Heads-up, form fans! Give a warm welcome to our honored guest blogger, Mr. Mike McNulty of Solve CRM. Sound familiar? Good, because we’ve blogged about these CRM all-stars before and when Mike asked if he could share some pro tips with all of you on how to maximize that sweet CRM potential of yours? Well, what do you think we said?

Get ready for some CRM wisdom, people. Take it away, Mike.

If you’re running a business website, you’ve probably got an online contact form embedded into your site so visitors can submit inquiries, sign up for your newsletter, request a demo, or get in touch with you for just about anything else.

And it’s likely that you use a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to store the customer (and potential customer) data you collect. But how do you get the customer info you’re collecting via your website forms and the data you’re collecting from other landing pages and marketing efforts all into one place?

It’s easy! Your website visitor data can be automatically transferred into your CRM using a Wufoo-CRM integration. (Check out all available integrations here!) And once you’re all integ-ready, there are 3 things you can do to optimize your Wufoo-CRM powerhouse. Ready to learn? Of course you are.

1. Capture & Categorize

The #1 rule for optimizing your Wufoo-CRM integration? Be flexible. The more choices you include in your forms, the more comfortable your visitors will feel giving you their information. Plus, it’ll be easier to personalize how you follow up with them. So make sure any form on your website is set up to include the right fields.

A good place to start is with a dropdown menu. For example, sort your contacts by asking site visitors, “Why are you contacting us today?” And when you ask for email and phone number, ask them to tell you which method of communication they prefer. You can even include a file upload field so existing customers (and potential clients) can submit photos or other documents. That way you’ll contact them, ready to offer feedback, tips, or price estimates.

In short, your CRM should enable you to capture data using varying form fields–and tag contact records as they arrive, so that your data are given the right context. Websites that collect different information from different types of visitors should consider using separate Wufoo forms with unique fields and tags. With better data and more context, your staff can qualify leads more accurately and make faster decisions.

2. Automate Next Steps

Staff love when you make their lives easier, and you love it when there are no cracks for things to fall through. So when you capture a visitor’s data from your website, make sure they get assigned to someone automatically, and that their record is shared with the right people. Any series of tasks that need to be performed should be created and assigned immediately. Perhaps future emails should be scheduled or “Welcome!” phone calls planned. And if there are help desk tickets or emails related to this person, those should all get linked to the contact record as well.

Many teams need contacts, tasks, and events synced to particular member’s Google Apps accounts. You can also help your clients automatically maintain their profile with you by having your CRM simply update their record as they fill out your Wufoo forms. This helps centralize your client data and prevent duplicate records from weighing you down. With all the meticulous and repetitive work automated your team can focus time and energy on clients.

3. Take Action

Here’s where the fun really starts because your team can now begin to leverage your setup, and use your CRM to demonstrate value to your new leads.

Scheduled emails are being received. Follow up phone calls are being made. Prospects  are being added to marketing campaigns. Projects are being set up and shared while draft invoices are being prepared. Your existing customers and potential clients will think you have an army of staff dedicated to them.

Every step of the way, updates are being made and shared centrally in your CRM. So when a prospect calls you, you know exactly what they are talking about. Or if the client emails you, you can see their entire history in Gmail, so you’ll know how to respond appropriately, without even jumping back into the CRM.

Your business should seem like a surprise party for your prospects. Your team should seem like a well choreographed group of friends, welcoming them with a shower of personalized service, delivered with effortless efficiency. Wufoo helps trigger such a party when it’s integrated with a CRM that leverages other best of breed apps: email apps like Google Apps, accounting apps like Xero & Freshbooks, campaign apps like MailChimp & Constant Contact as well as Zendesk for helpdesk and RingCentral for incoming phone calls.

Remember, online forms and CRMs are helpful on their own, and once they’re connected, they can turn your business into an automated powerhouse.

For more information on how you can get started with Solve CRM or if you just want to give a “Hey there!” to Mike, click!