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Know Before You Go
Prior to creating multiple survey templates, you must bring in Contact data containing the field that separates your surveying groups (ie. Segment, Brand, Language).
Introduction
Most of our customers use only the "Default" survey, which is typically configured to ask a simple sequence of questions that is always relevant to your Contacts.
However, there are times where one Survey Template just isn’t enough. You will need to create multiple Survey Templates when you have a need for multiple surveys with specific wording, logos, questions, or language. Some examples of situations where multiple Survey Templates *might* be needed are:
- Sending to contacts that communicate in another language
- Sending to different brands where you want your contacts to see the branding they’re used to
- Surveys being sent at different stages in the customer journey. ("How was your onboarding experience?")
Typically, you do not need multiple Survey Templates to capture more insight from your customers. The biggest impact on your reporting comes from the Contact data you import, not from the quantity of Survey Templates. We suggest keeping it simple.
Methods for sending Multiple Survey Templates
There are two approaches to sending multiple Survey Templates:
- Using Send Schedulers to send Custom Survey Templates
- Create the Survey Templates that you need, then use the "Custom Templates" dropdown on your Send Scheduler(s) to choose which survey is sent.
- Using the Trigger Field to "lock" Contacts to Survey Templates.
- This approach is required if you need Surveys to be sent *immediately* after a one-time event occurs in your CRM, or if you plan to Survey your contacts manually via Survey Blast.
1. Using Send Schedulers to send Custom Survey Templates
Send Schedulers are nicely laid out visual tools that allow you to set rules for who will receive a survey. In the Send Scheduler window, you can choose who gets which Survey Template by setting Rules & then using the "Custom Template" dropdown to specify which Survey Template will be sent for the contacts that meet those Rules.
Before you create Send Schedulers, you will need to create your multiple Survey Templates:
- Go to Surveys > Manage Templates.
- Click the dropdown in the top left to set the Trigger Field to "Segment." (If your trigger field is already set, you can skip this step.)
- Click "Create a custom Survey Template" on the right
- Name the Survey Template whatever you'd like, and use the dropdown to choose what existing template to base your new template off of.
- Click "Add" and your survey will be created!
- Navigate back to the Survey page (hammer/pencil icon) to customize your Survey Start and Survey page.
Once your Survey Template is configured the way you want it, navigate to your Send page (paper airplane icon). Next to "Advanced Daily Scheduler", click the "Add" button. This will create a new Send Scheduler.
The screenshot below shows an example of a Send Scheduler that has been configured to send a Custom Template: you can see that the "Support Ticket Survey" will be sent to anyone whose CSM_c value is "Robert" and their "Created" value is exactly 1 day ago.
Our customers typically find this to be the easiest approach to having multiple Survey Templates.
The one catch here is that Send Schedulers are sent on a recurring basis according to your Global Contact Rule (set at the bottom of your account's Send Page) ::UNLESS:: you create a date-based rule like the "created" rule above. The last dropdown that says "Don't repeat" is the only way to prevent Send Schedulers from sending surveys in the future.
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In other words, if you want the Survey to be sent only once, you must import a date field when you import your Contacts.
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You will need to reach out to us to "convert" this to a date field on the back end. Contact support@asknice.ly for assistance in setting up your date field.
- Once the Date field has been converted, build a rule using it on the Send Scheduler, and be sure that the last dropdown says "Don't repeat."
2. Using the Trigger Field to "lock" Contacts to Survey Templates
If you are doing instantaneous Surveys that are triggered from your CRM ::OR:: if you are uploading a bunch of contacts and then immediately sending them a survey, we are going to need to have a way to tell AskNicely what survey someone should receive as soon as they are added to the system.
This is what the "Trigger Field" is for.
The Trigger Field value for any given contact must exactly match the name of the Survey Template you wish to send.
You can validate if your Trigger Field is set up correctly by looking on your Contacts page and seeing if the value you have chosen as your Trigger Field matches the "Survey Template" column. In the screenshot below of the contact "Bill Johnson", the Trigger Field is set to "segment" (segment value: Billiam); the Survey Template column also shows "Billiam" because this is the Survey Template that was "locked" (or "assigned") to this user.
Choosing your Trigger Field
To set your Trigger Field and start using multiple templates, navigate to your Survey Page by clicking the Hammer & Pencil (a), and then Manage Templates (b).
You’ll be taken to the Manage Templates screen.
From here, the first thing you’ll have to do is choose a Trigger Field (a). This field can be any data point you track in AskNicely, but it can only be one. We always recommend using "Segment" as your Trigger field; then, when you are import your data, match the field you want to use as your Trigger field to the AskNicely field of "Segment."
However, you can choose other fields than Segment, if you'd like. In the example above, we’ve chosen "location" as our Trigger Field; we can then create a template based on any of our locations that we’ve added so far by clicking Add a new template (b) and selecting a location from the dropdown.
Dropdown options won’t appear here until someone in your Contact data is imported with that value in the Trigger Field. So, if you haven’t added any contacts yet, you can do this process in reverse: for example, if you haven’t added Adelaide yet, but you know you’ll want a template for Adelaide, you can click Create a custom email template (c) to create a Survey Template called Adelaide. You will then want to make sure that when your Adelaide contacts are imported, their "location" value is "Adelaide."
To Reiterate: The template name and the data point name must match EXACTLY in order for the recipient to receive that specific template. If they don't match exactly, contacts will be sent the default survey template.
Creating New Survey Templates from Existing Templates
Use template or language (d) will allow you to choose an existing template to clone, or a language default to use.
Template name (e) will allow you to rename this template. Remember that the name of the template and the name of the trigger field data point must match, so if you created this off of the list of possible data points, you probably don’t want to change this.
Click Add once you have made your selections. Validate that your Survey Template is correctly "locked" to the right Contacts by going to your Contacts page and confirming that the Trigger Field you chose matches the "Survey Template" column.
You can also select what action you would like AskNicely to do if there is a contact without a matching template. If you select "Not send at all", contacts that are uploaded but do not have a matching template will not receive a survey, and you will be able to identify them through the Not Sent tally on your dashboard and contacts (see more here).
Once this is all set up, you are free to enable a Triggered Integration (i.e. Intercom, JobAdder), activate your API or send Survey Blasts, knowing that the right Contacts will receive the correct Survey Template as soon as they are created in AskNicely.
Deleting a Template
If you decide you no longer want to use a template, you can delete it from the Survey page by clicking Manage Templates, and then selecting Delete (f) next to the template name.
Note: Deleted templates cannot be recovered, so be sure you want to delete before you do!
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to our support team by clicking the chat button in the bottom right of any AskNicely page, or by emailing support@asknice.ly.