How do the reminders for broadcast and transactional surveys behave?

Environment:

August 2013 and newer releases

Resolution:

Survey reminders need to be a part of your initial survey creation process because reminders are scheduled based on when the initial survey is sent. We try and send the survey reminders as close to the exact time of day that the survey was initially launched, but there can be a slight delay at times. The survey type (broadcast or transactional) also plays a role.

For broadcast surveys (with the exception of recurring broadcast surveys), you cannot add reminders after the broadcast survey is sent.

For transactional surveys, reminders will apply only to the invitation messages sent after the reminder has been added. For example, if you have a transactional survey that has been triggered to send by an external event and then you decide to add reminders, the reminders will start sending only after your next survey is triggered.

For these reasons, we recommend implementing survey reminders into your strategy from the start.

Survey reminders apply global opt-in and external suppression list options to your reminder audience if those options are selected on the Audience tab of your survey. However, even if recency and frequency of communication options are selected for the initial audience, they are not applied to the reminder audience because the scheduling and frequency options you define for each reminder take precedence over any recency and frequency options that may be selected for the initial survey audience.

The system is designed to prevent duplicates by allowing only one reminder to be sent to the same audience on the same day.

Cause:

Reminders prompt your audience to take the survey if they have forgotten about it or to finish it if they have already started but have not yet submitted it.

For broadcast and transactional surveys, you can now add up to four automatic reminder messages that can be scheduled between 1 and 365 days after your initial invitation message is sent. There are two standard reports that apply to survey reminders (Survey Reminder Statistics and Broadcast Response Timeline). You can use the audit log to track your broadcast survey reminders without needing to run a report. When reminders are sent for broadcast surveys, a new row is added to the audit log, which is available on the survey’s Summary tab.