IntelliSurvey's software not only allows users to create surveys and view their respondent results, but also provides them the ability to maintain respondent contact lists and email messages to individuals on these lists. The Contact Lists applet, found under the Sample button group in the Survey Navigation menu, allows users to maintain, view, edit, delete, or add new lists of potential respondents to a survey.
See Email batches for more information on how these lists can then be utilized for sending email messages.
Managing contact lists
Selecting Contact Lists in the Survey Navigation menu brings users to the Contact Lists applet. From here, one can create a new contact list via the New button; use the Actions menu to view, update, or delete contact lists, view reports, or verify email formats and domains; and Refresh the selected list any time updated counts are needed.
The following fields are included in the table on the Contact Lists page.
- Name: The name given to the contact list when uploaded.
- Description: The description of the contact list entered when the list was uploaded.
- Count: The number of contacts in the contact list.
- Created: A time stamp for the date and time at which the contact list was uploaded.
- Author: The user who uploaded the list.
Adding new contact lists
Pressing the New button allows users to create a new contact list via the Create Contact Lists page. It is required to enter a Name (ID), which serves as the list ID for the new contact list, and a Description for the list. Next, select the method for adding the new contacts. Users can upload via a file or cut and paste the data in the field provided.
When uploading/adding data for a new contact list, the spreadsheet must contain an 'email' field. An 'id' field is optional. The system will assign each contact a unique respondent ID if the 'id' field does not already exist and will add the 'id' field itself upon upload. If the 'id' field is manually added, make sure the IDs are unique across all contact lists in the survey.
Users have the option to Automatically remove duplicates in this file (the default option). If this is checked, the duplicate validation feature checks for records that share the same email only within the file that is being uploaded. It does not compare the file being uploaded to other existing contact lists. In order to compare and remove duplicates from across multiple lists, use the Dedupe emails option under Validate Contacts in the Actions menu.
After pressing the Next button, users should receive confirmation that the contact list is ready to be used.
Note: Important highlights:
- When uploading/adding data for a new contact list, the spreadsheet must contain an 'email' field.
- Users cannot upload/include the same ID across lists. The database must have unique IDs for the specific survey, even if they are included in different lists.
- When creating a new contact list or adding data to an existing contact list, make sure that the custom column cells, for example "wave" or "region", contain either a text string or numerical data, but not a mix of both. The system will attempt to read the column data and assign one or the other, then attempt to validate each cell in the column against this assignment. This does not apply to column headers, IDs, or emails.
Actions menu options
Once an existing contact list has been clicked on/highlighted, the following actions can be completed via the Actions menu.
View
To view a contact list, users can either double-click on the list name or select the View option under the Actions menu. This brings the user to the View Contacts List page. The name and description entered when the contact list was uploaded are displayed above the list, and just below this, the current page that is being viewed (e.g., Page 1 of 8). If the contact list is multi-paged, forward and back arrows will be activated to allow for page navigation. The following columns are standard regardless of the contact list provided: id, status, email, (batchname)_status, (batchname)_message, survey status, dedup_ts, format_checked_ts, email_verified_ts, and email_contact_count.
Respondent/contact statuses
The status column indicates each recipient's current status for the Contact List applet. This status determines whether an email batch can be sent to the potential respondent or not. The respondent will also generate distinct statuses for each email batch and the survey itself. Recipients may be assigned one of the following statuses.
Label | Status | Description |
---|---|---|
Active | A | Default status; the email address is eligible to be sent to. |
Bounced | B | The email address has been flagged for having at least three emails bounced back from batch sends. |
Removed | R | The recipient associated with this email address has opted out of the survey. |
Duplicate | D | The email address was marked as a "duplicate" during the duplicate check. |
Malformed | M |
The email address was not properly formatted (e.g., missing '@' symbol, etc.) and marked as "malformed" during verification of the email format check. |
Invalid domain |
I | The email address was marked as having an invalid domain during the domain verification check. |
Note that it is possible to be initially marked as Active then reclassified as another status after a batch has been sent or the Validate Contacts verification options have been run on a list.
