Send survey invitations directly from Simplesat. Choose who receives them and when, and add reminders if needed.

On the survey's Publish tab, choose Direct email delivery, then a type.

To edit and publish a survey, you need the Manage surveys permission. The Owner and Admin roles have it.

From, Email and Subject are required.

Replies go to the address in Email. To receive them, use an inbox on your own domain instead of [email protected]. Click Add a domain at the end of the domain list and complete authentication. Once the domain is marked Validated, select it in the Email field. Until then, emails come from simplesat-mail.com.

Use the toolbar above Intro text and Outro text to format your message. Pasted formatting is removed, and HTML you type appears as plain text.

If the survey runs in more than one language, choose a language in the Email language selector at the top of the subtab. Then write that language's From, Subject, intro and outro.

Placeholders add a customer's details to the subject, intro or outro. The braces menu above Intro text and Outro text lists the placeholders for your survey's type and inserts one where your cursor is. Subject has no menu, but placeholders you type or copy there work too.

One-off and ongoing surveys:

Event-based surveys:

If the customer's first name is missing, the email uses there. If their company is missing, it uses your company.

The design template sets the email's layout, background and colors. It also sets how the ratings appear:

To change the rating icons, open the Build tab and choose an Icon set for the metric question.

Design templates are built in and can't be edited in the app. The Design template list shows the designs for your survey's metric, plus any custom templates made for your workspace for that metric.

If another question comes before the metric question, the email doesn't show the ratings. Instead, it shows that earlier question with a Take me to my survey button, and Basic is the only design available. Your logo, intro and outro stay the same.

On the Premium, Scale and Enterprise plans, our team can build a custom email template for you. Send us the design and we'll work with you to implement the template.

The test uses whatever is on screen, saved or not, and its subject starts with [Test]. To test a reminder, use the Send test email button in that reminder's settings.

When you click a rating in a test email, the survey opens in preview mode. You can click all the way through and nothing is recorded in Feedback. If you send a lot of tests in a short time, you'll see "Test email limit reached. Please wait 1 hour before trying again."

You can send up to three reminders to customers who didn't act on the invitation, 2, 5 and 10 business days after it. We can change those days for a one-off or ongoing survey if you ask us. They can't be changed on an event-based survey.

Send follow-ups to sets who gets them:

Send follow-ups to always shows a value, even when all three reminders are off. Nothing sends until at least one reminder is on. The reminder switches save as soon as you flip them. Send follow-ups to saves when you click Save.

A reminder has its own From, Subject, intro, outro and design template, so the wording can change as the sequence goes on. Switching a reminder off also stops it for invitations already sent. To see which reminders went out, check the Email event column in the survey's Email activity. It marks each email as the initial email or a follow-up.

To send each customer exactly one email, leave all three reminders off. On an event-based survey, set Suppression as well. Otherwise, two requests for the same customer send two invitations.

For one-off and ongoing surveys, use audience rules to choose from customers already in your workspace. You don't need to import them again. For event-based surveys, the integration or your system identifies the recipient.

A rule checks one of these fields with Is or Is not:

Rules go in two groups, Meet ALL of the following rules and Meet ANY of the following rules. If you use both, a customer has to match every rule in the first group and at least one rule in the second.

A card shows "N customers match this survey's rules". Click View matching to see the first 20, or Download CSV to get the full list with name, email and company. The count includes customers who will be skipped at send. That means anyone who's unsubscribed and, on an ongoing survey, anyone who got this survey within the Frequency period.

To add a new list, click Import customers and upload a CSV. Each import gets a tag. Use that tag in an audience rule to send only to customers from that import.

Rules only use what Simplesat stores about a customer. To target an event in another system, or a company as its own record, import it as a customer attribute or a tag.

To exclude a customer from this survey, use an audience rule. To stop all survey emails to them from your workspace, unsubscribe them.

