Creating and Configuring an Email Survey

Build a survey and send it to a list of recipients by email, one time or continuously as events occur.

Who this is for: All users, Admins

Overview

To distribute email surveys, you build the questions and design, add a list of recipients, and each one gets an email with a unique link to a branded, desktop and mobile-friendly survey page. Use it for batch sends (surveying everyone who did something last month) or for real-time, event-triggered sends via the API (surveying someone the moment they complete a return, close a ticket, or finish a purchase).

Every response flows back into your Unwrap data layer, where it's analyzed alongside your other feedback signals once the survey is connected to a View.

Prerequisites

• An active Unwrap account (Admin or Survey Admin access; both can create surveys)

• At least one View set up in your organization, if you want responses analyzed alongside your other feedback

How It Works

When the survey is active, each recipient you add receives an email containing a unique, single-use link. Opening it takes them to the survey page you've designed. Their response — including any dynamic AI follow-up answers — is processed in real time and surfaces in any View the survey is connected to.

Recipients receive a snapshot of the survey at the time they're added: if you edit questions afterward, recipients already added still see the version that existed when they were added, while new recipients see the update.

Getting Started

Step 1: Create the survey

1. Navigate to Surveys from the left navigation and click Create New Survey.

2. Enter a survey name (internal only — respondents won't see it) and an optional description, then click Create.

Step 2: Add your questions

1. On the Settings tab, add your questions. There's no hard limit on question count, but shorter surveys with AI follow-ups consistently outperform long ones.

2. Choose a question type for each: Rating (1–10), Open-Ended Text, Single Choice, Multiple Choice, Yes/No, or Matrix Table.

3. Toggle Allow AI Follow Up on open-text questions where you want it. When enabled, Unwrap asks a targeted clarifying question only if the respondent's answer is low in detail — a thorough answer moves on without one. Add a system prompt on any follow-up-enabled question to give the AI context (your company/product, topics to go deeper on, topics to avoid). The system prompt is never shown to respondents.

4. Reorder or delete questions using the six-dot drag handle or the up/down arrows on each question card.

5. Personalize question text with recipient data using {parameter_name} syntax (e.g., "How was your experience returning {product_name}?"). The parameter name must exactly match a column header in your recipient CSV, or a metadata key if you're adding recipients via API — same spelling, same capitalization.

6. Set up branching logic if relevant. Each question has a logic section (collapsed by default below the question), where you can control what happens after it's answered:

   • Branch on the answer — for Yes/No, Single Choice, and Rating questions, send respondents to different next questions depending on which answer they gave.

   • Set a fixed next question — on any question, regardless of type, choose exactly which question comes next. Use this to keep a branch going after a question that doesn't support conditional branching (Open-Ended Text, Multiple Choice, Matrix Table), or to end the survey immediately after a given question.

Step 3: Set your email subject line and send a test

1. Enter a subject line (up to 200 characters). Specific, action-oriented subject lines get better open rates than generic ones.

2. Send yourself a test email before adding real recipients — test responses aren't recorded.

Step 4: Design the respondent experience

1. Click the Survey Design tab to set your logo, background image, and layout alignment (left/center/right). See Survey Design Page for the full reference.

2. Click the Email Design tab to customize the email recipients receive, including subject, title/subtitle, and the survey link button. Leave a field blank to use its default. Use {firstName} or any recipient parameter for personalization.

Step 5: Configure Reminders (Optional)

By default, reminders are off — the Settings tab shows "Not configured — reminders will not be sent" under Email reminders. Click Change settings to send follow-up reminder emails to recipients on a schedule. You have the following options:

• Enable reminders — turn the reminder sequence on or off.

• Reminder interval — how many days to wait between the original send and each reminder (the same interval is used between the original send and reminder 1, and between each subsequent reminder).

• Max reminders — how many reminder emails to send in total, from 1 to 3. Only that many of the First/Second/Third Reminder rows are active; the rest show as Disabled.

• Reminder subject lines (optional) — a custom subject line per reminder. Leave a box blank to default to "(Reminder)" plus the survey's own email subject.

• Ignore recipients before — pick a date to exclude recipients added before midnight (your local timezone) on that date from receiving reminders. Using this prevents sending a reminder to all prior recipients. Clear the date to include all existing recipients.

Step 6: Add recipients

Choose the method that fits your use case:

• CSV upload — for one-time or batch sends. See Survey Recipients Page.

• API — for real-time, event-triggered sends, called directly by your system or via your engagement platform's webhook/workflow action. See Adding Recipients via API and Webhook-Triggered Survey Delivery.

Step 7: Connect your survey to a View

Do this before activating so every response is analyzed from the start. From the Recipients tab, click Add Survey to View and select a View, or connect from the View's Integrations tab instead. See Adding Surveys to Views.

Step 8: Activate

Toggle the survey to Active on the Settings tab. Recipients already added will receive their email within a few minutes (up to a few hours during high-volume periods); new recipients added afterward are queued the same way.

Configuration Options

Best Practices

• Send a test email before activating. It takes 30 seconds and you can't un-send a real one.

• Enable AI follow-ups on your open-text question. It's the highest-leverage setting for email surveys — a brief comment becomes a detailed conversation without adding survey length.

• Connect to a View before activating, so you see analysis from the first response instead of backfilling later (responses before the connection are stored but not analyzed until connected — see Adding Surveys to Views).

• Use the API for event-triggered delivery — purchase, return, ticket closure — rather than batching CSV uploads after the fact. Feedback collected right after an experience is more detailed and more actionable.

Limitations

• Recipients receive a snapshot of the survey at the time they're added — question edits afterward don't apply retroactively.

• Recipients cannot be removed once added.

FAQ

Q: Can I edit questions after the survey is active? A: Yes, but only new recipients added after the edit see the updated version. Recipients already added keep the version that existed when they were added.

Q: How quickly do recipients receive their survey? A: Most receive their email within a few minutes of being added to an active survey; during high-volume periods, delivery may take up to a few hours.

Q: Can I send this same survey to a new batch of recipients later (e.g., a recurring NPS)? A: Yes, but avoid re-adding the same recipient to the same survey. For recurring programs, create a new survey each time.

Q: What happens if a recipient opens their link and submits a response more than once? A: The new response overrides the old one. This is different from adding the same email address twice as a recipient, which results in two separate invitations being sent — see Survey Recipients Page.