Never, ever lose a sales lead.
In a hurry? Contact Support to get the WordPress Forms Plugin with Database + SwiftCRM Connector plugin, it is free for SwiftCRM users.
Not a Swift CRM user? See below for options, or just sign up. It’s awesome, for most clients. Retail + restaurants = not a match.
What it does:
- Capture the lead locally from even a Static-Generated form such as with Simply Static Web Forms (ref: Simply Static)
- Log it to the local database, within WordPress. This gives you the first line of defense. Default status is “Incomplete”, which means it has not yet been transmitted to SwiftCRM. Even if SwiftCRM fails, you at least have a “safety net” now, as long as the website is online. Since all our websites are static now, they basically never go down and load crazy fast.
- Via cron, it will send the lead to Swift CRM. We will probably release a paid version that connects other CRMs, if people request it.
- If the data has NOT been confirmed to the CRM, and is over 13 minutes old (2 cron-cycles of 6 minutes), then we also can fire off a different message i.e. to a sysadmin / bug report.
- If the data has been confirmed to the CRM, all is good. That can fire sequences for followup, etc.
We will be enhancing this soon with wordpress-side code to escalate the sales conversation – trigger a chatbot, if we can. Not all guests will welcome it, but some will, and you’re never more likely to sell then right then.
WHY the WordPress Forms Plugin with Database Plugin?
Sales leads are like cash money in your pocket, sometimes.
Losing sales leads is like lighting money on fire.
The WordPress Forms Plugin with Database is designed to capture as many as possible, even if the CRM were to be offline (unlikely). Think of it like a safety net system.
WordPress Forms Plugin with Database: The Backstory
A few years ago, for a very large debt settlement company, we (our small Marketing Agency side) engineered the absolute best possible lead capture system.
The requirement: Never, never, lose a single lead. Ever.
This gets into “High Uptime Engineering”, by the way – if you have a serious brand, are spending $ on marketing, you need this. These guys were netting a few hundred thousand per month (take-home net profit) at that time, so it was worth it. Every minute the sales floor didn’t have leads was hundreds or thousands of lost revenue out the door, so seconds matter & reliability is king.
What this looks like now for us:
- Static websites like this: fast to load, WordPress is abstracted out, and htaccess-protected. Far more secure, better load experience.
- Forms have to get totally revised on static sites
- They point to a local lead-capture. For very high traffic, we can put this on a load balancer with failover notification.
The next level: Incomplete Forms Capture
We have this code built and used previously, but it is intentionally not installed on this site out of respect for privacy.
If you submit the form, we got you. If you don’t, we’ll honor your choice.
For the client:
If someone so much as started a form and abandoned it, we still captured every field that had been filled out, even if they did not hit submit.
Note: This may not be legal in your jurisdiction for purposes of marketing. If someone enters a phone #, but doesn’t click submit, they maybe changed their mind, and that could – or not – be considered a do-not-call violation. We are not attorneys, and advised the client to discuss with counsel. They did, and decided to proceed. I do not believe they acted on it, they just wanted reassurance they had captured every single possible lead, no matter what.
By capturing incomplete and abandoned leads, the client gained reassurance they had as much data as humanly possible.
The next level: IP Visitor Enrichment
There is one level back even, which is proactive IP recognition. This converts some of your website visitors into contact records, even without them so much as filling in any data. This won’t work for all visitors, but it will for most – you’ll get at least some of their contact info.
What should happen next with our WordPress Forms Plugin with Database project?
We should add…
- Incomplete Capture as an option in settings, but this requires some work on the field-side to make it work. We’ll discuss internally.
- IP based / Browser Fingerprinting based Visitor Auto-Enrich via Plugin, JS, APIs.
- Spam Filtering, WP-Side, before the lead is sent to server
- WP-side “Session Upgrade” i.e. pipe data into a new chat; goal = deepen the sale
- Piping to some external systems like Zapier and Make.com
So how do I get it?
Easy: Try SwiftCloud! The growing suite has Email Marketing, Invoicing, Social Workrooms, e-Sign, Waivers, & much more.