Sending Surveys and Broadcasts

Created by Michael Brander, Modified on Thu, 4 Jul at 6:17 AM by Michael Brander

Learn more about sending your SMS or WhatsApp surveys using the Impaxio platform, including scheduling surveys, creating repeated surveys, and automated survey reminders.

At Impaxio, we call each survey sent out "a wave". Each wave represents one survey round - one distinct period of time in which answers are collected from respondents.

1) Go to the "Wave" section in the survey you would like to send out
Navigate to the SMS or WhatsApp survey that your would like to send out to your contacts. Then click on the tab "Wave"

2) Create your survey wave plan
Click on the button "Create Wave Plan".

3) Customize your survey sending and scheduling
We offer a range of options to allow you to send your surveys as needed. Here's an explanation of all survey sending settings:

Message Route: A route selection is required for all survey sending. If you don't have a route yet, please contact our support team. Otherwise, select the route you want to send your surveys from.
Airtime Route: Only needs to be selected if you want to provide your respondents with airtime top-ups as an incentive for survey completion. If you need an airtime route, but don't have one yet, please contact our support team.
Schedule / Now: Choose whether you would like to send out your survey immediately ("Now") or if you would like to schedule it for later release (Schedule).
Start Wave Date: If you would like to schedule your survey for later release, click on the date field and select the date and time you would like the survey to be sent on.
Note that the date/time reflects your system time (e.g. if you are based in London, the time shown is London time).
Recurring Waves:If you would like your survey wave to be regularly repeated, click on this toggle.
- You can then select in what interval (every N days) and for how many times (number of occurrences) you would like your survey to run.
- Example 1: If you would like to run your survey every week during one year, enter as Interval every "7" days for "52" occurences. This means that your survey will be automatically sent out every week for one year and a total of 52 surveys will be sent.
- Example 2: If you would like to have a total of 5 surveys (including the first one) every one month, enter as interval every "28" days and "5" in the occurence field.

Duration: This is the time (in hours) that your survey will be open for completion.
- You will need to enter a value if you would like to close your survey automatically after the duration is passed. For example, if you would like your survey to be open for one week, type "168" hours (7 days * 24 hours).
- If you have recurring surveys, make sure that your survey is closed by the time the next survey round is released (e.g. if you send weekly surveys, make sure that your duration is less than 168 hours). This is because you can't have parallel surveys with the same contact and same survey route.
- If you plan repeated surveys for the same participants, we recommend to always set a survey duration and therefore have an automated ending to each survey!
Reminders: This is the number and interval of your survey reminders that help increasing response rates. Click on the "+" icon to add further reminders.
- Enter the time to pass for a reminder to be sent. This reminder interval in hours is counted from the moment of your last contact with a survey participant. For example, if you enter "24" hours, your survey participant will again receive the intro message in case they haven't responded to your intro message within 24 hours. If you have a second reminder with again "24 hours" as reminder interval value, a second reminder will be sent after another 24 hours, and so forth.
- For WhatsApp surveys we strongly recommend to set reminders at 24 hours (and not more). This is due to the special way that WhatsApp messaging works as you have to use pre-registered templates for all new contacts after 24 hours.
- Typically, we recommend to go with a maximum of 3 reminders, which is a good balance between efficiency and effectiveness.

Contact groups: Here you select who among your contacts will receive this survey.
- Send to some groups: To send out the survey to parts of your contact database, tick the groups you want to receive the survey. For example, you may have contacts grouped in branches of your business or organizations, and you may want to send out the survey only to some branches. In this example, all contacts in groups "Hanoi Branch" and "Kampala Branch" would receive the survey.
- Send to all contacts: If you would like to send your survey to all contacts in your project, you can leave the field "contact group" blank and instead activate the toggle "Send to all contacts".

Active Waves: In an SMS or WhatsApp survey system, only one survey per respondent and per messaging route can run at a time to ensure clarity in responses.
- Our system automatically checks for active surveys among selected respondents to avoid confusion about which survey their answers belong to. By default, the survey proceeds, but those already in an active survey won't receive the new one. Alternatively, enabling the "Cancel wave start if any number is already active in another wave" toggle ensures the survey won't launch if any number is involved in another active survey wave.
- This also explains why it is always advisable to automatically end a survey by setting its duration (see above).

4) Send out - Create Wave Plan
Once you are fine and have checked all your parameters, click on "Create Wave Plan". Once you clicke on it, your survey wave is created, which means that it is immediately sent out (if you chose send "now") or send out automatically as scheduled.