-- If you prefer a video walk through, check out this video.
Adding online forms to your website is a great way to capture new leads on your website or landing pages.
When a contact fills out a BenchmarkONE form, 3 things will happen:
They will be added as a contact in your database;
Any automations you have applied will be triggered; and
A cookie will drop and you can begin to track where the contact is going on your website (learn how to set up webpage tracking here)
To get started, navigate to Tools > Online Forms.
Select +New Online Form, which will bring you to the screen below:
Basic Form Information
Name the form and provide a brief description.
You must choose a default sales rep that the contact will be assigned to when coming into BenchmarkONE.
Choose a default contact status to identify where these contacts should fall in your pipeline (e.g. lead, prospect, opportunity, customer).
Choose how to handle duplicate records. BenchmarkONE will use the email address to match to an existing contact in your database. If an existing contact is found, the information will merge using the option you have provided here.
Duplicate Options are:
Do not update the existing record: If a user submits a form and that contact is already in BenchmarkONE (we match on email address), but a different address, phone, etc. is provided, the information will not be updated in the system. This includes the 'status' field mentioned above, so keep this in mind if your form should be moving contacts forward in the pipeline.
Update only blank fields in existing record: If a user chooses this option, only fields which were left blank will be filled in by new information. Fields which already have data in the system will be ignored.
Overwrite fields in the existing record: If a user chooses this option, fields that contain data will be overwritten by new data submitted via the form except phone number and address fields. Those fields will be appended to the contact record.
Double Opt-In: If selected, BenchmarkONE will not add the contact or their information to your database until the contact has clicked a confirmation link within an email sent to them.
You can organize your forms by using Folders to quickly locate forms later.
Locking the form will allow only admins within your system to make changes.
When complete, select the Continue button to proceed into the form builder.
Building the Form
To add fields, drag and drop the type of field you want into the form. Make sure to note whether or not you would like that field to be a required field on your form using the red required asterisk in your top dashboard panel.
Types of Fields
Contacts Fields
Fields in the Contacts Fields area will merge into the contact record.
The Tag Comb and Tag Checkbox fields allow your contacts' to segment themselves by selecting their own interests as it relates to your products or services. They will be tagged based on their selection(s).
Any field with the Custom title will merge into a custom field on the contact record. IMPORTANT: You must create the fields you would like to merge first by going to Account Settings > Customizations > Custom Fields.
Be sure click the gray gear icon and fill in that last box with the Custom Field you would like this information to be tied to.
Social Networks, Advanced Fields, and Survey Fields are NOT added into contact records. These are for your internal use only. You can view the data put in these fields via a notification email or through the form submission report.
Customizing the Form
Changing the Color and Style. You have options for font style and color as well as background color in your form. Edit those as you would like.
Hack: Make the form background, etc. transparent so it blends in seamlessly with your website!
You can choose from a list of themes to customize your form.
Changing the Size: You can change the field width and size by clicking on the field you would like to adjust and choosing the width or size options in the toolbar.
You can also change the width of the entire form from the builder. Select form width and adjust as needed.
BenchmarkONE Hack: To make your form fit in a certain place on your website, right click on the area and select "Inspect Element". This should give you the height and width of that area. Match the width number from your site to the width number in the form!
To Adjust Height of your Form using iFrame:
Delete the part of the code that says: onload='this.height=screen.height;'
Insert: height="NUMBERpx" (where NUMBER=the height of the area on your site).
Adding Form Automations
The next step is to set up automations that should trigger when a visitor submits the form.
You may include as many automations as needed for each form you create.
The Send an Email option automatically sends an email to the contact who submitted the form.
The Send Notification option will send an email to a user or any specific email address you enter. This is for internal use. There is an option to include all the data from the form in that email as well.
Reminder: The Send Notification automation is separate from the notifications already set in your account settings. If you already have your email notifications in account settings enabled for every form submission, you do not need to add a notification as an action here (unless you want to notify a second person of the form activity).
Thank You Page
On the next screen you can choose to add text to a default thank you page or link an existing URL that's hosted on your own website, landing page, or pre-designed thank you page.
Best practice: re-direct back to your site so that leads can browse and possibly find more products or services that you offer!
Embedding the Form
On the final page of the form wizard, you will choose your embed option and then copy the code to put on your webpage.
The link to your form option is great for testing, copying into emails, or for use as a quick entry at a networking event. See this article for more info.
We offer multiple embed options to seamlessly place on your website or landing page. The iFrame will insert the form onto your website exactly as you have created it within BenchmarkONE. The HTML/CSS code is a great option if you are planning to customize the design to best fit your existing website design.