We have added an update to the Email Groups feature that we launched a couple of weeks ago. You can now embed a poll or a survey into an email, so the recipient can submit their response directly from the email.

Just use the [poll] shortcode to embed a poll in the email, or [survey] shortcode to embed a survey. More on how to do this can be found on the support page.

Polls and surveys are then embedded directly in the email as a form without the need for any other code. This should should work for all email clients, although if you find one that doesn’t work please do let us know.

We have been busy integrating PollDaddy Jr. on another excellent website creator, Weebly.com. This partnership will allow Weebly users to create and manage their PollDaddy polls directly in their Weebly website editor without the need to go to PollDaddy.com.

If you use Weebly.com you can access this new functionality by clicking on the ‘More’ folder in the site editor.

From there just choose the ‘Online Poll’ option.

Weebly is a website creator that allows you to create pages with template skins and content widgets. Users can easily drag-and-drop content widgets like pictures, text and video to create neat looking pages. They also provide a new blogging platform that can be added to a personal Weebly page.

If you would like any more information on PollDaddy Jr. and how it can help your users communicate and interact with their own online community then please give us a shout!

Ning have officially announced the launch of Ning Apps. We are delighted that PollDaddy Junior is included in the Apps directory under the Featured and the Collaboration categories.

Ning Apps will allow you to add this application as a Network Creator and add a poll to your network.

This is one of the cleanest implementations of Opensocial that I have personally developed with and I am in no doubt the number of Apps (currently 90) will quickly grow.

Best of luck Ning!

We’ve added a custom style editor to the WordPress polls dashboard. This editor will give WordPress users the freedom to style their polls anyway you want. This will come in handy when you need a poll to match your blog theme or when you want to add a funky background image to your poll.

There is now a link in the Polls menu to ‘Custom Styles’. This will take you to your list of custom styles where you can create, edit, or delete your styles.

Apart from building a poll style from scratch, the style editor will also allow you to preload a range of standard styles as a starting point. You can then add your modifications as you see fit.

We have also added this to the WordPress.org plugin, bringing the latest version to 1.7.

Feedback on the editor will be appreciated here. Let us know if there is anything else we can add to help you further customize your polls.

As some of you may know there is an Apple press event today regarding an update to some of their music products. Apple events always generate a lot of buzz and Gizmodo, the biggest gadget blog on the planet, is always there reporting for their millions of waiting fans. This time around they thought they would try some live feedback on their blog to include the many readers who are eagerly awaiting news. Together with design firm Mekanism we came up with a unique voting mechanism to find out how Apple fans think about the new products released in real time. Head on over to the Gizmodo live blog to see this in action.
Go vote now!

PollDaddy has many ways for you to distribute your surveys and polls, from widgets and embed codes to simple URLs. We’ve now added another way for you to get your surveys and polls out there with a much-requested Email Groups feature.

Simply put, email groups allow you to maintain groups of email addresses. The magic comes when you create a poll or survey – you now have the ability to directly send it to one or more of your email groups. This makes it an ideal way to notify your users quickly and simply, with PollDaddy taking the strain of sending the emails.

To ensure you have full control over your email groups you can import and export addresses using CSV files. Each group can contain as many email addresses as you want, and the same address can occur in multiple groups – perfect for different email campaigns.

In addition to storing a name (first and last) and email address, you can also add custom data to each address which can then be used when sending out emails. For example, you may want to store a salutation, a product name etc.

Note that while anyone can create and manage email groups, only Pro or Pro2 users can actually send emails. Pro users will receive an allowance of 10,000 emails per month, with Pro2 users receiving 50,000. If you need more then custom allowances can be created by contacting support.

Naturally we want to prevent PollDaddy from becoming a source of spam and so all outgoing emails will be tagged with an opt-out link. Anyone receiving an email can quickly register that they do not want to receive any more.

Full details about managing and using email groups can be found on the email groups support page.

Let the emails flow!

Our polls will now accept and render a limited set of HTML tags in the poll question and answer text fields.

This means you will be able to format the text directly, add an image and/or add a link into the text fields. This feature allows you another method to further customize your poll. This has been a frequently requested feature that we have been a little slow to add due to some security concerns.

We have white-listed a limited set of HTML tags that are safe to use. Check out the support article to see the full list of tags available.

If you have some suggestions on more HTML tags that we could add, leave feedback here and we’ll check them out.

We have partnered with a company called AddToAny.com to add a cool sharing option to your polls. When you create a poll on PollDaddy.com now there is an option to enable sharing. (To see how this works hover over the “Share This” link in the poll below.) This is going to be available as a trial for a few weeks to see if users find it useful.

With AddToAny enabled in your poll, your voters will be able to share a link to the page on your site across WordPress, Digg, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, email and much more. This will help spread the word that you have a super cool poll going down and you need more votes! So what do you think? Is it a good addition?

We are excited to announce today that PollDaddy Jr. is now available to users of Webs.com. This partnership will allow Webs.com users to create and manage their PollDaddy polls directly in their Webs.com site editor without the need to go to PollDaddy.com. If you use Webs.com you can access this new functionality by clicking on the ‘Addons’ button in the site editor. From there just choose polls on the left hand side and you will see our app.

Webs.com provide all the tools you need to create a professional-looking website in minutes. Add a blog, forum, calendar, photo gallery, video gallery and much more. You also have the ability to add members and create personal profiles so you can turn your site into a community where friends, colleagues and family can connect and collaborate. You can sign up for a free Webs.com account here to try it out.

If you would like any more information on PollDaddy Jr. and how it can super charge your own online community then please get in touch!