How to Capture Leads with a Webform

BigContacts provides a "Webform Connector" feature that allows you to seamlessly integrate a web form from your website with the BigContacts CRM. When a visitor submits the form on your website, it automatically creates a new contact record in your BigContacts system.

Industrial Use Case For example, in the real estate industry, agents use web forms to capture potential homebuyer leads directly from their websites. By integrating these forms with BigContacts, agents ensure that every inquiry is logged and assigned to the appropriate team member for immediate follow-up.

Benefits

Automated Lead Management: Automatically assign leads to team members and initiate follow-up tasks, ensuring no opportunity is missed.
Efficient Sales Tracking: Create sales opportunities as soon as leads are captured, streamlining your sales pipeline management.

In addition to loading the lead to your account, you can also choose to have the system-

Assign the new contact to a team member
Assign a task for a team member to follow up
Create a sales opportunity
Begin sending automated emails to the new contact

1) Activate a new webform in your BigContacts account:

1. Click the Admin Tab (1) on the left-side menu of your BIGContacts dashboard.

2. In the "Manage Templates" section, click the "Webforms" (2) link.

3. Scroll down and click the "Add Webform" (3) button.

4. Configure your webform:

Name: Enter a name for your web form. For example, you might name it "Free Trial Form."
Assigned to: Use the dropdown menu to select the team member who should be assigned to the new contact when it's created.
Assign Task: Check the "Assign Task" box if you want a task to be created with each new web form submission. Although optional, this is often a good practice.
Task Name: Enter a subject line for the task that will be created when a contact submits this web form. For example, you might use "New Web Lead" as the task subject line. This subject line will appear in your task list.
Assign Task to: Use the dropdown menu to select the team member to whom you want this task to be assigned.
Create Opportunity: If you want a sales opportunity to be automatically created, check the "Create Opportunity" box. This option will add contacts who submit this web form to your sales pipeline.
Opportunity Stage: If you checked the "Create Opportunity" box, use the dropdown menu labeled "Opportunity Stage" to select the stage the opportunity should be in when the contact is created.
Opportunity Product: If you checked the "Create Opportunity" box, use the dropdown menu labeled "Opportunity Product" to select the primary product for the opportunity when the contact is created.
Check Referrer: If you want to track where your web form submissions are coming from, check the "Referrer" box. This option helps you identify the source of your leads.
Referrer URL: Enter the URL of the page where the form was filled out. This helps you track and analyze the effectiveness of different web pages in generating leads.
Save Your Web Form: After reviewing your web form settings, click the orange "Add WebForm" button to save your changes and generate your unique form code.
Connect to Your Website: Note the unique form code and merge fields (refer to the image below for merge values). Provide this information to your web developer, or if you are the web developer, add these to the appropriate places in your HTML to connect the web form to your website.

IMPORTANT: If you choose the option label "Check referrer," you will want to make sure that the URL matches exactly the URL of your web form. You must have an exact match, including any "www" or "/" in the URL, or this will not allow the form to be submitted.

Here's what the new webform you added will look like. You can modify it anytime you want by clicking the Edit icon. If you wish to remove it, click the Delete icon.

New webform added to the account

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2) Build your web form

Here is an example of HTML code for a basic form:

<form action="https://app.bigcontacts.com/webforms/process" method="POST"> <p>

<input name="form_code" type="hidden" value="exxxxxxxxxxxxxxx76ecd2f5" /></p>

<p> <input name="lead_type" type="hidden" value="Web Site" /> </p>

<p> <input name="lead_source" type="hidden" value="Information Inquiry" /></p>

<p> <input name="contact_type" type="hidden" value="Prospect" /></p>

<p> <input name="return_url" type="hidden" value=" <a href="http://www.mywebsite.com/process_form.html">http://www.mywebsite.com/process_form.html</a>" /></p>

<p> First Name <input style="width:10em;" type="text" value="" /></p>

<p> Last Name <input name="last_name" style="width:10em;" type="text" value="" /></p>

<p> Email <input name="email" style="width:10em;" type="text" value="" /></p>

<p><button type="submit">Submit</button></p>

<p> </p>

</form>

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3) Choose the data fields on your form that you wish to pass into your BigContacts account

Standard Data Fields and their merge values

PLEASE NOTE: When using these merge values you must put double brackets on each side. Example: {{first_name}}

Merge fields for the personal information in a Contact record located under the Personal Info tab)

The field name in the contact record	Webform HTML code snippet
First Name
Last Name
Address
Address 2
City
State
Postal Code
Home phone
Email

Merge fields for the business information in a Contact record (located under the Office Info tab:

The field name in the contact record	Webform HTML code snippet
Business Name
Address
City
State
Postal Code
Country

Note: While Merge fields will appear with brackets before you send the email, they will display the actual data in that particular field of the contact record when your contact receives the email. For example: {{first_name}} will appear as {{first_name}} before you send the email, but if "John" is in the "first name" field then "John" will display when your contact sees the email.

Custom Data Fields and their merge values

Custom data fields - To obtain the correct form names you will need to merge the data from the webform into your custom fields:

Click the Admin tab
In the "Manage my Account" section, click the "Customize Account" link

Click Customize Account in the Admin tab under Manage My Account section

Scroll down to the Custom Fields section. Here's what the form name for the fields will look like:

And that's it! If you encounter any issues or have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to our support team.

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