Poll Maker - Help

Sending your Poll via Email

If you wish to email your poll to voters and/or track which email addresses have voted you can do so directly from the poll creator. You can also use this email system to send automatic reminders and thank you emails, track who has and has not voted and track what people have voted for.

Access the email section by clicking 'Email' at the top of the 'Share' tab. You will initially be presented with 2 automatically created emails (an Invite email and a Reminder email). You can click 'Edit' to modify these or add more emails with the ' Add Email' button.

For each email you add you can choose if it is:

• an Invite to take your poll which you can send immediately, or later at your convenience.
• a Reminder to take the poll which will send automatically to all people who haven't already voted (after an amount of days that you specify).
• a Thankyou email that will send automatically immediately after a voter has voted on your poll.

Sending Emails

There are no limits to how many emails or recipients you can send to. You can click 'Add List' to upload email addresses in a list separated by comma, new line or semicolon. The file must be of the type 'txt' (Plain Text File) or 'csv' (Comma Separated Variable File) - you can export to these file types from almost every Software Package, including Microsoft Excel, Word and Outlook.

If you have over 100,000 recipients for one email, it is recommended that you upload lists of email addresses in files no larger than 100,000 email addresses per file.

Please Note: You will need to verify your email address before sending any emails (you will automatically receive an email with a verification link that you can click). In addition, our system sends out your emails in batches and automatically monitors the response and vote rate of your polls - if your response and vote rate falls below our minimum acceptable level we will review your emails and all abusive or spam emails will get your account permanently banned and your polls removed.

After you click 'Send'

After you have clicked 'send' you can close the browser window and your emails will still be sent - click 'Stop' to stop the sending of your emails. It can take a few minutes to start the sending process due to the verification and monitoring processes (to prevent SPAM) so don't be dismayed if the 'Sent' count does not start to increment immediately.

Sending via your own email service

If you want to use your own email service you easily can by copying and pasting the Email Compatible Embed Code into your email from the Embed section of the 'Share' tab. You can also add tracking codes and track who has voted and download their exact votes or view them live.

Sending Reminder Emails

Click 'Edit' to edit an email and change the 'Type' drop down to 'Reminder'. Some new settings will appear where you can set to send the reminder email to everyone who has been invited (All Invited) or to add your own custom list to send this reminder email to. You can also choose how many days later they receive the reminder. These days are counted per email address from when the original invite email was sent to each individual recipient. This means for example, that if you add a new 'Invite' email and send it to 'John Smith' 2 days after sending your original invite and your 'Reminder' email is set to 2 days later. Then 'John Smith' will recive his 'Reminder' email exactly 48 hours after he receives his invite (which will be 4 days after you sent the original invite).

If you use a 'Custom List' to send the reminder email to, you will still need to make sure those recipients have already been invited via an 'Invite' email as well. However the 'Custom List' functionality allows you to send different reminder emails to different groups of people.

Sending Thank You Emails

Click 'Edit' to edit an email and change the 'Type' drop down to 'Thank You'. You can then choose to send to 'All Invited' or a 'Custom List'

If you use a 'Custom List' to send the thank you email to, you will still need to make sure those recipients have already been invited via an 'Invite' email as well. However the 'Custom List' functionality allows you to send different thank you emails to different groups of people.

Using the email editor

Click 'Edit' to the right of an email to modify it. The email editor will appear with a toolbar that contains basic rich text editing functionality such as Bold, Italics, Underline etc... as well as the ability to add links, pictures and other multimedia.

There is also a full screen button that will expand the editing window to the full browser window size for easier email editing. Click the button again to go back to normal size. You can hover over each button icon to see a description of what it does.

There are two special buttons for adding your poll to the email (it will be added by default anyway, but in case you delete it).

• Poll Link will add the link to your poll into your email at the current point that the cursor is. In the editor the link will appear as a blue box that says 'link' and it can be deleted just like normal text. At the time of sending the system will change the blue 'link' box into a link to your poll that contains tracking codes to track the recipients vote.
• Embed will add a blue box that says 'poll' at the current point that the cursor is. At the time of sending the system will change this blue 'poll' box into an email compatible version of your poll itself that contains tracking codes to track the respondents vote. Your recipients can then just click the option they wish to vote for and their vote will be recorded. The poll is formatted as compatible HTML which works in all current email software and almost all older software too.

Reporting on email voters

To find out what people have voted for you can Download your results to Excel, CSV or HTML. The normal results will contain the email address of your voters.

In the Export dialog you can change the results drop down to Email Report to see a list of all 'Invite' recepients with the following columns:

• Status: If they have received the invite, visited the poll or voted.
• Visited Poll: The date that they first visited the poll.
• Vote Count: How many times they have attempted to vote on your poll (multiple votes will be filtered based on your Security settings).
• First Vote: The date that they first voted on your poll.

You can also see the email addresses of voters in your live individual voters reports.

Using the email text field as well

You can also easily combine emailing your voters with publishing a link and asking voters for their email address. If you add an email question to your poll it will automatically be hidden and recorded when someone votes via an email (so they won't need to enter their email address).