How to track the source of your leads in Ninja Forms
Looking for a way to track the source of leads in Ninja Forms? This article will show you how
Are you looking for a way to track the source of your leads in Ninja Forms?
Imagine how good it would be if you could see exactly how each lead came to your site (I.e. Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Organic Search, etc).
Fortunately for you, there is a very simple way to do this.
In this article, we'll show you how to use a tool called Attributer to track the source of all your leads in Ninja Forms and send that information to your CRM and other tools.
3 steps to track the source of leads in Ninja Forms
Follow the 3 simple steps below to start seeing the source of your leads in Ninja Forms
1. Install Attributer and add hidden fields
The first thing you need to do is to start a 14-day free trial of Attributer.
You'll then get given a bit of code to add to your website. You can add it to your WordPress site by following the instructions here.
After you've added the code, the next step is to add a series of hidden fields to your forms, including:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Channel Drilldown 4
Adding hidden fields to Ninja Forms is super easy. You simply drag and drop a 'Hidden' field into your form and give it a specific default value. You can see step-by-step instructions here.
2. Attributer writes the lead source data into the hidden fields
Now that everything is setup, Attributer will begin tracking your website visitors as they come to your site.
It will look at things like UTM parameters, referring domain, device, etc, and then categorize each visitor into a set of channels (similar to the ones you see in Google Analytics, like Paid Search, Paid Social, Organic Search, etc).
Then, when a visitor submits one of the Ninja Forms on your website, Attributer will write that information on where they came from into the hidden fields.
3. Lead source data is captured in Ninja Forms
Finally, when the visitor submits a form on your site, the lead source information that Attributer wrote into the hidden fields is captured in Ninja Forms along with the lead's name, email, etc.
From here, you can do the following:
- View it in the Submissions section: You can see the lead source data alongside each lead in the Submissions section of Ninja Forms (in your WordPress Admin area).
- Include it in notification emails: If you don't use a CRM and simply respond to new leads from your inbox, then you can include the lead source data in the lead notification emails so you can see where each new lead has come from.
- Send it to your CRM: If you do use a CRM, you can send the lead source data there. Ninja Forms has native integrations with Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive & Hubspot or you can use tools like Zapier to send the data to thousands of other CRM systems.
- Send it to a spreadsheet: Ninja Forms has an Excel Add-On which allows you to download submissions to Excel, or you can use Zapier to connect to Google Sheets. Either way, you can then build charts in your chosen spreadsheet tool or connect a reporting tool like Google Data Studio or Microsoft Power BI to do more advanced reporting.
What lead source data gets captured in Ninja Forms?
If you use Attributer to capture lead source data in Ninja Forms, you'll get the following information:
1. Marketing channel data
Attributer will pass through information on what channel a lead came from.
To illustrate, imagine you're a marketer at Ninja Forms and someone clicked one of your Google Ads before completing a form on your site. Depending on what UTM parameters you placed behind your ad, the following information would get passed through
- Channel: Paid Search
- Channel Drilldown 1: Google
- Channel Drilldown 2: Brand Campaign (or the specific campaign name)
- Channel Drilldown 3: Ninja Forms (or whatever keyword you bid on)
Alternatively, if a lead arrives organically through a Google search, the following information would be captured:
- Channel: Organic Search
- Channel Drilldown 1: Google
- Channel Drilldown 2: www.google.com (or the specific Google domain they came from)
- Channel Drilldown 3: Ninja Forms (or the keyword used to find your site, if available)
2. Landing page data
On top of the marketing channel data, Attributer also captures the initial landing page (e.g., ninjaforms.com/blog/best-form-builder) and the landing page group (e.g., /blog).
You can use this information to see how many leads you are getting from certain sections of content on your site (like your blog for instance) as well as drill down into which blog posts are generating the most leads.
3 example reports you can run when you track the source of your leads in Ninja Forms
Before creating Attributer, I led the marketing & analytics teams at several billion-dollar tech companies
As part of my role, I ran literally hundreds of reports to understand where our leads were coming from and what we needed to do to generate more.
Below are some of the reports I've found most insightful over the years:
1. Leads by channel
This report shows you how many leads you get from various channels (I.e. Paid Search, Paid Social, Organic Search, etc).
It's a good way to get a high-level overview of where your leads are coming from and which channels are worth investing further in.
For instance, the graph above shows that most leads are coming from Organic Search and it's been growing for the last few months, which would suggest that there might be some opportunity to further increase that growth that you should probably look into.
2. Leads by Google Ads campaign
This report shows how many leads you're getting from your Google Ads each month, broken down by the campaign they are coming from.
It's a really good way to understand which Google Ads campaigns are actually generating leads for your business (as opposed to the campaigns that are just driving a lot of cheap traffic that doesn't actually convert).
3. Leads by social network
This reports shows the number of leads you got each month from Organic Social, broken down by the network they came from.
It shows you how many leads you are getting from the various social media networks you're posting content to, and can help you prioritise the networks that are actually generating leads for your business.
Wrap up
Attributer is a great tool for tracking the source of your leads in Ninja Forms.
It can help you understand which of your marketing initiatives (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc) are actually generating leads for your business and what you can do to generate more.
Best of all, it's free to get started and usually takes less than 10 minutes to set up, so start your 14-day free trial today and try it out!
Get Started For Free
Start your 14-day free trial of Attributer today!
About the Author
Aaron Beashel is the founder of Attributer and has over 15 years of experience in marketing & analytics. He is a recognized expert in the subject and has written articles for leading websites such as Hubspot, Zapier, Search Engine Journal, Buffer, Unbounce & more. Learn more about Aaron here.