Batch delivery statuses
Once an email batch has been sent, it will be listed as a column in the Manage Contact List grid as (batchname)_status, with each recipient being assigned a delivery status for whether the email was successfully received or not. Some of the statuses are temporary and can be updated after the server and email client continue to attempt to deliver the message. Other statuses are permanent. The potential delivery statuses are:
Label | Status | Description |
---|---|---|
Pending | pending | The batch email is waiting in the queue to be sent. |
Unsendable | unsendable | The email was unable to be received due to an invalid/malformed email. |
Sent | sent |
The batch email was successfully sent to the corresponding email. Recipients classified as Sent may later be reclassified as Viewed if it was opened, or Bounced if there was a domain error or other issue. |
Viewed | viewed | The batch email was successfully sent and was opened by the respondent. This status is used to display "view counts" in the Manage Contact Lists page and is not used in reports. |
Bounced | bounced | The batch email was bounced/unable to be received. Often a reason may be listed for the bounce, such as "Bounced: User Unknown" or "Bounced: Domain Error" and the specific reason will be accompanied in the (batchname)_message. |
Bounced (Permanent): User Unknown | user_unknown | The recipient's address was not found/does not exist on the domain. |
Bounced (Permanent): Domain error | domain_error | The host domain was not found, e.g., gmail.co (missing the "m"). |
Bounced (Permanent): Spam | spam | The IntelliSurvey server sending the email has been flagged as spam. |
Bounced (Temporary): User over quota | over_quota | The recipient's inbox is full and cannot receive new messages. |
Bounced (Temporary): User Disabled |
user_disabled |
The recipient's address was found but is no longer functioning, e.g., "a. smith" has left the company. |
Bounced (Temporary): Message too large | message_too_large | The message exceeds the email client's limit. |
Bounced (Temporary): Reason Unknown | other | The bounce reason is not able to be determined. |
Occasionally a status for a batch may be blank, indicating an email was never queued up for that batch. Note that sometimes servers need more time to relay messages, and it could take up to two days to get a clear, permanent status.
A unique batchname_status and batchname_message column will be generated for each email batch sent. The batchname_message column will display pertinent information for bounced emails. If there is a concerning number of bounced emails with the same message, reach out to Support for assistance with troubleshooting the issue.
Survey statuses
The survey_status column records a respondent's status once the respondent enters the survey. If a potential respondent has not clicked into the survey via an invitation link, this status will remain blank. The most common statuses recorded are below. See Understanding respondent statuses to review the full list.
Label | Status | Description |
---|---|---|
Complete | C | Respondents who have answered all of the required questions and have reached the final page of the survey, wherein they see the survey complete ending message or a sample provider redirect. |
Initiated | I | Respondents who have clicked into the survey via an invite link but have not advanced past the first page. |
In Progress | P | Respondents who have started the survey but have not yet completed it. They remain as a status P for up to 30 minutes of inactivity before becoming Inactive (N). |
Inactive | N | In Progress (P) respondents are considered Inactive when they have not responded to the survey during the past 30 minutes. |
Terminated |
T |
Respondents whose answers failed to meet a survey's qualifying criteria and are not allowed to complete the full survey. |
Add to an existing contact list
Selecting the Add to Contact List option allows users to upload new contacts to an existing contact list and update the data (e.g., email address) for an existing record (ID). If there are multiple lists, first click on the desired list to highlight it, or double-click on the list to open it. This option will now be available in the Actions menu.
Users have the option to Automatically remove duplicates in this file (the default option). If this is checked, the duplicate validation checks for records that share the same email only within the file that is being uploaded. It does not compare the file being uploaded to the pre-existing contacts. In order to compare and remove duplicates from an existing list, use the Dedupe emails option under Validate Contacts in the Actions menu.
Next, select the method. Contacts can be uploaded via a file upload or via cut and paste. Press Next and the user will be brought to another screen that will confirm the number of new records, existing records updated, and list any errors. If this is not correct, click Back to return to the previous page to make the necessary changes, or click Next to merge the data. The next page will confirm the new contacts were merged successfully. When finished, press the Back button or Manage button to return to the Manage Contact Lists screen.
Note: When updating an existing contact list, make sure the spreadsheet includes an 'id' field as the system will seek to compare/match contact ID numbers. Any contacts on the list that do not have ID numbers will be treated as new contacts and assigned an ID.
