What is Form Automation Software & How to use it
Our world is going faster each day. And we must keep up with this speed in our work. But don’t worry about your to-do list getting bigger, nor with your tasks pile growing larger than your own height. We bring a solution for you to keep up with the hasty world - form automation software.
You can implement form automation software, such as MightyForms, to increase your workflow, without increasing your workload. Automated time-consuming tasks are the easiest way to grow your company. All because you and your team can finally dedicate the time to tasks that really demand human interaction.
Using a Form Automation Software is how you can complete piles of tasks and still save time to do your work. What seemed impossible before, is practical now.
In this article, you’ll learn what is a form automation software, how you can get to know one’s fingerprints, how you can use and adapt your business to automation, and how MightyForms can do all the hard work and time-consuming tasks for you.
What is form automation software?
Form automation software is, in a simple and short definition, when you use tools that streamline your workflow, assigning wasteful and tedious recurring tasks to software apps.
Form automation software allows companies to speed up document processes, onboarding processes, and more, increasing employee performance. Since automation is a great way to save time, you can count on the employee to do more relevant tasks. Instead of accomplishing manually time-consuming tasks, such as looking for documents or responding to each email, now they have the time to dedicate to other tasks, as writing messages that can convert leads.
And that is an important thing to keep an eye on. The lead is one of the crucial parts of any business. Is the lead who brings traffic to your website, gives reviews, and, eventually, converts into customers.
With form automation software you can personalize and automate key functionalities and tasks from your forms. You don’t just eliminate the paper from your office but also tedious tasks, by automating them. Again, when you automate tasks that would take a long time to be accomplished you gain productivity.
As an example, you can automate your contact form to bring better results to your company. Just create the form and leave it on autopilot. It can do all the tasks that would, in the old days, take forever for you to do.
Paper form or Web Forms? Which one to choose.
Our lives are turning more digital every day. So, the logical response to this question is for you to choose to use web forms. Now let’s give some facts that can make such affirmation trustworthy.
In the U.S. alone, companies spent more than $120 billion on printed forms. Saving money seems to be a reasonable argument to stop using paper forms and go online. The worst part is that most of these paper forms are outdated after 3 months or so. As if it wasn’t enough, there is the time the employee spent looking for paper forms, which makes each document costs a minimum of $350.
Using web forms, on the other hand, can reduce these costs, saving your company money, and also can help and speed up the process of searching for each document, reducing the time an employee would spend on the task.
Save money and time are the main two reasons for you to change all business forms to web forms.
Benefits of using automated forms
There are several benefits to starting using form automation software on your business. The main benefits are that you can stop with waste: say goodbye to both time and money wasted, and also paper waste, helping the environment. But there are many more and we are going to talk about each of them now.
Less waste
It is considered a waste of anything that is not useful for the business functionality and that demands too much time and money, with a few returns. Stop the waste by using web automated forms. You can also, with this action, eliminate the over-production.
Save money and time
I know, we already talked about it. Several times, indeed. But it is because it is very important. There is no bigger benefit in using a web automation form than what you save with money and time. Paper forms cost a lot more than digital forms. You have the cost of printing, transportation, inks, folders, and the paper itself. And when we see about time-consuming, with automation instead of wasting their talent in trivial tasks, employees can use their knowledge in more effective tasks, like producing content to convert leads.
Speed up tasks
What a waste of time it is when you have to look for a single client's data using the paper form. But, with automation software you can do the same search in a few seconds and have all the data organized the way you think is more productive. That is to speed up your tasks.
You can also create pre-filled forms, helping the user to fill it out and submit it, and streamline your processes by adding integrations, like Google Calendar, Dropbox, Stripe, among others.
Track forms performance
By using automation software to your forms you can easily know how each one of them is performing and if a field must be replaced or changed in any way. That’s because you can follow field by field and get to know if a specific question is making prospects abandon the form. You can, then, improve your forms to get a better response.
Key features of a form automation software
To start this discussion what you must know is that form automation software is only worthy if it reduces your workload by taking on time-consuming tasks and if they help your business improve its efficiency. If it doesn’t do these things, it does not deserve the name of form automation software.
