Salesforce's Marketing Power- Increase your lead conversion by contacting web visitors within minutes of completing a form

I found one of the most valuable tools salesforce has to offer is the ease of creating a data entry form for capturing web visitor information. SF email templates allow you to notify staff of a new lead, create a task for a specific staff member to followup, create a customized msg to the prospective student, and call the student within minutes of the student completing the form.

Generating the html code for the web to lead form can be done in minutes, where the work comes in is editing this code. However, once you have created one form you can use it as a template and simply copy the code and make the minor adjustments such as updating the campaign id.

You also need to establish an assignment rule for these new leads. You can assign all new leads affiliated with your record type to one individual who will receive an email notification OR perhaps you want to you would like to assign a lead based on the campaign or program of interest. If you would like a group of co-workers to receive an email notification of the incoming lead then create a user queue to share the workload. It is a best practice to establish a generic email alias (with all queue users as recipients) to use as the queue email. This will ensure all staff receives a message when a new lead has been added.

An autoresponse sent to the prospective student is an optional feature but can easily be setup. Create an email template to convey a customized msg to the prospect that is automatically emailed upon creation. You can also establish multiple templates if you wish to send a specific message based on the data entered. For example, you may want to send program information based on the program of interest selected on the form.

Some of My Success Stories With Web to Lead Forms
I created a general inquiry campaign to capture new web to leads that complete a form requesting general information. One of these forms captured over 120 new leads within the past 8 months with one already converting to a student. Another program recently had two Open House events & advertised these events in the local paper directing them to the website. Within a few weeks over 70 leads were created :)

Then of course there is Google Adwords an easy an affordable way to advertise your website programs on the Google Search Engines. Web to leads can be used in conjunction with this long tail marketing technique in order to measure your Return on Investment (ROI). These forms & tracking code allow you to capture the number of converted leads from each Google Adword Campaign.

So generate your code...
edit your picklist values... set your record type, and campaing id value etc
determine which staff member(s) will receive the email notification
setup an email autoresponse to the prospect (optional)
be sure any necessary tracking code (Google Analytics/Adwords) are added to the page
and please come back and comment with success stories of your own :)

Marketing - Salesforce Web-to-Lead Forms Overview

Are you looking to more effectively respond to program inquiries? Would you like to enhance you websites' interactivity by adding a data entry form to request additional information about a program? Would you like an email notification sent to a co-worker each time a visitor to the site completes the form?

A web to lead provides users the ability to gather information from their website visitors which automatically tracks and stores in salesforce. You can use standard lead fields on this form such as name, address, email, phone number, lead source etc. in addition to any custom field. Perhaps you would also like to capture the prospective student's program of interest (a custom field) along with their contact information. Salesforce provide you the ability to easily add this field to the form. If you have a basic understanding of html, you can also include hidden fields, identify a specific value for these fields, as well as format the form fields.

A website could potentially contain several web to lead forms, so it is highly recommended that you create a campaign prior to generating a web-to-lead in which to associate the leads. For example, the off campus group has a "General Inquiry" campaign established in order to group all web to leads that completed the "Request Information" form as well as an "Information Session" campaign established for recruiting events. So a user to the site has the option of "Requesting information" or "Registering for an Information Session". The potential uses for a basic web to lead forms are endless.

Web to Lead Best Practices

• Be sure to the following hidden fields & associated value:
• Campaign ID (tracks to specific campaign)
  
• Record type id (tracks to specific program)
  
• Web to Lead (check box value on the lead record to denote the lead was created via web to lead)
• If you would like to notify a co-worker when a new lead has been added you will need to:
• Be sure the co-worker is an active salesforce user (has access to salesforce)
• Establish Assignment Rules to specify criteria or rules used to determine the recipient of an email notification. For example, you may want all new web to leads for your record type to be assigned to a user(s) or perhaps you would like to notify co-workers depending on the campaign or program of interest. Assignment rules allow you to identify the necessary criteria for the rule.
  
• Create a Queue in order to assign a lead to a group of co-workers
  
• Create a public email template for the automatic email notification that will be sent to the co-worker.
  
• This email can contain merged SF fields such as their contact information so there is no need to login to salesforce to retrieve this information
• You may also want to include a link to easily access the record within SF
  
• Create a lead autresponse rule to automatically send a message to the prospective student completing the form.
  
• Create an email template for this message which can be customized with merged fields in order to make it more personalized.


• If you are using Google Analytics/Google Adwords be sure to include the tracking code on the webpage of the form


Web to Lead Limitations

• A max of 5,000 web to leads can be generated in one day (org wide)
• Custom objects and encrypted fields are not available for use on a web-to-lead form