You may or may not have noticed some changes to the Qualtrics email send limits. This week Qualtrics adjusted the limits on how many emails a user can send through the Qualtrics platform. Here are some details you may want to know.
New Qualtrics users have a 500 email send limit per week. This includes emails in your workflow. For example, if you request an email response when someone fills out your survey those count in the 500 email limit. If you have your survey set so that your respondents are emailed a copy of their responses, those also count. If you believe you will need more than this limit, please email Linda Charlton Gunderson with your request.
Why did Qualtrics make this change? While there was limited official communication about this change, one of the main reasons for making this change is that email service providers (Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) have all been instituting more strict policies on what emails make it through their servers and which ones are sent to the spam folder or not delivered at all. Individuals sending large numbers of emails in one day or week can be marked as spam (either by the recipient or by the server) or be blocked from a server entirely.
What can you do? You can request that your email limit be increased if that is required for your research. But more than that you will want to keep your email lists clean as there are laws about who you can email. Has everyone on your list given permission to be contacted? If not, send a request for permission to email them about the survey from your personal email address rather than a bulk send of this request. Start an email list of people who have given their permission to be emailed (email service providers have this feature). Do you have old, inactive, or email addresses that frequently are bounced? If so, remove any email addresses that may be inactive. If someone has changed jobs, get their updated email address or remove them from the list. Keeping your email list clean decreases the number of bad emails gobbling up your email limit, improves your email/survey's deliverability, and ensures only the individuals who want to hear from you are receiving your emails/surveys.
If you have any questions about this change, please contact Linda Charlton Gunderson.