Form elements – How to build forms and collect contact info

By adding a form element to your CTA, you can collect contact details and more info from your visitors, quickly and easily.

Just click to add an element to a column and choose the "form" element type. Once you've added your form, click on it to show the form settings in the builder panel.

IMPORTANT: To view form responses/submissions, the visitor needs to be an identified contact in ConvertFlow. This means they need to provide an email address, or a phone number, for the form responses to be linked to a contact. Please refer to this article on How to identify anonymous website visitors as contacts.

Preset contact fields

In the "fields" settings, you can now enable all of the fields you want to display.

ConvertFlow's form fields come with preset fields already configured for you, helping you collect standard contact information and send it to your email marketing tool or CRM.

Each preset field can be edited by clicking on the field setting in the builder panel and adjusting the options in the modal. You can edit the placeholder displayed in the field, add a label, make the field required and more.

Scroll below the preset contact fields and you'll find more options you can enable.

Enabling real-time email and phone verification fields

You can optionally have ConvertFlow check that the entered email address is real and exists with their email provider, at the expense of a few seconds of wait time for your visitor. This can help improve your email list quality, sender score and potentially reduce the need to send a double opt-in confirmation email.

Pro tip: Want to allow business emails only? Toggling email validation on also presents a child-setting that can be enabled to allow business emails only.

The same option is available for phone fields as well, so you can prevent visitors from entering invalid phone numbers into your forms. If the phone number entered isn't real, ConvertFlow will require the visitor to enter a real phone number that can be verified. Once verified, it'll format and sync the phone number in the international E.164 standard that SMS marketing tools require.

Hiding pre-filled fields

ConvertFlow uses progressive profiling to remember the information entered by your visitors. If a form displays a field for contact info already known to ConvertFlow, it will pre-fill the field for that visitor.

However, you can also have the form hide a pre-filled field entirely. This may make sense depending on the content of your CTA and form.

GDPR consent checkboxes

You'll also find options to enable GDPR compliance checkboxes to your form. This is important if you're collecting contact info from European citizens and for being transparent about how you're using the visitor's contact data. 

Privacy Consent – By  adding your privacy policy and terms of service to your ConvertFlow website, you can directly link to that info alongside a required checkbox using the "Require Privacy Consent" checkbox. 

Marketing Consent – If your form gates some form of content the visitor is expecting to get, but also opts them into an email list, you can collect consent for ongoing marketing with the "Request Marketing Consent" checkbox.

Consent from your visitors can be sent to their subscriber record in your ESP/CRM by  mapping these preset fields in your integration settings.

Adding custom fields

By clicking the "+ Add Field" link, you can add as many custom fields to your form as you would link.

First, choose a custom field data name. 

The custom field data name can be for ConvertFlow only, or you can choose from the custom fields created in your integrated ESP/CRM and ConvertFlow will send that custom field info collected by this form to your integrated tool.

Next, choose what type of custom field you want to display to your visitor. You can choose between having a text field, dropdown field, radio selection field, paragraph field or a hidden field.

Each field type has their own options that can be configured. Drop downs and radio select fields can have options added, you can give the field a label, text fields can have a placeholder display, etc.

Pro tips:

• Want to create a custom checkbox? Create a radio selection field and add only one option.
• Want to separate your dropdown options' data value from the displayed label? Click on the field option to open up a settings modal where you can control this.
• Dropdown and radio/checkbox select field options can be assigned score values by clicking on the field option to open up the settings modal.
• The range custom field type can be used to make it easy for visitors to input numerical values, price estimates, percentages, etc.

To watch an example custom field be created, here's a video:

Styling your form

When editing a form, in the builder panel, scroll down past the fields and you'll find your form's design settings.

Here you can space your form in your CTA, choose whether you want your form to have a vertical or horizontal field layout, how wide you want your form to expand, the fonts used for your form, button color, button roundness, field color, drop shadows etc.

Form confirmation settings

By clicking "Confirmation Actions" at the top of your form settings in the builder panel, you'll be displayed a modal where you can control what happens after someone submits your form.

Confirmation actions

Here some of the actions you can perform upon form submission:

• You can choose to redirect your visitors to a URL
• Show another step in the CTA
• Display a thank you message
• Display another CTA you've created in ConvertFlow
• Open a SMS message to a phone number

Select the form action you want, and you'll be able to enter the details.

Automations

Here you can also add "Automations". These can be automations in ConvertFlow such as sending a lead alert to a team member, adding a ConvertFlow tag to segment the contact for future targeting, etc.

You can also add automations in your integrated email service provider. For example, for MailChimp you can choose which list you want to add the contact to. 

Add as many automations as you need to properly segment you contacts into the right audiences in your connected tools.

Running scripts and conversion pixels

By adding scripts to your form's confirmation actions, you can fire conversion pixels in your advertising platforms and perform other custom javascript. ConvertFlow will run scripts added here only after the form has been successfully submitted.

Conditional actions

By default, ConvertFlow will perform the confirmation actions you've set. However, there may be scenarios where you want to perform actions only for certain people, such as based on the custom fields they've selected.

By clicking "+ Add Conditional Action", you can perform confirmation actions only for the visitors that meet the conditions you've defined.

To learn more about adding conditional actions to your forms, head here →