## Introduction
Retention surveys are critical tools for product teams to understand user satisfaction, identify pain points, and prioritize feature improvements after a product launch. Manual sending of these surveys is time-consuming, error-prone, and often leads to inconsistent outreach. Automating this process ensures timely, targeted, and scalable communication, improving response rates and providing valuable data for product optimization.
In this article, we will build a step-by-step automation workflow using n8n, an open-source workflow automation tool, to automatically trigger and send retention surveys post-launch.
This workflow benefits product managers, growth teams, and customer success specialists by enabling them to gather actionable feedback without manual overhead. By integrating tools like Airtable (for user data storage), Google Sheets (for survey questions or results), and Gmail (for survey dispatch), this automation provides a robust and easily adaptable framework.
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## Tools and Services Integrated
– **n8n:** The automation platform to orchestrate the workflow.
– **Airtable:** Stores user data including email, signup date, and product usage metrics.
– **Google Sheets:** Stores survey templates and records survey responses.
– **Gmail:** Sends personalized retention survey emails.
These tools are commonly used in startup environments and provide easy API access.
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## Workflow Overview: Trigger to Output
1. **Trigger:** Scheduled time-based trigger (cron) that runs daily to identify users eligible for the retention survey.
2. **Query Airtable:** Fetch users who joined 30 days ago (post-launch threshold) and have not yet received a retention survey.
3. **Compose Survey Email:** Using Google Sheets to read the survey questions/templates.
4. **Send Email:** Dispatch personalized survey email via Gmail.
5. **Update Airtable Record:** Mark that the survey email was sent to avoid duplicate outreach.
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## Step-by-Step Technical Tutorial
### Prerequisites
– n8n installed and running (Cloud or local instance)
– Airtable account with a base containing your users dataset
– Google Workspace account with Gmail and Google Sheets access
### Step 1: Configure Trigger Node (Cron)
– Add a **Cron** node in n8n.
– Set it to trigger once daily (e.g., at 9 AM) to automate when the workflow runs.
### Step 2: Query Airtable for Eligible Users
– Add an **Airtable** node.
– Configure authentication with your Airtable API key.
– Set the operation to **’List Records’**.
– Select your base and users table.
– Use a formula filter (Airtable API supports filterByFormula) to find users whose signup date is exactly 30 days ago and where the ‘Retention Survey Sent’ field is false or empty.
Example Formula:
“`
AND(IS_SAME({Signup Date}, TODAY() – 30, ‘days’), {Retention Survey Sent} = FALSE())
“`
– This ensures you target the correct users only once.
### Step 3: Fetch Survey Template from Google Sheets
– Add a **Google Sheets** node.
– Authenticate via OAuth2 with Google.
– Specify the spreadsheet and sheet where you store the survey email template/questions.
– Use ‘Read Rows’ operation to fetch the template fields.
You can use placeholders in your template like `{{UserName}}` that you will replace dynamically.
### Step 4: Construct Personalized Survey Email
– Add a **Function** node to loop through each user record from Airtable.
– In the JavaScript code, for each user:
– Replace placeholders in the template with user data (e.g., name).
– Prepare email subject and body.
Example snippet inside Function node:
“`javascript
return items.map(item => {
const user = item.json;
const emailTemplate = $items(“Google Sheets Node Name”)[0].json.template;
const emailBody = emailTemplate.replace(/{{UserName}}/g, user.Name);
return {
json: {
email: user.Email,
subject: ‘We value your feedback – Retention Survey’,
body: emailBody,
userId: user.id
}
};
});
“`
### Step 5: Send Email via Gmail
– Add a **Gmail** node.
– Authenticate with your Google account.
– Use the ‘Send Email’ operation.
– For each item from the Function node, set:
– **To:** `{{ $json.email }}`
– **Subject:** `{{ $json.subject }}`
– **Body Text:** `{{ $json.body }}`
### Step 6: Update Airtable to Mark Survey Sent
– Add another **Airtable** node.
– Set operation to **Update Record**.
– Use the `userId` from the previous item to update the user record.
– Set the ‘Retention Survey Sent’ field to true and optionally add a timestamp.
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## Common Errors and Tips for Robustness
1. **API Rate Limits:** Airtable and Gmail APIs have usage limits. Implement delays or batch processing nodes in n8n if processing many users.
2. **Data Synchronization:** Ensure the timezone between your n8n server and Airtable date fields align to avoid off-by-one-day errors.
3. **Error Handling:** Add error workflow branches to catch failed email sends and retry or log failures.
4. **Authentication Refresh:** For Google OAuth2, configure automatic token refresh to prevent manual re-login.
5. **Duplicate Emails:** The Airtable update step ensures users don’t receive survey twice. Test thoroughly before production.
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## Scaling and Adapting the Workflow
– **Multi-language Support:** Store multiple email templates keyed by user locale. Include a lookup step to select the right template.
– **Conditional Survey Triggers:** Integrate product usage analytics (Mixpanel, Amplitude) via API to trigger surveys only for active users.
– **Response Collection:** Use typeform or Google Forms links in the email, and automate pulling results back into Airtable or Google Sheets for analysis.
– **Slack Notifications:** Add steps to notify the product team via Slack when a survey batch is sent.
– **Scheduling Flexibility:** Parameterize the number of days post-signup before survey sending to adjust cadence.
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## Summary
Automating retention survey sending post-launch with n8n dramatically improves the efficiency and reliability of gathering user feedback. By integrating Airtable for user data, Google Sheets for templates, and Gmail for delivery, product teams build a scalable, maintainable automation.
The step-by-step approach of scheduling a daily cron trigger, filtering eligible users, generating personalized emails, sending surveys, and updating records demonstrates practical use of n8n’s powerful yet user-friendly automation platform.
**Bonus Tip:** Incorporate survey response tracking and automatic scoring using additional n8n nodes to instantly alert your product team about at-risk users or critical feedback points, enabling proactive retention strategies.