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taylor_wilson
taylor_wilson
Contributor ⭐️⭐️
September 18, 2018
Solved

Embed full survey in email template

  • September 18, 2018
  • 8 replies
  • 623 views
I saw in another thread that embedding a survey question/answer into an email template was released about a year ago. I'm looking to take the user experience one step further and allow them to complete an entire survey within an email, like Google Forms allows you to do.

Is this available in Gainsight?
    Best answer by dan_ahrens
    So the challenge with tracking respondents comes in with mapping their response to a contact record. The simplest way to do this is to give each respondent their own unique URL to use when responding to a survey so the trouble of authenticating the respondent is not put on the end user. However if you have a URL that you want to re-use in an email signature, then you can't use this method.

    This is why when creating a survey in Gainsight you need to specify if you want to allow anonymous responses, as this changes the way that our survey tool generates the survey URLs.

    Another way (Gainsight doesn't currently offer this) that you could track the user is if you required them first to log into a portal or application and then present them with the survey "in-app". Since they already logged in, you have their identity already captured.  

    8 replies

    lila_meyer
    lila_meyer
    Gainsight Employee ⭐️⭐️⭐️
    September 18, 2018
    Hi Taylor,

    This is not possible today. Can you explain more about why you would want to do this? I think even a Google form opens up in a new window.
    Lila Krutel, Dir. Global Education Services
    taylor_wilson
    taylor_wilsonAuthor
    Contributor ⭐️⭐️
    September 18, 2018
    Hi Lila,

    Thanks for the reply. The objective is to increase response rates of an entire survey - although the number might be small, a required new tab/window to complete a survey would detract some responders. I've completed Google Forms within email before and just confirmed this with some online research.

    dan_ahrens
    dan_ahrens
    Expert ⭐️⭐️⭐️
    September 19, 2018
    Hi Taylor, I totally understand where you're coming from with trying to increase response rates! That's the "holy grail" of emailed surveys. :)

    The functionality to complete the entire survey in the email client using Google Forms is a little bit hit and miss based on what is supported by the email client of the recipient.

    For example, you can complete the form using Gmail for Web, but can't complete the form using Gmail for Mobile. I haven't tested this recently with Outlook (desktop or 365 versions) but when I looked into this previously, Outlook didn't support this functionality either. In fact, there are entire resource articles dedicated to working around Outlook's limited rendering of HTML content in the email body. 

    This limitation is recognized by other survey vendors as well (Example 1, Example 2, etc) and in fact many survey vendors recommend "one click surveys" as a "best of both worlds" approach, as many of them do support the embedding of a single question in an email like Gainsight does. 

    Hope this helps!

    VP of Customer Success at Forcepoint
    taylor_wilson
    taylor_wilsonAuthor
    Contributor ⭐️⭐️
    September 19, 2018
    Dan thanks for the knowledge share. I didn't know about the limitations to the Google Forms. I guess we will stick to the single question layout for now.

    On another note, does Gainsight provide a tool (I'm gonna guess "widget" is the correct word here) to embed a survey single question into our gmail signatures? I realize a link to survey is always an option but thinking the partial embed will produce better results!

    dan_ahrens
    dan_ahrens
    Expert ⭐️⭐️⭐️
    September 20, 2018
    My pleasure. 

    To your single survey signature question - this should be possible if you create a survey that has a single question and is embedded in the email message and if you set the survey for anonymous recipients. Then send the survey to yourself, copy the text (and links) into your signature and then people should be able to answer the survey by clicking those links. 
    VP of Customer Success at Forcepoint
    taylor_wilson
    taylor_wilsonAuthor
    Contributor ⭐️⭐️
    September 21, 2018
    This is great and thanks again for sharing this idea. My concern is the anonymous aspect as we'll want to know who responds to the survey. Possible to achieve the single question in signature but still know how is responding?
    dan_ahrens
    dan_ahrensAnswer
    Expert ⭐️⭐️⭐️
    September 21, 2018
    So the challenge with tracking respondents comes in with mapping their response to a contact record. The simplest way to do this is to give each respondent their own unique URL to use when responding to a survey so the trouble of authenticating the respondent is not put on the end user. However if you have a URL that you want to re-use in an email signature, then you can't use this method.

    This is why when creating a survey in Gainsight you need to specify if you want to allow anonymous responses, as this changes the way that our survey tool generates the survey URLs.

    Another way (Gainsight doesn't currently offer this) that you could track the user is if you required them first to log into a portal or application and then present them with the survey "in-app". Since they already logged in, you have their identity already captured.  
    VP of Customer Success at Forcepoint
    taylor_wilson
    taylor_wilsonAuthor
    Contributor ⭐️⭐️
    September 21, 2018
    Dan - makes total sense. Thanks again for all the info!
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