Membrain Forms

Introduction

Membrain Forms is a tool that allows you to create forms directly from Membrain to gather different kinds of information in various ways. The information gathered in these Forms can then be used to create, for example, new Prospects from website visitors or create activities connected to already existing contacts in your Membrain database.

There are many ways Membrain Forms can be used, here are just a few suggestions:

  • An information/demo request from a new website visitor
  • Customer satisfaction surveys
  • A contact form on your website
  • A poll ahead of a demo meeting or a presentation of your products and services
  • A quality survey to capture feedback after you've implemented a project

Once you have your forms ready, you can either embed them on your website to capture information from your website visitors, or send them out as they are as a stand-alone link via email to your prospects, customers, and so on.

To start building your Membrain Form, go to Profile picture > System Setup > Membrain API, Forms & Beacon and click on the icon as shown below.

Benefits

When a contact submits a Membrain Form, the information included is automatically populated in the corresponding Membrain fields for that contact, streamlining your sales and marketing workflows.

It can even create a Prospect, Sales Project, or Account Growth Project for that contact, automatically!

Setup - Creating a Form

Creating a Membrain Form is quite easy and doesn't require a developer or web administrator. Follow these 5 simple steps outlined below and you're done!

  1. Build - Build the form, selecting the corresponding fields in Membrain and adding them to the form
  2. Action - Decide what you want Membrain to do with the information gathered in the form
  3. Post Submit Message - What message you would like to be displayed to the contact after submitting the form
  4. Design - Customize the design and layout of the form
  5. Embed or Share - Choose how and where you want to present this form

1. Build

  • Give your form a name.
  • Click on +ADD COMPONENT to add information/fields you want to populate inside Membrain from this form. That could be contact information, company information, it even might be things that you want to populate inside a Prospect or an Account Growth Project where you manage your customers, partners, etc.
Note: While customizing your form, please be aware that the characters "|" (vertical bar) and "<" (less than symbol) cannot be used in the form fields.
  • Enhance your form's user experience by customizing component names. Click on the name of any component to assign a different, external-facing name. This feature allows your customers to see a more user-friendly or context-specific name, different from the actual field name used in Membrain.
  • Decide whether a component is mandatory for form submission by toggling on the "required" button. Required fields are displayed with an asterisk. You can also choose to hide the field or allow it to overwrite existing data if it already exists in your Membrain environment.
  • You can also add an 'Upload File' component for capturing documents, videos, images, and audio files from your contacts. Customize the component by naming it and setting text and size limits.
  • Customize the “Submit Button” text that will be shown to the person that fills out the form.
  • Click Save or Save & Preview if you'd like to see first what your form looks like.
    Note: Name, Email Address, and Company Name are mandatory fields by default.
Note: A Membrain Form comes with the Membrain Beacon enabled per default, to give you the possibility to identify the submitter of the form.

There may be cases though where you wouldn't like or need to identify the submitter, for instance that could be forms that are intended to be used internally at your company (e.g. order registration, partner lead registration, prospect creation, etc.).

Whatever the reason might be, you have the possibility to turn off the Membrain Beacon from a form, with one click, as shown in the screenshot above.

2. Action

Select an Action

When the form is submitted, the submission is automatically logged in the Activity Stream on the Contact and Company who submitted the form. You can also specify what action Membrain should take after the form is filled out. For example, you can create a Prospect, Sales Project, Account Growth Project, assign a Task, or log a Note for the Contact.

Each of these actions represents an activity in Membrain, and you can capture additional information through custom fields within these activities.

In addition to selecting an action, the Create Only If option allows you to set specific conditions for creating Prospects, Sales Projects, or Account Growth Projects. This ensures that projects are only created when the defined criteria are met, providing more control over project creation. This functionality enhances flexibility by preventing unnecessary projects from being created, ensuring that only relevant ones are generated based on the conditions you set.

  • Select the Action you'd like to happen in Membrain.
  • Select an Owner to assign it to someone.
  • If creating a project from a form you can select one of the following options
  • Click Save or Save & Preview if you'd like to see first what your form looks like.

Enroll in Automation

The Enroll in Automation option allows companies or contacts to be automatically enrolled in an automation when the form is submitted. You can choose from a list of available automations, which are categorized by type (e.g., Company Automations, Contact Automations).

  • Select the desired automation from the dropdown menu.
  • The system will manage the enrollment, ensuring that no duplicate enrollments occur if the company or contact has already been enrolled in the selected automation.
  • This action is logged in the Activity Stream, keeping a record of the enrollment.

Notifications

When a form is submitted, a notification can be sent to the people you've identified in this view. It could be the project owner, a marketing person that is specifically in charge of surveys, and/or a team if several people work on the same topic. You can choose from sending these notifications by email, to someone's Membrain Guide, and even to Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

Please note: The email notification will include all the detail captured in the form, so the recipient has all the information they need to take appropriate action.

To send an email notification:

  • Insert the email addresses of the people who should get notified when a form is submitted as shown below.
  • Click Save or Save & Preview if you'd like to see first what your form looks like.


To send a notification to Membrain Guide:

  • Select the name of the person who you'd want to get notified in Membrain Guide.
  • In the field “Content” write some information/instructions to the person.
  • Click Save or Save & Preview if you'd like to see first what your form looks like.

To send a message to Slack or Teams:

  • Select the name of the channel you'd like to send the notification to.
  • In the field “Content” write some information/instructions.
  • Click Save or Save & Preview if you'd like to see first what your form looks like.

3. After Submit

When someone has filled out a form on your website you can have a message shown to them and even embed an HTML link or images in it. Another option is to redirect the form submitter to a specific page on your website where people can find more information on some product or service that you offer.

