Link Studies
Sprig Link Survey Basics
The easiest way to get started with Sprig is through our Link studies. Link studies do not require an installation and can be sent by email, SMS, or even embedded within static websites and newsletters.
Customize Link Study
- Click on + New Study, then either Create new Survey or Browse Templates, to create a new study.
- Customize the questions by selecting the Question tab and then add or delete questions. Be sure to review the skip logic as well.
- Click on the Audience tab
- Select Shareable Link for Delivery Platform.
- Configure Response Options.
- Preview study: before launching the study, the Preview Study feature allows you to share the study with colleagues. No responses will be recorded from the preview study.
- Click Launch Survey to generate a link to the study that you may use to send to respondents.
After launching the study, in the Summary tab, you can retrieve the link at any time by clicking Share Study near the top of the page.
Embed Link Study
A popular workflow for capturing user insights is the ability to embed Sprig studies within an HTML newsletter or website. Some of the best-known newsletter communities utilize this method to measure content performance. Two of our favorites are listed below. We reference them in the following Template Collection in our Template library.
Warning
Only the first question in a study can be embedded; all other questions must be answered on a page redirect. Only multiple choice single answer, 1-5 rating scale, or NPS questions can be embedded.
- Create a Shareable Link Study.
- Copy and paste the Shareable Link Study into your newsletter, website, or SMS message.
- Send your study.
- Review Responses.
Embed Custom URLs for Response Selection
Sometimes, you'll want the newsletter subscriber or website visitor to choose a response to the first question and then ask them one or two more followups. Typically, presenting the options to choose from as the first part of the interaction helps increase response rates. To do this, after creating a Link study and depending on the question type of your first question in the study, you'll append a value to the URL that follows a pattern of ?r=value.
If the question type expects a numerical answer in a scale such as the 1-5 Rating Scale or NPS, you'll place a number for ?r=value. If the question type expects a response value of the text, such as Multiple Choice Single Select, you'll append the response answer values.
- Create a Shareable Link Study. It should look something like this
https://a.sprig.com/5636714d415548744f337e7369643a3430303033 - Create Custom URLs using a text editor to prepare your newsletter or website.
- Copy and paste the customized URLs into your newsletter, website, or SMS message.
- Send your study.
- Review Responses.
Create Custom URLs
1-5 Rating Scale
Add ?r=, followed by the rating (1-5) to the end of the link study's URL
Examples
- 1 - https://a.sprig.com/5636714d415548744f337e7369643a3430303033?r=1
- 2 - https://a.sprig.com/5636714d415548744f337e7369643a3430303033?r=2
- 3 - https://a.sprig.com/5636714d415548744f337e7369643a3430303033?r=3
- 4 - https://a.sprig.com/5636714d415548744f337e7369643a3430303033?r=4
- 5 - https://a.sprig.com/5636714d415548744f337e7369643a3430303033?r=5
NPS
Follow the same pattern described above for 1-5 Rating Scale, but the range is from 0 to 10.
Multiple Choice Single Select
For multiple-choice, single select you will also augment the URL with a ?r=, but will need to account for the response label's text values (e.g., the answers for your user to choose from should be appended to the URL at the end)
Example:
The URLs for the option above are appended with ?r=great, ?r=good and ?r=meh:
- Great - https://a.sprig.com/5636714d415548744f337e7369643a3430303033?r=great
- Good - https://a.sprig.com/5636714d415548744f337e7369643a3430303033?r=good
- Meh - https://a.sprig.com/5636714d415548744f337e7369643a3430303033?r=meh
Info
Here are some formatting guidelines when appending your response labels' text values:
- Convert to all letters to lowercase
- Replace any spaces with an underscore
- Remove periods, commas, and apostrophes
- Keep exclamation marks and question marks
Example HTML
The following shows how you might integrate the links into a web page using the previous study as an example.
Code:
<p>How would you rate this week's newsletter?</p>
<p><a href="https://a.sprig.com/5636714d415548744f337e7369643a3430303033?r=great">Great</a> |
<a href="https://a.sprig.com/5636714d415548744f337e7369643a3430303033?r=good">Good</a> |
<a href="https://a.sprig.com/5636714d415548744f337e7369643a3430303033?r=meh">Meh</a></p>
Enrich Responses for Link Study
Sometimes you might like to include extra data with your study data in addition to the question responses. For example, as Link Studies are anonymous, you may want to parse the respondent's identity as a parameter. This enables you to conduct a more sophisticated analysis that would not be possible if you just used the response data alone. These data may include characteristics (email, user id, etc.) you knew about respondents beforehand or the A/B group the respondent was assigned to in an experiment. The data might typically be stored on a 3rd party marketing platform, such as Customer.io, Iterable, Mailchimp, or ConvertKit. The data are incorporated as parameters into the URL of the link study that you would send out to prospective respondents. The process of incorporating this additional data into study responses is known as response enrichment.
Even with user attribution, shareable link surveys will not count towards a user's recontact waiting period. Only in-product surveys affect the recontact waiting period.
The steps in the process to create a link study with response enrichment are:
In Sprig:
-
Create a Sprig study.
-
Launch the study.
-
Copy the link from Sprig.
In the 3rd Party Marketing Platform:
-
Parameters representing the extra data are then added to the end of the Sprig study URL. Parameters take the form of name-value pairs with ampersand
&
separators:
https://a.sprig.com/*study_id*?param1=val1¶m2=val2¶m3=val3
Real-world example:
https://a.sprig.com/534a635666712d3751517e486e774d68594b6259?user_id=id_101&ab_test_variant=a&state=CA
Info
You can add a maximum of 25 parameters per link, and the associated variables can have a maximum length of 1000 characters. The parameter
r
is reserved for use by the Custom URLs feature,user_id
is reserved for parsing the userId to Sprig, andvisitor_id
is reserved for internal use. -
Distribute your study link through the usual means, for example, email or SMS.
In Sprig:
- Once the study has been distributed and responses received, in Sprig, the data, including the response enriched data, can be retrieved through the CSV export feature or the API. The name-value pairs are grouped under the category Custom Metadata in both the CSV file and API.
To use the API to retrieve the study responses:
- Go to Retrieve Responses
- Input the sid, or Study ID. The Study ID is a unique integer that is part of the URL when viewing a study in Sprig.
https://app.sprig.com/surveys/<Study ID>
- Set with_custom_metadata to TRUE.
- In Sprig, click Integrations > Public API > Get API Keys.
- Copy the key for the study's corresponding Environment.
- In Retrieve Responses, paste the key in the Authorization field. Don't forget to prepend the key with
Bearer
. - Click Try It.
Linking Sprig studies
You may want to send a link between one Sprig study and another. For example, you may want to use a Sprig in-product Survey to send a link to a Link study. In this case, add ?user_id={{user_id}}
to the end of the Link study URL in the Button URL field in the Web study link: see our text / URL prompt documentation.
Updated about 1 month ago