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Ability to email a survey from TypeForm and capture their email address

  • 17 August 2021
  • 9 replies
  • 1520 views
G

Hello, I am new to TypeForm and the Community. Appreciate any guidance in advance.

Just transferred all my surveys from Survey Monkey and wondering about a specific feature. In Survey Monkey, it allowed me to send a survey right from within a tool and when users responded to a survey, I was able to see who responded (their email address). Is also allowed me to save the email template so I could reuse it easily for new emails/invitations. Seems like I can’t do this in TypeForm.

I have this Client Satisfaction Survey that I need to send to a client after project is completed. I can copy the link and email the client from Gmail, but then I will never know who completed the survey unless I specifically ask them to add name or email address from a survey (which is something I do not want to do). I noticed that it also allows me to integrate TypeForm with ActiveCampaign, but this won’t work as this is not for one-time email campaign. I need to add 1-2 emails a day and send those surveys easily on the fly using an email template. Am I missing something or this functionality does not exist in TypeForm?

 

Thanks in advance for any help and support!

Greg

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Best answer by Gabi Amaral 19 August 2021, 10:32

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Gabi Amaral
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Userlevel 7
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Hey @gzelfond! Welcome to the Typeform Community! :blue_heart:

We have a feature called "hidden fields" that can help you to get the data you want from your respondents without asking for it in your survey. I suggest you read this article to understand how this feature works! Once your hidden fields are up and running, you can publish your form and go to the "Share" panel, where you'll see several sharing options. :wink:

We don't have a direct way to send emails from Typeform (there isn't such a feature like this at the moment), but you can embed your form into your email if need be. You can find more info on this here: Start your typeform in an email. Then you can use tools for email distributions such as MailChimp.

Make sure to take a look at this article from our Help Center that shows how you can get this done!  

Let me know if you were able to make this work! Hoping you will! :four_leaf_clover:

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always. =)
G

Thanks Gabi for the response! Appreciate it. Yes, I considered using Hidden fields and integration with email service. It is way too clunky to use. I need to send emails on a daily basis and it is very clunky to go email provider, add emails, send campaigns. Takes way too much time. I hope there will be a way to send Typeform survey directly from Typeform in the future.

B

@gzelfond thank you for asking EXACTLY my question! Much appreciated. 

P
Userlevel 1
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I’ve read both of those help articles you linked and still don’t understand how to do it. The mailchimp one is more about collecting information from the form and bringing it into mailchimp.

And hidden fields does not address email addresses; it talks about the source. I already know the source; they found us from the email we sent. I don’t want to put the information in the survey they see… I just want their email address to be attached to their results in my Typeform report.

Surely this is a basic function that many people want.

I want to do exactly what the OP said: send a survey by email, have them answer the first question in the email, launch the rest of the survey, and have the survey results capture the email address they used. How can I do that?

john.desborough
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

@Pamela1 - welcome to the community

somehow you have to be able to have the email in the typeform data in order to send the results back to Mailchimp and have the results added to the correct user record. 

How are they getting to your typeform? if you are putting the link in the email that you sent to them from Mailchimp, then you would need to add their email address to the link that you sent.. something like this

(this might be your Call to Action text) >>>Click here to take the quiz

with the url to the typeform being: https://yourform.typeform.com/to/XXsYgGMU#email=testname@testmail.com 

this way the email address is sent from mailchimp into the typeform as a hidden field for typeform to use. 

If you do NOT ask for the user to enter in an email in your typeform, then you would have to have created a hidden variable called ‘email’ (it needs to match what is being passed in the url) so that the email address is captured and is available to be sent back to mailchimp. 

 

if the user is NOT getting a link from you to click but wandering into the form from your website or something else, you will need to ask for them to enter the email address so that you can then match it up against an existing client record or add a new one.. 

there are a number of articles on the Help Centre that address these topics. 

cheers

 

des

If your third coffee of the day is not helping you with your Typeform, maybe we can help you find your answers...
P
Userlevel 1
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But I don’t want the results (email addresses) to go back to Mailchimp! I just want them to be attached to the person’s survey results in Typeform.

What I want to do is this:

  1. Send an email through Mailchimp to everyone who attended the conference thanking them for coming and inviting them to complete the survey.
  2. Have the person click on a link in the email to respond to the survey, which is embedded on our website.
  3. Have the person’s email address from the Mailchimp be attached to their survey results in Typeform.

I don’t want to ask them their email address for two reasons:

  • one more question = added friction / decreased chances the person will complete the survey
  • opportunity for people to make up fake email addresses (and to fill out the survey multiple times with fake email addresses that we can’t all trace to one person)

I’ve read through all those help files and don’t see anything about how to do this.

john.desborough
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

you have what you need in my comments above. when you send them the email to the survey, add their email address to the url … next steps are as follows:

  • in your survey, create a hidden variable called email. 

you need a ‘placeholder/bucket’ inside your typeform. 

Once you have that, publish your form and  if you click on the Share option, you will get the link to the form with the appropriate email bits added into the url. It will look something like the image shown below with the #email=xxxxx ending. You have to replace the xxxx with the users’ email address  - if you create the email using the Mailchimp builder,  you should be able to put the mailchimp field selector code where the xxxxx is and that would dynamically replace the user’s email as each one is sent out by mailchimp. 

 

this repeats what i described above. the ‘hidden variable’ called email in the typeform will accept the email input from the url and it will be submitted with the data. 

there are a number of articles and other posts that describe how this is done in the community and the Help centre. 

des

If your third coffee of the day is not helping you with your Typeform, maybe we can help you find your answers...
P
Userlevel 1
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Thanks, John. I did finally manage to get it working, but it was not easy.

My main problem that was hard to solve is that the example on the Automated Hidden Fields with Mailchimp help page shows the mailchimp code going after a question mark that followed the URL.

But the website I have the form on has question marks already in the URLs. (This isn’t the actual domain, but the page URLs look like https://myurl.ca/?page_id=6185 . So it only worked after I figured out I needed instead to an # before the *|EMAIL|* code.

Gabi Amaral
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Hey @Pamela1! So you were able to make it worked by adding a # before the email code? You simply added it to your url before sending it to your respondents? Can you send us the link of the url working? I'm curious to check these links! 

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always. =)

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