The right software for your business is the one that has useful features and matches business goals. This means that you can choose the best form automation software on the market, but if you don’t use it properly, it may not help you. In short, be aware of where your business is and what you want it to achieve.
To help you on the quest of finding the proper software for your business, we have a few key features that a good form software must-have:
Customizable forms
The first item on our list of features is customization. You must be able to customize and brand your forms. Any good form automation software must give you the possibility to choose among several templates that can be altered to suit your goals and business identity. And this process must be quick, easy, and intuitive.
Integrations
Integrations are the connectors between your forms and other services, such as Google Calendar, Zapier, Dropbox, and Stripe. You can set up payments, schedule appointments, save files, all straight from the form. With integrations, you can use the maximum of your web form, streamline any process, and reduce your workload.
Digital signature automation
If you want to stop with paper waste and streamline your processes, therefore, having the option for clients and employees to sign any document digitally is one imperative and must-have feature. An electronic signature can be verified and work as a legal statement as much as an in-paper signature.
Webhooks
Webhooks connect your forms to other apps and online services. This allows you to get data from one app or URL to fill out form fields with user information. For example, you can connect a mailing service to your MightyForms, then, when a lead clicks on a form from an email, certain data will automatically be added to the form, like their email address
Responsive
A good form automation software is the one that allows you to create forms that work from any device used by a lead. This means that no matter if a lead is in a waiting room when submitting your form from a mobile, or if they are on a laptop, they can have the same user experience and the form will perform equally from both devices.
Logic Rules
Also known as Conditional Logic or Logic Jumps, Logic Rules is one of the crucial elements when we talk about automation. When you set up Logic Rules in your form you can guide the user into a more personalized experience with the form. Since the next question is related to the previous answer the rate of submission tends to be higher. And that is because people are not interested in answering questions that are clearly not for them.
For example, imagine you have a form for a new product launched. You want to know how your audience perceives this new product. If this form ends up in a new user inbox, that is not all familiarized with your brand, maybe they are not able to answer all questions you are asking. Therefore, if you add logic rules they can be directed only to pertinent questions, raising the submission rate.
Automatic email & SMS notifications
A real form automation software is the one that lets you and your team know when a submission happens. You can know about new submissions 24/7. And then you can work on delighting the lead from the moment you receive the notification of the submission. You can also organize the data and use the information submitted as it is to your goal.
Set up a Success Page
The autoresponder functionality is a must-have in a form automation software. The success page’s main goal is to notify the lead that the form has been correctly sent. But, that’s not all. You can set up a message to show all the next steps to the lead and then they can be well informed. Setting up an automatic message on a success page is a nice way to automatically nurture the lead. And nurturing the lead is how you conquer them converting them into customers.
Form Analytics
You must be able to study the form’s performance with Form Analytics, Google Analytics, and A/B testing with Google Tag Manager. It is the only way to decide if the form needs any change or adaptation. Tracking your form and seeing who are the respondents, where they are, to study their consumer behavior and nurture each one with close attention. Nurturing the lead is how you convert them into customers since you are working to convince them that your product is the best. When nurturing you can easily delight the lead by presenting all the unique qualities of your business.
Allow you to set reCAPTCHA
Protect your business from bots using bots, that is the principle of using a reCAPTCHA. You can automate the protection for your business, preventing robots from having access to your forms.
Form Automation Software Integrations
Looking online you’ll find several options for form automation software. We even have a list where you can check best form builders. Now it’s time to have a list of the best automation integration. Choose carefully your form automation software and make sure they have one or more of these integrations.
Zapier
Zapier is a great short-cut for thousands of other integrations that can make your job easier, faster, and wasteless. You have numerous possibilities to create the best and most complete form.
Google Data Studio
Gather data from multiple sources and add them to your forms, helping both users and yourself. With Google Data Studio integration you can do more with your forms than the simple question-answer pattern, like getting reports and capturing data.
Mailchimp
Automate your email and marketing strategies using Mailchimp integration. Get to know more about your audience to be assured of how to approach each of your leads.
Clio Grow
Attract and retain clients using the cloud-based software Clio. Create a good user experience using integration for client relationship management (CRM). Transform how your company is seen by your audience and grow your business.
