Often when surveying respondents, you will already have data from your list of contacts that you'd like to include with your survey data.
We have several options to pre-populate your surveys with data you already have. Below we'll review each method, the strengths and weaknesses of each method, and a summary of how each works. Follow the links to the tutorials for each pre-population option to get step-by-step instructions for pre-populating surveys.
Email/SMS Campaign Contact Fields
Email/SMS Campaign Contacts Fields are fully integrated into your surveys and are the simplest of pre-population methods. Each contact has the following 30 fields that can be populated with external data:
- Email Address (required for Email Campaigns)
- Phone (Mobile) (required for SMS Campaigns)
- First Name
- Last Name
- Address
- Ste/Apt
- City
- State/Region
- Country
- Postal Code
- Organization Name
- Division
- Department
- Team
- Group
- Role
- Job Title
- Website
- Phone (Home)
- Phone (Fax)
- Phone (Work)
- Custom 1-10
When a contact clicks the link from their email/sms campaign invitation their contact information will be pulled into the survey and automatically associated with the survey questions in their response. This makes this data available as part of the CSV/Excel export as well as when browsing individual responses. It is even accessible as part of filtering in reporting!
Strengths: Completely integrated, familiar (like managing an address book), requires no outside services.
Weaknesses: Limited number of fields to populate.
Login/Password Action
Using our Login/Password action, you can upload a CSV/Excel spreadsheet that contains a unique login and password for each of your contacts. In this spreadsheet, you can include additional data for that contact for pre-poulation in the survey. You can also think of the Login/Password Action as a spreadsheet lookup where the password is the key.
The Login/Password action works by associating a password with additional data contained in the rest of the columns for that row. For instance, here is an example of column headers and a row of data in a spreadsheet that could be used for pre-population:
Password | Name | Age | Dept | |
password123 | Tom Baker | 42 | tom@email.com | Marketing |
Once the data is loaded into the Login/Password action, the action will display a series of dropdowns to allow you to map data from the spreadsheet to questions and fields within your survey:
The following question types can be pre-populated by the Login/Password action:
- Textbox
- Textbox List
- Essay
- Radio Button
- Checkbox(1 column per checked option)
- Dropdown Menu
- Dropdown Menu List
- Radio Button Grid (by row)
- Continuous Sum
- Star Rating Grid (by row)
- Contact group fields
- Custom group fields
Strengths: One-time setup, up to 255 separate options/questions can be pre-populated, provides duplicate protection and security.
Weaknesses: Requires a new spreadsheet when making changes.
Webhooks and Third-Party Integrations
Using Webhooks and other third-party integrations you can communicate with external databases, websites, or custom pages in order to pre-populate your survey. In almost all cases, you can also send data from the survey to populate the external databases as well! The following tutorials provide more information about third-party integration:
- Webhooks - Pre-populate with a returned URL-encoded string from a custom webpage and script.
- Salesforce Integration - Pre-populate content based on a Salesforce query with a unique Contact ID.
- Salesforce Marketing Cloud Integration - Pre-populate subscriber information based on their Subscriber ID.
- Microsoft Dynamics Integration - Pre-populate content from your Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
- Hubspot Integration - Pre-populate contact information based on their email address.
- MailChimp Integration - Pre-populate contact information based on their email address.
- SSO for Respondents - Are you already using an Identity Provider (IdP) to manage logins and access to the various systems your users need to access? Including SurveyGizmo as a Service Provider (SP) as part of your single sign-on (SSO) acts as an added security layer for your surveys. There is also the added benefit of being able to pre-populate; any data present for each user in the IdP can be automatically passed into the survey, which can then be used within the survey itself or in reporting.
Strengths: Integrates with existing information and has automatic communication.
Weaknesses: Steep learning curve and programming knowledge/resources required with Webhooks.
Query String (URL Variables)
Query Strings aka URL Variables are values that can be added to the end of the survey link that pass a name/value pair, such as "firstname=Derek."
Within your surveys, you can access and use values passed via query strings by using the URL Variable [url("xxx")] merge code, which could look like the following: [url("firstname")]*. This merge code would populate with whatever value ('Derek' in the above example) was passed in the "firstname" query string.
