Creating a referral Form is an easy way to receive new prospects that are sent over by a trusted source. Using a combination of a simple Act-On Form and a basic automated program, you can begin to allow your existing customers and website visitors to refer a prospect who may be interested in your product or service.
Your customers are the best source of leads. Create a Form to capture their referrals and build your lists even further.
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Part of your success with Act-On will be transitioning your prospects through the buyers’ journey. Simply: it's how well you can transition your prospects to the sales team. It’s very important to make sure that your sales team has the proper expectations, and that your goals are completely aligned.
Work with the sales team to determine the Form fields that are required for the referral so you can ensure you are getting the information sales needs.
Create a new Form using the fields you worked with sales on to capture your prospect's information.
- If you have already created a Form with the required fields you would like filled in - awesome, move along "To create an email template" below.
- If you have not yet created a Form, go to Content > Forms > Create form (top left).
For this Form, we will be using two email fields. One field is used for the referral's email address, and one is used for the referrer's email.
The Lists & Segments tab within the automated program dashboard includes all lists and segments associated with your program, including your sources, lists you may be updating a step, and lists and segments used to make decisions in your steps. When building out your program steps, these lists and segments will appear for selection.
To add a list or segment (also see Use Lists and Segments in Automated Programs):
- Navigate to Automation > Automated Programs.
- Hover over the program you would like to use (make sure it isn't running) and click Edit.
- Go to Build > Lists & Segments.
- At the bottom, click Add List or Segment and select the desired list or segment.
Contact your new referrals using automation! Use your Form submission list as the source list for a program that begins the conversation with your new prospects.
To create an email template see Create an Email Template.
Since we are using two email address fields on the referral Form we will need to make sure the email addresses are routed correctly.
The Email Address field will be used for the referral email, this will allow Act-On to send the Form confirmation to the prospect being referred. For the email address of the user referring to the prospect, we will be using a different standard field name.
- Click Contact > Standard Field Names.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click Add to add an additional email address field which can be called referrer email.
- Click the Save Changes button when you complete adding the fields.
To create a new Automated Program (also see the Automated Journey Builder User Guide):
- Go to Automation > Automated Programs > New program (top right).
- In the Settings tab:
- Enter a Name and an optional Description for your program
- In Contact Sources click Select Sources to select the lists or segments that you would like to associate with this program. You can associate multiple lists and/or segments with the program
- Once the program is running, your source lists will be checked periodically to look for new contacts to enter into the program and update the contacts' Activity History - you can also modify your scoring rules and create segments accordingly
- In Build > Program Message:
- Click Add Message
- Choose an existing template, draft, scheduled, or sent message as a starting point for your new message
- Once the message has been added to the program, hover over it and click Edit to make any changes to the content
- In Build > Lists & segments, click Add List or Segment and select the desired lists or segments.
- In Build > Program Flow:
- Click
(between steps where you want to add more) and in the Add New Step dialog, select the step you want
- In the dialog that appears, give the step a name, and specify its rules and actions
- Click
Measure the Impact
Revenue is directly related to your post-sale marketing efforts too! View the revenue impact of your customer marketing efforts.
To view the Revenue Impact Report:
- Click Reports > Revenue Impact.
- On the top left of the report, you can select the date range.
You can analyze these reports to review the most effective source.
See The Revenue Impact Report for details.