Thanks to numerous plugins, WordPress makes it easy for people to get in touch with you. Whether it’s potential clients looking to hire you or potential customers with questions before purchasing, a contact page with your favorite WordPress form plugin is all it takes.
The beauty of WordPress form plugins is that they will usually send a notification to your email address, letting you know a person filled it out. Some forms will even forward the entire message to you.
But what happens when you want that message or the recipient’s information to be added to your CRM? Or what if you want to add them to a special mailing list? What if you need to create a task that’s associated with that message, for example, following up with a potential client after a week or two?
The hard way involves processing the form information manually and then taking the appropriate action. However, there is a better way to handle your form submissions. In fact, thanks to one tool, you can integrate the most popular form plugins with nearly everything, and in today’s post, I’ll show you how.
As mentioned earlier, if you have a website for business reasons, chances are you need to integrate the data from your form submissions with other tools. You can easily achieve this using Zapier.
Zapier is an online application that connects two or more apps and allows you to sync data between them or import data from one app into another.
For example, you can use Zapier to:
Zapier offers a free and a paid plan so you can freely experiment with it and see different ways you can automate your business. By automating boring or repetitive tasks in your business, you can save time.
This allows you to focus your energy on more productive tasks such as marketing your business, connecting with influencers, and coming up with new ways to serve your clients and increase your profits.
Now that you know what Zapier is and how it can benefit your business, let’s take a look at how you can integrate it with some of the most popular WordPress form plugins.
For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be using the Contact Form 7 plugin and CF7 to Zapier plugin, both of which can be downloaded from the official repository.
The Contact Form 7 has a 4-star rating and over 5 million active installs and it’s also one of the most popular free contact form plugins out there.
CF7 To Zapier plugin is an addon plugin for Contact Form 7 which adds the necessary Zapier integration.
Let’s take a look at how to integrate the two.
Login to your WordPress dashboard and go to Plugins > Add new. Search for the Contact Form 7 and CF to Zapier plugins and then install them and activate them.
If you already have Contact Form 7 installed, then you only need to search for CF to Zapier plugin, install it, and activate it on your site. The good news is that the Contact Form 7 will already create the initial contact form which we will use for this tutorial.
Go to Zapier.com and create a free Zapier account. If you already have a Zapier account, then you can proceed with the next step.
In Zapier, click on the Make a zap button and select Webhooks under Built-In Apps. On the next screen, select the option to Catch Hook.
Zapier will now give you a hook that you need to copy and paste to your contact form.
Go back to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Contact > Contact Forms. Hover over the existing contact form and click on the Edit link under it.
Click on the Zapier tab and paste the hook in the Webhook URL box. Be sure to also check the box that says Send to Zapier. Save your changes.
The only thing that’s left to do now is to complete the Zap setup and tell Zapier where we want to send the data. For the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll store form submissions in a Google Sheet.
Go back to Zapier and you press the button that says “I did this” under the webhook step. Zapier will then test to make sure it can grab the information. Once the test is done, you’ll see a notice that says your zap is missing an action step. Let’s add that step now.
Click the link and you will be taken to a screen where you can choose the app that you want to connect with your form. In this case, I’ll select Google Sheets. Zapier will ask you to connect your Google account so go ahead and do so.
You’ll want to create a spreadsheet in your Google Sheets that will store the data that the Zapier will pull. Be sure to add column names that match the fields on your form so Zapier can properly process the information. In this case, you will need to create a column for the name, email, subject, and the message field.
Go back to Zapier and choose the newly created spreadsheet from the dropdown menu. Map the form fields to the corresponding columns in your spreadsheet and click continue. Zapier will then send test information to your spreadsheet. When you see the success message, all that’s left to do is to turn your Zap on.
If you’re not a fan of Contact Form 7, fear not as there are a few other WordPress forms that can be integrated with Zapier.
WordPress form plugins allow you to create anything from a simple contact form to a more complex intake questionnaire. Thanks to Zapier, you can get even more out of your favorite form plugin and integrate it with the rest of the tools you’re using in your business.
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