A regular link survey campaign gives you a unique URL that you distribute to respondents yourself. Retently generates the link and records responses, but sending the link is your responsibility. Unlike the anonymous link campaign, the regular type identifies respondents, which enables throttling, response attribution, and contact profile enrichment.

Go to Campaigns and create a new campaign. Select your metric (NPS, CSAT, CES, or another supported type), choose Link as the channel, and select Regular as the campaign type.

Before anything else, assign a survey template to the campaign. You can select an existing template or create a new one directly from the campaign setup page.

When you open the template editor, the first screen you will see is the customer identification screen.

This screen is shown to respondents who arrive at the survey URL without an email address in the link. They are asked to provide their email before answering the survey.

If you pass the respondent's email address in the URL, this screen is skipped entirely, and the respondent lands directly on the first survey question. See this article for the different ways to pass respondent data.

Beyond the identification screen, the template editor lets you customize the survey appearance, add or reorder questions, and update the thank you message. Survey template editing is covered in detail in the survey templates documentation.

Because Retently does not send the survey on your behalf, the campaign has no audience filters or scheduling configuration. Instead, there is a Link section where you manage everything related to the survey URL.

Each campaign has a unique URL. You can copy it from the Link section and paste it into any communication channel you use: an email marketing tool, SMS platform, live chat, or anywhere else.

When a respondent opens the URL without any parameters, they are prompted to enter their email address first. Once they do, they proceed to the survey questions.

To skip that prompt, append the respondent's email address to the URL as a query parameter. You can also append other contact properties to enrich the respondent's profile in Retently at the same time.

Click the Show QR code button in the Link section to generate a QR code for the survey. You can download it from Retently and place it on printed materials, signage, or any physical surface. Respondents scan the code with their phone and are taken directly to the survey.

When a respondent opens a survey link and starts answering, a session begins. By default, that session stays open for 60 minutes.

While the session is active, the respondent cannot start a fresh survey attempt. If they close the page and return within 60 minutes, they will be prompted to continue from where they left off. Only after fully completing the survey (or after the session expires) can they submit a new response.

The Campaigns Link section includes an option called Custom Resume Window for In-Progress Surveys. This lets you override the default 60-minute session time with a shorter or longer window.

The most common use case is setting a shorter window so respondents can answer again sooner. For example, setting the window to 1 or 10 minutes means the session expires much faster, and the respondent can start a new survey attempt once that time passes.

Turning this option off restores the default 60-minute session.

The session timer does not start counting the moment someone opens the survey. Instead, Retently monitors whether the respondent is actively interacting with the page. Once interaction stops (the respondent navigates away or the page goes idle), the countdown begins. When the window expires, the session closes automatically, even if the survey was not fully completed, and the respondent is free to begin a new attempt.

Kiosk mode is designed for tablets or other shared physical devices placed in a location where multiple people answer the survey in sequence, such as a reception area, event booth, or retail location.

When you enable kiosk mode, you configure an idle reset:

Reset survey if idle for X [seconds / minutes] - If a respondent starts the survey but stops without finishing, the survey resets automatically after the configured time. The next person to approach the device sees a fresh survey from the beginning.

You can also enable two additional options:

Show Thank You countdown - After a respondent finishes the survey, a countdown is displayed on the thank you page showing how long until the survey resets. This lets the respondent know when the next person can begin.

Custom Thank You page duration - By default, the thank you page resets on the same timer as the idle reset. You can set a different duration here if you want the thank you message to stay visible longer or shorter than the idle timeout.

The throttle option prevents a respondent from answering the survey more than once within a time period you define. This is useful when the survey URL is broadly distributed and you want to avoid duplicate responses from the same person.

When enabled, you can choose to track responses:

You set the time window in seconds, minutes, hours, or days. For example, setting seven days means a respondent who has already completed the survey cannot submit another response for seven days.

If a throttled respondent opens the survey link, they see a page informing them that they have already submitted a response, along with the date when they will be eligible to answer again.

The daily survey limit caps how many total responses the survey accepts in a single day. Once the limit is reached, any respondent who opens the link sees a message informing them that the survey is not accepting responses for the day and inviting them to return the following day.

This is useful when you are running the survey at a physical location or in a high-traffic channel and want to avoid an unmanageable volume of responses in a short period.

The following sections are available in the campaign editor.

The final step is to activate the Survey by link campaign by switching the toggle button ON. Otherwise, you will not be able to use this campaign in your workspace.