Email Automation Fails on Duplicate Survey Entries | XM Community
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Email Automation Fails on Duplicate Survey Entries

  • July 24, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 44 views

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Hi everyone,

Hope you're doing well.

I have a survey set up as a form, which users are expected to fill out multiple times—sometimes in quick succession. Each submission is supposed to trigger a follow-up email.

Everything worked fine during my initial test, but when I tested it again with multiple submissions in quick succession, I stopped receiving the follow-up emails.

There's nothing showing in the workflow run history, but the follow-up email still isn't being delivered.

I'm wondering if this might be related to a fraud prevention mechanism—perhaps Qualtrics detects the same email address being used repeatedly in a short period and blocks the follow-up emails as a result?

Thanks :) 

Best answer by jake_dufinetz

Hi there! Yes, this could potentially be contact frequency rules or Qualtrics duplicate blocking preventing the emails from being distributed. I am going to assume that the workflow that triggers on survey submission includes either the “Send a survey via email” task (green task) or the “XM Directory” task (purple task) to distribute a survey. Here is what I recommend checking to fix this issue:

  • Include some piped text in your template that so that each distribution’s email is unique. For example you could pipe in the date/time stamp, a response ID, or some type of unique transaction ID that would only appear for that specific email distribution. Qualtrics may be blocking your emails due to sending the exact same email template to the exact same email address within 24 hours.
  • Verify in the Directory settings of the Directory that your mailing list is tied to doesn’t have any Directory-wide or mailing list contact frequency rules enabled that would prevent repeated distributions in a short time frame.
  • If you are using the “XM Directory” workflow task, I would also make sure you don’t have the checkbox selected to unsubscribe the contact from the mailing list. This would opt them out from future distributions.

Hopefully this helps!

Jake

3 replies

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  • QPN Level 3 ●●●
  • 86 replies
  • Answer
  • July 24, 2025

Hi there! Yes, this could potentially be contact frequency rules or Qualtrics duplicate blocking preventing the emails from being distributed. I am going to assume that the workflow that triggers on survey submission includes either the “Send a survey via email” task (green task) or the “XM Directory” task (purple task) to distribute a survey. Here is what I recommend checking to fix this issue:

  • Include some piped text in your template that so that each distribution’s email is unique. For example you could pipe in the date/time stamp, a response ID, or some type of unique transaction ID that would only appear for that specific email distribution. Qualtrics may be blocking your emails due to sending the exact same email template to the exact same email address within 24 hours.
  • Verify in the Directory settings of the Directory that your mailing list is tied to doesn’t have any Directory-wide or mailing list contact frequency rules enabled that would prevent repeated distributions in a short time frame.
  • If you are using the “XM Directory” workflow task, I would also make sure you don’t have the checkbox selected to unsubscribe the contact from the mailing list. This would opt them out from future distributions.

Hopefully this helps!

Jake


Sachin Nandikol
QPN Level 6 ●●●●●●
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  • QPN Level 6 ●●●●●●
  • 531 replies
  • July 25, 2025

Hello ​@parkie_0007, in De-duplication check instead of using Email, use other logics which can be unique to each customer and they try the workflow. 


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  • Author
  • Level 5 ●●●●●
  • 157 replies
  • July 25, 2025

Thanks, everyone!

I solved this by piping in the response ID and placing it at the bottom of the email, within our T&Cs copy. I also matched the colour to the background so it's hidden. Great work, team! 🚀