Creating Customers and Contacts Using Surveys

Surveys can be used to generate contacts and customers through your web site. When an online user performs online activity engaging your website and organization (e.g. information requests, event registration, contest entry) the user must provide contact information. Survey rules can use this information to create a new contact record.

For example, creating an event registration survey deployed on your company's website will mean that every person that submits the survey becomes a contact in your Enterprise Marketing Automation database and is registered for the event.

You can also generate a contact entry survey for internal use. The survey rules are able to:

Auto-generate the contact ID
Check for duplicate contacts
Validate the contact information
Automatically launch the contact on an opportunity work plan

Creating a Survey that Creates Contacts

Surveys that generate and create customers and contacts through activity with your online survey are created using generic surveys with specific rules that will add the user as a customer in the database once they enter the required contact information. The fields and rules described below can be added to any generic survey to create a contact. To create a contact-generating survey:

Create a new generic survey. This is done by selecting the survey type of 'Generic' in the Define Survey screen. For more information on creating surveys, please see Creating New Surveys.
Note: The survey type must be 'Generic. The 'Customer' type of survey already has customer data associated with it and are used to target existing customers and not new customers. Do not use 'Customer' as the survey type.
Add fields to capture contact information in the Fields screen. Include the following fields in order to contact the customer electronically:
- First name
- Last name
- Email
- Organization
Add the following fields to contact the customer by mail:
- Phone
- Address
- City
- State
- Postal Code
- Country
For more information on adding fields to surveys, please see Adding Survey Fields.

Add other fields as necessary for the survey.
In the Rules screen add the following rules. For more information on:
1. In the Customer rule category, select Create Customer rule configured as follows:
  - In the Rule Action Arguments section, select the survey fields that capture the contact's information (e.g. 'First Name, Email Address) and associate them with the appropriate fields. For example, the field 'Email Address should be associated with CUSTOMER_EMAIL.
  - In the Returned Object Name field, type r_Org.
    Note: This is a temporary name for the organization matched or created by this rule. You will use r_Org in the next rule.
2. In the Customer rule category, select the Match Customer rule configured as follows:
  - In the Rule Action Arguments section, select the survey fields that capture the contact's information (e.g. 'First Name, Email Address) and associate them with the appropriate fields beginning with r_Org. For example, the field First Name would be associated with 'r_Org.First Name'.
  - In the Returned Object Name field, type r_Org.
    Note: This is a temporary name for the organization matched or created by this rule. You will use r_Org in the next rule.
  For more information on creating survey rules, please see Adding Rules to Surveys.
  
  The survey can be created so long as the above fields have been added.