*When using merge codes, make sure that you use straight quotes ("") as shown above. Do not use smart/curly quotes (“”) as these will break your merge codes. If you find that your merge codes look broken, it is likely due to the use of curly quotes. Recreate the merge codes with straight quotes and this should solve the problem.
Strengths: Works without configuration in the survey, easy to implement, can be controlled outside of SurveyGizmo.
Weaknesses: Maximum of 2000 characters in the query string, can create long URLs (if not hidden in HTML), small learning curve.
— Mike.cordeiro on 07/27/2020
@Bmattern: Thank you so much for reaching out to our help page!
With linking responses to another survey. I suggest looking into using hidden values to prepopulate URL variables, that can then be used to fill in information via a URL redirect in another survey! I’ll go ahead and link documentation below on these aforementioned features:
https://help.surveygizmo.com/help/hidden-values
https://help.surveygizmo.com/help/url-variables
https://help.surveygizmo.com/help/url-redirect-send-values
Hope this helps clarify!
Mike
Technical Writer
SurveyGizmo Learning and Development
— MyClubHub on 07/22/2020
Someone asked "I was wondering if it is possible to pre-populate a survey with responses from a previous survey? For example, the respondent fills in one survey, then once that is completed it links to a separate survey which has some pre-populated fields so the respondent doesn't have to fill in the same info again." I don't see a clear answer. I'd like to know how to do this if possible.
Admin
— Bri Hillmer on 06/13/2016
@Web: Indeed! You can map the data from the Login/Password Action to a Hidden Value and then use the Merge code in the text of the question.
Here are a couple of tutorials to help you on your way:
https://help.surveygizmo.com/help/article/link/hidden-values
https://help.surveygizmo.com/help/article/link/merge-code-intro
I hope this helps!
Bri
Documentation Coordinator/Survey Sorceress
SurveyGizmo Customer Support
— Web on 06/10/2016
Is there a way to prepopulate part of the text of the question itself (rather than the answer) using data from the login/password file? For instance, I would like to use info from the login/password file as the row of a grid style question, for the question text itself, not for the answer option.
Admin
— Bri Hillmer on 03/07/2016
@AnnaH: Here are a couple of resources that cover how to set up what you describe:
http://help.surveygizmo.com/help/article/link/prepopulate-a-survey-login-password-action
http://help.surveygizmo.com/help/article/link/prepopulate-a-survey-email-campaign
You might also take a look at our Pre and Post Test Survey Tutorial:
http://help.surveygizmo.com/help/article/link/pre-post-test-survey
I hope this helps!
Bri
Documentation Coordinator/Survey Sorceress
SurveyGizmo Customer Support
— AnnaH on 03/07/2016
Thanks for this useful article. I was wondering if it is possible to pre-populate a survey with responses from a previous survey? For example, the respondent fills in one survey, then once that is completed it links to a separate survey which has some pre-populated fields so the respondent doesn't have to fill in the same info again. We won't have the info in our CRM database so not possible to pre-populate from there. Thanks!
Admin
— Bri Hillmer on 10/06/2015
@Sean.mcnally: It depends mostly on how you wish to send out your survey. If you will be using email campaigns taking advantage of the built-in fields there is the easiest method. For all other methods you'll need to build out the fields to store data.
I hope this helps!
Bri
Documentation Coordinator/Survey Sorceress
SurveyGizmo Customer Support
— Sean.mcnally on 10/06/2015
If I just wanted data from sample included in the response set is the approach you described above - with the question hidden - the best approach, or is there a better way? The data fields I want to include are things like client segment, customer value code, etc.
Admin
— Bri Hillmer on 08/11/2015
@Bin: Thank you for taking a look at our documentation! You can indeed do so! Here is a tutorial that covers how to use contact info from an email campaign in your survey:
http://help.surveygizmo.com/help/article/link/using-contact-data
I hope this helps!
Bri
Documentation Coordinator/Survey Sorceress
SurveyGizmo Customer Support
— Bin on 08/11/2015
Can we use the value stored in the contact list within the survey? For example, can we have a question like: "our record indicate that "your organization" has "100-300" employees, with the name of "your organization" and the "100-300" employees information obtained from the contact list?