Create a Survey

Mailchimp surveys help you receive valuable feedback from your contacts and others who might be interested in your brand. Surveys are easy to share on the web or in Mailchimp campaigns, so people can engage with them immediately. If your survey asks for an email address, you can use it to apply tags and grow your audience.

In this article, you’ll learn how to create a survey.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• This article is about hosted surveys in Mailchimp. To learn how to add a simple poll or survey to your email content, check out Add a Simple Poll or Survey to Your Campaign.
• Your account user level must be Manager or higher to create surveys.
• Each survey is associated with 1 audience in your account. After you finalize a survey, you can't change the audience.
• Respondents who provide their email address are added to your audience as a subscribed or non-subscribed contact. Both of these contact types count towards your monthly plan limit.
• Looking for inspiration? Check out these ideas for how to use surveys.

Create a survey

When you create a survey, you choose an audience to associate it with. Responses are collected in that audience, and people who opt in are added as subscribed contacts.

To create your survey, follow these steps.

1. Click the Audience drop-down, then choose Surveys.
   
2. Click Create Survey.
   

Add content to your survey

To add content to your survey, follow these steps.

1. Click the plus icon (+) to add content to your survey.
   
2. Choose a section type based on whether you want respondents to use Radio Buttons, Checkboxes, a Range, or an Open Text box. You can also add an Introduction and ask people to provide their Email or Contact Information.
   Here are some more details about each option.
   • Introduction
     Creates an introduction to explain how respondents should use the survey via text or an embedded YouTube or Vimeo video.
   • Radio Buttons
     Creates a multiple choice question that allows only one answer. Enter an option in the text field, then click Enter or Return to add more options. Toggle on the Toggle Other Option slider to let users fill in their own answer for the last answer choice.
   • Checkboxes
     Creates a multiple choice question that allows multiple answers. Enter an option in the text field, then click Enter or Return to add more options. Toggle on the Toggle Other Option slider to let users fill in their own answer for the last answer choice.
   • Range
     Displays numbers, stars, emojis, or hearts on a scale from low to high.
   • Open Text
     Provides a text field for respondents to fill in their answers.
   • Email
     Asks respondents for their email address to identify and tag respondents, or ask them to subscribe to your emails.
   • Contact Information Asks respondents for their age, gender, first name, last name, or address. Answers will populate in corresponding merge fields for the Mailchimp contact if they provide their email or answer the survey via a campaign.
   • Content Block
     Creates a content block to add text or video in between questions.
3. Type your question in the What would you like to ask? field.
   
   If you want to include an introduction, add text or embed a video from YouTube or Vimeo to welcome respondents to the survey.
   
4. In the Section Type sidebar, select whether to require survey respondents to answer the question before they submit the survey.
   
   Auto-tagging applies tags to your contacts based on their responses. You must share your survey through a Mailchimp email campaign or automation in order for tags to apply automatically to existing contacts. New contacts will auto-tag if they join your audience via the survey. Auto-tagging doesn't apply with surveys shared outside of an email campaign or automation unless you add an Email question type to collect email addresses.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 for any other sections you want to add. Click Duplicate Question to make a copy, or click Delete Question to remove a question.

Design your survey

To design your survey, follow these steps.

1. Click Continue To Design.
   
   Here are the options you'll see.
   • Branding
     Add a logo and description.
   • Custom Messaging
     Edit the survey title, submit button label, confirmation message, closed survey message, and require response error message.
   • Styles
     Edit background and button colors.
2. After you've customized your design, click Review to continue.
   
3. Click Edit in the Survey title section to give your survey a name. The title is for internal organization and won't be visible to respondents.
   
4. Confirm your audience with the Audience drop-down. The survey must have an email field to let new contacts subscribe.
   
5. Toggle on the Immediate notifications slider to be notified of every new response.
   
6. Toggle on the Daily Summary slider to get daily email summaries of new responses to your survey.
   
7. When you're ready to publish your survey, click Continue.
   
   Nice job. You've published your survey. Now you're ready to share it.

