One of the key differentiators with ActiveCampaign over other email marketing platforms is that it is also a marketing CRM. Which means it comes with CRM features like a deals pipeline. This allows you to keep track of leads as you move them through your marketing and sales process.
The starting point for a new lead is often when someone fills in an enquiry form on your website. That is their way of raising their hand, expressing an interest in your services and wanting to at least go to the next step.
I use Jotform for my enquiry forms. Jotform is a fantastic form builder, with many great features. It is also packed with native integrations. It has more native integrations than any other form builder that I have seen.
What is a native integration?
A native integration is when you can connect the tool to another tool, and have data flow between them, without needing to use a third-party integration tool like Zapier or Make (or custom API integration). It is something that a lot of tools don’t spend enough time on, as it can make the world of difference.
Jotform’s native integrations include ActiveCampaign. This means that when a lead fills in a form, it can automatically create a corresponding contact in ActiveCampaign. So you can automatically send them nurture emails in ActiveCampaign (assuming they have consented).
Adding a deal
After creating your form, head to the form settings. From there, click on Integrations in the left sidebar.
ActiveCampaign should be at the top of the list. If not, search for it.
After you add or edit the integration, you’ll have the following actions available:
- Create/update a contact
- Add contact to an automation
- Add note to a contact
- Create a deal
Create contact
Create/Update a contact adds the name and email to ActiveCampaign contact. You’ll need to choose a list to add the contact to. I have mine set to add them to my “Clients” list. They aren’t clients yet, but I segment between clients and leads with tags.
You can sync fields from your Jotform form to the contact record in ActiveCampaign.
You can also set tags. This is helpful if you want to trigger an automation to send emails to this lead.
Create Deal
In the “Create Deal” action, you’ll set the following properties:
- Owner: the person in your team who’s responsible for this lead. If it’s just one, then select your user account.
- Pipeline: this is the pipeline in ActiveCampaign that the lead will be added to. I have a pipeline called “Enquiry”.
- Stage: the stage of the pipeline that the contact should be added to. I have a stage called “Inbox”, which is there they are initially added to.
Next, you can map the fields from the enquiry form in Jotform to the deal record in ActiveCampaign.
This is what I have set up.
I have a text-area field on my form that asks “What’s the number 1 problem I can help you with”. I’ve set that to be added to the deal description so that I can see their answer right in the deal.
The value deal field is an odd one. ActiveCampaign requires that you set a value for the deal. I don’t actually ask for their budget when they complete the enquiry form (I may do in the future). But I need to set a value, or the deal can’t be created.
To get around this, I added a hidden field to the form called “Budget”. That is set to $1. And that field is mapped to the Value in the ActiveCampaign deal. This means that all deals have an initial value of $1. After speaking to the lead and getting a deeper understanding of the requirements and potential solution, I can then change the value.
Adding note
I’m also adding a note to the contact record with other usual information from the field. This ensures that I can easily see anything relevant from within ActiveCampaign, which enhances my communication with the lead.
Wrapping up
With a few simple steps, you can integrate a Jotform powered enquiry form with ActiveCampaign, and create a contact and deal. This cuts out any manual work of adding the required information to your CRM. And that speeds up your time to communicate with the lead and makes the relevant information available in the CRM, which increases the chances you’ll close the deal.
And this is all without the need for Zapier or Make, thanks to Jotform’s robust native integration with ActiveCampaign.