Export
Export allows users to download a contact list report as an Excel file. To export a contact list, select the File Type, then select the fields to use (All Fields or Individually) via the Field Selector. If Individually is selected, a second box will appear, allowing the user to either type in the fields to filter respondents with, or to use a pulldown menu.
After the fields required to limit the contact list data have been selected, which records to use can be specified via the Record Selector. Users can select respondents on the list by whether they are Active or not, by ID numbers, or by a Data Cut. These checkboxes are not mutually exclusive, and all three options can be applied simultaneously.
If IDs is selected, enter the record IDs. This field is case-sensitive. The Gear icon may be used to Rename, Delete, or Save the list of IDs. If a list of IDs has yet to be saved, then only the Save option will be active.
Once an ID list has been saved, all three Gear icon options will be activated, and users will have the ability to reuse that list as an additional Gear icon option.
If either the Rename or Delete options are selected, a modal will appear to allow the user to enter a new list name or to confirm deletion of the list, respectively.
If Data Cut is selected as the method to select the respondent records, users can either select existing data cuts from the dropdown menu, or by selecting the Wrench icon, they can build their own data cuts through the Expression Builder modal.
See Expression Builder for more information.
Once all filters have been selected for the export, press Next to apply them. Users will be taken to another screen which will confirm creation of the desired spreadsheet. Users can then download the Excel sheet from this screen.
Validate Contacts
The Validate Contacts option provides users with a few different options to help ensure that email addresses on the list are not duplicated, or have proper formatting and legitimate domain names.
Note: Since larger contact lists of 20,000 or more potential respondents may take some time to validate, IntelliSurvey will send the user an email when the validation process is completed.
Dedupe emails
Selecting this option brings up the Duplicates modal, which includes two options. The modal defaults to the option Delete duplicates, but users may instead opt to Keep duplicates. Mark status 'D'. The latter choice can be useful for exporting the contact list afterwards and running a filter on duplicate email addresses to compare with the non-deduped list to see if information differed between the records. For example, if a survey was being run internally for a company, it may be possible that the duplicated addresses list conflicting employee ID numbers or departments.
Validate email format
Selecting this option triggers a process that reviews the email addresses in the selected contact list to verify that they follow proper formatting (e.g., including "@" symbols, following web standards such as no spaces, etc.). A notification will appear when completed, letting the user know if the system found any "malformed" email addresses.
Verify email addresses
Selecting this option triggers a process that checks whether the domains of the email addresses in the list exist. A notification will appear to let the user know that it could take a few minutes and that results will be emailed to them as soon as the process is completed. Any email addresses that are considered "invalid" will be marked with an "I" in the list records.
Reports
Users have the ability to run Individual and Frequency reports on their contact lists via the Reports option.
Individual
Selecting the Individual reports option will bring the user to the Contact List Individual Report applet. Similar to the Response report, a report can be constructed for each individual respondent for any fields selected. Since this report is specific to contact lists, only the results for System Fields, User Fields, and/or Batches may be selected (Survey Fields are not included). The screen defaults to displaying All Fields and all Active records, but users may use the Record Selector and Field Selector to limit which records and fields are displayed.
See above for more details on selecting records and fields for the report.
Once the desired filters have been applied, users may hide the filters be pressing the Filters button on the screen header. Press the Filters button again to make the filters reappear.
Frequency
Similar to the Frequency Reports applet, the Contact List Frequency Report applet allows users to create reports providing a quick overview of contact list field counts, base sizes, and percentages rendered in HTML. As with the Contact List Individual Report, filters may be applied via the Record Selector and Field Selector to define the report. The Contact List Frequency Report applet also has the same header buttons available as the Contact List Individual Report.
While some fields will display a table with a count and percentage breakdown for each ID available in that category (including a bar graph representation of the percentage), others will simply display the total number of respondent records and a link to View Data. Selecting the View Data link for a given field will bring the user to the Contact List Individual Report applet to view the raw data for only that field.
Delete
This option allows users to delete the selected contact list. The Confirm Contact List Deletion modal will appear, asking users to verify the list's deletion. If a contact list is deleted accidentally, it will have to be re-uploaded.
Note: If a batch email is either pending or has already been sent for a given contact list, that list cannot be deleted. Attempting to delete the contact list will cause an error message.
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.