Data collection allows you to collect data from your subscribers through 2-way SMS. By creating questions, you can collect data in the SMS replies to those questions, opt audience members into campaigns, and trigger a reply message or another question. Once you have created your questions, you can set up a data collection flow and select the first question within the flow. The rest of the questions will follow based on the configuration of the first question. Data collection flows can be sent as SMS or web link. Web links are initially sent via SMS and subscribers are redirected to a web browser when the link is clicked.
To begin creating your data collection question, go to the Data Collection Questions page and click the ‘Add Data Collection Question’ button.
Data collection flows allow users to configure the question flow after creating data collection questions.
You can send the SMS Data Collection messages as an autoresponder or as a scheduled message. You can select an SMS Data Collection flow. If you select ‘Web Link’ for the SMS Text Type, the web link for the flow will appear in the SMS body. If you select ‘Question Text’ for the SMS Text Type, the question text will be added into the SMS body. You can also adjust the SMS text before submitting it without interfering with the collection process.
Subscribers will receive an SMS question in the form of an automatic response or scheduled message from your messaging campaign. Once they receive the question, they will respond back with their answers via SMS. Then you can trigger a message response or a campaign opt-in. If the data collection flow is sent as a web link, subscribers will first receive an SMS containing a link to the data collection questions. The flow will begin once the link is clicked.
When subscribers respond to an SMS data collection question, we save their answers as subscriber data under the ‘View Data’ column of the audience list data page. Note that the subscriber data is only available within the campaign that a subscriber has responded to. If a subscriber opted into multiple campaigns within the same account, their other campaigns will not receive the collected data.
You can use the collected data in future messages as dynamic merge tags within the message text to personalize your messages for each of your audience members. Also, you can use the collected email addresses to subscribe to an email campaign. Moreover, you can export the collected data and use it for your own analysis or segmentation.
