Sending a Survey via Text Message

How It Works

The Text Message collector lets you text people with a US or UK phone number a link to take your survey. Survey takers can open the link to take your survey in any survey language on their mobile phone.

Sending texts via SurveyMonkey helps you reach a large audience quickly, avoid spam filters, and make your survey more accessible to people on mobile devices. Anytime texts are sent, credits are deducted from your team's text balance.

The Primary Admin controls which members of the team can use the Text Message collector. If someone doesn't have access, they won't see the collector in Collect Responses. If a survey with a Text Message collector is shared with someone who doesn't have access, they can see the collector in their collector list, but won't be able to send or create text messages.

Overview

2 Design your survey

2 Create a Text Message collector to send your survey

2 Survey takers open the survey link in the text message to take your survey in a mobile browser

2 Track your sent text messages and analyze your results

Create a Text Message Collector

To send your survey via Text Message:

1. Go to the Collect Responses section of your survey.
2. Choose Send a Text. If you already have a collector for your survey, select Text Message.
3. Add recipients.
4. Click Edit to identify your company name in the Message.
5. Edit the collector Options.
6. Optional: Click Test to send a test text.
7. Click Send.
8. Check the box to confirm that all SMS recipients have consented to receiving these text messages from me in accordance with applicable law, and I have identified my company in my message.
9. Click Send Text.

You can't customize the number the text is sent from.

Message

Your message needs to include your company name but can't contain links. You can add special characters, code, or emojis, but they may take up additional character space and count towards your character limit. Texts sent per recipient lets you know if 1 or 2 texts will be sent to each recipient.

If you can’t Save your message, shorten your message until you can.

Recipients will receive your custom message, the survey link, and the following opt out text, which isn’t editable:

Options

Update the collector options to control the survey taking experience or add restrictions to the survey. If your team uses a custom subdomain, it isn't supported when using the Text Message collector.

Add Recipients

Recipients need to have a US or UK phone number. There are a couple ways to add recipients to your text message:

• Type or paste phone numbers into the Send To field and hit enter. You can also add contact groups.
• Click Add Recipients to import new contacts, upload a CSV spreadsheet, import from another site, or copy and paste a list of phone numbers.

Any new phone numbers you enter or import are saved in Contacts. You can add up to 1,000 recipients per text message. After you send your text message, you won't be able to send more texts with the same collector. But you can create a new collector for the same survey to send more texts.

Import Formatting

The formatting instructions in SurveyMonkey update dynamically based on how you choose to import recipients and help make sure you don't encounter any errors.

Your recipient phone numbers are updated in the Send To field to include the US country code and recipient name, if custom data is saved in your account, and any non-numeric characters are removed. For example:

Preview and Send Your Text Message

As you update your message and options, the mobile preview on the right shows a preview of your text.

Test Your Text Message

You can send a test text to any US or UK phone number. The survey link in the test lets you preview the survey without recording any responses. Sending test messages may use up to 2 texts from your text balance.

Send Your Text Message

When you're ready, click Send. Make sure you're following our Acceptable Uses Policy and check the box to confirm that all SMS recipients have consented to receiving these text messages from me in accordance with applicable law, and I have identified my company in my message. It's your responsibility to only send surveys to people who have agreed to receive texts from you. Then you can click Send Text.

Track Recipients and Analyze Your Results

Track Responses and Recipients

See the number of texts you sent, whether any phone numbers bounced, and the number of responses you received in the Overview tab.

You can see a list of recipients added to the collector and their individual response status from the Recipients tab. Click All recipients to filter recipients. If you want to edit recipient details, you can make edits in Contacts.

Analyze Results

From the Analyze Results section of your survey, you can browse, filter, and compare responses. You can filter by collector or custom data to narrow down responses.

If your contacts include custom data, you can see it in individual responses or in responses data exports, unless anonymous responses was turned on.

Team Settings

Allow People to Send Surveys by Text Message

By default, no one on the team has access to send surveys by text message. The Primary Admin controls whether people on your team can send surveys by text message. They also choose who can send surveys by text message—their entire team or only specific people.

If only specific people are allowed to send texts, the Primary Admin or Admin needs to turn on this setting for individuals from Manage Users.

Team members with access can create Text Message collectors. If access is disabled later, the team member won't be able to send or create new Text Message collectors, but they can see their existing collectors.

Text Balance

The Text Balance is the shared number of text messages your team can send through the Text Message collector. You can see your team's Text Balance as you create your Text Message collector and in the collector Overview tab.

If you need to text your survey to more people than your Text Balance allows, reach out to your Primary Admin—they can work with their Customer Success Manager to increase the text balance.

What Survey Takers Can Do

To take a survey, people can tap the link in the text to open the survey in a mobile browser.