We have been using Qualtrics for years and have noticed an alarming trend in sending out surveys to our customer's email lists. Aside from the normal bounce rates, we are generating less than 2% response rates across several studies. We initially feared there was an issue with the outgoing email invitation (going directly to recipient's junk folder) and have gone through all of the recommended changes that Qualtrics suggests, such as changing the FROM domain to another Qualtrics' domain, etc. We cannot seem to figure out what is going on and our IT group does not believe it is an internal problem.
Aside from the steps recommended in the support pages (words to avoid, html tags, customizing the FROM address, etc.) are there any others out there who have had to go "outside the box" to solve this problem? In several conversations with Qualtrics, they insist that there is no known problem on their end, but we are getting frustrated. Can someone offer their experience, tips, tricks, etc. that we may not have thought about?
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I can say that I have seen an increase in Qualtrics emails hitting spam/junk folders. One solution is to work with your IT department to setup an SPF record so that you don't send from ANY Qualtrics addresses, but instead from your own domain.
Details here: https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/distributions-module/email-distribution/using-a-custom-from-address/#SettingUpAnSPFRecord
Details here: https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/distributions-module/email-distribution/using-a-custom-from-address/#SettingUpAnSPFRecord
Also, if you've your customer phone number then you can try distribution the survey through SMS... This will help you to know whether the customer is willing to participate in the survey or not.
Qualtrics provide multiple ways of SMS distribution which you can check here:
https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/distributions-module/mobile-distributions/sms-surveys/
Qualtrics provide multiple ways of SMS distribution which you can check here:
https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/distributions-module/mobile-distributions/sms-surveys/
I'm curious to know whether the response rate has been declining over time, or if you've always seen around a 2% response rate? I'm assuming the former, which I can understand would be concerning. I'm not on the IT side of things so I can't appropriately comment on that side of things. If, however, it's just a problem of low response rate in general, I'd be happy to share some best practices/tips on boosting response rate that I've encountered over the years I've been in marketing research. Good luck!
There are some general steps I go through when invites aren't getting clicked. In most cases it is usually either the content of the invitation or a bad contact list. It sounds like you've done your due diligence here though, so here are some other things I would consider next.
Email gets flagged as spam based on complicated and changing rules, but in general you are looking at your spam score and the reputation of the sending IP address. Qualtrics has a team that monitors the reputation of their sending IP addresses, so I would take one last look at content before taking one of the next steps.
To verify you don't have a spam score problem you can acid test your email content. There are a number of tools available to spam test your invitation content as well as verify the content across multiple email clients (many offer a free trial if you just want a quick check).
Consider setting up an SPF record as @AnthonyR suggests above. This setup gives permission to the Qualtrics servers to send using you, or your companies, domain. Your invitations will still be sent from Qualtrics, but they will be masked as if they came from your domain.
Consider setting up an SMTP relay. This setup transfers emails from the Qualtrics email server to you, or your companies, email server. You will still send through the normal process within the platform, but the invitations will come from your email system. The setup is straightforward, but there are some things your IT department will want to consider before putting this in place (can your system handle the volume, does your system have a good reputation with ISPs, etc.).
SPF record setup: https://qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/distributions-module/email-distribution/using-a-custom-from-address/#SettingUpAnSPFRecord
SMTP relay setup: https://qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/distributions-module/email-distribution/using-a-custom-from-address/#SettingUpAnSMTPRelay
Email gets flagged as spam based on complicated and changing rules, but in general you are looking at your spam score and the reputation of the sending IP address. Qualtrics has a team that monitors the reputation of their sending IP addresses, so I would take one last look at content before taking one of the next steps.
To verify you don't have a spam score problem you can acid test your email content. There are a number of tools available to spam test your invitation content as well as verify the content across multiple email clients (many offer a free trial if you just want a quick check).
Consider setting up an SPF record as @AnthonyR suggests above. This setup gives permission to the Qualtrics servers to send using you, or your companies, domain. Your invitations will still be sent from Qualtrics, but they will be masked as if they came from your domain.
Consider setting up an SMTP relay. This setup transfers emails from the Qualtrics email server to you, or your companies, email server. You will still send through the normal process within the platform, but the invitations will come from your email system. The setup is straightforward, but there are some things your IT department will want to consider before putting this in place (can your system handle the volume, does your system have a good reputation with ISPs, etc.).
SPF record setup: https://qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/distributions-module/email-distribution/using-a-custom-from-address/#SettingUpAnSPFRecord
SMTP relay setup: https://qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/distributions-module/email-distribution/using-a-custom-from-address/#SettingUpAnSMTPRelay
Hi, there - Did you ever figure out what the problem was? I am having a similar issue. I went from a 40% response rate in 2017, to an 8% response rate in 2018. Clients are reporting that they never even received the survey. Not good. Since then I set up an SPF record, which helped some surveys to get to a client's junk folder, but that is it. Currently trying to set up an SMTP relay to see if that helps. After that though...I am out of ideas.
