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[ Back Get Responses / Tracking & Anonymity

Using Custom Data to Store Contact Info

Custom Data lets you store extra info in Contacts about the people you invite to take your survey. When someone takes your survey via an Email Invitation or Text Message, the recipient's custom data is shown along with their responses to help you analyze your results. You can also use custom data to personalize your Email Invitation messages—a proven way to get better response rates.

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Overview

Custom data lets you store first name, last name, and six custom fields in Contacts. Since custom data isn't specific to one survey or collector, we don't recommend regularly updating custom data for specific surveys or collectors.

To view your contact's custom data:

  1. Log in to SurveyMonkey.
  2. Click your username in the upper-right corner.
  3. Select Contacts.
  4. Use the scroll bar at the bottom of the contact list to view all contact fields.

Custom data fields are labeled by default as Custom 1, Custom 2, etc.. Click Settings to edit these labels.

 

Adding & Editing Contacts with Custom Data

New Contacts

You can add an individual or multiple contacts directly to Contacts. Or, add recipients directly to an Email Invitation or Text Message collector, and they’ll be automatically added to Contacts.

Add a Single Contact

To add a new contact with custom data:

  1. From Contacts, click +Contact.
  2. Select Add a single contact.
  3. Input First Name, Last Name, Email Address, and Phone Number (phone number only displays if Text Message is enabled for your team).
  4. Check the box to Add custom data.
  5. Add up to 6 fields of custom data.
  6. (Optional): Check the box to Add to a Group. Select an existing group, or click New Group, name it, and click Add Group.
  7. Click Add Contacts.
Import Multiple Contacts

To add new contacts with custom data:

  1. From Contacts, click +Contact.
  2. Select Import Multiple Contacts.
  3. Select an import method—you can import your existing contacts directly from Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo! Mail, Apple Mail, Outlook, or LinkedIn, or import a CSV file. You can also manually add multiple contacts by typing or copy and pasting in contact info.
  4. Create a spreadsheet with your contacts' email, phone number, name, and custom data in an application like Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets, then save it as a CSV file. (Phone number only displays if Text Message is enabled for your team.)
  5. (Optional): Check the box to Add to a Group. Select an existing group, or click New Group, name it, and click Add Group.
  6. If someone already exists in your Contacts, use the dropdown to either update contact information associated with the email address with the info in your import, or ignore import information so the info you have for that contact stays as is.
  7. Click Add Contacts.

Existing Contacts

To add or edit custom data for a single existing contact, click the contact's email address in Contacts and Edit Contact.

To update multiple contacts at a time:

  1. Export your contacts as a CSV file. Click . to the right of a group under Groups and click Export contacts.
  2. Add the custom data to the CSV file. Make sure the CSV is properly formatted.
  3. Import the CSV to Contacts and make sure to select update contact information in the dropdown.
TIP! Check out the custom data character limits.

 

Using Custom Data in Email Invitations

To personalize your email invitation messages, you can Insert Custom Data tags in any message format. These tags are placeholders that are automatically replaced with your contact’s custom data when your message is sent.

To add custom data to your message:

  1. Create an Email Invitation collector.
  2. Click Edit Message.
  3. While editing your message, click where you want to insert custom data.
  4. Click the Insert Custom Data button and select a tag to insert.

If you want to personalize your subject line, type or copy and paste a custom data tag from the list below. Just make sure you don't edit these tags, including the brackets.

If a contact doesn’t have custom data, they’ll see a blank space in their message where that tag was.

Custom Data Tags

Add any of the following custom data tags to your message:

[Email]
[FirstName]
[LastName]
[CustomData1]
[CustomData2]
[CustomData3]
[CustomData4]
[CustomData5]
[CustomData6]

Example Message with Custom Data

Here’s an example of a message using custom data tags (highlighted in yellow):

Hi [FirstName],

We're planning a picnic for the [CustomData1] department and would love to get your feedback.

Please do not forward this message since it's associated with your email address: [Email]

Thanks for your participation!

- Annie

Each recipient gets the message with their own custom data in place of the custom data tags. Here’s an example of what a recipient sees (custom data is highlighted in yellow):

Hi Danny,

We're planning a picnic for the customer service department and would love to get your feedback.

Please do not forward this message since it's associated with your email address: danny@surveymonkey.com

Thanks for your participation!

- Annie

TIP! When you send a test email, custom data is pulled from a random recipient in your collector.

 

Custom Data in Analyze

When you view Individual Responses or Responses Data exports, you can see the following custom data:

  • Email address
  • First name
  • Last name
  • Custom 1

To view all Custom Data fields 1-6, you can export your results as an XLS spreadsheet.

You can apply analyze rules to show, filter, or compare survey data based on custom data to help you better understand why people answered the way they did.

If you don't see custom data in your results, it's likely because:

When using the Text Message collector, phone numbers won't be passed to Analyze Results.

 

Custom Data lets you store extra info in Contacts about the people you invite to take your survey, and include it with your survey results. You can also use custom data to personalize messages when using Email Invitation.

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