Surveys are a great tool to learn more about your advocates! Surveys can have an intricate set up including tracks and conditional questions, but you can also design a simple survey to gather their name, email, and a couple of questions (this doubles up as a sign up form!).
Read about the other action types and how to launch them here.
Most actions in AdvocacyAI will take 3 main steps to create.
- Action Details and Target Selection: The name and description of your action and, if applicable, selecting your targets.
- Content Creation: This can include content for emails, letters, call scripts, socials, survey questions, or staff emails.
- Widget Design and Settings: The branding and text of your widget, address verifications, custom fields, redirects, and more.
🚀 Let’s Create a Survey Action
Log into your AdvocacyAI account and navigate to the Actions tab. Click on the + New Action button and select the “Survey” action type.
🛠️ Survey Set Up
Let’s set up the basic details of your survey action:
Set Action Details
- Name: This will be the name of your action.
Since the name can be public facing, we recommend that you name it something you are comfortable with the public seeing.
- Internal Description: Describes the action for your internal team.
- Ada Drafted Content: When turned on, Ada will help you draft content based on the information you provide. This option can be enabled or disabled at any time by toggling the switch on or off.
Information for AI: Provide context for Ada about what the action is for, your goals, and any other information that will make the content draft more relevant for your organization and advocates.
- Start Date: The date when your action will start.
- End Date: An action can be ongoing or end at a specified date.
Tip: If your action is time dependent, we encourage you to set an end date so advocates cannot engage with the action after it is no longer relevant. Advocates can still be directed to sign a petition if they find the link after the date has passed.
Customize Data Options and Set Tags
- Enable VoterMatch: VoterMatch matches advocate information with the voter file and other demographic data.
When VoterMatch is enabled, Address is a required field for advocates. Read more about how VoterMatch affects Address Collection here.
- Set Action Tags: The selected tags will be added to any advocate that engages with this action. Tags can be managed in the in Advocates section.
Once you have customized the action details and data, click on the “Save Action & View Surveys” button to continue.
❓ Write Your Survey Questions
Question Types
Compatible with tracks and follow up questions.
- Single-line answer: This collects short freeform text responses from advocates.
- Multi-line answer: This collects longer freeform text responses from advocates.
- Single checkbox: This allows advocates to choose a single answer from the displayed options. An “Other” option can be enabled, which allows advocates to enter their response.
- Multiple checkbox: This allows advocates to choose multiple answers from the displayed options. An “Other” option can be enabled, which allows advocates to enter their own response.
- Yes/No: This creates a yes/no answer.
- Dropdown: This displays all options as a dropdown menu, from which the advocates can choose a single answer.
Creating Questions
- On the left section, select the question type you would like to create. Based on the question type you choose, you may have additional options:
- Answer Choices: Single Checkbox, Multiple Checkbox, and Dropdown question types let you customize the options that advocates will choose from. Click the “Add” button to add more choices. They can be reordered with the up and down arrows.
- Import From Custom Field: Single Checkbox, Multiple Checkbox, and Dropdown let you use existing custom fields as questions in your survey.
- Write the name of the question, which your advocates will see as they answer the survey.
- Click the “Create Question” button to save that question to your survey.
Creating Survey Tracks
Options for Previewing Survey Questions
As your Survey gets lengthier, you may want to collapse your view of the page. You can do so with the toggles options at the top to turn off Show Navigation and Show Answers. Turning off Show Navigation will remove the Previous Question and Next Question below each Question, while turning off Show Answers will remove the answer options for each Question.
What is a Question Track?
Question Tracks let you build dynamic surveys where supporters are shown different questions based on their response. Think of it like a choose-your-own-adventure for engagement: you can guide each person down a different path depending on their interests, background, or willingness to take action.
This makes your surveys feel more personal and relevant—and drives way more meaningful responses.
You can use Question Tracks to:
- Segment supporters by interest or identity
- Identify who’s ready to take bigger actions
- Collect better stories, insights, and data
- Trigger automations based on real-time feedback
By default, the platform creates a hidden “Opening Track” that all questions are added to (it is only visible on the backend). Once you create a custom track, you will be able to:
- Edit the name of this “Opening” default track
- Assign questions to specific tracks
How to Create Tracks
- Scroll down to the “Survey Tracks” section, then click the “+New Track” button.
- Enter the name of your new track and save it.
- You are now able to see our default “Opening” track and the one you created. You can edit the name of either track by clicking the Edit button next to them.
How to Create Conditional Follow Up Questions
Use conditional follow ups to show a different question based on how the advocate answers a previous question.
- On the left section, select the new track you created, the new question type, and write the question. When you click “Create Question”, it will be saved under the new track on the right section.
- Click the “Add Conditional Follow Up” under the parent question to connect it to your new track and:
- Select a Trigger Response: If chosen by the advocate, this is the answer that will lead them to a new track.
- Select a Track: You can choose to take the advocate to a different track or end the survey.
- As you build out additional Follow Up Questions, the triggered responses will appear below the initial question so that you can clearly see the order of your Survey:
Once you are done customizing your questions, we can finalize the action!
🎨 Widget Design and Settings
The following options let you customize the look and feel of the widget, the data you can collect from the advocate, follow up actions, and more! Read more about each section below:
Call to Action
Customize the text, colors, and buttons of your main call to action widget.
Survey Text
The survey texts appears above the survey. It should encourage the
Thank You Page
Customize the thank you message after the advocate takes action.
Customize Widget Settings and Options
The options below give you the option to ask the advocate for more data, give them flexibility on editing the content, displaying a goal for your action, or include an opt in.
- Action Points: When the advocate takes action, they will receive the amount of points specified. This can be used to measure how much engagement an advocate has had with your organization.
- Collect Address: A form that allows you to collect addresses from advocates.
- Verify Address?: As the advocate types their address, the Google API will show them verified addresses to choose from.
- Manual Address Entry?: Disables address search and lets the advocate type their address in manually.
- If VoterMatch is disabled: You have the option to collect the advocate’s Zip Code only.
- If VoterMatch is enabled: Address collection is required and cannot be turned off.
Tip: Enabling or disabling VoterMatch on your Action affects address collection in the following ways:
- Collect Business Information: Adds a Company and Title field for the advocate to fill out.
- Collect Phone Number: Add a form to collect the advocate’s phone number.
- Add Custom Fields: Select up to 2 of your existing custom fields to ask the advocate as part of this form. Custom Fields can be added and managed in the Advocates section.
- Opt-In Checkbox?: Include a custom opt in checkbox for the form. You can fully customize the text and include hyperlinks.
- Display Action Goal: To increase engagement, you can choose to display a target goal of actions. You can also customize the starting number if you do not wish to start from 0
Customize the Advocate Experience
- Add URL redirect?: Redirect the advocate to an external site after they take an action.
- Single Action Only?: Ensures the advocate can only take action once.
- Kiosk Mode: After an advocate takes action, the form will not save the advocate’s information using website cookies. Ideal if you are displaying an Action in a booth or table for multiple people to engage with.
Once you are done, you can click on the “Save & View Action Page” button to launch your Action!
⏭️ Next Steps
After you’ve launched your action, we recommend that you create an Action Landing Page (learn more here)! This is an external page that you can use to promote your action, which includes your Action Widget, in addition to text and images to support your campaign and expand on your call to action.
👋 Need More Help?
We're always here for you. Reach out at help@advocacyai.com, and we’ll get you back on track.