List Survey: Passing Variables Through Survey Links – aytm Help Center

You can append data to your survey results using pass through variables in the survey link (URL). Use variables to automatically include data you already know about your respondents so that you can use it in your results. Variables can also be used to pipe data and customize the survey for a respondent.

Best Practices

Before you start to build your survey, decide what variables you want to pass through the survey link (we'll get to that later) and map them out so that you can pipe them into the survey questions.

Let's imagine you own a car dealership and you want to email your customer list. In your database, you have a customer’s vehicle make, model, and purchase type (lease vs. purchase), and you want to use this information without asking them for it in the survey. Variables passed through the URL should be named with "var" at the beginning; in this example, you would use "varmake," "var_model," and "varpurch."

For example: To target Chevy Avalanche leasers, this is what would be added to the end of your list survey URL, ?varmake=Chevy&var_model=AVALANCHE&varpurch=lease

Pipe appended data into a survey

Use pass through variables to pipe data into a survey using aytm logic. Here is an example of using aytm logic to pipe customer vehicle information into the survey questions (options for varpurch are "buy" or "lease").

Creating and previewing appended URLs

Now that you have your variables mapped and applied in piping logic, you will want to create the URL and test it out in preview mode. Click on the share survey icon and find the preview link.

Copy this link and paste it somewhere so that you can add the variables to the end of it. Using the car dealership example, the link would look like this:

https://aytm.com/{yoursurveyURL}?varmake=Chevy&var_model=AVALANCHE&varpurch=lease

Basic URL formatting

The basic format to include after your survey's URL is

?var{variable name}={variable value}

?var{first variable name}={first variable value}&var{second variable name}={second variable value}

If you have more than one variable, use "&" between them. There should be no spaces in the URL string. After you create the appended URL, paste it in your browser to check that everything is working as expected.

This is how it will appear to respondents.

Interpreting variables in the data

The variables you create by passing them through the URL will be available on your results for use in filtering, Virtual Questions, and in data exports. (See below for an example of a raw data export with the example variables.)

In addition to using pass through variables for information you know about your customers, you can also use it to track where respondents clicked to enter your List Survey, such as from social media, your own website, etc.

https://aytm.com/{yoursurveyURL}?var_source=twitter

Using your CRM to pass variables through the survey URL

The example above assumes you are manually creating survey links using variables specific to your customer segments. Although aytm does not integrate with CRM functions, if you use a CRM to distribute your survey links, you may be able to leverage existing fields/variables in your CRM to automatically append those variable values to aytm survey links included in the body of your messages.

Note: you can also append data after the survey completes using the Custom Variable Upload feature.