Instant web forms reviews

Before you give away an advertising specialty,  you’ll want to collect information about the prospect at the tradeshow, online, or in direct response forms. Automating lead responses is critical since one of the greatest failures of lead generation is lack of follow up. This is especially true for mid-size businesses. A decade ago custom forms were expensive and generally done by a web programmer. Although that’s still an option, using a web form creation service can also provide a lot of benefits. When you choose a solution you’ll want to consider these elements in case there are price restrictions with different features.

• How many forms am I likely to create?
• Do I need an automated response and auto redirect page, or do I need a lead nuturing system that will enable multiple automated follow ups?
• If using social media or online advertising, how many landing pages will I have over time?
• How easy it is to export data and is it in a form I can use elsewhere?
• Who is going to manage my forms?
• How many people will fill in my forms?
• Do I need to collect payment?
• What do I need to integrate with? (Salesforce, Mailchimp etc.) What data is sent/captured? If relying on an API, how will triggers work?
• Am I going to analyze reports and if so, what data is needed?

Best web formbuilder reviewed for robustness without having to integrate to other software: Logiforms.

Best web formbuilder reviewed to use with multiple custom landing pages : formstack.

Formstack is best if your goal is to get them to a web page for immediate conversion to a specific action. It does not offer lead nurturing, but it you can create multiple landing pages with custom URL’s and conditional logic. For the power marketer.

Free plan descriptions: Adobe- 1 free form, 50 responses, unlimited questions and fields, no skip logic. Collect data in a form. Wufoo- 1 user, 3 forms, 3 reports, 10 fields, 100 entries per month. ( You can download to empty the responses to 0) Formsite- 5 forms, 50 fields, 10 responses. Best FREE web form builder: ADOBE FORM CENTRAL if you don’t need secure payments, Wufoo if you do.

These are worth a mention: Caspio Free 14 day trial, form designer. Big clients include UPS and ESPN. $39-$749 plus many extra fees. Complex.Though robust, you’ll need more of an IT mindset to plan and deploy. Significantly reduces program from scratch projects. Good solution for large companies with in-house IT and marketing resources to create and deploy complex projects in shorter timeframes. Adobe Genius.com. They have a great company name and some nice creative, but the site seems to fall short on telling their story and I encountered a few html errors which makes me pause. Pros: Mulitple channel marketing. Genius URL’s let’s you collect data from many points with extensive tracking. Once in the genius system, it’s all web based and there is an option to integrate to Salesforce where you can then set up triggers. These formbuilders have less frills for those who really want to collect information, but are not interested in spending time analyzing reports and don’t need many fancy features.

Coffeecup did not make the cut. Emailmeform is a very simplistic, yet cost effective solution that offers SSL and export for basic forms to COLLECT data. $9.95/mth for ad free, unlimited forms and responses. All formbuilders reviewed include a spam filter such as captcha.

It’s absolutely critical to understand how you want to collect data and what you’ll do with it after to choose the best solution for you. The other element is technical expertise. Do you need a solution that provides beautiful creative for you, or do you have staff skilled enough to tweak it the way you want? A solid planning solution is to have marketing write out their plan. This entails: – Sketch the flow from capture to management, which will provide a blueprint for planning. For example, marketing wants to capture leads from a direct mail campaign, a trade show, and an email campaign. A postcard is sent out directing prospects to a landing page that tells a story and has a fill in form. Cards are scanned at a trade show. Emails are sent. Do they all link to the same landing page? Or are each unique messages? What’s on the response form? Is the data merged into a common database? How will the database distinguish this lead source from another? Who will see the data? How will the data be managed? Does it need to be exported? Is there an automated sequence to follow up? Does the sequence vary by data response source? Does the sequence involve print or email? Only when you answer all these questions, can you determine the best solution for your company. If you need to ‘walk before you crawl’, make sure that you choose a solution that will export exactly the data you want if you envision upgrading at a future date. You may need IP address, date, URL where captured to import into other programs, especially if there is an email sign up.