Web-to-Lead is a Salesforce feature that helps generate more leads from website visits. This is an important tool, especially for sales teams looking to increase their productivity and for marketing teams looking to improve each business campaign they create. But how does one configure this feature in Salesforce?
Quick Background on How Web-to-Lead Works
The purpose of Web-to-Lead is to help hasten the capture of leads directly from a company’s website pages. Leads are automatically uploaded on Salesforce so that sales and marketing teams can directly use them for their business campaign developments.
A company using the Web-to-Lead feature has an embedded contact form in their website. When site visitors submit this form, Salesforce automatically creates a lead record from that form.
Web-to-Lead is an integrated functionality in Salesforce and does not need to be bought separately.
Setting up Web-to-Lead
Enable Web-to-Lead by following these easy steps:
- Go to the Quick Find Box under Setup interface.
- Type in Web-to-Lead on the Quick Find Box.
- Select Web-to-Lead.
- Click on Edit to start enabling Web-to-Lead services. You can also change your settings if you are an existing Web-to-Lead user.
- Choose your preferred settings for sending automated email replies to prospective customers. Choose also your desired default template for the response emails.
- Save your work.
Creating the Web-to-Lead Form
Here are instructions on how you to setup the web-to-lead form for a website.
- While still on the Web-to-Lead dialog box, click the Create Web-to-Lead Form.
- Choose the fields you wish to include in the form. Add and remove arrows are available for moving your chosen fields between Selected Fields list and Available Fields list.
- Change the order of your fields as you wish by using the Up and Down arrows on the interface.
- Choose the language to be used for the labels displayed in the form. This is important if your organization renamed some tabs or used Translation Workbench.
- Enter the complete URL of the company website’s page where the user will be redirected while the lead form is being submitted to Salesforce. This could be a Thank You page, an Information page, or anything your company sees fit. Hit Generate.
- Select Enable Spam Filtering to add a reCAPTCHA widget to the form.
- An HTML code will be generated shortly. Copy the entire code and send it to the company website’s webmaster so that he can embed this code to the existing company website.
- You may test the form by adding this code line:
<input type=”hidden” name=”debug” value=”1”>
Be sure to remove this line before using the entire code for your company website.
- Click Finished.
Once the code is integrated to your company’s site, it will start sending prospective leads to Salesforce every time a visitor successfully submits the Web-to-Lead form you have created.
Web-to-Lead Summary
Salesforce’s built-in Web-to-Lead feature is a powerful tool to increase leads. Sales teams and marketing teams can take advantage of this feature to contact interested website visitors, plan targeted marketing campaigns, and convert these visitors to business partners.