Also, all my recipients know this email is coming and know me. Plus I have a very high message health score for the email I am using. The only thing bringing that down is the fact that it is an HTML email.
Also, all my recipients know this email is coming and know me. Plus I have a very high message health score for the email I am using. The only thing bringing that down is the fact that it is an HTML email.
Hello there!
We are currently having the same issue. Did setting up the SMTP work for you?
We are currently having the same issue. Did setting up the SMTP work for you?
Have you resolved this? We have had a significant (more than 50%) decline in our response rates since April across all of our surveys.
Hi guys, same thing here. We are receiving now almost a half less responses compared with what we had with our previous tool.
The number of bounced emails is ridiculous, as well as the number of survey invites ending in Spam folder. We have whitelisted the IPs, have the SPF record. SMTP is not an option for our company, though.
Anyone got any solution?
The number of bounced emails is ridiculous, as well as the number of survey invites ending in Spam folder. We have whitelisted the IPs, have the SPF record. SMTP is not an option for our company, though.
Anyone got any solution?
To avoid emails being marked as duplicates add some unique information as comment in email text.
We are having the same issues - we recently joined Qualtrics, and we are experiencing a higher than normal email undeliverable and bounce rates. We set up the SPF record. I asked our IT dept about the SMTP relay setup - they said no b/c that would allow Qualtrics to access our internal systems. Our IT dept said we should talk to our customers' email admins to find out if their servers are blocking our emails and find out why -- but that's asking a lot from our customers. Reading this thread makes me feel better that we're not alone?
Qualtrics suggested this spam testing site for your emails: https://spamcheck.postmarkapp.com/.
They said to get the full message, follow instructions here: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/29436?visit_id=636737173142894617-1899137928&rd=1
They said to get the full message, follow instructions here: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/29436?visit_id=636737173142894617-1899137928&rd=1
For us the issue was that there was no MX record, thus emails were bounced at a high rate
Hi all! If you have not yet already, be sure to check out this page called 'Avoid Being Marked as Spam'. If anyone continues to have issues, be sure to reach out to our Support Team!
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I am having the same issue. Some people (me included, as I was also on the distribution list) are not getting the email generated by Qualtrics. It doesn't even appear as spam--they don't get the email invitation AT ALL. Qualtrics indicates that all the emails have been sent, and correctly indicates if something has bounced. But there are a LOT of email invitations that simply go missing, and you don't know who is not responding due to attrition/other, and who never got the invitation in the first place.
This has some disastrous consequences for several of my active projects.
This has some disastrous consequences for several of my active projects.
@Em_Pijl, I strongly advise you to contact Qualtrics support team and insist they investigate the issue by the email deliverability team .
We were directed a gazillion times to the support page about how to avoid spam and knew it by heart already. We opened a number of tickets with the same response. We had hundreds of bounced emails and one support "specialist" said "I do not see any bounced emails under the survey" (direct quote), which made us laugh and cry at the same time.
So good luck, you will need it...
We were directed a gazillion times to the support page about how to avoid spam and knew it by heart already. We opened a number of tickets with the same response. We had hundreds of bounced emails and one support "specialist" said "I do not see any bounced emails under the survey" (direct quote), which made us laugh and cry at the same time.
So good luck, you will need it...
Hello Everyone! As some of you already mentioned, reaching out to our Support Team will be your best bet moving forward! We do want to mention that we checked in with our team already and have been informed that there has not been any significant drop in distributions deliverability.
However, every case can be different and our team will be able to dig into the specifics of each of yours! When you do reach out, be sure to provide the representative with the name of your survey distribution, the name of the survey itself, as well as the time in which the survey was sent out so that they can identify the affected distribution. This will allow them to help you out as quickly and efficiently as possible!
However, every case can be different and our team will be able to dig into the specifics of each of yours! When you do reach out, be sure to provide the representative with the name of your survey distribution, the name of the survey itself, as well as the time in which the survey was sent out so that they can identify the affected distribution. This will allow them to help you out as quickly and efficiently as possible!
Late to the party here.
We just started using Qualtrics a few weeks ago and the ability to customise 'From' address and SMTP relay is one of the biggest reasons why we chose to go with Qualtrics. It's great to have good survey question types and fancy analytics, but if the survey never reached your audience, it's useless. We will have our first 'real' survey in a month or so. So hopefully Spam won't be too big of an issue.
We are a consulting firm and we perform survey on behalf of our clients. Therefore, we would need to configure multiple 'From' domains of our clients. Which is fine.
However, it seems that once an SMTP relay has been configured, we can't change it till we call support. Would be nice if we can choose which SMTP relay to use based on projects (which ties to each of our clients).
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