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Adding Contacts to Email Invitations

SurveyMonkey

Adding Contacts to Email Invitations

Adding Contacts
Import Methods
Invalid Email Errors
Editing Contacts

Learn how to add contacts (recipients) to an Email Invitation so you can email people your survey.

Adding Contacts

Add Contacts

To add contacts using an import method:

Click the Add Contacts button in the upper-right corner of the message.
Choose an import method (described in more detail below).
Name the group (the email addresses will be stored in your Contacts).
Decide what you'd like to do if someone already exists in your Contacts. You can either update contact information associated with the email address with the info in your current import, or ignore import information so the info you already have for that contact stays as is.
Click Add.
Read the section below if you see any errors.

Please be sure to use individual email addresses and not a Listserv, distribution list, or email alias (since only one person from the list would be able to take the survey).

Copy & Paste Email Addresses

You can type in or copy and paste a list of email addresses directly in the Send To field. Just pop them in and hit enter.

Recipient & Message Limits

There is a limit to how many people you can send to, as well as how many messages you can send in one day: Sending, Import & Character Limits

Import Methods

Manual List (Simple Copy and Paste)
Manual List (Advanced Copy and Paste)
You can copy and paste a list of email addresses, names, and custom data using the Manual import option.

If you're using a city and state (like Portland, Oregon) this will create two fields: one for Portland, one for Oregon.

If the commas are too confusing, you can simply copy and paste the rows of your spreadsheet into the box!
Guidelines: Each email address needs to be on its own line with custom data fields separated by commas. If you don't have info for a given field, leave a blank space. You must put the email address first: Email, First Name, Last Name, Custom 1, Custom 2, etc.

Example: Here's an example list with email, first name, last name, 3 custom fields (age, gender, and favorite ice cream flavor). We don't have Jane's age, we don't have Pat's age or gender, and we don't know Marge's favorite ice cream flavor, so we'll leave those blank:

bob@email.com, Bob, Thompson, 39, male, chocolate
jane@email.com, Jane, Smith, , female, strawberry
marge@email.com, Marge, Simpson, 33, female,
pat@email.com, Pat, Lyon, , , pistachio
CSV Spreadsheet
You can create a spreadsheet with people's email, name, and c u stom data in an application like Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets, then download it as a CSV to upload into SurveyMonkey.
Guidelines: Each contact needs to be on its own row in the spreadsheet. If you don't have data for a particular contact, just leave the cell blank. Remove the header row from the spreadsheet before you import it. Put the columns in this order with the email address in the first column: Email, First Name, Last Name, Custom 1, Custom 2, etc.

Example:

View a screenshot of a properly formatted CSV file.
Email Import
- You can use Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, LinkedIn, Microsoft 365, or Outlook.com to import all your contacts. If you make changes to contacts in your email account, they're not reflected in SurveyMonkey (your SurveyMonkey account is not synced to those applications).
- To add only some contacts or to import contacts from another email provider or site, go to your email account and export the contacts you want as a CSV file, then import the file to SurveyMonkey. For instructions on how to export your contacts to a CSV, please search your email provider's help center.
- Outlook.com, the free web-based email service formerly known as Hotmail.com, differs from the Microsoft Office Outlook mail application. To import contacts from Microsoft Office Outlook, first export your contacts into a CSV file, and then import the file. Or ask your IT department if your Outlook application is powered by Microsoft 365.

Invalid Email Errors

If you see an error about invalid emails or that “something went wrong” when you try to send or schedule a message, it means you may have:

Added duplicate email addresses
Included contacts that are opted out or bounced
Imported a contact list that wasn’t formatted correctly

Duplicate Emails

You can send one invitation email per email address per collector, by default. When you Invite More and add a contact that was already sent an invitation from the collector, we automatically remove them from your contact list before sending your new message. Enterprise customers may be able to Allow duplicate invites when they choose to Invite More.

Anyone can create a new Email Invitation collector for the survey if you want someone to take a survey more than once. If you want to send someone your invitation message again, you can send them a one-off reminder.

Opted Out or Bounced Emails

You can’t send messages to people who have opted out or bounced. Ask them to opt back in if they want to take your survey. Then, create a new email invitation collector to send them the survey (the old collector will continue to list them as opted out or bounced).

You can check for opted out or bounced emails in the Recipients tab under the Sent column.

Spreadsheet and Contact Errors

If you imported or added a contact list that wasn’t formatted correctly, you won’t be able to send your message. Here are some tips to fix the errors, then try to add contacts again.

While there's a hard limit of 10,000 rows per spreadsheet, it may be helpful to break large lists down into multiple CSV files. We suggest files with fewer than 2,500 rows each and import them one at a time. Or copy and paste the rows of the spreadsheet using the Manual import option.
Delete the header row from your spreadsheet. Any formatting of the header row can cause errors.
Make sure you're using an accepted delimiter for the spreadsheet (colon, semicolon, pipe, comma, or tab), and that your character encoding is in Unicode ( UTF-8 or UTF-16).
If your spreadsheet includes Asian characters, make sure your character encoding is set to UTF-8 format.
If you're using a Mac, try saving your file as MS-DOS Comma Separated (.csv). Go to File > Save As > Format.
Review our import, sending, and character limits for more info on special characters and vanity domains.
If you're copying and pasting a list of emails using the Manual import option, make sure the email address is listed first, then you can add other info. Check out the example above.

Editing Contacts

Draft or Scheduled Emails

You can remove contacts from draft or scheduled emails. From the Overview tab, click Resume and expand your contact group in your email invitation.

Reminders & Thank Yous

When you're sending a Reminder or Thank You message, you don't upload contacts from scratch. Instead, you can choose from the people you've already invited.

Click Edit Recipients in any Reminder or Thank You message to remove recipients. You can remove up to 1,000 recipients.

Update Email Address or Custom Data

To update someone's data in the Recipients tab:

Click your username in the upper-right corner to go to your Contacts.
Find the email address, click the contact to make edits, and save.
Go back to your Email Invitation collector.
In the Recipients tab, you should see the new info. Any new messages you send will use the up-to-date info you saved in your Contacts.
Export the data from the Recipients tab to use when analyzing your results. Contact details are pulled into survey results when a recipient submits their response, so they aren't updated when you make edits in Contacts.

Sent Messages
You can delete a recipient from a sent Email Invitation. One reason you may need to do this is if a recipient requests their Right to Erasure. In this case, the account holder needs to delete all the recipient's personal and response data.

To delete a recipient from the collector:
1. Go to the Collect Responses section of your survey.
2. Open the Email Invitation collector used to send your survey.
3. Click on the Recipients tab.
4. Click recipient's email address.
5. Click Remove recipient record.
This removes the recipient from the Email Invitation collector. When you receive a Right to Erasure request, we also recommend that you:
- Delete the individual's response
- Delete the recipient's contact

Language Codes

Sending Multilingual Surveys by Email Invitation

Matrix Answers Disappear or Deselect Automatically

SurveyMonkey

Adding Contacts to Email Invitations

Adding Contacts

Add Contacts

Copy & Paste Email Addresses

Recipient & Message Limits

Import Methods

Invalid Email Errors

Duplicate Emails

Opted Out or Bounced Emails

Spreadsheet and Contact Errors

Editing Contacts

Draft or Scheduled Emails

Reminders & Thank Yous

Update Email Address or Custom Data

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