How to Pick a Form Integration Solution

Remember the smell of freshly printed paper and the feel of a ballpoint pen as we entered our names into countless fields, basking in the glow of fluorescent lights at the DMV, in a real estate agency, at a bank, or when signing up for a gym? These days, the humble form looks a little different but is more useful than ever.

Forms are pivotal in learning about customer or constituent needs, which in turn helps a business or nonprofit create programs, and products that respond directly to their audience. Every department can gain from knowing more about their target audience, and integrating that information with systems like Salesforce can inform your daily operations and enhance the customer/constituent experience. It comes full circle! 

In this post we’ll explore why form integration matters, some common form types, and what you need to consider when you’re choosing the best solution for your organization.

Why form integration is important

A form is just a set of fields used to collect information. But when integrated with your CRM, it can be used to build a more complete picture of your contacts, including the engagement points when you gain a lead, process event registrations, or survey to learn how you can improve. Instead of having a different excel spreadsheet with your contacts’ data for each form they fill out, you can have that centralized in your CRM if you choose a form tool that integrates well, which will save you a whole lot of data clean-up in the long run. Let’s look into a few different types of forms, what they can be used for, and how to know which one is right for you.

Four of the most commonly used forms

Contact Us / Newsletter
The “contact us” form is an important initial point of engagement and can be easily facilitated through Salesforce web-to-lead. Web-to-lead captures basic information (i.e name & email) and syncs with Salesforce (meaning you can avoid creating duplicates if you set it up correctly). By capturing interested leads early on, you can make sure they’re added to event invites and relevant updates, nurturing the lead into a potential customer or donor. Newsletter sign-ups are similar, but are facilitated through your mass email solution (most have a sign-up link you can embed on your website).

Donations or Purchases
Syncing payment information with your CRM can be challenging. Naturally, monetary transactions require a payment processor, and there are a variety of solutions that can assist. Check out our recent post about what you need to know about choosing a payment processor for more information.

Application/ Registration
Application or registration forms are often required for registering as a volunteer, member, or potential staff member. FormAssembly is one powerhouse in this category; it is one of the more flexible solutions on the App Exchange and can be customized to match your branding and create detailed reports.

Events
Event solutions vary widely, depending on complexity and cost. Check out our recent post on event management solutions for an in-depth examination. For example, Click and Pledge is an effective tool when you need to integrate payments, but can’t handle event inventory or sessions. Cvent can manage the event down to venue research, but you pay for the additional features. If you host relatively simple events, solutions like Soapbox may be more cost effective. Another avenue to explore would be off-site solutions such as Eventbrite. Off-site means users don't sign up for events on your site, but navigate to another domain to fill out the form. You can still retrieve participants’ information from an external site, but have to set up a sync or manually enter the data.

How do you know what solution is best for your organization?

1. First, ask yourself how many of the above categories your organization regularly needs. Whether you are looking for an event form, application form, donation form or a contact us from, there are a variety of options to choose from. The product you choose will be constrained by the “good, fast and cheap” paradigm (typically you can have two, but not all of these). If you get to the point where you have more than five forms on your website, you probably want to consider a marketing automation solution such as the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot, or Pardot, that has form building capabilities. This will help you take the valuable information you’re collecting further by adding lead scoring, workflows, and automated nurturing into the process.

2. Second, consider if you have in-house technical expertise or are willing to pay for consultant support. Some solutions are straightforward to set up and relatively inexpensive, but limited in capabilities. If you don’t require complexity, this may be the solution for you. If you want additional features and enhanced customization it will cost more.

3. Finally, keep an eye on your end goals. All in all the aim is to integrate the desired information with your Salesforce instance in a way that helps you better interact with those involved in your organization. If you’re not achieving this, you probably need a new tool or more support with your integration.

Don’t forget your users

Once you have a new form solution, don’t forget about your users: they’re never going to fill out your form unless they see value in what you are offering. If the perceived value is lower, you should ask for less information. When something exciting or particularly useful lives behind a form on a website, the user is happy to provide the information you ask of them, and it’s a win-win: they get whatever lives behind the form, you get valuable information that enables you to keep delivering what your audience wants.

If you need any help understanding the intricacies of form building or have general questions about CRM integration, let us know.

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