Creating the Email

1. If you have predefined email objects in the current survey, they will be listed in the Email drop-down - choose the email to be sent. Otherwise, select Create new email to open the Text tab so you can write and set up a new email.

The Create Email page then opens - as shown below.



Figure 1 - The Create Email page

Note that HTML and Plain Text email text fields are presented for each language selected for the survey, so you can send the email in the various survey languages.

Note: Any emails you set up directly here in the Emailing Wizard and save, will be saved in the survey and will be accessible for to you to use on later occasions.

Note: You can also set up emailing tasks for later execution, before corresponding respondents are uploaded into the database.

2. Once you have selected or created the required email, set up the properties.
3. Click Next to go to step 3 in the wizard.

Email Details

• Id – displays the name/title of the current email object. The default values are “e1”, “e2”, etc. You can enter more descriptive titles.
• Deleted – will be chosen if the email object is soft-deleted. If you uncheck the Deleted option, the email object will be undeleted.
• Read only – choose this setting if you want the email object to be locked so that no changes are made to it accidentally, either in Survey editing mode or when sending email in Respondents > Emailing.
• Include link – check this box to have a link (URL) to the web interview included automatically at the bottom of the e-mail (default).

• Send as HTML – check to send the email as HTML code. Only mail clients that support HTML will be able to read the email.
• Send as plain text – check to send the email as plain text. Most mail clients will be able to read it.

The email object will have two text fields for each language: one for HTML body and one for Plain text body. When sending email to respondents, you can choose to send the email either in one of those formats or in both in one sending. When you choose to distribute the email in both formats, the mail clients supporting HTML will use the HTML version, other mail clients will display the text version.

• Override recipient email – the respondents' email addresses will normally be in the "email" column of the database. However you may also have 'secondary' email addresses in another column. This would allow you to send the same survey link to another email address, for example the respondent’s manager's address in the event the respondent does not answer the survey. Check to override the respondents’ email addresses with email from another column. You must then choose the column name from the drop-down. Note that you can disable the "No of emails sent column" - see below.
• Send email FW – select this option and select a column from the drop-down if you want to forward the survey email to a person, for example the survey manager, in order to notify him/her that the survey has been sent out. The link to the survey will not be included in the forwarded email.

Note: The noOfEmailsSent column will only show the number of emails sent to the respondents in the ‘email’ column.

No specific set names need to be given to columns with forward and override addresses.

• Send confirmation email – check this option if you want to receive confirmation email from the system, stating that the emails have been sent.
• From - this shows the email address from which the email will be sent, default will be the address of the currently logged on user - you. You can change this if required.
• Display Name - The value entered in this field will be displayed in the 'From' field in the email. If nothing is entered in this field, the recipient will see the email address/name entered in the From field. Specify a valid email address in the Reply to field. When the receiver clicks his/her 'Reply to' button, the email will go to this email address (go to Fixed Sender Domain and Email Delivery Report for more information).
• Reply to - specify a valid email address in this field. When the receiver clicks the 'Reply to' button, the email will go to this email address.
• Reply to Display Name - the name entered in this field will be displayed in the ‘To’ field when the receiver clicks the Reply to button. If nothing is supplied, the name entered in ‘Display Name’ will be used. For example, the ‘Reply to Display Name’ could be set to ‘DO NOT REPLY’.
• Default language - if respondents do not have a language specified in the ‘language’ column in the respondent list, if their language is not activated with the Activate language setting, or if it does not exist in the current email, they will receive the email in the default language selected here. This list contains all the languages selected for the survey. If you set default language to 'None', respondents who do not match any of the activated languages, will not receive any email.
• Disable update of noOfEmailsSent - in the event you wish to prevent the email counter from registering the email transmission (for example you may be sending reminders to respondents' managers etc. - see Override Recipient Email above), check this box to disable the Number of Emails Sent column.
• Additional survey link parameters - allows you to add custom parameters after the survey link. An example could be:

http://survey.confirmit.com/wix/pXXXXXXXXX.aspx?__sid__=encryptedid&code=1

where code=1 is the additional parameter. This could previously be achieved by constructing the URL by piping in ^sid^and ^respid^, however this was not possible with encrypted system request parameters in the URL. This field allows you to include additional URL parameters in the survey link in email when using encrypted system request parameters. The field supports piping from the respondent list (with ^s). It works both for piped links (with ^slink^ or ^secureslink^) and when the "include link" checkbox is selected.

• Custom headers - use this field to add custom headers to the email. The syntax is:

X-name:value

X-name2:value2

You can use piping to "personalize" the email. Here the syntax is:

X-name:^pipedValue^

These headers will be added after the internal headers. Note that you cannot use the X-Confirmit prefix in custom headers.

• Custom survey link text - (located at the bottom of the page) allows you to insert clickable text instead of the survey URL in HTML email. Note that this applies only to HTML email. This could previously be done by constructing the URL by piping in ^sid^ and ^respid^, but it was not possible with encrypted system request parameters in the URLs. This field makes it much simpler to create a text such as "Click here to take the survey", or even include an image tag. The correct < a href=---> tag will be created in the HTML. This works both for piped links (with ^slink^ or ^secureslink^) and when the "include link" checkbox is selected.

In multilingual limited surveys, you can upload the respondent list with a column ‘language’ where each respondent’s language is specified (go to Handling Respondents in Limited Surveys for more information). If email subject and body has been entered and the Activate language property is chosen in the email object, the system will send email in the correct languages to the respondents. The system will automatically select the Encoding that has been assigned to a language on the server.

Text Substitution

You can "personalize" the emails you send to your respondents by including the contents of a respondent list column, for example the respondent's name, in the email. To do this you use a form of text substitution using the ^ character. The exact code you will need to include in the email will depend on the column name in your respondent list that contains the required information. If for example your respondent list includes a column called “name”, which holds the full name of the respondent, then you can add the code ^name^ to the text of the email, as in the figure below - .

Figure 2 - Substituting text in an email

Now when the respondent receives the email, it will read for example, “Dear John Smith”.

If your respondent list has several columns for the name information, for example “firstname”, “lastname”, “title” etc, then you could use the text Dear ^title^ ^lastname^, which will give e.g. "Dear Mr Smith".

The ^ character can be used in any of the fields in the email form, so you can for example add data from the respondent list into the Subject line.