Overriding Duplicate Email Block | XM Community

Overriding Duplicate Email Block

  • 27 February 2018
  • 9 replies
  • 420 views

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We're trying to use Qualtrics for mid-term progress reports and end of term course evaluations. This requires the ability to include the same email address more than once in the panel, with a different Course ID field etc. One professor might teach several classes, and one student might be enrolled in several classes. We want them to receive an email for each class. The duplicate email block is forcing us to create a separate Qualtrics project for each class (think hundreds of projects, each with its own contact list), or send the links manually to the contacts that were rejected as "duplicate". It's a very labor intensive process. Is there any way to override this unnecessary feature? Thanks for your help.

9 replies

Hi Daniel,
We are facing exactly this situation with currently trying to roll out course and lecturer evaluations in our tertiary institute, like you think 800-900 courses. Have you made any headway with this?
Thanks,
Mel.
Userlevel 5
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Qualtrics blocks emails to the same recipient with the same content in the invitation as an anti-spam safeguard. If you have additional data in your contact list such as the Course ID, you can use piped text to pull it into the invitation. This will make the content of the email unique and allow it to pass the duplicate block.

I did see a thread that said you could also add a timestamp to your invitation as well. This could work if you don't have additional information tied to your contact records.

Update: The timestamp idea came from @AnneF and @Akdashboard
Details: https://qualtrics.com/community/discussion/11/getting-around-duplicate-email-setting
Userlevel 6
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@Rich_Boits_Walker is right. We use Qualtrics for course evaluations at my institution as well and send the emails with the course title in the subject line and the course ID number in the URL code for the survey. I haven't had trouble with duplicates doing it this way.
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@Mel_Unitec Not yet. We're doing it the hard way this semester.
@Rich_Boits_Walker and @VirginiaM Thanks for the insights. We use piped text to pull embedded data from the contact lists.
Here's the code from the invitation email, subsequent reminders, and page one of the survey:
You are evaluating: ${e://Field/CourseID} ${e://Field/CourseName} with Professor ${e://Field/Faculty}.
The fields are pulling successfully, but Qualtrics is still blocking duplicate email addresses.
Userlevel 6
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Hmmmm....we use anonymous link types in the email (under advanced options at the end) and use the contact triggers list to unsubscribe students who complete the surveys so they don't continue to receive reminders. Then, instead of sending a reminder (which you can't do with anonymous link emails), we send it to the whole list.
We also use two separate contacts lists--one with the courses and one with the students. We have SSO and use both contacts lists to authenticate in the survey flow (first the course, then the student).
I'm not sure if either of these would impact/help with the duplicate email issue...
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@VirginiaM Thanks! I'll have to research contact triggers and anonymous links. We don't have SSO yet... someday!
Userlevel 6
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@Daniel_McCamish ahhh, yes, not having SSO probably does change everything.

I have a solution that mostly works but needs improvement. To get around the dup email issue, I uploaded one mailing list that contained a concatenated field that joined student-ID with class-ID. That formed a unique ID for each combination of student and class. This field was labeled "ExternalDataReference" (see Creating Mailing Lists). I don't know how/why, but Qualtrics will send one email for each unique ExternalDataReference value. That means Sally will get one email with a survey link, for each class she's registered for. We don't use SSO or triggers.
Sounds OK but doesn't always work. For some reason some of the students get one email blocked, others don't. I don't know why this is. All emails should lead to an evaluation, but about 12% of emails were blocked. It is not systematic.
For example:
Bridget took 4 classes, 2 emails blocked, completed 2 evals.
Rajbir took 2 classes, 0 email blocked, completed 2 evals.
Ezekiel took 2 classes, 1 email blocked, completed 1 eval.
** Any ideas welcomed! **
Michael

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Thanks, Michael. This is fascinating! Worth some experimentation at least. I've adapted pretty well using spreadsheets to create project and file names. We're a small school, so there's only about 240 to give each semester. My biggest issue now is server speed at Qualtrics. Triggering and pulling all those reports used to be a smooth process. Not any more! Now it sometimes takes several minutes just to get the report to view. If I don't wait for it to fully display, the PDF file will be full of errors. Seriously thinking about a different vendor once our Title III grant ends.

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