To capture form submissions as contacts from HTML forms on your website, you can follow the steps mentioned in this article.
What are forms?
Using forms, form submissions are captured as contact whenever a visitor clicks on the submit button on your HTML forms.
Note:
We’ve introduced CRM Tracking code to track all website events, marketing, and sales interactions in one place. Install the unified tracking code to connect existing forms with your web application, and start tracking leads automatically.
Refer to this article if you have a webform in your external site, which is not built using our Classic form feature and you want to capture every form submission as a contact in your CRM.
How to capture contacts from forms not built using classic forms?
Prerequisites for capturing contacts from from your website’s form submissions::
A contact is created in CRM only if the email address is provided as an input and is valid if there are any validations maintained in your form. In case, a visitor submits a form without email address value, then on form submit, it will not be captured as a contact in CRM.
HTML form submits can be captured as contacts only if the CRM tracking code is integrated in the webpage where the form is located. In case if any security extensions block the loading of our tracking code, then the capturing of contacts would fail. Hence, please ensure, the CRM tracking code is loaded successfully on your webpage.
The form in your web page should have the following:Static HTML form wrapped in <form> tag
Form has the <input type =”submit”>
Form is not loaded using an iframe
Form has an email input field
To configure forms,
Go to Admin Settings > CRM Tracking Code
On the CRM Code Library page, go to Form Settings. Form submissions from external HTML forms can be configured using one of the two options:
Automatically / manually add forms to CRM (previously Smartforms) - Enable this option to automatically identify forms wherever CRM tracking code is integrated and capture as contacts in CRM on form submissions. You can also manually disable or enable forms at your choice.
Manually edit forms to the CRM - Enable this option if you want to have more control on the forms that need to be captured in CRM. Even if the tracking code is integrated on the webpage, form submissions will be captured only if the form’s webpage URL is manually configured.
Note: By default, ‘Automatically / manually add forms to CRM’ will be enabled for accounts.
How to view forms?
Once you have chosen either of the options above, from the form settings, CRM will automatically start collecting form submissions on your website as soon as submissions occur or you will have to manually add them.
Click Forms from the left navigation bar to access them
Forms list overview
The following operations can be performed on the forms list view,
1. Filter by type and status- All the automatically captured forms can be found with the form type as “Automatic”. You can use the filter “All Types” to filter forms based on automatic and manual forms. Users can filter by status- enabled and disabled.
2. Enable or disable a specific form. Once the form is disabled, form submissions from that particular form will not be captured as contacts in CRM.
3. By default, form name is captured from the HTML code if form name or id is found. You can rename the form by selecting the more option in each form line item in the list view.
4. Edit the form configurations by clicking on the form name or edit option from the more menu.
5. Search by form name
6. Get metrics of number of form submissions and unique contacts captured.
Number of form submissions- Includes no of submits on the form submit button
Number of unique contacts- Number of unique email addresses captured
7. Last submitted date- Date of the last form data captured.
8. Form URL- URL of the webpage from where the form is captured.
Note: The data in the dashboard is updated every 15 min. However, contact creation and update will happen in real time. You can confirm it by checking the Contacts module.
Automatic Forms: Mapping of form fields and contact properties:
CRM will automatically map the form fields with the contact properties if the form’s field name or label matches with the contact property’s name.
Please make sure, you create contact property with names matching the website’s form field names to avoid any mismatches. If the CRM cannot find a matching contact property, the respective form field will be treated as an unmapped field and the form data for that field will still be captured and can be viewed in the contact’s recent notes.
Automatic Forms: Managing and editing a specific form
To view the forms and form fields that are mapped, navigate to Forms from the left navigation bar.
All the automatic forms captured can be viewed in the list view. By default, the form name is captured from the HTML code.
The following actions can be performed by clicking on the form:
Edit form page, will display details of the form name, form’s webpage URL. If more than one form exists in the same URL, you can find which form it is by the form name/id.
View form fields and contact property mapping. Currently editing of form fields and contact mapping is not allowed. Please note hidden fields in the form are not displayed. Coming soon
Form can be enabled or diabled from the Edit form page. By disabling a form, future form submissions will not be captured as contacts in CRM
With the Contact creation settings page, users can choose how the contacts should be created in CRM. By default, the option to create or update contacts with values overwritten is selected (recommended). This will avoid duplication of contact creation. Users can choose whether overwriting is required or not and may choose if duplication of contacts is required for their business needs.
Subscription status and fields: By default, contacts created from a web form are marked with subscription status as “Subscribed” and are associated with all subscription types available in the account. Users can choose to configure the subscription status as unsubscribe or not subscribe and associate to the subscription types based on their need. Contacts already created before the configuration changes will not be changed. Changes will apply only for new form submissions.
Marketing email consent checkbox:For sending out marketing and promotional emails, consent checkbox is enabled by default. Users may choose to mark it unchecked for double opt-in use cases.
Associating contacts to Marketing lists: By default, contacts are created in All contacts. As a Marketer, if you want to maintain a separate list for each form submission, you can choose one or more marketing lists from the drop down. Please note only new contacts will be moved to the selected lists.
Manual Forms:
If you want to only manually add forms rather than capturing from all webforms and capture data only from those forms, please make sure “Manually edit form” option is enabled in the Admin settings > CRM Tracking code > Forms setting.
Upon enabling the option, please follow the steps below:
1. Navigate to Forms from the left navigation bar. Click on the Add Form button and provide a form name and click Create button.
2. Add the webpage URL where the form is located and click on the Load form button. This will load all the forms embedded in the <form> tag. Please make sure CRM tracking code is integrated into the above given URL. Select the form from which the data needs to be captured as contacts in CRM.
3. Once the form is selected, form fields pertaining to the form will be displayed and the corresponding contact properties will be shown for you to do the necessary mapping.
4. If you don’t want to capture any sensitive or unwanted fields, you can toggle off the respective field.
5. Once the mapping configurations are made, click Next. In the contact configurations page, choose the option on how the contacts should be created. By default, the option to create or update contacts with values overwritten is selected (recommended). This will avoid duplication of contact creation. Users can choose whether overwriting is required or not and may choose if duplication of contacts is required for their business needs.
6. Subscription status and fields: By default, contacts created from a web form are marked with subscription status as “Subscribed” and are associated with all subscription types available in the account. Users can choose to configure the subscription status as unsubscribe or not subscribe and associate to the subscription types based on their needs. Contacts already created before the configuration changes will not be changed. Changes will apply only for new form submissions.
7. Marketing email consent checkbox:For sending out marketing and promotional emails, the consent checkbox is enabled by default. Users may choose to mark it unchecked for double opt-in use cases.
8. Associating contacts to Marketing lists: By default, contacts are created in All contacts. As a Marketer, if you want to maintain a separate list for each form submission, you can choose one or more marketing lists from the drop down. Please note only new contacts will be moved to the selected lists.
Once the changes are made, enable the form. Now, the form submissions from the configured form will be captured as contacts in the CRM.