Time needed: 10 minutes.
Mailchimp have released their latest marketing functionality. Surveys are now available and enable Mailchimp users to collect responses to questions. In the past it has been necessary to use Typeform, JotForm, SurveyMonkey or any third-party survey software however now we can use Mailchimp Surveys.
Surveys were released today and below are instructions to use this new Mailchimp feature (please note that Mailchimp may change the functionality as time progresses).
- Enter the Mailchimp Survey builder.
Login to Mailchimp and click “Audience”and then “View Contacts”. Click “Surveys” in the menu.
- Create your Survey questions.
Click the “Create Survey” button then “Add Questions”. Click “Add a question” to add your questions. You’ll be able to add questions of the types; radio buttons, checkboxes, open text, 0-10 range and email. As you add questions you’ll notice that there are question settings for each question to the right of the screen (e.g. “Require the questions to be answered”).
- Design your survey.
To change the style of your survey and customize other options click “Design” (next to the word “Questions”. Here you’ll be able to change the background color of your survey, the confirmation message, button text (e.g. “Send” in place of “Submit”), logo and so on. Once you’ve finished styling and customizing then click the “Save and Close” button.
- Make your survey live.
To make your survey live, so that people may answer your survey questions, merely click “Turn On”. Once you have made your survey live you’ll be able to copy the survey URL to share in an email campaign (you have options for attributing the response should you so wish), sharing on Facebook or Twitter or sharing the Survey URL via any other means (e.g. a link from your landing page or website).
- View your Survey responses
At any time you’ll be able to see the response that have seen submitted via your Survey. Results are shown per survey by accessing the Surveys screen in Mailchimp (per item 1 above) and then clicking the name of your survey. You may also click the “View All Responses” to see a graph of responses to each question (and tag contacts that have provided a certain answer).
this was good though I am confused at how to actually send the survey out to my Mailchimp list! do I need to create a new campaign to do that?
Yes. The survey is hosted on a URL. If you want to advise your subscribers of the survey then you need to send the survey URL (Mailchimp will provide the URL to you) to your subscribers.
Well I’m doing my first survey, and have the URL from mailchimp. When I sent the test email with the URL, the url does not appear as a link, you have to copy and paste it into the browser. How do I fix this?
Jon, send yourself the campaign and test if that works. Sometimes the test emails don’t generate shortcodes.
“You have options for attributing the response should you so wish.” I don’t understand what this means. Mailchimp says I can “link with automatic response attribution” or :link without automatic response attribution.” Huh?
Never mind. Once I clicked on it, they explained.
hello, I noticed a mistake in my first survey that is now live already (and sent to my subscribers). If I edit it, will it still have the same url?
Hi Elodie. Yes the URL will be the same.
thank you!
Is there a way to embed the survey in an email campaign instead of linking to another page?
Hi Kara, unfortunately now. Email standards don’t include the ability to handle forms (which a survey effectively is). Most email readers therefore can’t handle a survey in an email message.
Your video is very helpful, Gary. It is important to note that if you do not choose response attribution, the default is for NO response attribution. I learned this the hard way. My question: I would like to send out an email with response attribution, but when I test it —I have tried with various email addresses—it always comes back “unknown contact”. Am I missing a step? I am using email addresses that are in my audience. Thank you!
Hi Sheri, good point regarding response attribution.
The response attribution doesn’t work in a test email as the test isn’t being sent to a contact that is in your Audience but rather an unknown contact. When Mailchimp sends a test email it considers the recipients to be ‘anyone’ (i.e. not a specific contact in your Audience).