Inhaltsverzeichnis

Wildcards in Mailings

In case you are sending mailings directly with SoSci Survey, you can use a couple of wildcards for personalisation purposes.

Important:Do not enter the link to the questionnaire manually; use the wildcard %link% or %link.html%.

The Most Important Wildcards

Wildcard Description Notes/Requirements
%salut% Salutation with name and title, depending on gender You can specify exactly how the salutation should look in the form. By default, the form of address is „Dear Ms. Last Name“ or „Dear Mr. Last Name“.
%link% Personalized link to the questionnaire The questionnaire can be selected below.
In the HTML version the following usage is useful:
<a href="%link%">To the questionnaire</a>
%link.html% link to the questionnaire (HTML-Version) Shows a personalized link to the questionnaire in the HTML mail. The displayed text can be customized at Link-Text. The placeholder %link% is automatically changed to %link.html% by the Create HTML from text version button.
%custom1% Custom data field No. 1
%custom2% Custom data field No. 2
%custom3% Custom data field No. 3
%custom4% Custom data field No. 4
%custom5% Custom data field No. 5

With user-defined data fields you can display any individual text in the cover letter (also multi-line). This can be information such as where the contact information comes from or which company the invitation refers to. The custom information is best imported as a separate data column in a table with contact data, but it can also be entered individually with the contacts.

Wildcard for the Personal Salutation

Some placeholders are specially designed for creating personalized salutations. If necessary, use these wildcards for the fields address women, address men and address unknown.

The salutation itself is inserted in the email with the wildcard %salut%.

Wildcard Description Notes/Requirements
%formalname% Last name of the person incl. title
%title% Title, if available
%title+% Title, if available If a title exists, a space is automatically inserted behind it
%firstname% First name, if available
%firstname+% First name, if available With this wildcard, a space is automatically added after the name if a first name is present.
%lastname% Last name, if available

Wildcard for special cases

Wildcard Description Notes/Requirements
%access% Participation code The participation code is automatically included in the %link% wildcard. The participation code can only be passed in the link to the questionnaire (variable d) and cannot be typed in manually.
%serial% Serial number (Participation code) If you work with serial numbers, you can use them directly by means of %serial%. If serial numbers have not yet been assigned to the e-mail addresses, this is done automatically when the e-mail is sent.
%subgroup% Subgroup The subgroup (if any) will be applied exactly as it was set for an entry in the panel.
%link.attr% The personalized link to the questionnaire (URL) for use in HTML mails (&amp; instead of &). This wildcard is normally used in the Link-Text field.
%link.get% GET part of the questionnaire link The part of the personalized questionnaire link that is automatically appended (after a question mark) to the Internet address of the questionnaire. Normally, the the participation code with a presented d=
%to.mail% Recipient email address
%to.mobile% Mobile phone number of the recipient
%name% Sender name
%email% E-mail address of the sender
%lock% Link to delete or block the recipient's email address
%date+XU% Date in the future Date X units (U) in the future. Allowed units are d (days), w (weeks) and m (months). The wildcard %date+7d% would e.g. output the date 7 days after sending the serial mail.
%sms.status% SMS dispatch status of the serial mail to which the current reminder mail refers (only available in reminder/follow-up mails).
%sms.datetime% Timestamp of the SMS sending status

If you want to add further information (e.g. language or a reference) in the link to the questionnaire, you can simply do this after the wildcard %link%:

Click here for the questionnaire:
%link%&r=A121&l=ger

An overview of possible entries in the questionnaire link can be found in the chapter The questionnaire link.