Seamlessly Welcome New Leads with Automated Contact Creation
Collecting leads is important, but it‘s just the first step. To provide the best experience for your new contacts, you need to swiftly welcome them into your CRM or email platform. Manually downloading spreadsheets and typing information wastes precious time better spent nurturing relationships.
Let‘s explore how automating contact creation with Zapier keeps your doors wide open for every new signup.
The Cost of Manual Onboarding
When new leads sign up on your website, they‘re eager to engage with your company and explore solutions to their problems. But a clunky, lengthy onboarding process can sour their initial enthusiasm.
According to data from HubSpot, leads who aren‘t contacted within 5 minutes have a 400% higher falloff rate. And those contacted within 30 minutes still see 120% more falloff than those contacted in under 5 minutes.
It‘s clear that fast follow-up impacts conversion rates. But manually managing contact data delays outreach. Copying info between apps leaves room for human error too. These hurdles drain sales resources that could be spent providing value.
CRM platform Salesforce found an astounding $12,000 per year is lost for every sales rep bogged down with manual data entry. For a 25 rep team, that tallies up to $300,000 in lost annual revenue.
The Rise of Automation in Business
To keep pace with rapid growth and customer expectations, Salesforce notes 72% of high performing sales teams have automated more than half their workflow. Exporting data to spreadsheets simply can‘t cut it anymore in the world of real-time everything.
From a 2021 State of Business Process Automation report by Zapier:
- 76% of businesses rely on automation
- 72% plan to expand automation this year
- 65% say automation improves work/life balance
And a survey by the Business Application Research Center looking at 527 organizations over 3 years found:
- Companies using automation grow revenue 37% faster on average
- They improve productivity by 32%
- They outperform competitors across key metrics:
Integrating Zapier empowers you tap into these automation superpowers.
Understanding How Zaps Work
Every Zap has two key components:
Triggers – These are the events that activate a Zap, like a Wufoo form submission or a new SignUpGenius signup.
Actions – The tasks automatically performed when triggered, such as creating a HubSpot contact or adding a subscriber to Mailchimp.
When the trigger occurs, Zapier immediately performs the defined actions without you lifting a finger.
For example:
Trigger: New Typeform response
Action: Create Airtable record
The structure is simple, but the time-saving possibilities are endless. You can instantly add leads to your CRM, subscribe contacts to email lists, update existing records, send Slack alerts to your team, and more.
Top Form & CRM Tools
With over 1000 app integrations available, Zapier connects all your favorite platforms. Here are the most popular lead capture and management tools:
Lead Form Apps
| Typeform | 15.7% market share |
| Wufoo | 13.2% market share |
| Google Forms | 12.3% market share |
| JotForm | 11.7% market share |
| Google Sheets | 9.2% market share |
CRM Apps
| HubSpot | 15.9% market share |
| Salesforce | 14.4% market share |
| Zoho CRM | 12.1% market share |
| Insightly | 11.2% market share |
| Pipedrive | 9.3% market share |
Zapier seamlessly connects these solutions and all your other business apps.
Example Zaps for Automated Contact Creation
Here are just a few pre-made Zaps that can help you instantly welcome leads:
Create Salesforce Leads from Gravity Forms
This Zap watches for new Gravity Form submissions, then creates a corresponding lead in Salesforce with the details.
Add MailerLite Subscribers from Google Forms
When a new Google Form response comes in, this automated workflow subscribes the person to a MailerLite list.
Build HubSpot Contacts from Eventbrite Registrations
For every new Eventbrite registration, a contact record gets created in HubSpot containing the attendee‘s information.
The possibilities are unlimited. You can create Zaps that add spreadsheet rows, update CRM records, send Slack notifications, post data to internal apps, and more.
Calculate Potential Return from Automation
Just how big is the revenue impact from streamlining onboarding with Zapier? Let‘s break down hypothetical projections based on the Salesforce‘s data referenced earlier.
For a 25 person sales team that closes 100 deals annually at an average value of $5000, that tallies $12,500,000 in closed revenue per year.
With the previously stated $12,000 per year wasted from manual data entry reclaimed through automation, the total regained for a 25 rep team is $300,000.
That‘s an extra 2.4% revenue recovered just by automating CRUD tasks – creating, reading, updating, and deleting contacts. And by freeing up reps to better nurture leads, close rates and deal values size likely increase even more.
For larger teams or organizations, multiplying those modest productivity gains can translate into 7-8 figure profit boosts. Automation pays dividends across time savings, customer experience, and revenue.
Construct Your Own Automated Workflows
Now that you‘ve seen the data behind the drive for seamless automation, let‘s discuss how to leverage Zapier specifically to enhance lead onboarding.
Ready to instantly move lead info into your platforms? Just sign up for a free Zapier account to start building workflows.
- Select your lead capture app or data source as the trigger. Common options include:
- Online forms
- Help desk ticketing
- Contact lists
- Email inboxes
- Imported spreadsheets
- Choose your CRM or other databases as the action destination. For example:
- Salesforce
- HubSpot
- Zoho
- Pipedrive
- proprietary apps
-
Map input fields from the trigger source to matching fields in the destination. Profile data like name, company, title, etc can flow into your CRM‘s standard lead/contact fields.
-
Specify if you want to create new records or update existing ones if email matches. Upserts add new contacts while updating ones already in the CRM.
-
Turn on automation and immediately sync every new signup! Monitor analytics dashboard to see contacts flowing seamlessly at the moment of signup.
Expand Beyond Basic Contact Creation
While centrally collecting lead data in your CRM is the first step, don‘t stop there! Look holistically at the lead-to-customer journey and identify anywhere information falls through the cracks.
Common use cases include:
- Alerting sales reps in Slack to hot inbound leads.
- Enteringregistrations from offline events like trade shows into the CRM after the fact.
- Appending additional lead enrichment data from Clearbit or other sources.
- Segmenting customer contact lists stored locally in Excel based on info from linked financial platforms.
Endless integration potential exists with Zapier. You can even build Python scripts to create logic flows customized to your company‘s unique processes.
Tailor Automations to Your Tech Stack
To get the most value from Zapier, take stock of your martech stack beyond just your CRM and lead capture forms. Identifying how platforms are siloed can spotlight where automation will have biggest impact connecting workflows.
Do you leverage separate tools for:
- Email marketing
- Call tracking
- Finance data
- Project management
- Inventory databases
- Support ticketing
- Proprietary apps or scripts
Pinpoint roadblocks thrown up between systems when information flows between departments. Eliminate manual copying by automatically passing data instantly with Zapier.
The more data flows freely, the better experience for customers and employees alike.
Grow Faster with Automated Workflows
Manual data entry and management drags down productivity with tedious work that frustrate staff and customers alike. But automated contact creation powered by Zapier integration facilitates seamless experiences.
With smoother onboarding increasing conversion rates and recovered revenue from eliminating drudgery, automated workflows deliver transformative business impact.
The doors are now open 24/7 to welcome every new contact into your CRM, email platform, and most importantly, relationships with your team. Let Zapier do the busywork while you focus on long-term success.
Sign up for a free Zapier account now to get started automating workflows!
