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How To Send Surveys via HTML Email

Using online survey tools with MailChimp

A lot of people ask us if they can embed surveys into HTML emails. The answer is "yes, sort of."

Surveys are basically web forms. And forms don't work so great when you send them in HTML email. Sure, coders have found crafty ways to rig web forms into HTML emails (mostly, this involves using "GET" instead of "POST" in your form code), but this really only works with very, very simple web forms (like a one-field "Search" box). You shouldn't embed big surveys into your HTML emails for a number of reasons:

Buggy Email Programs

For instance, let's say you received an HTML email with a survey embedded in it. You type in a response into one of the fields. Oops, you just made a typo, so you hit your backspace (delete) key. Instead of deleting the text in that form field, the email program thinks you want to delete the entire message from the inbox.

Anti-Virus Programs

There are also anti-spam and privacy programs that will want to block users from submitting forms inside of emails. And don't even think of making a Javascript powered form.

Logic, Multiple Pages, etc.

What if you want to send a survey with logic? Or multiple pages? Sending a survey inside an HTML email wouldn't work, because you'd be limited to one single page.

How to Properly Send Surveys in HTML Email Campaigns

Even though there are ways you can send simple forms embedded inside HTML email, embedding an entire survey into the email is just not the way to do it.

The proper way to deliver surveys is:

  1. Build an online survey using a service like SurveyGizmo (check out how we integrate with SurveyGizmo).
  2. When you're finished building your survey, SurveyGizmo will send you over to MailChimp to send the survey and further personalize the email design.
  3. We even have a special template designed just for SurveyGizmo.

If you run future email campaigns with surveys, you can actually use MailChimp to segment your lists to send only to people who have clicked previous survey campaigns.

Example Uses:

Don't just stop at one little survey. Here are some ideas based on what we use surveys for:

  • An annual "Customer Feedback" survey, where we ask customers how we're doing, and what kind of new features they'd like to see in future MailChimp versions.
  • A "Comment Box" survey that's permanently linked from our footer
  • Surveys to our beta testers. We roll out new features, ask beta testers to comment on them
  • External research - We poll audience segments about how they use MailChimp to find out if new features are worth rolling out
  • Internal research - Our documentation and training teams polls our support team to find out what they need to best assist our users
  • Exit Surveys: Whenever someone de-activates their MailChimp account, or unsubscribes from one of our mailing lists, we ask them to take an exit survey
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