PipeDrive
Organize your sales, raising your chances to close a deal, using PipeDrive integration. Manage your leads and business easily, track communications, and get data and reports.
How to automate your forms
The good news is that automation is no longer the future - it’s the present. That means that any software worth its coding can automate tasks that you set up for it.
MightyForms, for instance, is an intake platform with thousands of resources for you to automate your business and your workflow. You can easily cut off tasks by using integrations when using your talent and creativity in more interesting or urgent activities.
You can use several integrations, and also features, that can make all your work easier and faster. That’s the idea of using a form automation software, right?
Use Google Drive or Dropbox to receive files
Connect your Cloud accounts to the MightyForms and receive any file sent along to the form, making it better to manage.
To receive files with Google Drive and Dropbox is simple. Just sign in to your Cloud account and give MightyForms permission to interact and connect to them. And just like that, you can start receiving files.
It is a great resource for many reasons, like when you’re hiring and need to fill out information from candidates' resumé to the form’s answers. Or maybe it’s a feedback form and the user can attach photos.
Get submission data on Google Sheets
You can have all gathered data on Google Sheets, and this is an automatic action. Organize the data, build up reports, get to know how well your forms are doing, all with Google sheets integration.
Keep your form’s data in a single spreadsheet by connecting Google Sheets to MightyForms. And then all data will be sent automatically to the spreadsheet, so you can have more time to analyze it and decide, with the information collected, what are your next steps.
Interact with several other apps using Zapier and Webhooks
Zapier and Webhooks are two integrations that allow you to use data from a form to form or from a third party to form. Which makes your forms more intuitive, personalized, and quicker to fill out.
To connect to Zapier services all you have to do is to connect your Zapier account to your MightyForms, and then you’ll be logged to over 2 thousand apps and services.
And Webhooks isn’t complicated either. Webhook is a term used more each day, and that can be explained by how practical it is. You can connect services, URLs, and apps, and use the data from them, facilitating your workflow. To add a Webhook using MightyForms you go to Integrations and click on Webhooks, selecting the source of the data to l to be used, and how, as well.
Add Save and Resume functionality
One more action to streamline your forms, and it is also one that can help you avoid form abandonment. Save and Resume functionality is to be used when a lead has to stop filling out the form, so they can save all the data and won’t have to fill it out again when they return to the form.
It’s a feature made to prevent form abandonment. The feature also reminds the lead that they have a form that has not been submitted yet. This means that you can send an automatic message to recover those leads.
Track the form’s analytics
Using the Abandoned Form Recovery feature you can follow all your forms and make charts and reports on them. You can also realize what is working and what must change in each form, reducing the abandonment rate. Not to mention that this feature also lets you send messages to lost leads in an attempt to recover them.
And to use the Abandoned Form Recovery all you have to do is enable the functionality on your form dashboard. And you’re now tracking your form’s performance.
Set notifications to your team
You already know the importance of sending notifications to your team. Now let’s talk about how you can do it using MightyForms. You can alert your team automatically every time a form is submitted. All you have to do is select the email addresses or phone numbers that will receive the notification. And just like that your team and yourself can know every time a new submission is made and never miss the opportunity to convert a new lead.
Send a nice thank-you message
Let the lead know their form has been submitted and thank them for their time. You can customize the message using the input from a form field, such as the Name field, and let them know how you appreciate they have chosen your business. We have an article talking about the importance of the thank you message to the leads and also how to build the perfect one.
Add logic rules
Tell me what you want. Logic rules can guide the respondent through the form, letting only relevant questions show up according to the previous answer. No more form abandonment due to unnecessary questions.
Logic rules benefit your submission rates, but also your team’s workflow. As an example, you can set a message to be sent to a specific team according to the selection the respondent makes. Let’s say you have a job requirement form, you can ask about the position the respondent wishes to send their resumé and set a logic rule to send a message to that specific team supervisor.
You now know more about form automation software and all the features that a good one must-have. You also know more about MightyForms and how you can automate your forms and workflow using it.
To start using MightyForms is free. Try now and have full access to the best intake platform on the market. Automate your forms and reduce your workload.