Once you've designed your survey, there are several ways to share it with customers both in and outside of your product:
Trigger via Javascript API (Web only)
Send a shareable link
The easiest way to share your survey is by creating a shareable link. This allows you to share your survey through any channel - allowing you to reach customers even when they’re not in your product.
First, go to "Trigger your survey automatically with rules" and select "Turn this off". This will stop your survey from triggering with any rules and it will disable the frequency and scheduling.
Important:
This turns off all triggers and audience rules so surveys shared via a URL can be accessed by Users, Leads, and Visitors. You'll still need to set your survey live to share it.
If you choose not to turn this off, the survey will send automatically and via the shareable link and Javascript API method. However, if you have a Fixed Audience, the shareable link and Javascript API method will only trigger the survey for 30 days after it's been set live.
Then go to "Additional ways to share your survey." Select “Link or Embed” from the sharing options and add the page URL where your survey should appear when shared.
If you get the error "Your browser does not support copying directly to the clipboard. Please use Ctrl - C to do this instead", this is because you have left the URL blank. You must enter the URL of a webpage where you have the Intercom Messenger installed to generate the link to share with your customers.
Important: Surveys can only appear on a page that has Intercom installed. To ensure the survey always appears, we recommend using URLs anyone can access (visitors, users and leads). Note that in order for responses to be associated with a user record in Intercom, the user should be signed in to your product when they take the survey.
Next, select “Copy link” and you’re ready to add your link to channels outside your product such as via an email, SMS, or social post. You can also use this shareable link in a chat, post, banner or bot message with Intercom’s in-app messages, or let teammates share it with a customer via the Help Desk to collect feedback in the moment.
Note: Surveys sent via a shareable link can be taken multiple times. Anytime a user clicks on a link to a survey (e.g. from an email), it will record as a new survey sent. If the survey responses are stored to a user attribute in Intercom, then the attribute will be updated to reflect the most recent response.
Important: Your survey needs to be set live in order for it to trigger on your chosen page. The scheduling option only works with users who are receiving the Survey based on the audience rules. They do not work with these additional ways of sharing Surveys.
Share your survey inside Intercom
Emails: Send customers who aren’t logging in anymore an email with a link to a short survey to find out why they aren’t using your product or if they would like someone to reach out. Or embed the first question directly in your email.
Push Notifications: If a customer completes a purchase via your app, send them a push notification and include a post-purchase survey link.
Banners: Want to gather product feedback? Create a banner asking your active users to provide their opinions on a new feature and link your survey.
Messenger: When a support rep receives a new feature request from a customer, have them send a link to a feedback survey to measure how well the current product offering fits the customer needs. Then share the request and survey results with your product team.
Product Tours: Add the link to a survey at the end of a product tour to gather instant customer feedback.
Tooltips: Trigger a survey from inside a Tooltip using Smart Links so that customers can find and take the survey any time they want.
Embed in an email
Embed the first question of your survey into an email to boost your response rate.
When a customer receives the email and selects an answer, the survey will open on the page you have set it to appear on and their response to the first question will be automatically stored.
Important: These methods of sharing Surveys can be used in addition to audience rules. If you share a URL to a Survey for example, the user does not have to match the audience rules in order to receive the Survey.
Follow the shareable link steps above to generate the HTML snippet that can be copied into an email.
Note: To embed your survey in an email, it must not have an intro step and the first question must be either a rating scale (NPS, Numeric rating, Star rating, Emoji rating) or a multiple choice question with 'multi-select' toggled off (large format surveys only).
Once you have copied the HTML snippet, create an email and insert "HTML":
Next, just paste the HTML code into the modal, click "Save" and your first survey question will appear in the email.
Continue drafting the email and send yourself a preview before setting it live. Check out our email marketing best practices for more inspiration.
Important: Your survey needs to be set live in order for it to trigger on your chosen page.
If you decide to make changes to the first question in your survey, remember to copy and paste the HTML snippet into your email again by following the steps above to ensure that your changes are reflected.
Tip: The HTML snippet will work in any third-party email platform you currently use provided that it supports HTML editing.
Recording answers when a Survey is embedded in an Email
When a lead/user clicks on the Survey embedded in the email, it will bring them to the URL specified to record the answer and let them complete the remaining steps in the Survey.
A Leads answer will only be associated with an existing Lead profile if they still have the same cookie from when they were created. If they don't have the same cookie, it creates an anonymous Visitor and associates the Survey responses with that Visitor.
If a User completes the Survey on a page that does not require them to log in, their answer will not be associated with their existing User profile and it will create a new Lead profile. For a User's answer to be recorded on their existing profile, you need to have the URL to complete the Survey behind your login.
If you have the Survey behind a login page and the User does not log in when they click on the Survey, their answer will not be recorded but will be seen in the click data. When viewing the click data, if the user clicked on a rating, the URL will show "response=1" for example.
Trigger via Javascript API
Another way to share your survey is via the Javascript API (Web only.)
First, go to “Additional ways to share your survey”. Then select "Custom trigger using code" from the sharing options, and click “Copy code” for the snippet of code that will be used to trigger the survey.
For a more detailed walkthrough, visit our developer docs here.
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