Every website has a web form. Whether it's a Contact Us page or a Quote Request, somewhere on every business website there is a web form designed to capture contact information. The trouble is most are built on WordPress or Joomla components included free with their Content Management System (CMS), and are designed to collect the data from website visitors and send the results by email to a designated staffer.  While this is better than having no webforms at all, it is notably inferior to integrating webforms into a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, and can often be a bridge to nowhere.

In fact, webform integration with a CRM can offer several advantages:

1. Reduce Manual Work: Integrated web forms send website visitor information directly into your CRM, eliminating the need for manual data entry. As mentioned above, most CMS forms send an email to a hapless staffer who must then stop whatever they're doing, and key in the data from that email. This is not only disruptive and inefficient, but it can delay or jeopardize your response to business leads. And when you consider this free manual method will save only $15/month compared to CRM-integrated solutions, free can prove to be quite costly.

2. Workflow:  Once a web form adds or updates a contact record in the CRM, it can be configured to automatically schedule follow-ups, create a support ticket, trigger drip campaigns, and even create a sales Opportunity.  Such steps ensure faster, more consistent lead responses to form submissions, and a better customer experience.

3. Automated Marketing Campaigns: The integration allows for the automation of marketing campaigns. When a user fills out a web form, their information can be used to automatically enroll them in relevant marketing campaigns. For instance, Act! Marketing Automation can be configured to send a welcome email to all new contacts, and automatically add them to your newsletter distribution group.

4. Improved Data Quality: Since the data goes directly from the webform to the CRM, you're less likely to suffer from typos that can occur during manual data entry. What's worse, the staff assigned to follow up on this bad data now has to track down the staffer who entered it to get the corrections, causing more delays and effort.

5. Provide better customer support:  Integrated web forms can help you provide better customer support by automatically assigning contacts to sales reps or technical support agents, and furnishing them with follow-up details under that contact's record. 
   
   
6. Authorization: Webforms can be used for online waivers or consent documents that allow the capture of digital signatures, and then copy this consent to the new or updated contact in your CRM. This method captures the contact and their consent in one step, as well as storing the digitally signed document in their contact record. 
   
   
7. Compliance: Integrated web forms can also help with collecting newsletter sign-ups, or complying with GDPR and CASL related consents.
   
   
8. Segmentation: By mapping your web form to fields in your CRM, this new field data can be used to automatically segment your contacts into different groups based on industry, buyer preferences, region, business title, you name it. 

There are many tools available to create web forms, but for Act! users the simplest and most cost-effective is Link2forms.  Link2forms offers a variety of features, such as drag-and-drop builders, customizable templates, conditional logic, and easy integrations with WordPress and Joomla. And Link2forms starts at only $15/month.

If you're an Act! user looking to generate more leads from your website and improve your business workflow, you owe it to yourself to try Link2forms. Start your 2-week free trial HERE today.