For ongoing surveys, Send every controls how often a customer can receive this survey. Customers who received it within that period are skipped, even if they still match your audience rules.

In Delivery Window, choose the days and earliest hour an ongoing survey can send. Selected days are highlighted, and the time is in your workspace time zone. Sending starts at or after that hour, not at a guaranteed minute. There is no end-time setting.

The window only applies to ongoing surveys. A one-off sends when you click Send now or at its scheduled time. An event-based survey sends when its Delay is up, on any day and at any hour.

Choose how an ongoing survey paces its sending:

With spread delivery, the panel estimates how many emails will go out each day. The estimate changes with your audience. To reduce it, narrow the audience, increase the time between surveys or allow sending on more days. There's no setting for a fixed daily email cap.

A one-off survey stays in Draft until it's sent. To send it:

To send later, click the arrow beside Send now and choose Schedule send. Pick a date and hour in your workspace time zone, then click Schedule. The survey shows Scheduled, and Cancel schedule takes it back to Draft.

Send now is unavailable while audience changes are unsaved, while no customer matches the rules, or while the survey is closed. Hovering over it shows one checklist covering all three.

After a one-off has gone out, click Send another batch on the Delivery subtab. This returns the survey to Draft so you can change the audience and send again. The new batch goes to everyone the rules match, including people who got the last one. If you only want new customers, narrow the rules. Earlier sends keep their rows in Sending history.

For an ongoing survey, click Set Live and confirm to start sending. Click Pause Sending to pause it. You can't set a closed survey live.

An event-based survey sends when an integration or your system triggers it. Closing or archiving it prevents emails from new requests. Closing the survey does not cancel event-based emails already waiting to go out, follow-up reminders included. Archiving it cancels them.

An event-based survey can be triggered by a Simplesat integration or by your own system. If you're using an integration, select the survey you want it to send. If you're connecting your own system, your developer can use the Endpoint on the survey's Delivery subtab to request an email for a customer.

Delay controls how long Simplesat waits before sending. Suppression limits how often the same customer receives this survey. To check whether an email went out, open Email activity.

You can run several event-based surveys side by side, with separate endpoints, delays and suppression periods. Point each integration or system at the survey it should trigger.

The only required field in the body is the customer's email address. The Copy request body button copies a sample.

You can also send:

Some of these fields change what happens:

The reply tells you what happened:

API requests send real emails, and there's no test endpoint. Use your own email address while testing. Setting Delay to 0 removes the wait, but Suppression still applies. Restore Delay afterward.

Delay is how many hours Simplesat waits after a request arrives before sending. In days:

At 0, the email goes as soon as the request arrives, at any hour. With a delay set, the email goes within a few minutes of its due time.

A change to Delay only affects requests that arrive after you save it.

Delay is set per survey. For different timings by product or segment, duplicate the survey and point the second integration at the copy.

Suppression is how many days must pass before the same customer can get this survey again.

Delay postpones a send. Suppression decides whether there's a send at all. With Delay at 0 and Suppression at 6 days, the survey sends as soon as a request arrives, unless the customer received it in the last 6 days. One-off and ongoing surveys don't have Suppression. On an ongoing survey, Frequency does the same job.

Only invitations from this survey that reached this customer within the period count, so a customer who hasn't received the survey isn't affected. If a customer has three tickets close in the same week and Suppression is 7, they get one survey.

One-off and ongoing surveys list each send under Sending history on the Delivery subtab. Event-based surveys don't have a sending history. Each row shows the date, how many emails were sent, and how many were opened and clicked.

Click View email results to open the survey's Email activity, which has a row for each recipient.

Unsubscribing stops all survey emails to that customer from your workspace. If they use a survey email's unsubscribe link, that survey's Email activity shows when.

To unsubscribe or resubscribe a customer:

The Emails and Delivery subtabs only appear once the survey uses Direct email delivery. If you see three cards, the survey has no delivery method yet. Choose Direct email delivery and a type. If you see an embed panel, the survey uses an embed method. Open the ellipsis menu at the top right of the survey, choose Change delivery method, click Remove current delivery method, then pick again.

