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Creating Samples

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About Creating Samples

Samples are groups of people from the same mailing list or segment. They can be useful in pilot testing by splitting contacts into sub-groups. Samples are not visible to the entire organization.

Qtip: You must make a mailing list or segment before you can make a sample.
Qtip: This page only refers to creating contact samples in XM Directory and XM Directory Lite.

Creating a Sample

Qtip: You must have the Manage Directory permission to create segment samples.
  1. Navigate to your Directories.
    clicking the navigation menu in the top right and then Directories
  2. Select the directory where you’d like to add a segment. You may have access to just one.
    Topmost navigation bar of the screen. Clicking the name of the directory and seeing a dropdown with a list of all other directories
  3. Go to the Segments & lists tab.
    The samples section of the segments and lists tab is open
  4. Select Samples from the left.
  5. Click Create a sample.
  6. Name your sample.
    creating a sample by selecting the source mailing list and deciding how to determine the sample size
  7. Select whether you would like to sample from a mailing list or a segment.
  8. Select the mailing list you are taking a sample from. You can only select one.
  9. Choose your Sample Size. You have two options for determining the sample size:
    percentage of source or number of contacts options

    • Number of contacts: Enter the number of contacts you’d like to make up the sample. This number cannot exceed the number of contacts in your list.
    • Percentage of source: Enter the percentage of contacts from your original list you’d like to make up the sample.
      Example: If you have a list of 1,000 contacts and enter 75%, the sampling criteria you have added will be applied to all 1,000 contacts. If more than 75% of contacts meet the criteria, the list will be cut down so that only 750 contacts will receive the survey.
    Qtip: Samples must be less than 5,000,000 contacts to generate.
  10. To add special conditions contacts must meet to be in the sample, click Add Sampling Criteria.
  11. Create the condition. See the following section for additional support with Sampling Criteria.
    creating sampling criteria
  12. Click Create to complete your sample.

Sampling Criteria

Sampling criteria allow you to decide the conditions under which a contact is added to a sample. These conditions are set the same way as they are in directory filters.

You can filter samples by almost every kind of field. See Fields you Can Filter By.

Example: You want to split your mailing list into 2 samples. You have created Sample 1 which contains 50% of your mailing list. When creating Sample 2, you want to ensure that nobody from Sample 1 is included.

To achieve this, you can set the sampling criteria to be “Mailing list” > “Not in mailing list” > “The original mailing list” > “Sample 1.”  The screenshot below shows this same logic.
creating a sample by excluding members of a different sample

Projects That Can Use Samples

Qtip: The features discussed in this section are not necessarily included with every license. If you’re interested in getting access, please reach out to your Account Executive.

You can use XM Directory to build mailing lists and send invitations for several types of Qualtrics projects. However, not every Qualtrics project type is compatible with XM Directory.

XM Directory can be used to send the following:

In contrast, XM Directory cannot be used to distribute any Employee Experience (EX) projects. That means that no EX projects can be used with XM Directory, including Engagement, Pulse, 360, and more.

XM Directory contact data is completely separate from the employee / participant information saved in the Employee Directory. That means that data edited in one directory will never affect the other.

FAQs