How to Personalize a Collector Link

Included in this article:

Personalized Collector Links

Adding Custom Data

Customizing Collector URLs

Why personalized collector links are better

To collect responses with Vocal Video, you share public links to your collectors with your target respondents. You can do this via email, SMS, social media, or on the web.

When you use a standard collector link, respondents will be asked to enter their name, email address, and, if the collector calls for it, their job title and company name.

Thing is, sometimes people leave before completing this step. Amazingly, we've found that a meaningful fraction of respondents are more willing to record a video response than to enter their name & email, even though we make clear that this information is not used for any marketing purposes. Some people just sort of irrationally freak out when asked to enter their name & email in a form.

🤯, right?!

That's why we ask for respondent details after they submit their videos – you get more responses this way! And we've often found that even if a respondent doesn't identify themselves, you may recognize them, which lets you properly attribute them when you publish their responses.

But, there's a better way: personalized collector links.

With personalized links, respondent info is encoded in the link you share with them. So, when respondents see the attribution page after submitting their videos, their information is pre-filled. They can fix it if there are any errors, or customize how they want to be attributed in published videos, but they don't have to enter anything for you to know who the response is from. Also, if they abandon your collector after answering some of your questions, you'll still know who the response came from.

This improves your data quality, makes it easier to follow up with incentives, and also improves your respondent's experience. Your respondent gets a more positive interaction with your brand, and it makes it easier to get more videos from the same person in the future.

Sometimes it's just not practical to use personalized collector links, but when you can, we highly recommend it.

Create and Use Personalized Links

There are multiple ways to create and use personalized links: send emails from Vocal Video (to one individual or by uploading an email list), getting a personalized link for an individual & getting personalized links in bulk.

Send Emails from your Vocal Video account

See here for how to send emails with your branding directly from Vocal Video from the Collector Builder. Information will be prefilled on the Attribution page.

Create a Personalized Link for a Respondent (to send yourself)

Sometimes you have a few particular respondents in mind for a collector – they could be some of your best customers, strongest advocates, people that just gave you a 9 or 10 NPS rating. Whatever the reason, sometimes you invite people to respond on an individual basis because a truly personal message always makes someone more likely to respond.

When you're doing these one-off invitations (we like to call them "rifle shots"), you can use our personalized link builder to generate personalized links one at time. Access the Collector Editor, click Get Responses > Get a link to share > Create a personalized link for a respondent.

Enter the recipient's name & email (& optionally job title & company name) and we'll generate a personalized link you can copy & paste into an email.

Create Personalized Links in Bulk (to send yourself)

If you want to send invitations to respondents in bulk, or in an automated fashion (say, after someone gives you a positive NPS rating, or 2 weeks after a retail/e-commerce purchase), you'll need a programmatic way to generate personalized links in your CRM, marketing automation system, or whatever platform you'll be using to invite respondents to participate. Click on Create links for your CRM / marketing automation platform.

To save you some time, we've generated the custom URL formats for several of the most popular marketing automation platforms out there. You can plug this code into your links in your email templates and fire away. If you don't see yours in the list, see the bottom for how to do it yourself.

(Be sure to substitute your collector's base URL – the part between /c/ and the '?' – and as always with email campaigns, run a test!)

Constant Contact

https://vocalvideo.com/c/your-collector-base-url?name=[[firstName]]&email=[[emailAddress]]&job_title=[[jobTitle]]&company_name=[[companyName]]

ConvertKit

https://vocalvideo.com/c/your-collector-base-url?name={{ subscriber.first_name | url_encode }}&email={{ subscriber.email_address | url_encode }}

Note: Job title and company name aren't standard Convertkit fields, so those have been omitted. If you have this data in custom fields, you can include it via the optional job_title and company_name parameters in the URL. Be sure to use the url_encode filter.

Mailchimp

https://vocalvideo.com/c/your-collector-base-url?name=*|URL:FNAME|*&email=*|URL:EMAIL|*

Note: Job title and company name aren't standard Mailchimp fields, so those have been omitted. If you have this data in custom Mailchimp fields, you can include it via the optional job_title and company_name parameters in the URL.

HubSpot

https://vocalvideo.com/c/YOUR-COLLECTOR-URL-HERE?name={{personalization_token('contact.firstname','Your')}}%20{{personalization_token('contact.lastname','Name')}}&email={{personalization_token('contact.email', 'youraddress@email.com')}}&job_title={{personalization_token('contact.jobtitle', 'Job Title')}}&company_name={{personalization_token('company.name', 'Company Name')}}

Shopify

https://vocalvideo.com/c/your-collector-base-url?name={{ customer.first_name | url_encode  }}&email={{ email | url_encode }}

Note: Shopify doesn't track company names or job titles, so those fields have been omitted.

Braze

https://vocalvideo.com/c/your-collector-base-url?name={{${first_name}|url_encode}}&email={{${email_address}|url_encode}}

Note: Job title and company name aren't standard Braze fields, so those have been omitted. If you have this data in custom fields, you can include it via the optional job_title and company_name parameters in the URL. Be sure to use the url_encode filter.

Drip

https://vocalvideo.com/c/your-collector-base-url?name={{ subscriber.first_name | url_encode }}&email={{ subscriber.email_address | url_encode }}

Note: Job title and company name aren't standard Drip fields, so those have been omitted. If you have this data in custom fields, you can include it via the optional job_title and company_name parameters in the URL. Be sure to use the url_encode filter.

Pardot

https://vocalvideo.com/c/your-collector-base-url?name=%%first_name%%&email=%%email%%&job_title=%%job_title%%&company_name=%%company%%

Other marketing automation platforms

https://vocalvideo.com/c/your-collector-base-url?&name=RESPONDENT_NAME&email=RESPONDENT_EMAIL&job_title=JOB_TITLE&company_name=COMPANY_NAME

This is the basic format for generating a personalized collector URL with Vocal Video:

Your platform will have a way to insert personalized content into messages. Use that to fill in the name, email, job_title, and company_name fields – place your variables where you see ALL CAPS in the sample URL.

Each field is optional, so if you don't have one of those fields, just leave it out.

You'll also need to make sure that the dynamic data is URL-encoded so that it doesn't break the URL. Some platforms do this automatically, others require you to apply a filter to the variables.

Finally, replace the 'your-collector-base-url' with your own collector's base URL – this is the part of your collector's standard link that comes after vocalvideo.com/c ....

The result should look like this:

https://vocalvideo.com/c/your-collector-base-url?&name=Jane%20Doe&email=jane%40doe.co&job_title=CEO&company_name=Doe%2CCo

Adding Custom Data

• A transaction ID
• A customer or CRM ID
• A marketing segment

• Appear on the Attribution screen for the respondent to review or change.
• Be saved with the response without being displayed to the respondent.

Customizing Collector URLs

1. Open the collector.
2. Click Get Responses.
3. Find the collector’s public link and click Edit.
4. Edit the final part of the URL.
5. Click Update URL.

• You can edit only the final portion after /c/ .
• Personalized links use this public link as their base URL.
• If you change the URL after sharing it, previously created links and QR codes must be updated.

We know this topic can seem pretty complex. If you run into any issues, or need some assistance, don't hesitate to reach out to support@vocalvideo.com. We're here to help!