In some situations, a poll conducted over email may be more practical than running a web based poll because readers can vote through their email clients without requiring a browser.
It’s as simple as replying to any other email and can be done even from mobile phones.
Turn Gmail into a Poll Software
Let’s see how you can quickly setup an opinion poll over email using only your existing Gmail account. The suggested approach will work best for polls that have a single question as in the following examples:
a. Will you buy a Macbook Tablet ? (Yes | No | Maybe).
b. Which is your favorite search engine? (Google | Yahoo | Ask | Cuil | Other).
In this example, we’ll ask a standard question “What’s your gender” with two choices - male or female.
Step 1: Compose a new email in Gmail, make the question as your subject and put the choices in the message body.
Step 2: Now convert each of the choices into hyperlinks that link to your email address but with an alias.
For instance, if your email address is hello@gmail.com, you can make the choice “Female” as an hyperlink for hello+female@gmail.com as in the image below. Repeat this for the other “male” choice.
Step 3. We are done creating the basic poll in Gmail. You can now send this email poll to a mailing list or type the addresses manually in the BCC: field but make sure you don’t exceed Gmail’s limit on sending email.
Step 4: The next step is to create Gmail filters so that email containing votes don’t clutter your main Inbox. Also, filters will save you from the hassle of manually counting the number of responses received for every choice.
A filter would look something like this:
“hello+female@gmail.com” in the To: field, apply the Label “Poll: Female” and check “Skip the Inbox”.
Create a separate filter for the “male” choice. You are now all set.
And if you are sending this poll to a very large group, consider creating a No Spam filter in Gmail to prevent any valid responses from hitting the Spam folder. Also see: SMS Polls.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/conduct-email-opinion-polls-with-gmail/4045/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
How can we use a from address of hello+stupid@labnol.org to catch those people who are not clicking on the mail link but instead hit the reply button?
Written by Peter on 07.31.08
This is possible with any email service that has the concept of labeling or search folders. The “Email address” link supports a “subject” parameter, as in:
mailto:hello@wherever.com?subject=Male
and search folders or labeling then can be used to count the responses based on “subject:” instead of “to:”.
I do recommend using more complex subjects than just “Male”… for example, “What%20Is%20Your%20Gender%20Male”. This will let you distinguish between multiple poll response sets.
To answer Peter’s question, you should craft the outgoing message’s subject such that you can search/filter for incoming messages that contain the subject, but are not the response subject, so that you don’t miss any response. I’m sure the techinique would work in Gmail; you’d create a 3rd label that is based on subject.
I doubt you want to use a different “from” address such as “hello+stupid@gmail.com”, even if Gmail will let you, as then your outgoing message will not match blacklists on services other than Gmail, and messages containing hyperlinks are often treated as unsafe/spam by mail clients.
OR…you can just use Google docs and click the send out forum button. Much quicker and it doesn’t require creating new accounts.
Written by amoose136 on 07.31.08
Peter: What about the “Reply-To” field?
Written by Lars on 07.31.08
Why don’t you just use the “submit form” option in Google Spreadsheets?
Written by Alex on 07.31.08
I just tried it, but when I click on the url, it opens a new message box. Is it possible to just have them click on the link and an email gets sent back to me.
Written by Ted on 07.31.08
I have been sending myself notes+mygmailid to store personal notes in Gmail, with filter and label.
Pretty useful.
This is a nice idea.
This method is so dumb. Especially when you might have multiple questions to ask. Setting up filters for just one question doesn’t make sense.
Lars: I’d like to, but how do I set a Reply-To: field in Googlemails web application?
Written by Peter on 08.01.08
This is too cumbersome. google spreadsheets is neat and return survey results in the form of an excel sheet. I think that is the best option available for simple surveys as of now.
Written by Aniket on 08.01.08
Much quicker and it doesn’t require creating new accounts.