How to send test email surveys
Alex Bitca avatar
Written by Alex Bitca
Updated over a week ago

Before starting to send email surveys to your contacts, you might want to test them for yourself, to see what they look like in the inbox, and what would experience your contacts when answering a survey.

In case of a survey by email you have the following test options:

  • Send a test survey from the survey template editor.

  • Send a test survey via the Contacts page.

Send a test survey from the survey editor

On the Campaigns page access an email campaign that includes a survey template that you want to test. Once you're in the campaign's edit more, click on a template to access its edit mode.

In the top menu bar, you will see the "Send test" field. By default, it will include your email address, but feel free to change it if you need to send the test survey to another address.

IMPORTANT:

  1. If you're sending a test survey to an email address that is already added to your account but is marked as "Unsubscribed" on the Contacts page, then the test surveys option will return an error. Make sure to resubscribe the contact before sending a repeated test survey.

  2. If you're using survey variables in your survey template, then they may not be displayed as expected in the test survey. A variable, for instance, {{ first_name or "there" }}, will be replaced with the corresponding customer data from their Retently record. Therefore, if you're sending a test survey to an email address that you haven't imported in Retently yet, then it will lack any first name data, which means that the variable's fallback value will be displayed instead. Click here to learn more about the use of variables.

  3. Even though test surveys will not consume survey credits, they will still stop working if you don't have any survey credits left in your account, and will return an error.

Send a test survey via the Contacts page

The other way to send a test survey is with the help of the "Send Survey" button from the Contacts page. You will have to add one or several test contacts. Find out how to import customers manually by clicking here.

The next steps are:

  • Select the test contact(s) you want to send the test survey to

  • Click on the "Send Survey" button

  • In the pop-up window, select an email campaign in which the contacts will be surveyed (the campaign where the test survey template is assigned to)

  • Click on the "Send survey" button.

Sending a test survey via the Contacts page is the recommended method if you have variables in your email Subject line or the text of your template question pages.

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