Grow your business with marketing automation. Implement these three steps in your WordPress contact forms to instantly level up your business.
- The project: Grow your business by converting more online visitors into loyal customers.
- The problem: You're busy—this is only going to work if you automate it.
- The solution: Harness the power of email scheduling, MailChimp and easy online payments in your WordPress contact forms.
The problem with any growing business is that it keeps you busy. Really busy!
Sometimes too busy to take care of marketing like you used to. Could your business grow even more, with no ongoing time commitments falling on you? Can it really be automated?
This is a situation many small business owners find themselves in — alternating between quiet times and busy times like a yo-yo. Your quiet times are where you can concentrate on marketing, and you see the rewards quickly. But during busy times, your entire focus is on fulfilling orders and taking care of customers. During these times, your marketing gets neglected and your busy time doesn't last as long as it should!
Marketing automation with WordPress contact forms
You need a consistent, automatic way of keeping in contact with potential customers. You want something that can run with very little time and effort. Once you’ve invested the time to automate your WordPress contact form, you can let the automation run in the background while you focus on other aspects of your business.
Step 1: Maximize your existing WordPress contact forms
Your WordPress contact forms might look fantastic and gather all the information you need. It may even provide your web visitors with quote calculations. But does it make the most of its unique point of contact with your potential customer? If your contact form merely notifies your inbox that a customer has an inquiry, and does not have any other actions assigned to it, you have room to make improvements that will pay off rapidly.
Many business owners simply make their WordPress contact forms email a copy of the submitted information to the potential customers. This autoresponder email is a great opportunity to start a relationship with your prospective customer. Instead of just sending a copy of the submitted information, add something extra to your email message.
Ideas to engage your customer through your existing contact form
- Say “thank you!” Everyone likes to feel appreciated. Make sure to actually say “thank you”. Another way to say thanks is to offer a free download for a piece of valuable content such as an eBook or discount code. This gesture might be all you need to gain a loyal customer immediately. Even if they don't buy straight away, it can leave a lasting positive impression.
- Mention related products/services. Use conditional [if] tags in your email to conditionally show related products and services dependent on the category of the inquiry. Use this method to make your promotions more personal and relevant to the customer.
- Link to your special offers or upcoming events page. This one is a no-brainer. It’s simple, effective, and hassle free. If you have a special offer or events page that gets updated regularly, let people know about it!
- Link to your business’ social media accounts. Got a great social media page? Give people the opportunity to follow you on social media. It’s one more way to keep your prospective customer engaged.
Step 2: Schedule future reminders or special messages
Email marketing has a notoriously low conversion rate if you do it wrong. Emails are easy to ignore, easy to forget, and easy to delete. That's why many companies send out regular updates and reminders. It’s annoying to get the same message repeated again and again every day, so be careful that you set this up to engage customers, not annoy them!
Set it and forget it
Done correctly, email reminders can make a brilliant difference to the effectiveness of your marketing. Best of all, this is nearly a "set it and forget it" way to boost your business. The Form Action Automation Add-On allows you to automate future email or SMS text notifications based various fields in the original customer contact form.
Perhaps you’d like a follow up email to go out 48 hours after a prospect's first contact form submission? Send a coupon code 30 days after first submission? No problem. You can imagine the types of email communications that you would be able to send with this simple, effective solution. For more examples of what you can do with this, see the Form Action Automation docs.
Step 3: Use WordPress contact forms to grow your email list, make sales and solicit reviews
Build your email list
Even if you don't currently send out email marketing campaigns, build an email marketing list. A highly qualified list of potential clients is valuable to any business. The sooner you start building that list, the better. Then start using your fresh email list.
I recommend MailChimp for this because it is a great platform and easily integrates with Formidable Forms. The MailChimp Add-On automatically sends email addresses from your WordPress contact form to your MailChimp list. Allow anyone who submits a form to be added to your list, with no extra effort from you.
A word about email marketing: prospects and customers who have a say in the matter will be much more receptive to your email campaigns. Make sure your contact form allows them to opt in or out of your emails. (In the U.S. there are always those CAN-SPAM laws to consider too.)
Make that sale!
You're obviously marketing your business to increase sales. Now that you have a growing email list, send out timely email campaigns with sales links.
Formidable makes online sales easy with simple payment forms. Process one-time or recurring payments with ease. Make automatic changes to your entry after a payment is completed or refunded. Set your payment forms to trigger actions after the payment is received, including email notifications, add to MailChimp lists, and SMS text messages.
Woocommerce is a great tool to help manage promotions and coupon codes for your physical products. The Woocommerce Add-On allows you to create your product purchase form however you would like. Add a calculation to generate the total, and select your form in the sidebar box on the WooCommerce page. Now you can collect whatever information you would like before a product is added to the cart. Even include variable pricing based on the options chosen in the form.
Ask for feedback and reviews
Online reviews are a great way to climb higher in search results because of their ever growing SEO value. But who has time to go ask for reviews? Inside your email marketing campaigns, add a signature line like this to get your business on the fast track to success:
"Happy with our service? Show your appreciation by leaving a review on Facebook.”
It's also easy to solicit reviews with Form Action Automation. Obviously, the key to this is to request a review after purchase or support has been obtained, rather than immediately after the form submission.
Conclusion
Contact forms are an essential part of your WordPress site. Don’t neglect them. Simple automation tools in Formidable Forms can automate your marketing. So stop wasting time and get started today.
Read more: 6 ways to increase conversions in your email sign up form
Thanks for posting. I'm using GetResponse for marketing automation. Is there a way to integrate with wordpress just like with mailchimp?
Hi Gloria. There is a third party Add-On to Formidable Forms (not maintained by Formidable) that integrates GetResponse.
Alternatively, Formidable has a full API Add-On for custom integration with RESTful APIs.
Good luck with your marketing!
Hi.
Is there a way of bypassing the requirement for contact forms altogether within email campaigns?
If an email campaign is targeting a user, we already have their email address, so have you ever come across CRM-to-ESP functionality that provides a 'one-click' lead generation function, so that all the user needs to do it click the CTA link and then between the CRM and, say, Campaign Monitor a relevant response is sent to that client?
Thanks