If you don’t use, or don’t want to use, a mass emailer like Mailchimp, you can create powerful interactive emails yourself with minimal effort. If you are marketing or promoting something, adding a survey, questionnaire, or order form to an email can be a very effective way to encourage user action. This tutorial will show you how to insert a Google Form into an email.
Large-scale email services, like Mailchimp, have their own forms that you can insert if you use their service. If you don’t use Mailchimp or other email services, you can do the same thing yourself in your own email.
Google Forms are gaining popularity because they are very powerful and well thought out. They are free to use, have fantastic designs, and compile all the results automatically for you. When it comes to marketing, it doesn’t get any easier than this!
Embed a Google Form in an Email
I’ll use Gmail as email, but you can use any email client to send the survey. You can send it embedded in the email or as a link. You can only embed the Google Form in Gmail, but you can send the link using any email client.
An easy way to fix this is to send the document directly to your Gmail address and forward it to your workgroup, Outlook, or email groups from there. You can also post the form on your social media accounts for maximum exposure.
Setting up a Google Form is very simple.
- Open your Google Drive and sign in.
- Select New at the top left.
- Select Google Form.
You should see a new window with a blank form ready to fill out. Give it a title, add your questions, and use the design tools in the small menu on the right to make it look the way you want. You can even add images and videos using the toolbar on the right side of the screen.
Select the paint palette at the top right to change the theme, add your logo as a header, and change the font style. It doesn’t take much time to customize the form to fit your brand or look exactly how you want. Then use the little eye icon to preview your form so you can see if it needs adjustments.
Once completed, select the gear icon at the top and check the box next to Collect email addresses. You can also customize other features of the form from the Settings pop-up window. You may also want to enable “View summary graphs and text responses so you can quickly see the answers people gave.” Select Save once finished.
Now select the Submit button at the top right of the main form window. This opens the Submit Form pop-up window. Here you set up the email around the form so that it looks good, contains an effective call to action, and gets people to fill it out. Be sure to check the “Include form in email” box to insert the form into the email.
All you need to do now is add the recipient’s email address and press Send. You will be asked if you want to be able to see the responses. A Google Sheet will be created in your Drive that will collect all of your form responses for you to check.
You can also receive email notifications letting you know when someone has completed the form. That notification won’t tell you what they responded, only that they responded.
Share a Google Form on social networks
In addition to embedding a Google form in an email, you can also share it through social networks. If you are marketing a business or company, you want the most exposure possible, so this is a must. It is also very simple to do.
Create your form as above, but instead of checking the “Include form in email” box, leave it blank. Then select Facebook or Twitter from the gray icons in the Submit Form box to add the form to those networks.
If you want to share it somewhere else, get the tab link inside the Submit Form box and post it everywhere you want the form to appear. It will appear simply as a link, but it will open the form on its own browser page and compile responses in the same way as email.
Google Forms fit the same mold as Google Sheets and Slides. It is simple to use but powerful in its execution. It also works seamlessly with other Google products for easy operation and allows anyone to market their business truly effectively. As long as you can create an interesting questionnaire or survey and convince people to respond, the rest is easy!
Get the link to your Google Form
Perhaps the most useful thing to know is how to get the Google Form link. This makes it possible to share or embed the document virtually anywhere.
To get the link; Follow the same instructions above to send it by email:
- Once you press the “Send” button, navigate to the “Send via” option on the screen.
- Tap the insert option () located at the top right of the options menu.
- Click Copy or use the keyboard command Ctrl + C or Cmd + C (Mac) after highlighting
- Use Ctrl + V or Cmd + V (Mac) to paste it into the content you want
Getting the link is very easy and is a great and simple way to share your Google Form.
Accessing the answers
Once you submit your Google Form, you can always log back in to check the answers. When opening the form, navigate to the top of the page with the options: ‘Questions’ and ‘Answers’. If you are using this survey or for your student’s homework, you may want to check the “Answers” regularly.
Once everyone has submitted their answers or you have reached the deadline, you will need to close the form. Following the same instructions above, simply turn off the “Accept Responses” switch (from green to gray). This will ensure that you can revisit the form at a later date, but no one will send responses once you have done so.
