If you use tokens to identify respondents in your survey, you probably already know that e-mail invitations are best sent using the tools available on the Startquestion.com platform.
By default, invitations are sent from the Startquestion.com mail server. However, there are cases in which we can’t send an invitation to complete a survey from such an email address and it’s required to distribute the invitations via another address – e.g. belonging to a given company, like yourcompany.com, because than the invitation could be fully credible for the respondent. We are also sure that using your own e-mail address the message won’t go to the unwanted mail folder, i.e. SPAM.
In this situation, the best solution is to integrate your account into the Startqustion.com site with your organization’s e-mail account. It can be either your e-mail address or a new address – created specifically for sending out invitations to the survey.
How to enter your e-mail account settings for sending invitations
Go to „Account” tab on the right side at the very top of the screen.
Then choose „Settings” option.
In the next step, enter the „Webmail server”.
4. At this moment, the form will appear on the screen to enter all data regarding your email account.
5. The first four fields are basic data about your account. There is a high probability that you know this data. If not, contact the administrator of your mail server or, for a private account, look for help information on your portal.
6. The next fields are the addresses of servers servicing incoming and outgoing mail. If you are not a technical person, you will definitely need help here, so we recommend sending this request to the administrator of the mail server in your company.
7. When all fields have been completed click „Save”.
8. We recommend checking that all settings are correct by sending a test mail. This trial message will be sent to the email address that is used to login.
9. If you have received a test message, from now on all invitations in your account will be sent from this e-mail address – without having to select any options.
If you need to configure a Microsoft Exchange server - check our guide.
However, if you would like to configure your account with Gmail - the configuration process is described here.
How to be 100% sure that the message will not go to spam folder?
To ensure that the message will not be treated as SPAM, you must also change the configuration of the e-mail domain. So if you want to send invitations from the survey@yourcompany.com address, you must configure the domain yourcompany.com by updating the TXT/SPF record by the following value: v = spf1 …. include: spf.startquestion.com.
If the above instruction doesn’t tell you too much we recommend you to pass this information to the domain administrator who will make a proper modification in a few minutes.
Worth to remember:
The configuration of an e-mail account is similar to the configuration of an e-mail program such as Microsoft Outlook. In the Startquestion.com website, please provide the same data as in each mail client.
Once introduced, the settings apply to the sending of invitations to fill in all surveys in your account.
If you have defined cyclical reports, they will also be sent from the provided email address.
Notifications about filling out the questionnaire will be sent from the standard e-mail address: notifications@startquestion.com
Integration with your own mail server is only available in the Enterprise account.