Additionally, you can configure Membrain to send an immediate confirmation email to the form submitter, providing them with a summary of their submission or next steps. This email can be personalized to enhance the submitter's experience and maintain engagement.

Click Save or Save & Preview if you'd like to see first what your form looks like.

4. Design

By default, the form design includes your company's logo and background as configured in the login screen logo & background settings found in System Setup. This ensures brand consistency across all your forms without extra effort. However, if you have tech staff with CSS knowledge, they can style these forms to make them more personalized and connected to your brand.

Click Save or Save & Preview if you'd like to see first what your form looks like.

The CSS code to edit the submission button is .MembrainBeaconFormSubmitButtonValidationSucceeded .MembrainBeaconFormSubmitButtonValidationFailed

5. Embed or Share

Finally, when you're ready with creating the Membrain Form, you can embed it or share it.

  • Click on Save and then reopen the form to see the embed/share code.
  • Copy the code and send it to your IT/development department, so they can add it to your website.
  • Additionally, you could also use a direct link to this form, which you can add to an email template that you aim to send to a customer. This could be after you've delivered some product or service, or successfully implemented some project and want to gather feedback. The Membrain Form would then be part of your customer process.

Advanced Form Management with Right-Click Options

By simply right-clicking on a form in your list, you can access a variety of options to streamline your workflow. These include:

  • Edit: Quickly modify the form's content and settings.
  • Make a Copy: Duplicate the form for different uses or testing purposes.
  • Archive: Safely store forms that are no longer actively used.
  • View Submissions: Easily access all the submissions made through a particular form.
  • Delete: Remove a form from your list, provided it has no submissions.

This right-click feature enhances your ability to manage forms efficiently, giving you more control with fewer clicks.

Deleting Forms

There might come a time when a form you've created is no longer needed or relevant. In such cases, Membrain allows you to delete the form. However, before you can proceed with deletion, you must first ensure there are no existing submissions for that form. Here are the steps to follow to do just that:

  1. Navigate to System Setup and click on Membrain Forms.

  2. Switch the view to display Membrain form submissions in a list view. This gives you a broader perspective and allows you to filter the submissions related to the form you wish to delete.

  3. Use the Membrain Form filter to display only the submissions related to the form that you intend to delete.

  4. Once your view is filtered, select all submissions by checking the box next to the "Name" column. This is a quick way to select all displayed submissions at once.

  5. Click on the "Delete" option. This will remove all the selected submissions from your system.

Now that you have deleted all the submissions linked to the form, you can proceed to delete the form itself. This process ensures that no essential data is lost accidentally. Remember, deleting a form or submissions is a permanent action and cannot be undone. Always make sure that the data is no longer needed before proceeding with deletion.

Exporting Form Data

Membrain offers flexible options for exporting form submission data, making it easy to analyze or share insights with others. One approach is to create a graph within the dashboard that visualizes the form submission data, and then export this data into an Excel spreadsheet by clicking the actions button and selecting export data to excel. This method allows you to take the structured data from the graph and utilize it in external tools for further analysis or reporting.

In addition to manual exports, Membrain supports automated reporting. By setting up an automated report, you can schedule regular exports of your form submission data. This is done by creating a dashboard report that includes your form submission graph, and configuring it to be delivered at regular intervals. Automated reports ensure that you always have up-to-date submission data available, reducing the need for repeated manual exports and improving efficiency.

Passing Data into Hidden Fields in Membrain Forms

In addition to the standard functionalities of Membrain Forms, there is a powerful feature available for more advanced applications: the ability to pass data into hidden fields within the form. This feature is particularly useful for tracking conversions from advertising campaigns or capturing custom data that you do not wish to display to the form submitter but need for internal processes.

How It Works

You can modify the Membrain form embedding script to pass specific data into hidden form fields. This is especially handy for capturing information from various sources, such as Google Analytics or Google Ads, and then using this data within Membrain for more effective and targeted marketing efforts.

Implementing Hidden Fields

To utilize this feature, follow these steps:

  1. Create a Field and Make it Hidden: First, create a custom field of text type and make it hidden in your Membrain form. This field must be created before building the form. Learn to create custom fields here.

    Depending on your use case, the hidden field can be created on the company, contact, or project level (if your'e creating prospects for instance from your form submissions). Do not hesitate to contct our support for further guidance.

  2. Modify the Embedding Script: Once you have your hidden field, you need to modify the embedding script of the form. An example modification looks like this:

     

    MBBeaconFormCreate({
    subdomain: 'your_subdomain',
    element: 'your_element',
    formId: 'your_form_id',
    width: '100%',
    height: 'auto',
    data: {
    'Person.CustomFieldID': 'VALUE_YOU_WANT_IN_THE_FIELD'
    }
    });


    Replace 'your_subdomain', 'your_element', 'your_form_id', and 'Person.CustomFieldID' with your specific details. The 'VALUE_YOU_WANT_IN_THE_FIELD' is where you put the data you want to pass into the hidden field.

Use Cases

  • Tracking Conversion Data: By passing UTM parameters or specific campaign identifiers into a hidden field, you can track which marketing efforts are leading to form submissions.

  • Custom Data Capture: For internal workflows, you might need to capture specific data that isn’t relevant to the form submitter. This data can be passed silently into hidden fields for internal use.

Note

  • Privacy and Compliance: Always ensure that the data you pass and capture complies with privacy laws and regulations, such as GDPR.

  • Technical Knowledge: Modifying the embedding script requires some technical knowledge. If you’re not comfortable with this, consult with your IT or web development team.