Capture Survey Feedback Directly in a Pardot Email

When you send an email looking for feedback on a webinar or event you hosted, do you send your attendees only a link to a survey in a third-party platform? There is a way to get at least some feedback even if you get limited survey completions.

Consider this. If 100 prospects click the survey link and 80% complete it, you will miss out on capturing feedback from the other 20%. But if you incorporate a question into the email, even if they don’t complete the survey, you still capture feedback from that 20%.

Pick your most important survey question and add it to the email.

1. Create an image for each answer to the survey question.

In this example, I created five face images to convey how the attendee felt about the event. This will work with a star rating or another image or text you want to use.

2. Create a custom redirect for each answer/image.

  1. Name the custom redirect so it’s easy to identify which survey and rating it belongs to.
    • Example: “webinar name – 2021 – 5 stars”
  2. Choose a folder.
  3. Add tags.
    • Examples: name of event, year, business line, rating
    • For yearly events, you may want to include all the information in a single tag: “webinar name – 2021 – 5 stars.” Then if a prospect attends the event multiple years, you’ll know which webinar they gave 5 stars and which one they gave 2 stars.
  4. Choose your campaign.
  5. Set your destination URL.
    • This will be a link to the survey and the same link in each of your custom redirects.
  6. Set your tracker domain.
  7. Enter a vanity URL.
    • This will make it easier to identify that the links are correct when building/testing your email.
    • Example: /2021/webinarname/5stars
  8. Add Google Analytics parameters.
  9. Add completion actions.
    • Tag prospects
      • Example: “webinar name – 2021 – 5 stars.” In the future you could send a follow-up email to those that gave it a low rating and ask for input to improve future webinars.
    • Other ideas: Notify a sales rep if the prospect gives a low rating, add them to a list for each rating, adjust the prospect score for higher ratings, add them to CRM campaign, send autoresponder email with other webinars to watch
  10. Create custom redirect.
  11. Repeat these steps for each answer/image.

3. Build your email.

Place the smiley faces into the email and link them using the custom redirects you set up in the step above.

4. Test your email.

It’s a good idea to double-check that the smiley faces are linked with the correct custom redirect before sending to the attendees.

5. Send your email.

Below is an example email using the faces. It uses a combination of text/images for the question as a fail-safe in case images don’t load.

6. View your results.

In Pardot Lightning, navigate to Content > Custom Redirects. Filter the list using the tags you created. Then click on each one to see which prospects rated your event.

NOTE: If you set up completion actions in your custom redirects to add them to lists, you could review those lists instead.

UPDATE: Watch for prospect clicks across multiple ratings. Spam filters may click on all the links in your email before the prospect receives it. Our list is small and it’s manageable for us to manually review any duplicates. Special thanks to Kelli Meador for pointing this out.

This method works for more than just surveys. It is a great way to capture first-party data or engagement when metrics, like open rate, are no longer reliable. Have you done something similar? Share it in the comments.

Marah Studniski

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