After submitting a form, respondents need to be assured that the submission has been received and will be processed by your organization. You have several options to communicate to respondents after they submit a form:
- Success messages appear directly after they submit and are an opportunity to thank them and inform them of the next steps.
- Link respondents to an external URL to provide more information after they submit the form instead of showing them the success message.
- Confirmation emails that respondents receive if the form asks them for an email address or payment.
Admins can use the Organization defaults to configure default success messages and response emails. If they do, these are automatically in place for newly created forms. Form authors can edit and format these defaults using the Visual text editor or the HTML editor.
Customize the Success Message
Respondents see the success message immediately after they have submitted the form. The intention is to reassure them that the submission was successful, and it is good place to include a:
- Thank you message
- Receipt number
- Brief processing timeline
- Link to another webpage
To write a success message:
- Go to your form Settings > Response settings.
- Expand After respondent submits response and select Show success message from the drop-down menu.
- Use the text box to write your message. You can switch between the Visual text editor and the HTML editor to write and format the message.
- Select Save response settings.
- Save and Publish your form.
You can also use piped answers and snippets within the message or use the linking function to add a link.
Please note that some HTML may be incompatible with the Visual text editor. You can switch between the two, but some HTML may be stripped; you will see a dialogue box warning you of this, but please review the message after switching.
Link to Another Website
This option is used instead of a success message and will redirect the respondent to the specified URL upon form submission. For example, you could redirect them to a page on your corporate site detailing a timeline, next steps, or a generic thank you page.
- Go to the form Settings > Response settings.
- Expand After respondent submits response and select External URL from the drop-down menu.
- Enter the webpage URL into the URL to redirect to field.
- Choose where the redirect displays when the form is embedded, either:
- Stay within the frame when embedding the form on a page: The webpage will display within the iframe.
- Directly to the external URL: The whole page will be redirected.
- Select Save response settings.
- Save and Publish the form.
Send a Confirmation Email
Before configuring the confirmation email, you must configure the Email identity settings to add an email address and sender name for your form.
The confirmation email informs respondents that you have received their submission. You can include answer piping and snippets in it to personalize it to the respondent and their submission.
To send a confirmation email, you must first ensure that your form asks for their email address:
- In the Build tab of your form, drag and drop an Email field into your form.
- Use the gear icon to open the Email Field Settings and check Yes for Use this address when emailing users about submissions?
- Now, go to Settings > Response settings and expand Send respondent confirmation email.
- Enter the Email subject and Email body. You can pipe answers to personalize the email or quote respondent answers, and switch between the Visual and HTML editors for the Email body. Please review the body when switching between HTML and Visual, as some HTML may be incompatible with the visual editor.
- Choose if you want to include the Default response PDF and Add attachments, if you’re on an Enterprise plan and want to attach custom documents.
- Select Save response settings.
- Save and Publish your form.
If you use EngagementHQ, you can add an emoji survey question to the respondent confirmation email. When the respondent selects a survey option in their email, the online survey will open in their browser, and they can complete any remaining questions. This can help gauge sentiment and reach a wider audience. Once you have created and configured your survey with an emoji question, you can copy the survey snippet and paste it into the HTML of your Email body.
What Else?