Polls

What a poll is

A poll is a single question with a few answers that readers pick from with one click. Put it in a newsletter and each answer becomes a button in the email. Inkwave counts the votes, and you see the results under Tools, Polls.

There are two types:

• Voting: there is no right answer. Use it to ask readers what they think.
• Trivia: one answer is correct. Use it for quizzes.

Creating a poll

Click New Poll. You can also create one while writing a newsletter (see below).

• Poll Name: for you only. Readers see the question, not the name.
• Poll Type: Voting or Trivia.
• Poll Options: type the question, an optional description and the choices. Press Enter to add another choice, up to 10. Press Backspace in an empty choice to remove it. A poll needs at least two choices.
• Poll correct answer: shown for trivia polls. Pick the right choice.
• Redirect URL: optional. A full web address, such as https://example.com/thanks, that readers are sent to after voting from an email. Leave it blank to show them the results instead.

Click Save. The note at the top of the panel says it: polls are not live until published.

Putting a poll in a newsletter

1. In the newsletter editor, type / and choose Poll.
2. Click Select Poll and pick one from the list, or choose Create new poll to make one there and then.

A poll can appear in more than one newsletter. The Appearances column shows how many newsletters it is in.

Publishing and locking

When you publish a newsletter, every poll in it is published too, and its status changes from draft to published. From then on:

• it can't be edited, so the results always match the question readers saw
• it can't be deleted

To ask a similar question again, use Duplicate from the menu on its row. The copy is a new draft named after the original with "(Copy)" added, and you can change it freely.

How readers vote

From an email: the reader clicks an answer. Their vote is counted and a page opens saying "Thanks for voting! Here are the results:", with the percentages for each answer. If the poll has a Redirect URL, the reader is sent to that page instead once their vote is counted.

Each answer link in an email belongs to the subscriber it was sent to, so the vote counts as theirs whoever clicks it. If a reader forwards your email, votes from it count as theirs.

On your website: when a newsletter is read on your site, a reader who is signed in votes with one click. Anyone else is asked for their email address first. They see the results straight after voting.

Each email address can vote once per poll. A second try shows "You've already responded to this poll."

Results

Click a poll's name, or View from its menu, to open its results page:

• Preview shows the question and choices as readers see them. On trivia polls the right answer is marked Correct.
• Results for All Newsletters & Emails shows the votes for each choice, from every newsletter the poll appears in.
• Export Results downloads a CSV file with the votes and percentage for each choice.
• Share Results copies a short text summary of the results, ready to paste anywhere.

You can also see what a reader answered on the Polls tab of their subscriber profile.

Using votes elsewhere

• Automations: the Poll Submission trigger starts an automation when a subscriber answers a poll. It only fires for people who are your subscribers, not for website visitors who typed in an email address.
• Segments: the Poll Response condition finds subscribers who answered.

Your plan

If your plan doesn't include surveys and polls, New Poll and Duplicate are turned off and you see "Your plan doesn't include new surveys and polls. Existing ones keep working." Polls you already have stay listed, editable while still drafts, and readers can keep voting. Your plan may also limit how many surveys and polls you can have together, counting live surveys and every poll; at the limit, creating or duplicating a poll is refused with a message saying how many your plan allows.

Troubleshooting

There's no Edit or Delete option: the poll is published because a newsletter containing it was published. Duplicate it to make a version you can change.

Save is greyed out or shows an error: check that the poll has a name, a question and at least two filled-in choices. Trivia polls also need a correct answer.

Readers aren't sent to my Redirect URL: the redirect only applies to votes from an email; readers voting on your website see the results in place. The address must be a full web address starting with https:// or http://. Anything else is ignored and readers see the thank-you page with the results. A reader who has already voted, or whose link no longer works, is shown a message rather than redirected.

The vote counts look different from my open counts: a reader can only vote once, and many readers open an email without voting.