Why are forms so important?
Forms are one of the most essential elements of any website. Whether is for capturing contact information from your visitors, asking for some feedback, or making a survey, forms will be that bridge between your business and potential customers. According to WPforms, 74% of businesses use online forms to generate new leads. Having a contact form on your website is the best way to obtain contact data online. The people who fill in your contact form will do it because they are already interested in your products/services, so there’s a great chance to guide them into conversion.
Ins and outs of contact forms
Using forms has more advantages than disadvantages. But of course, like anything else, it has its flaws. Here are some of the advantages of using forms vs the downsides of using them:
Advantages
Flexibility
You can use a form for every case when you need to obtain data from your visitors. You can also use forms anywhere on your website, the content, design, and style of them is up to you, but there are no limitations when creating forms.
Cost-effectiveness
Using forms can be very cheap or even free if you know some coding. If you rely on a third-party solution, paying some money for them can be the best investment for your business. Once you start getting the desired results, the ROI will be almost immediate.
CRM bridging
If you have a CRM, and it worries you the task of pasting the information into your CRM, there’s always a way of connecting your forms data to your CRM. You probably need some coding, or rely on a third-party plugin but there’ll always be a way to connect it.
Eye appeal
Having a nice form on your website could be a magnet for your visitors. Using catchy colors and a nice layout can turn a user more interested in completing it.
User experience
Having a well-designed contact form can turn a form into a satisfactory experience. Who doesn’t like when hovering over a visual object it produces an awesome effect? It’s like playing some game, right? Having a form that produces a satisfactory response in users can turn using forms into a winner.
Disadvantages
Difficulty
If you have never built a form before, it will probably be difficult the first time you create a new one. You have to understand some concepts like “inputs”, “boxes”, “labels”, “id”, “value”. If you use a tool that creates the form automatically, it will be easier. However, if you need to customize it a little, you may need to know about these terms anyways.
Spam
When you place a new form on your website, it will be a target of spammers most likely. If you don’t use an anti-spam tool like Google’s reCAPTCHA, using a form could turn into a nightmare. You won’t be able to tell whether if a new submission is legit or not.
Security
Having a form on your website comes with great responsibility. When you start collecting personal data from your users is your responsibility to keep that data safe and use it according to your privacy policy. You also should secure your website to ensure that the data received will be safe. Forms can be blank for hackers to exploit vulnerabilities on your website.
What is Gravity Forms?
Gravity Forms is one of the best plugins to create forms on WordPress. It lets you create any type of form, from a single input to complex ones like payment transaction collections. It has a powerful visual editor that lets you configure every part of your forms. You can create workflows and conditional logic fields like automatically hiding or showing fields depending on your preferences. One of the coolest features of Gravity Forms is that it has a high level of integration with other popular apps like PayPal, MailChimp, Dropbox, and Zapier.
Gravity Forms’ drag and drop builder makes building your forms a lot easier, so you won’t have to get too technical to be able to create your forms. It also has implemented lots of security measures to ensure your data is collected safely and locked, so you won’t have to worry about security breaches.
How does connecting Gravity Forms to Maropost help me?
By connecting your Gravity Forms stored data to your Maropost account, you’ll be able to create and update your contacts information inside Maropost. So you’ll be able to create journeys and send emails to users that submitted your forms.
Gravity Forms’ drag and drop builder makes building your forms a lot easier, so you won’t have to get too technical to be able to create your forms. It also has implemented lots of security measures to ensure your data is collected safely and locked, so you won’t have to worry about security breaches.
How can I integrate Gravity Forms with Maropost?
Through WP Fusion
Currently is the easiest and best method to connect your Maropost Marketing account to your Gravity Forms data. Each time a form is submitted you can update your contact lists inside Maropost.
Using Zapier (Only available with Commerce Cloud)
You can connect your Maropost Commerce account to Gravity Forms to create workflows based on the data submitted on your forms. You can use multiple triggers and actions for your submissions.
Using Leadsbridge
Although more expensive, you can also use leadsbridge to create and update your subscribers in your Maroposts Lists.
How to connect your Gravity forms submissions to your Maropost account
We are going to show you how you can connect your Maropost Marketing Cloud account to your Gravity Forms inside WordPress. In order to use this method you need to have a license for both Gravity Forms and WP Fusion. This is the easiest method to do it, and is the most affordable as well.
Connect through WP Fusion
In order to bridge your gravity forms submissions with Maropost you’ll need to:
1.- Have an active Gravity Forms License and the plugin installed.
2.- Have a license for WP Fusion (WPFusion Lite doesn’t work).
3.- Download the WP Fusion installer file.
4.- Upload the file into your WordPress dashboard.
5.- Install the plugin.
6.- Activate the plugin.
7.- Go to your Maropost dashboard and go to your “Account Details”.
8.- Go to the “Account” tab and look for your “Account ID”. Copy your account ID and paste it into a note.
9.- Then go to “Settings” option for your account.
10.- Click on the “API Keys” option.
11.- Click on the “ADD KEY” button.
12.- Give your name to your API key. It can be something like “Gravity Forms Key”.
13.- Select the privileges for your API Key. You can choose only the ones that belong to your contacts.
14.- Click Save. Copy and paste your API key into the note where your account ID is.
15.- Go to the “Settings” option of wpfusion.
16.- Look for “Maropost” in the “Select CRM” dropdown.
17.- Paste your account ID and the API key. Click “connect”. It will connect your WordPress app with Maropost.
18.- Once your account is synced you can choose a Maropost default list to write in by default. Click “Save Changes”.
19- Now you can map the fields of your Gravity Forms with the fields inside your Maropost account. While you are editing a form look for “wpfusion” in the settings dropdown.
20.- Click “Update Settings”.
21.- That’s it. Now when your form is submitted will automatically update your contact lists inside Maropost.
Get the most out of your forms
That’s how you can link your Gravity Forms with Maropost. You can also use WP Fusion for more advanced capabilities like creating segments based on conditional logic and using prefilled fields in your forms for contacts in your Maropost database. You can also try one of the other methods if you prefer it. Also, remember that if you need help connecting your Gravity Forms with Marpost we can help you. We can also help you with any need you have for your Marketing inside Maropost. Don’t hesitate to contact us and we will reach to you as soon as possible.