Why Automate Your Form Submissions

Every time a contact fills out a form on your website or landing page, there is an opportunity to follow up immediately — before the lead goes cold. By connecting your form to the automation builder, you can automatically send a welcome email, apply a tag, assign a task to your team, or trigger a sequence of follow-up messages the moment a contact submits their information. This removes the need for manual follow-up and ensures every lead receives a consistent, timely response no matter when they submit the form.

How to Set Up a Form Submission Trigger in Your Automation

This section covers how to add a form submission as the starting trigger in the automation builder. Before you begin, make sure you have at least one published form available to select, either a public form for your website or an internal form for manual data entry by your staff. If you have not yet created a form, see the links in the Related Articles section below before continuing.

1. Open the automation builder and locate the trigger area at the top of the canvas. Click and drag the A Form is Submitted trigger onto the canvas. The trigger block will appear as the first step in your automation sequence.

   

   The trigger panel on the left side of the automation canvas lists all available trigger types. The A Form is Submitted trigger appears in the trigger list. Drag it to the center of the canvas to place it as the first step.

2. Click the A Form is Submitted trigger block on the canvas to open the trigger configuration panel. In the configuration panel, you will see two options: Create a new form and Use an existing form.

   

   Select Create a new form to build a new form from scratch, or select Use an existing form to choose from forms you have already created. If you select an existing form, a dropdown list of your available forms will appear. Click the name of the form you want to use as the trigger.

3. If you need to build a new form before continuing, use the links below to access the form builder. After you finish creating the form, return to the automation builder to complete this setup.
   • Learn how to set up a public form to post on your website
   • Learn how to set up an internal form for manual staff data entry

4. After selecting or creating your form, return to the automation canvas. Confirm that the correct form name appears in the A Form is Submitted trigger block. Once the correct form is displayed, click Save in the trigger configuration panel to apply your selection.

   

   The trigger block on the canvas will update to display the name of the form you selected. The Save button is located at the bottom of the trigger configuration panel on the right side of the screen.

Publish Your Automation to Activate the Form Trigger

After saving your trigger and finishing the rest of your automation sequence, you must publish the automation for the form trigger to become active. Until the automation is published, form submissions will not start the sequence. If you make changes to the form or any other step in the automation after it has already been published, you must republish the automation for the updates to take effect.

How Form Responsiveness Works

All forms created in the automation builder are mobile responsive. A mobile-responsive form automatically adjusts its layout to fit the screen size of the device a contact uses to submit it — whether that is a desktop computer, a tablet, or a mobile phone. You do not need to create separate versions of your form for different devices.

Forms created before February 26, 2020 are not mobile responsive and will not automatically adjust for mobile devices. To make a pre-2020 form mobile responsive, you must replace it by creating a new form in the Advanced Automation Builder. If the original form was embedded on your website using HTML embed code, you must also update the embed code on your website after republishing. If the original form was embedded using a JavaScript snippet, republishing the form in the Advanced Automation Builder is sufficient — the JavaScript embed will update automatically without changes to your website.

Related Articles

This article covers adding a form submission trigger to an existing automation. The following articles cover related workflows that are outside the scope of this article:

• Set up a public form to capture leads from your website
• Set up an internal form for manual contact entry by staff