Their mail client blocks images, which is common in Outlook. The ratings are still links. In the built-in designs, NPS and CES ratings are numbers and CSAT ratings show their label as text, so those still work. 5-Star ratings are images only. The customer can allow images from your sending address. Embedding the images in the email doesn't get past a client that blocks them. If the icons show but the layout breaks in more than one mail client, send us a copy of the email.

Some older versions of desktop Outlook treat animated icons as media to play. The click can then record the wrong rating, or none at all. On the Build tab, choose a still Icon set for the metric question.

The audience count includes customers who won't receive an email:

If you imported a list, check the import review for missing or invalid email addresses. Duplicate email addresses become one customer.

During a trial, the daily sending limit can also reduce the number sent. Check Email activity for individual delivery results.

Delay is set to 0. Suppression doesn't postpone a send. Set Delay to the number of hours you want to wait. Requests that arrive after you save will wait that long.

That reply means the request was accepted, not that an email went out. With a Delay set, the email isn't due yet. Suppression, unsubscribes and the trial daily limit are only checked once it's due. Look the customer up in the survey's Email activity. A held email shows the reason, such as "Survey is in suppression period" or "Customer unsubscribed." An email that's still waiting isn't listed, but we can confirm it for you. A survey that was changed from event-based to another type also returns this reply and sends nothing.

The request is missing the X-Simplesat-Token header. Send a workspace API key in that header. You create keys under Admin → API keys. A key limited to chosen scopes needs responses:write.

Check the survey's type:

If an ongoing survey's timing still looks wrong, send us the survey name and one example customer.

Check that the integration's automation is still switched on in Simplesat. Switching it off and on in the other tool doesn't switch it back on in Simplesat. If it's on, the connection may have expired. An expired connection still shows as authenticated but fails on every request. To fix it:

Events that happened while it was off aren't sent later. Ask us if you need them sent.

The survey may have been archived or deleted, or the rating link may have been changed or cut short. If the survey was archived, its links work again once you restore it. An event-based survey's links carry a code made for each email, so a link built by hand, or one with that code removed, won't work. Compare the link with a rating link from a test email sent to yourself.

Test emails open in preview mode, so test ratings don't appear in Feedback. If a response from a real customer is missing, send us their email address and roughly when they answered.

If the email was delivered, it reached their mail server. Ask them to check their spam or quarantine folder, or send us their address and the date.

No. It's part of every survey email.

Simplesat doesn't have built-in A/B testing. You can use separate surveys for different versions and compare the results.

Switch on follow-up reminders and set Send follow-ups to to Unopened customers or Unanswered customers. You can't build an audience from who opened or clicked an earlier email. On a one-off, Send another batch sends again to everyone the rules match.

On an ongoing survey, Frequency limits how often one customer gets it. To leave out everyone who has answered, switch on Update customer data after feedback is received in the Simplesat Tools integration. Each customer who answers then gets a custom attribute named after the survey plus "responded", set to yes. You can exclude that attribute with an audience rule. It only marks customers who answer after you switch it on.

Your plan includes a monthly sending allowance. During a trial, the workspace can send 50 survey emails a day across all its surveys. The Delivery subtab shows that limit while the trial runs.

No. An event-based survey has one Delay, and an ongoing survey has one Frequency. For a sequence like that, your own system has to send a request to an event-based survey at each step.

Direct email delivery sends email only. Ask us about sending surveys by SMS.

No. They go out about five minutes after a rating arrives, whatever the survey's delivery window is.

There are two reasons. Clicked counts a click on any link in the email, including links in the intro, outro and footer, but only a rating link leads to a response. Email security scanners also open the links in a message to check them, without loading its images. A rating is only saved when the survey page loads in a browser. Clicks with no opens and no responses usually come from a scanner.