Inviting

Create an invitation to take a survey

Inviting is the process of creating an invitation for a customer to take a survey. The process begins soon after Sampling identifies individuals to receive invitations. The Survey engine creates an unique survey instance for each invitee, and then selects one of the Rules to create the Invitation email.

The Distribution setting defines the information that is in the email heading, such as the To and From values. It also identifies when the Invitation email and survey expires, and whether or not to send one or more Reminder emails. Optionally, the Distribution setting can specify an email to use when creating the email. If it does not specify an email, the Survey engine selects one based on a rule defined in the email.

When the Invitation email is ready, it is placed in a delivery queue where Experience Cloud Broadcaster picks it up and sends it to the invitee. After the respondent takes the survey, the distribution setting may optionally send a Thank-you email, and the survey results are passed on to Alerts and Reports. However, if the invitee does not take the survey, the Broadcaster optionally sends one or more Reminder emails until the invitee takes the survey, or until it expires.

Process flow of invitations through Experience Cloud. The order is Import, Sampling, Survey Program, Inviter, Language Preferences, Email Templates, Broadcaster, and optionally to Auto-Reply. Then either customer finishes survey followed by Thank You, or Invitation and survey expires.

Reminder emails are not sent to the invitees who sent an email reply, since those get an Auto reply email and are still able to take the survey before it expires.

The key to understanding how it all works is to remember the Survey engine picks the survey, Distribution setting, and Email based on data in the record. Each of those assets have a Condition that matches against data in the record. This information must be in the record before the record is sampled, which means it either enters Experience Cloud when importing the date, or the Importer causes the values to be inserted into the record. 

For example, consider a company that has multiple brands, a customer loyalty program, and different surveys and invitation emails for various variations of the brand and loyalty level.

A record with e_brand-2, e_loyalty_level=1, and e_firstname=Skyler; Conditions for survey program:e_brand=2, Inviter:e_brand=2, and Email template: e_brand=2 AND e_loyalty_level=1

The three components of the invitation process might use these fields as follows:

  • A survey for the Orion brand matches on e_brand=2 (where the e_brand data type is the Choice set whose value for Orion is 2).
  • A distribution setting sets the From email field to say Orion Team and matches on e_brand=2.
  • An email includes text saying: Thank you for being a Loyalty member and inserts the invitee's first name, and it matches on e_brand=2 and e_loyalty_level = 1.

When Experience Cloud creates the Invitation email, it uses information derived from all three components: survey, distribution setting, and email.

Example email message with callouts: Inviter populates To and From, Template provide the Subject, variables in the template provide values like name and survey link

Warning: When Medallia, Inc. detects abnormal email delivery (such as, a spike in bounces or excessive send-volume), the responsible Medallia Experience Cloud tenant is restricted from sending any emails until the issue is resolved.

For more information, see: