Bad Contact Forms: Where Customers Relationships Go to Die

In many ways, the essence of inbound marketing is captured by its first phase: attract. This isn’t to say the other phases aren’t important – because they certainly are. But those phases don’t get a chance to operate if customers aren’t ushered into a relationship. And that brings us to contact forms. Or rather, bad contact forms.

Frankly: bad contact forms are where budding customer relationships go to die. Why all the doom and gloom? There are two reasons.

The first reason is that bad contact forms ask for information that customers aren’t willing to provide. This isn’t because they have something to hide or are paranoid. It’s simply because it’s too much, too soon. It’s like going out on a first date and having your companion launch into probing questions about marital intentions (“I’m always nervous on first dates – by the way, should we register at Macy’s on the way to the movie?”).

The second reason is that bad contact forms are perceived as too time consuming to fill out. The word “perceived” is important here, because the form may actually not take more than a minute to complete, and many customers who consider themselves highly scheduled are, in fact, huge time wasters (Angry Birds anyone?). But that’s beside the point. If they perceive that the contact form will take too much of their valuable time to fill out, then that perception becomes their truth.

Of course, most businesses that put up bad contact forms aren’t trying to be invasive, or waste their customers’ valuable time. They’re simply trying to optimize the touch point by getting as much rich customer data as possible. For example, knowing that a customer is in the 18-24 age group can trigger one kind of campaign or messaging, compared to a customer who is in the 36-44 age group. The same goes for income levels, expected purchase timeline, and so on. All of this data is gold. But, it’s all pointless if most customers won’t fill out the form. And any form that isn’t filled out is the definition of a bad contact form.

So all of this begs the question: what is a good contact form? These are contact forms that meet the following criteria:

Clearly indicate why customers should fill out the contact form in the first place (e.g. to download a valuable and relevant ebook, infographic, etc.).
Are not perceived as invasive (probing too deeply) or excessive (taking too long).
Match the context of where customers are in the journey. Brand new relationships are more vulnerable than those further along, and as such contact forms early in the journey should be shorter than those later in the journey.

Remember: customers don’t actually like filling out contact forms (who does?), but they aren’t opposed to doing so — provided that it’s a good contact form that keeps the momentum moving forward, not a bad contact form that damages or destroys the relationship.

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If you’re unsure or concerned if your contact forms are the good kind or the bad kind, then contact us today. We’ll evaluate all of your touch points – including but going beyond your contact forms – and provide you with targeted, strategic recommendations on what you can do to optimize the connection with your customers, and generate the most ROI from your inbound marketing.