Email to Survey

If your CRM can send a simple email with custom data dynamically pulled into the body of the email, you can use that email to bring a contact into AskNicely and immediately send an event-based survey to that person.

Configuring the Email

For AskNicely to understand the data you’re sending, we’ll need the email to be formatted in a very specific way. You will want to build some type of "email template" in your CRM / POS system that can format this email the same way, every time.

The Subject

The subject of the email has no effect on how AskNicely imports the data in your email. Something generic like "AskNicely export" would work great, or you can leave the subject blank if you prefer. 

The Email Body

The body of the email will essentially be a list of data points you want to bring into AskNicely. Correct formatting is essential. Each line should have the name of one of your CRM / POS fields (like location, customer name, account_owner, etc), and a value to follow it up.  

For example:

name: Joe Thornton
email: [e-mail]
segment: Platinum

Importing this email would create a person entry on your Contacts page that looks like this:

Note: Make sure an email signature is not included - the email should contain ONLY the desired fieldname:value pairings.

The To: Address

To import this contact into your AskNicely Contacts page, you’ll need to send it to a very specific address that can be found in your settings.

1. Click the App Store to go to the Settings Page
2. Click Integrate
3. Scroll down and click Email to Survey
4. Click Activate Email to Survey to create the unique address
5. Click Copy to Clipboard to copy the address to your clipboard

You will need to paste that address into the email template in your CRM that you and any contact you send to that address will be added into AskNicely.

Additional Arguments and Commands

You can include additional arguments in the body of the email to modify how these contacts are handled in AskNicely to work around various rules in AskNicely like the Global Contact Rule or to ensure that customers are surveyed at the right time.

name: Joe Thornton
email: [e-mail]
segment: Platinum
position: Goalie
coach: Wayne Gretzky
delayminutes: x
thendeactivate: true

Here are the available arguments:

1. addperson: true

This will only add a person into your Contacts page - it will not trigger a survey. You would not want to use this with any of the other sending arguments. (Options 2-4 below.)

2. triggeremail: true

When this person is received in AskNicely, it will send a survey immediately, overriding your Global Contact Rule that is set at the bottom of your Send page (paper airplane icon). This is not recommended unless you are testing.

3. delayminutes: x

Sets a number of minutes (replacing x) to delay the send of the survey email. The value range is unlimited.

Note #1: This value does not apply to SMS surveys, which cannot be delayed.

Note #2: This delay is carried out by our email service, Mandrill. It’s not in AskNicely, so surveys sent with this delay will still be considered “Sent” by AskNicely, and can’t be changed or canceled. 

4. thendeactivate: true

This will deactivate the contact after the survey is sent - Deactivating a contact doesn’t delete them or prevent them from answering a survey you’ve already sent out; it only prevents them from being surveyed until they are reactivated.

You might want to use the “thendeactivate” argument if you want to send a survey based on one-time event, like closing a support ticket or following up on a purchase. If you don’t use the thendeactivate argument, the contact will remain in your active contacts and may get chosen for surveys by a different scheduler or survey blast.

Additional arguments can be found on your API page (Settings > API) or by visiting this generic API page.

Including Custom Data Fields

To attach Custom Data fields with each contact, you can list them under your other no fieldname: value</code> pairings like the arguments included in italicized below. It is essential that there are no spaces in the fieldname. You may use underscores to create spaces within the product for the Custom Data Field label.

name: Joe Thornton
email: [e-mail]
segment: Platinum
position: Goalie
coach: Wayne Gretzky
pro_Team: Seattle Kraken
minor_League_Team: Portland Winterhawks
delayminutes: x
thendeactivate: true

Note: If you have Multiple Survey Templates, you can use your Trigger Field to send the correct survey to those Contacts.

SMS Number Formatting

If using the Email to Survey feature to send to mobile phones, please make sure all numbers include country and area codes. The US country code is +1, so if the number is [phone], you would want to have the SMS number formatted as: [phone]. 

The phone number needs to be formatted as “{number}@sms.asknice.ly” - that means, when the phone number arrives in AskNicely, it should look like this: [e-mail]