Email template setup and custom variables

Overview

Survey invite email is the defining part of the overall feedback cycle. It is what the customer judges upon whether to participate in the survey or not.

SandSIV recommends to keep email invites simple and easy to digest. Please remember that your email is one of probably hundreds the customer might receive so your message should be succinct and to the point.

Customization with variables

It is possible to use custom variables within email templates. Variables are "special words" which are treated in a different way by VoC Feedback. The exact action depends on the variable used.

The key part of all survey invite emails is the link to the survey. This can be very easily done by adding the {{questionnaire.direct_url}} placeholder in the email template.

{{questionnaire.direct_url}} is then expanded to a unique URL within each individual email which is sent to your customers.

For the list of all supported placeholders/variables please see the description below.

{direct_url}

What it does: Expands to a unique direct link with questionnaire hash within the email

How to use:

<a href="{{questionnaire.direct_url}}"> Start Survey </a>

will expand to

<a href="https://survey.sandsiv.com/gWpPdOikvV4elDw0Fre8WJpAmeJtrCVC"> Start Survey </a>

within the email body where gWpPdOikvV4elDw0Fre8WJpAmeJtrCVC is a unique survey hash which is generated individually for each email to denote the exact survey for a certain customer

{{unsubscribe_link}}

What it does: Expands to the contents of "Label Unsubscribe Link"

How to use:

Let's say you have "Label Unsubscribe Link" set to the following:

<a href="{{questionnaire.unsubscribe_link}}">follow this link</a>

as shown in the example below:

Then, as an example, consider this snippet from an example email invitation:

You've received this email because you have been subscribed to our newsletter. We value your time and you can always unsubscribe if you <a href="{{questionnaire.unsubscribe_link}}">follow this link</a>

In this case this is what the customer will receive in their individual email:

You've received this email because you have been subscribed to our newsletter. We value your time and you can always unsubscribe if you follow this link

"Label Unsubscribe Link" contains {{questionnaire.unsubscribe_link}} which was expanded to a unique survey unsubscribe URL

Please see this article for more information on unsubscribe behavior.

{{ questionnaire | meta:"IMPORT_COLUMN" }}

What it does: Expands to the contents of the column for the given customer in the original import file

Where can be used:

invitation email subject
invitation email body
question text

How to use:

Let's say you have an import file with some additional data next to required information:

ADDRESS	LANGUAGE	Name
user@example.org	EN	John
anotheruser@example.org	EN	Mary

In this case, you can use import column Name in your email template.

Example:

Dear {{ questionnaire | meta:"Name" }}, Thank you for getting in touch with us. Please share your experience so that we can improve our services.

When an invite is prepared and sent to the customer user@example.org, they will receive the following:

Dear John, Thank you for getting in touch with us. Please share your experience so that we can improve our services.

And in the invite sent to anotheruser@example.org they will see the following:

Dear Mary, Thank you for getting in touch with us. Please share your experience so that we can improve our services.

Additional information: You can fall back to some default value in case the value is not present in the import file. In order to use this, please use the following syntax:

{{ questionnaire | meta:"IMPORT_COLUMN" | default:"Default_value_to_use" }},

where:

IMPORT_COLUMN is the name of the column you need to derive the data from
Default_value_to_use is the default value VoC Feedback will fall back to in case the value for IMPORT_COLUMN was not found in the import file for the given customer

{{questionnaire.img_email_track}}

{{questionnaire.img_email_track}}

Allows to track the fact that the email was opened.

When an email contains this variable an image is embedded into the email template to track the fact that the customer opened their invitation email.

Please note: This functionality relies on the embedded image. Downloading embedded images is usually restricted by email clients due to security concerns. This might skew the displayed statistics of "Opened" surveys so that the value might be lower than the number of actually opened emails.

{{questionnaire.url}}

{{questionnaire.url}}

Please find more details on how to use this placeholder within this article at "Label Survey Link" section

Example

Consider the following simple email template:

<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <body> Dear Customer, Thank you for getting in touch with us. Please share your experience so that we can improve our services. This short survey will only take a few minutes of your time. <a href="{{questionnaire.direct_url}}" style="text-decoration: none;"> Start Survey </a> Thank you. </body> </html>

As you can see, this template consists of main HTML code which defines the look and feel of the email template and of the link inside the a element.

This is how the following code looks interpreted by the email client (Gmail in this example):

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