Group Links - Shareable Survey Links

A Group Link is a unique link to the survey that can be shared. A Group Link allows multiple surveys to be completed from the one link.

Create Group Links if you don't know the individual participant details or to share the survey with a wide audience. These links can be shared on social media, websites and auto-responders, or sent via email to individuals or influencers to share with their network.

Clicking on a Group Link allows a person to register in a project either anonymously or with their personal details. As people register they become participants in the project and they are added to the list of participants in the project.

In many projects, a single Group Link will be all that is needed.

However, reports can be filtered to include or exclude surveys completed from selected Group Links. So, creating different Group Links may be useful when analyzing the survey results.

In this Article

Group Link Uses

The Group Links menu

Adding and Editing Group Links

Viewing and Sharing Group Links

Deleting Group Links

Optional URL Parameters for Deploying via Autoresponders and Mail Systems

Group Links have Multiple Uses

• Posting or embeding surveys on websites or Intranets
• Posting surveys to Social Media
• Sharing surveys via autoresponders (like Mailchimp & Aweber)
• Creating links for Influencers to share with their networks
• Give links to people to share or distribute surveys personally

Group links support three optional URL parameters. These Parameters are brought forward into the Participant List in Spark Chart.

The Group Links Menu

The Group Links menu lists all the shareable links in the project.

Adding or Editing Group Links

To create a Group Link, select "+ Add Group Link" or "Import CSV" in the top menu. Click the Edit button or the Delete button alongside a Group Link to edit or delete.

Adding Manually

Manually adding single Group Links is the most common way to create a link. Only the name is required. The other fields are optional. The name and other details are not visible to survey respondents.

Add from Contacts, Participant Lists or CSV

Creating Group Links from Contacts, Participant Lists or CSV can be useful when larger numbers Group Links are needed. For example, Group Links may be sent to Influencers. Or you may wish to send Group Links to a mail list so that those people can each share the survey to a wider audience.

Mostly, you would only do this if you want to view separate reports for each link or for collections of links.

Registration Options - Required, Optional or None

If you wish to ask the users who click the Satellite link for their details, you may wish to enable a Required or Optional registration. This will display a screen before the survey, asking them for the relevant details.

If registration is set to Required or Optional, an optional email can be sent automatically to the survey participant. The email confirms their registration and provides a link to the survey. This automatic mail can be turned off.

Viewing and Sharing the Group Links

There is a Link button alongside each Group Link.  Multiple links can be viewed by clicking the checkbox alongside multiple Group Links and then choosing Selected/Links.

There are two options when viewing Group Links.

Copy Link and Share

This will copy the survey link to the clipboard. After copying, you can then paste the link in an email, website, social media post, auto-responder and more. This single link will allow multiple participants to take the survey.

Take Survey

This will let you take the survey as if you were a normal participant. Do NOT copy the link from the browser and send to participants. The browser link will work only once. You must use the link from the Copy link button.

 Getting Multiple Group Links

Add surveys to websites (embed or with a link and button or image)

Copy the Group Link and then use it on websites. Embed the survey into a website with an iframe. Or use the link with a button or image.

Share on Social Media

To share satellites to social media accounts, select the "Social" button from the Satellite list and choose the desired social media. Alternatively, copy the link and post to Social Media manually.

Group Links can be emailed

An email address can be added to a Group Link, allowing Group Links to be emailed with the Spark Chart Mail system.

To email all Group Links, select the "Mail" button at the top of the page. To send email for selected Group Links, select the check box next to the link and then choose Mail/Selected. There is also an email icon alongside each Group Link.

The Mail Window 

The email window has two tabs - Recipients and Mail Settings.

Recipients

The Recipients window displays the satellites to be sent emails and their email addresses.

Mail Settings

In Mail Settings select the Mail template to use. The Mail subject and message may be edited without affecting the Mail Template. Alternatively, create the email directly into the subject and message settings without using a Mail Template.

It is important to add relevant "Tokens" to the email. In particular, it is imperative to add a "Survey Button" token. This token will insert a button with a the link to the survey. Without this token the survey participants will not be able to access the survey.

A field is available to enter a "Mail log Comment". This comment will be recorded and can be viewed in the Mail History log for the satellite.

Deleting Group Links

After deleting a Group Link, the link will no longer allow people to register and complete the survey.

Deleting Group Links does not delete the participants who have registered from the link or their responses. Those participants will continue to appear in the list of project participants.

Optional URL Parameters for Deploying Group Links via Autoresponders and Mail Systems

Group links support three optional URL parameters. These parameters are easy to use in mass mail outs from mail systems or Autoresponders (e.g. Mailchimp, Aweber), or embedding in websites that include user authentication. This negates the need for users to register for the survey (as they have already logged into your site).

These Parameters are brought forward into the Participant List in Spark Chart.

There are 3 parameters that can be passed to the Group Link

1. email
2. first_name
3. last_name

If you want to use this feature, the only mandatory parameter is email, the others are optional.

Examples

Let's look at some examples. As you have seen by now, a typical Group Link looks like this;

survey.sparkchart.com/abc123s/

If you don't have the registration option enabled, anyone who clicks the link will be added to your survey as an Anonymous User. Now let's look at the URL parameters;

survey.sparkchart.com/abc123s/?email=john@example.com

Anyone clicking that link will be registered into your survey with the listed email address, and this will be shown in your Participants list. Now for another example;

survey.sparkchart.com/abc123s/?email=john@example.com&first_name=John&last_name=Smith

After clicking this link, John Smith will be in your participants list.

You may ask - what happens if I have a registration screen on my Group Link and I use this option? Simple - the registration screen will be pre-filled with those values, so the participant can verify them before starting the survey.

Usage

In case you have not used URL parameters before, the process is very simple. The format of the parameters and values is;

?email=john@example.com&first_name=John&last_name=Smith

Note that before the first parameter, you must use a ? symbol, and after that, each parameter is joined using a & symbol. The order of the parameters does not matter.

Once you have worked out your parameter list, simply add it to the end of the Group link.