Contact Form Automation:

Whiteboard Wednesday: Episode 1 Contact Us Form Automation

Today we’re going to break down the form automation for a contact form on your website. Welcome to our very first whiteboard Wednesday.

What’s the first way people engage with you when they’re ready to reach you? They use your contact form. Are you using a simple email submission, or are you using automation? If you’re doing it right, you don’t have time to do it manually, and you’re wanting to get some contact form automation. Hold tight – here we go.

When they contact you, what are they going to do? The first thing they’re going to do? They’re going to fill out your contact form. We have our own we use for our upcoming Conversion Marketing 101, I’m not going to sell you that – Today, I’m going to sell you on the importance of having an effective contact us page and having form automation driven from that contact us page.

Contact Form Automation flow: (aka Inbound Marketing)

• They’re going to go to your Contact Us Page.

• They’re going to fill out the form.

  • On the page with the form, you should explain the value of contacting you, set expectations.

• They’ll get a confirmation email also called double opt-in email.

  • This is valuable to make them know you’re not going to spam them (and keep that promise). I highly recommend the double opt-in to make sure it’s not a fake email, also it gives you the opportunity for a thank you page. The thank you page tells them to look for the email, and keeps you out of their spam folder in advance. I suggest using “Confirm Your Email” instead of subscription which is default on MOST autoresponder software.

• (OPTIONAL): Lead Score / Lead Scoring based on what they’ve done on your site.

  • When someone signs up for our Contact Us form we’re going to give them 50 points – that’s a lot. We have a cookie that travels with our viewers to find out where they’ve gone, where they came from and where they go. This is stored in our automation / CRM system so when they contact us, we already know what they’re looking for. DO you have that level of automation? Well – the 50 points tells us they are VERY interested in a Virtual Assistant.

• Tag them as “Virtual Assistant” (or whatever you’re selling):

  • This is using our VA Staffer contact form, I have many products and services that I provide. Making sure you keep track of the interests of your potential customers is huge. Obviously depending on the contact form they used, you’ll want to tag them appropriately.

• Welcome Email from Form Automation:

  • This is going to introduce them to expectations, what they’re going to get, how soon you’re going to contact them. In this email, we also promote our “Virtual Assistant Tips” list which provides downloads, tips and tricks for using a virtual team. Also different tools we use to help our clients, we also open it up to our clients to share things they’ve learned that everyone can value from. You can do HTML or text, I’ve done both – typically on a contact form, I like to require a lot of data, and if they’ve gone through to fill it all out – they really want to talk and don’t care what format. I do the HTML because it gets more interaction. I get about 50% click rate on the social media, and tips list click form contact us. Now I could automatically drop them in my Top 10 Virtual Assistant Tasks / Virtual Assistant Tips list, but I like to make sure they REALLY want to be in that list. It’s important to keep your unsubscribe rate low, since that’s what you get in trouble for. You’re doing things of value, not spamming people with your form automation. Remember that!!

• Notify Team Members:

  • Why? I’m going to send my virtual assistants to learn about these people. I want to know what products they sell, services they offer, how we can help them, and opportunities to work together. I have a team that can help me with this, because ultimately – like you guys, I don’t have the time either and my time is spent better doing fun things like these videos.

• Ending our Automation:

  • Yes, they have now gone through your automation, and 7 steps later you’ve got your whole system set. They’ve been emailed twice (conformation and welcome) – where they went on your website is recorded, they’ve been entered into your CRM (Customer Relationship Management). The staff has been notified to learn about them (I’m one of them).

Now THAT is our automation at VA Staffer – I’d love to learn how you’re doing your automation or if you’re really doing all this work yourself to validate your leads.

I had a conversation with a new client today about how he and I both have a good kind of problem – we have a lot of people who want to work with us – but we just can’t accept everybody. Use lead scoring, tagging, and automation to help you work with the best strategic relationships to help you grow. Know what opportunities are out there, and how you can positon yourself better by utilizing form automation on your website.

This was my very first Whiteboard Wednesday: Form Automation for a Contact Us Page. Let me know what you think, also ask me questions, give me feedback, reach out to me – let’s see if I can answer your questions too.

Oh hey – and a plug for our new automation / crm system that we’re launching (but not ready to launch yet) here – http://conversionmarketing101.com Conversion Marketing 101