When you’re easily contactable, you’re open to new opportunities. Open your horizon and market with new business partners, clients, recruiters and more.
As more and more visitors view your website, chances are many will be more interested to get in contact than you think. In many cases, customers want to know more about a product, hoping you will fill in on their requests. Depending on the size of your business, some people may be looking to partner with you, make business deals, and even seek your employment; other times people want to leave some feedback, leaving you with constructive data for the future. Whatever the case, a contact form for a website is like a door to an office – it allows people to get in touch and opens you to new opportunities.
The point of advertising your product or services is to get potential clients engaging with you; if you’re not easily open to requests then you’re losing valuable money and opportunities. Leaving a contact form on your website increases your user engagement and creates a relationship between you and your prospect. Without one, your website would be a one way stream with no space for rapport between you and your prospecting viewers – they would know you but you wouldn’t get to know them; failure.
A contact form is a customised form with a series of fields for viewers to fill, this usually includes a name, an email and a comment box for users to leave feedback. Forms can however have limitless options with fields you can add, meaning you can ask for as many intricate details as you need. Although usually used for contact applications, custom forms can be used for a variety of reasons such as creating application requests, email newsletter subscriptions and creating consumer surveys.
One of the greatest benefits of having a contact form is that it opens more leads, and better yet more qualified ones. With a custom contact form you can add fields specific to your business and the kind of clients you’re looking to attract. If for example you’re an experienced landscaping company looking to work on larger projects, instead of individually asking each prospect about their budget – a terribly time consuming process, your contact form could include a budget size field. As you receive your requests, you can simply read through your submissions and contact the ones with the highest budget first.
Like that, specialised fields help you know which requests are most relevant to your business, and which ones can be disposed of or dealt with in a different manner. The more you get to know about your clients, which has endless possibilities, the more you can priotisize your time and efforts around them. Moreover, when you already know the details of your client’s requests, you can get in touch with them far more prepared with your offer and more confident with what you’re going to say.
Having a good customer service is instrumental to the reputation of your business, without it, customers feel neglected and have no reason to trust you again. When you open a contact form your letting customers know that they have a space to express their concerns and get the help they need. Not only does this build on relationships with customers, but with the addition of custom entry fields you can better categorise each need and focus on those that need it the most.
Without the appropriate organisation, dealing with customer service can be a complex process. Some people want more product information, some people want a refund or a discount, others might be looking to speak with a manager. When you add fields to your contact forms, such as a your problem field, you can compartmentalise your requests between different people and different times. For example, when you look at your customer service submissions and you find someone would like a refund, instead of dealing with it yourself, you can delegate your tasks to the appropriate party. This way, your client requests can be compartmentalised and dealt with by the right people at the right time.
When prospects try to contact you through email, seeing their valuable requests is often missed through the fog of spam, email marketers, and all sorts of newsletters you might be subscribed to. Consequently, important message requests are missed and worse yet you’ve lost the groundwork of your business – potential leads. As for the sender who’s still awaiting their reply, they may lose trust in your and a relationship is lost. That’s where contact forms come in, and why having an organised method of communication is indispensable.
With a contact form, when a client or a prospect tries to get in touch, you’ll be sure that your message won’t be lost in a spam folder or hidden within an endless fog of marketing emails. Instead, you will have an inbox specialised towards client requests that can be neatly organised in a dashboard, ready to be ticked off when you’re done with them. This way you can consistently organise your client requests and confidently take on leads when you get them.
When you have something of value to show people, starting an email marketing campaign is a surprisingly effective method to increase conversions. Helping people doesn’t go unnoticed, and when you have content that can help others improve their lives, like this post for example, a surprising number of readers will be willing to input their email and subscribe to your newsletter. Not only does this build a long-term relationship between your newsletter and the reader as you update them, but it also serves as the perfect opportunity to engrain your newsletter with marketing for your business.
Contact forms, or in this case, subscription forms help you do just this. When a viewer enters your website, you can insert a subscription banner as a promt to enter their email and hit subscribe. With custom fields, you can also ask for other details such as age and gender, giving you a better understanding of your customer demographics. As your email list grows, your opportunity to build rapport and entice clients grows simultaneously.