Tracking Email Invitations
If you send your survey via email invitation, you can track how many people opened your invitation, clicked through to the survey, responded to your survey, or opted out of your survey in the Overview tab of the collector.
Jump to...
- Opened & Clicked Through Rates
- Invitation Tracking Setting
- Invitations Chart
- Responses Chart
- Common Questions
Opened & Clicked Through Rates
By tracking the opened and clicked through rates of your email invitations, you can identify where respondents need help and send more effective follow-up emails.
Your Opened rate is the percentage of recipients who opened the email invitation in their email client.
The opened rate helps you measure which subject lines or email delivery times entice people to open the email invitation. To improve your opened rate:
- Send reminder messages.
- Write compelling subject lines.
- Schedule invitations when people are more likely to take surveys.
Opened includes both recipients who only opened the invitation AND recipients who opened the invitation and clicked through to the survey. To find the number of people who opened the email invitation but did not click through, simply subtract the number of clicked through from the number of Opened.
Your clicked through rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked through to the survey by clicking the Begin Survey button (or clicked the survey link).
The clicked through rate helps you measure which email content inspires action—in this case, getting your recipients to click the Begin Survey button. To improve your clicked through rate:
- Make sure your content is easy to understand and concise.
- Provide a compelling reason to take the survey—explain what the survey's about, how long it will take, and how you'll act on the results.
Your click-to-open rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked through to the survey from the opened email.
Invitation Tracking Setting
Track how many people opened your invitation and clicked through to your survey in the Overview tab of the collector. You need to keep Invitation Tracking turned on—it's turned on in the collector options by default.
Invitation Tracking has two settings:
- On, show how many people opened your email invitation and clicked through to your survey
- Off, don’t show how many people opened your email invitation and clicked through to your survey
Invitations Chart
The Invitations chart tracks how recipients interact with your email invitations. This chart includes useful data like how many recipients opened the email invitation and how many recipients clicked through to your survey.
|
Label
|
Description
|
|---|---|
| Total Invitations | The total number of email invitations sent to individual email addresses in the collector. This is also the total number of recipients added to the collector. |
| Opened |
The minimum number of recipients who opened the email invitation in their email client—more people may have opened the email invitation because:
|
| Unopened | The maximum number of recipients who haven't opened the email invitation. It's possible more recipients opened it but weren't counted (see info on Opened in the row above). |
| Bounced | The number of recipients whose email invitation bounced and couldn't be delivered. |
| Clicked Through | The number of recipients who clicked through to the survey by clicking the Begin Survey button (or clicked the survey link). |
| Opted Out | Recipients who opted out from receiving surveys sent through your SurveyMonkey account. |
Responses Chart
The Responses chart tracks how recipients interact with your survey. This chart includes useful data like how many people responded to the survey, how many people completed the survey, and how many people only partially completed the survey.
|
Label
|
Description
|
|---|---|
| Total Responses | The total number of recipients who clicked through AND responded to the survey. Includes both Complete or Partial responses. Not all recipients who clicked through will respond to the survey. |
| Complete | Recipients who finished your survey—clicked the Done button at the end of the survey. Includes Complete, Disqualified, and Over Quota responses. |
| Partial | Recipients who started but didn't complete the survey—they responded to at least one survey question and clicked Next on at least one survey page, but didn't click Done on the last page of the survey. |
| Not Responded | Recipients who haven't submitted a survey response. To calculate the number of Not Responded, subtract the number of Total Responses from the number of Total Invitations. This info is also in the Recipients tab. |
Common Questions
From the Recipients tab of your Email Invitation Collector, you can see exactly which recipients have or haven't taken your survey. Use the drop-down menus to filter by:
- All Recipients
- All Responded
- Complete Responses
- Partial Responses
- Not Responded
- Opted Out
- Bounced
It's not possible to filter by Opened, Clicked Through, or Unopened.
You can also view individual responses from the Analyze Results section of your survey. Under the Individual Responses tab, you'll see the email address and response status tied to each individual response.
Recipients can opt out from your email invitations at any time.
The number of Opted Out recipients appears below the Invitations chart, separate from the total number of invitations you sent. This is because:
- Recipients who opt out may have opened the email invitation or clicked through before opting out.
- Recipients who opt out may have responded to your survey before opting out.
- Recipients may have previously opted out from your email invitations.
|
Example
|
Status
|
|---|---|
| A recipient opens the email invitation and immediately clicks the opts out link. | • Opted Out • Opened • Not Responded |
| A recipient opens the email invitation, clicks the Begin Survey button, and completes the survey. Then the recipient clicks the opt out link. | • Opted Out • Opened • Clicked Through • Complete |
| A recipient clicks the opt out link from a previous message you sent in a different collector. Then you add them to a new message and send the message. | • Opted Out • Unopened* • Not Responded |
* We don't send messages to email addresses that have previously opted out, but we still include them in your Total Invitations as Unopened and in the Recipients tab as Not Responded.
The Invitations and Responses charts only count each recipient once. No matter how many messages you send to an individual recipient through the collector, they're only counted once in the charts.
|
Example
|
Status
|
|---|---|
| You send a recipient an Invitation message, but they don't open it. Then you send them a Reminder message and they do open it. | • Opened |
| You send a recipient an Invitation message, but they don't open it. Then you send them a Reminder message and they open it and click the Begin Survey button. | • Opened • Clicked Through |
| You send a recipient an Invitation message, but they don't open it. Then you send them another Invitation message and they do open it. | • Opened |
Opened, unopened, and click-through rates are available on Advantage plans or higher—get more info on your plan. Additionally, if you turned Invitation Tracking off, you can't turn it back on once you schedule or send a message in the collector. Opened, Clicked through, and Unopened may not be available in some of your older Email Invitation Collectors.
This tracking feature was launched in June 2015. After the feature was added to your SurveyMonkey account, any new Email Invitation Collector you created from can include this tracking data. However, we can't retroactively include this data to older Email Invitation Collectors since tracking wasn't available when those messages were sent.
Even if Anonymous Responses is turned on, you can still track email invitations. This info is tied to the email invitation, not to survey results.