How can I Embed External Data into my Survey Link?

You can inject your customer's data from your CRM or database (e.g. in Excel) into your Glow survey link, e.g. unique id, segment, region, income, etc. This allows you to capture your respondent's age, gender, bank, or any other data you have without having to ask these questions in your survey and will be captured in your survey's response data as well as analysis filters and charts in Glow.

To do this:

1st protect the anonymity and PII of your respondents by coding into numbers any data you wish to embed in your survey link , e.g. in the Gender (gd) column, 1 = Male while 2 = Female.

You should ideally also create a Data Map to convert the numbers back to the original labels.

To inject your customer's data into your survey link, add a crd variable in a query string to the end of your Glow shareable survey link (https://glo.link/4horwhpx), which looks like this:

?crd_key=value OR
?crd[key]=value

For the key, you can use either the _underscore or the [square brackets] format, and can make up your own key. E.g. region could be "rgn", while bank could be "bnk". Here's a few examples.

For the value, this will be the coded data you want to insert into your survey link. If you're using a CRM to send out your emails, you should use your CRM's exact value format to pipe in the value from your CRM.

Some use squiggly brackets around the value, e.g. {UID}
Some require square brackets around the value, e.g. [BNK]
Some demand straight lines around the value, e.g. |RGN|
Some don't need anything around their values, e.g. GD

You can append more variables to your survey link by using the ampersand symbol (i.e. '&'), e.g.

&crd_key=value
&crd[key]=value

Here's a link where we've added unique id, bank, region, and gender.

The '?' and '&' symbols have been bolded for clarity.

Generate Unique Links in Excel

Within excel, you can concatenate all of the above into a single unique link for each respondent using a "concatenate" formula, e.g. for respondent "Foxtrot"

=CONCATENATE($G$2,"?crd_uid=",C7,"&crd_bnk=",D7,"&crd_rgn=",E7,"&crd_gd=",F7)

When you send out your emails, your system just needs to insert the corresponding unique survey link generated in excel above into each respondent's email.

CRM Integration

Alternatively, if you're using a CRM, e.g. Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp, Hubspot, etc. to send out your emails, then...

First, import your customer data to your CRM. Here's an example of what your CRM might look like when importing customer data. Make sure all variables have a field name, e.g. BNK, RGN, GD

Next, go to your subscriber list and check what each variable has been coded as in your CRM and the required value format (straight lines, squiggly brackets, square brackets, nothing). Here's an example of what your CRM might look like when checking your variable codes.

[right click on image and select "Magnify image" to magnify the image]

In this example CRM, our variables are [UID], [BNK|, [RGN], and [GD], and we need square brackets around these. These are the values we'll use in our survey link.

Then, create a survey link that combines all of the above into a single CRM link. Again, for the value, you should use your CRM's exact value format to successfully pipe in the value from your CRM. And again...

Some use squiggly brackets around the value, e.g. {UID}
Some require square brackets around the value, e.g. [BNK]
Some demand straight lines around the value, e.g. |RGN|
Some don't need anything around their values, e.g. GD

In this example CRM, we need square brackets around the value so here's an example of a survey link where we've added unique id, bank, region, and gender tags.

CRM Link: https://glo.link/4horwhpx?crd_uid=[UID]&crd_bnk=[BNK]&crd_rgn=[RGN]&crd_gd=[GD]

Finally, add the above survey link into your CRM email's survey button link.

Your CRM will automatically inject the corresponding values into the survey link above for each respondent in your list so the above link will actually get converted to this unique link for respondent 23:

Unique Link: https://glo.link/4horwhpx?crd_uid=[23]&crd_bnk=[3]&crd_rgn=[4]&crd_gd=[2]

Note: links should NEVER contain any spaces, e.g. "crd_bnk=ABC Bank"❌. But if you're injecting coded data, e.g. "crd_bnk=1" this shouldn't be a problem✅. Nevertheless, if somehow a blank value is injected into your survey link, our platform will automatically replace the illegal "space" with a legal "%" symbol but this is only 99.99% successful so you could have missing data for 0.01% of your responses if your embedded data has spaces.😨

CRD in Responses

Within your Response Exports, you'll find the data you piped into your survey link in the "Reporting Dimension" columns at the far right columns in your data.

CRD Filters

Within your Analysis, to filter respondents using the data you've embedded into your survey link

Go to the Analyse tab of your survey,
Go to the Filters tab to the left.
Click Create Filter
Give your filter a Label, e.g. Male
In the filter Condition, select Dimension
Within Type dropdown, select your crd key, e.g. gd
Within the Values dropdown, select your crd value(s), e.g. "1" for Males or "2" for Females.

CRD Cross Filters / Crosstabs

Once you've created your crd / CRM filters from the embedded data in your survey link, you can then add those filters into your chart and table as pre filters and cross filters. Below, we've added them as cross filters to our view.

CRD Chart

Optionally, you can even chart your crd / CRM filters separately within their own views with a few useful tricks:

Duplicate a choice question asked of all respondents
Within the choice config of the duplicate view, merge all choices into 1 single "Total" or "All" variable
Transpose your table so that Rows = Filters, and Columns = Choices, but keep Values as Column %.
Click "+Filter" to add your CRM filters to your Table Rows
Rename your View to whatever you like by...
1. clicking on the chart title
2. start typing
3. click outside title to confirm changes
Once you're happy with your new view, don't forget to save your dashboard

Glossary

CRM = Customer Relationship Management

CRD = Custom Reporting Dimension