How to Distribute Your Survey via SMS

Sending invitations by SMS is simple for you and convenient for participants. If you have cell phone numbers from countries like US, UK, Canada, or Australia, your questionnaires can be in the hands of your audience in minutes – and their responses can be in your account!

Navigate to

Send SMS Invite
Send SMS and Email Invitations

Send SMS Invite

Here’s how:

Select your project, then click on the Publish icon.
Select SMS invitation under Offline/SMS.
Under the source of Mobile Numbers, choose your preferred source.
- Type Manually: Type or copy/paste mobile numbers directly followed by the country code, as in the following example: +1-1234567890. This option is ideal if you are sending invitations to a small set of mobile numbers. Up to 100 mobile numbers may be entered at once, separated by commas or line breaks.
- From a File: Upload a list of contacts in .txt, .csv, .xls, or .xlsx format. The file may not exceed 9 MB and it must include mobile numbers in the first column.
- From a List: Select a List you have built under Contact Lists. Once this option is selected, choose which addresses should be sent the invitation:
  - Entire List: All mobile numbers will receive the invitation.
  - Selected Email Addresses: Only those identified will receive the invitation.
  - Draw a Random Sample: Identify the number of invitations to be sent and the system will select the appropriate count of mobile numbers.
Under Additional Publishing Options, you may choose to select more advanced features:
- Touch Rules: This makes it easy to avoid over-surveying by filtering out those who have recently participated, eliminating survey fatigue.
- Pre-populate Survey: This option will be pre-selected if the pre-population is applied on one or more questions in your survey. You may select the values to be pre-filled for these question on this step.
If Pre-Population is used in your project, the distribution wizard will include a relevant step. Depending on your distribution method, responses may be entered manually or by mapping columns.
Learn more about pre-populated invitations.
Any answer mismatches or blanks can be downloaded and reviewed in the next step.
Next, customize your message.
1. SMS content: You can customize the SMS message here.
  The survey link code “<>” can be moved but cannot be modified. In the invitation, this code will automatically be replaced by the survey link.
2. Sender Identity: This is a mandatory field that must include the name of the sender, which will be shown after the SMS message.
3. Unsubscribe message: This is a non-editable field and includes unsubscribe instructions that will be shown at the end of the SMS invitation.
4. You may choose to set this as the default message for all future invitations and reminders.
5. The SMS will include your content, sender identity, and the default unsubscribe prompt.
Proceed by clicking Continue.
You may choose to Send Now or Set up a Recurring schedule for your Project.
Options Include:
- Daily: Identify the time for invitations to be sent every day.
- Weekly: Choose both the time and day of the week for weekly delivery. Click on the plus icon to add more days.
- Monthly: Choose both the date and time for monthly delivery. Click on the plus icon to add more dates.
- Yearly: Choose the month, date, and time for annual delivery. Click on the plus icon to add more.
- Custom: Set custom rules with a combination of any of the above options.
Schedule the delivery Start Date and End Date.
If you want to send invitations to a specific subset of contacts, enable Contact Selection Criteria. You have two methods of filtering contacts using this option:
- Send only to contacts (Added/Updated/Added or Updated) since last distribution: Will send invites only to the contacts which are newly added or updated or added/updated. It won’t send invites to those records which are unchanged from the last distribution.
- Send only to contacts with the current date in selected column(s): Will send invites only when the dates added in the mapped columns matches the distribution date.
Click Send Now

Sending SMS and Email Invitations

To encourage participation, you may choose to send a contact both an email and an SMS invitation simultaneously. In order to use this option, you’ll need both a mobile number and an email address for each contact. Sending through this method delivers the same single-use link in both invitations, so participants can only respond through either the SMS or email invitation.

Here’s how:

Select your project, then click on the Publish icon.
Under the Email column, select Single-Use Link.
Under Select Email Message, review and select the message created under Email Templates.
Within Source of Email Addresses, choose ‘From a List’.
Next, choose a list that includes phone numbers associated with every email addresses.
Under Additional Publishing Options, enable SMS Invite.
Continue through the wizard to the SMS step.
Map the column of phone numbers to receive SMS invitations.
Customize your message.
The survey link code “<<SMS URL>>” can be moved but cannot be modified. In the invitation, this code will automatically be replaced by the survey link.
The SMS will include your content, sender identity, and the default unsubscribe prompt.
Totals may vary based on character count. A total SMS character count includes the content, sender identity, and unsubscribe message. For a message up to 160 characters, 1 SMS will be deducted from the account. For messages that exceed 160 characters, 2 SMS will be deducted. For longer messages, 1 SMS will be deducted for every 160 characters.
Click on Preview to see how the message will appear to your participants.
You may choose to set this as the default message for all future invitations and reminders.
Continue and complete the wizard to send your invite.
The system does not allow customization of automatic SMS reminder messages. By default, the SMS invitation message will be sent for SMS reminders.