencoded. To simplify this, you want to make sure that you use ‘%20′ in place of spaces in your contact if you are not using the HTML email invitation, only the TEXT version. Example: Custom1 is Bob%20Smith

In the HTML version of the email, you have to also alter not only what you see in the initial window, but also the link itself. To do this, click the SOURCE button on the toolbar and replace the section: <a href=”[%% Survey Link%%]“> using the same code as above, resulting in the following:

<a href="[%%Survey Link%%]?custom=[%%Custom1%%]">

Click OK to save the changes in the SOURCE view and return to the email invitation editor. If everything is setup, you can Save Changes for this invitation. For each iteration, copy this email invitation and upload your contacts with the new Custom1 field AFTER you have sent the previous iteration.

Changing the Survey

If you are dealing with this issue, it is likely that your survey is already setup to use the merge code for [%%Invite_Custom1%%] within your survey. We will be altering the survey so that instead of pulling it from the saved fields for that contact (since they will change with each upload), we will be storing the value from the query string into a Hidden Value action, then accessing the data using the merge code for that Hidden Value action, for maximum flexibility in logic and actions.

The only exception is on the very first page of the survey. If you need to access the passed value on the first page of the survey, you will want to use the [%%GET_custom] merge code rather than the Hidden Value field’s merge code.

On the very first page of the survey, click Add Action, select Hidden Value, and click Add Actions at the bottomof the page. For the Hidden Field Name, set it to something easy to identify, such as ‘Custom URL’. For the Value, you will want to use the query string merge code [%%GET_XXX], where XXX is the variable name. In our example, the variable name is ‘custom’, so the merge code would be [%%GET_custom] as seen below.

Now, within the survey, instead of using the [%%Invite_Custom1%%] merge code, you will select the merge code for the Hidden Value field. It will look similar to [%%23:Custom URL%%] .

Remember, if it is on the first page of the survey, use [%%GET_custom] instead!

That’s the final step/change to adapt your survey to use the newly constructed email invitation. If you have any further questions, please use our community forums.