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Automate Lead Collection On Your Website With Salesforce

As we work with existing or potential salesforce customers, we have found Salesforce’s Web-to-Lead feature to be one of the least utilized. Available in the Group, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions, Web-to-Lead lets you gather information from your company’s website and automatically generate up to 500 new leads a day.

Below is a step-by-step guide for the basics of setting this up for your business. You should have access to the following prior to beginning:

• Either you are a System Administrator for your Salesforce organization or you can get help from one.
• You are a webmaster for your company’s website or you can get help from one.
• Basic knowledge of HTML and CSS is helpful in making your web form look pretty.

STEP 1

To begin, navigate to Setup>App Setup>Customize>Leads>Web-to-Lead. When you click on Web-to-Lead you are brought to the below screen where you can begin setup. Setup includes editing Web-to-Lead settings and creating the Web-to-Lead form based upon the Lead fields you want in your form.

Salesforce Web-to-Lead Settings Page

STEP 2

Click on the Edit button to set the basic settings. Web-to-Lead Enabled must be checked in order for this feature to function. Then specify which Salesforce user will be the Default Lead Creator. When the Lead is created from a form being submitted on your website, this user will be set as the Lead owner. If however you have Assignment Rules enabled, the Lead owner may change based upon the criteria in your assignment rules. Finally, you should set a Default Response Template. This is a email template that is sent automatically to the person completing the web form based upon the email address they supply. Depending on the edition of Salesforce you have, you can use Auto-Response Rules to vary the email template that is sent depending on defined criteria.

STEP 3

Now that the settings are complete, it’s time to Create the Web-to-Lead From. The first step is to pick the fields you will be using in your web form. You can use standard and custom fields. All Available Fields are list and simply select the ones you want and click the Add arrow to move them to the Selected Fields list. Then you will want to specify the web page location the person with be taken once they submit your web form. This is often referred to as your “thank you” page.

Salesforce Web-to-Lead Form Builder

After you click Generate, you will be give the necessary HTML code to insert into your website. If you are not the webmaster for your website, give this code to someone that has access to edit it. The code includes basic instructions and debugging capabilities for testing. If everything is setup correctly you should be able to submit the form from your website and within a few minutes you will see a new Lead in your salesforce CRM.

If you are using WordPress to manage your website, try WordPress-to-Lead.

For questions about this process and any other Salesforce capabilities, contact Collabrax today.

Tags: automation, lead management, linkedin, Salesforce.com