Share your survey

Now that your survey is live, you’ll have the option to view the survey page, copy the survey URL, or share it in an email or social post.

Here are the different share options you’ll see.

• Create a new email
  Creates an email in the new builder with a Survey content block that links to your new survey. Responses are tracked if the respondent is already in your audience, or if you ask for the respondent's email.
• Add to existing email or automation
  Creates a link to add in Mailchimp email campaigns and automations. Responses are tracked if the respondent is already in your audience, or if you ask for the respondent's email. Recommended for one-off surveys or recurring surveys.
• Share a URL
  Creates a link to send any way you prefer. Responses will only be tracked if you ask for the respondent's email. Recommended for employee feedback, website feedback, order forms, chatbots, or new contacts.
• Share on Facebook
  Takes you to Facebook and creates a draft post with a link to your survey.
• Share on Twitter
  Takes you to Twitter and creates a draft tweet with a link to your survey.

View or export survey results

Every survey page has a Results section that provides an overview of survey responses.

In this section, you'll see the total number of responses from Known Contacts, Unknown Contacts, and New Contacts.

• Known Contacts
  Includes existing contacts in your audience, as well as new contacts who joined your audience when they provided their email address in your survey.
• Unknown Contacts
  Respondents who didn't provide an email address. If you didn’t include an email question in your survey, all respondents will be unknown.
• New Contacts
  Respondents who joined your audience when they provided their email address in your survey.

View responses

Survey reports are located on the Surveys page. Use the Current audience drop-down to choose which audience’s surveys you want to view. To view a detailed breakdown of survey responses, click View Report next to the survey you want to review.

Survey reports have 3 different views that can be selected from the Chart View drop-down:

• Chart View
  Shows all responses for each survey question. Response info is shown via text, graph, or chart depending on the question type. Click each answer to see who submitted it and tag those contacts.
• Table View
  Shows all responses for each survey question. Response info is shown via text.
• Individual View
  Shows how individuals responded to each survey question. Click Next response or Previous response to cycle through responses.
  

In Chart View, answered questions that use ranges, radio buttons, or checkboxes, have a Responses over time icon. Click this icon to view a graph of how your respondents answered over the last 7, 30, 90, or 365 days.

The graph for questions that use ranges show the average of responses over time.

The graph for questions that use radio buttons or checkboxes for responses show the totals for each answer over time.

Click the Download chart icon to save a file of either the total answers or the responses over time, depending on which is currently enabled.

In the Contacts sidebar of both Chart View and Individual View, you can click a specific contact to see all of their responses or delete responses. Click Tag Contacts to apply tags to all contacts who responded or only selected contacts.

Click Export results to download a CSV of survey responses or a PDF of all the charts and graphs shown on the Review your results page. Click Back to survey to return to the Survey Overview page.

View segment

If survey respondents provided their email address, you can create a segment based on signup source, and see which subscribers were added to your audience by a survey.

Unpublish or delete a survey

After you publish a survey and collect enough responses, unpublish or delete it.

Unpublish a survey

If you need to take a survey offline without deleting any responses, unpublish it at any time.

To unpublish a survey, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience.
   
2. Click Surveys.
   
3. If you have more than 1 audience, click the Current audience drop-down, then select the audience associated with your survey.
4. Click the survey that you want to unpublish.
5. In the Survey settings section, toggle off the Turn On/Off slider.
   

Unpublished surveys display a message that lets people know the survey is closed.

Delete a survey

When you delete a survey from your account, you lose all its of survey responses. We recommend you unpublish surveys you want to take offline, but keep the survey in your Mailchimp account so you can access its data.

To delete a survey, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience.
   
2. Click Surveys.
   
3. If you have more than 1 audience, click the Current audience drop-down, then select the audience you want to work with.
4. Check the box next to the survey you want to delete.
5. Click the Delete button.
   
6. In the Are you sure? pop-up modal, type DELETE, then click the Delete button.
   

Deleted surveys will display a 404 page not found message when someone visits the URL.