Initial client enquiries - create a free landing page inside Mailerlite

While you can create free forms inside of Mailchimp, I am a much bigger fan of Mailerlite myself. Did you know that on the free Mailerlite plan you can set up Forms (so forms for the potential client to use) and then set up automated responses once a client has filled out that form.

This is a free landing page that I created using Mailerlite for a firm that I consult with as a lawyer, Novus Law Group. I personally felt that anyone who was asking for a price on a Will, but couldn’t give me their email address, well they were probably going to go with someone who does cheaper Wills. Because we are not aiming to be the cheapest this is not my ideal client, so it is not the person I have set up my marketing automation for. Of course, if you do want price up front and centre you could put the price on this landing page and then invite them to give you their details if they are still interested.

---

Setting up an automated form to answer an FAQ

One thing you can easily use Mailerlite for is creating a form that responds to commonly asked questions by sending the client an email with the information. This can be quite helpful for your marketing because you are getting information, information like do people really want an answer to that, are people really concerned about that, and does that information help them to become clients? If you set this up and people are not willing to give their email address, or they get the email and do not move forward, then you know that you need to focus on something else in order to convert enquiries into clients.

Setting up an automated form to answer an FAQ is not difficult, once you have a Mailerlite account. You just need to:

• Create a Group - in this case I am calling it “Website sign up form - for Wills” - find instructions for that here

• Create an automation - then every time someone joins the group they get an email - find instructions for that here; and then

• Create a form - find instructions for that here; or

• Create a landing page - find instructions for that here

Initial client enquiries - create a free form inside Mailerlite

While you can create free forms inside of Mailchimp, I am a much bigger fan of Mailerlite. On the free Mailerlite plan you can set up Forms (so forms for the potential client to use) and then set up automated responses once a client has filled out that form.

This is a free form that I created using Mailerlite, I am only seeking the email address though the instructions do tell you how to seek more information. The thing with seeking more information is that less people will fill it out, so it is a balancing act. I have also set up an automation so that when you complete this form, which you can view for yourself here, you will get an email back from me.

---

Setting up an automated form to answer an FAQ

One thing you can easily use Mailerlite for is creating a form that responds to commonly asked questions by sending the client an email with the information. You could do that by changing the text so that instead of asking if you want to receive my emails, you instead ask “Do you want to know how much we charge for a Will”.

This can be quite helpful for your marketing because you are getting information, information like do people really want an answer to that, are people really concerned about that, and does that information help them to become clients? If you set this up and people are not willing to give their email address, or they get the email and do not move forward, then you know that you need to focus on something else in order to convert enquiries into clients.

You could also just set up a form to collect details. In order to set up a form you need to -

• Create a Group - in this case I am calling it “Website sign up form - for Wills” - find instructions for that here

• Create an automation - then every time someone joins the group they get an email - find instructions for that here; and then

• Create a form - find instructions for that here

You can visit that form by clicking on this link, and I have also embedded the form below so you can see what that looks like.

Sign up for my emails

Leave your email address to get more information from me about Mailerlite automation or email marketing.

Sign up

Thank you!

You have successfully joined our subscriber list.

Initial client enquiries - create a form on Mailchimp

One thing that you can automate is responding more promptly and relevantly to initial client enquiries. At Novus we get a lot of enquiries on Facebook, some are genuine some are not. I created a Mailchimp form collect some information from those people making enquiries. The goal is to get the information that I (we/Novus) need to respond, and an automatic email to the person making the enquiry with our details.

This will also filter out bots that are simply sending random messages to our business page with ‘Can I ask you a question’ type enquiries.

In order to do this you need different ‘audiences’ in Mailchimp so that you can have different sign up forms and send different emails in response. Mailchimp moved multiple audiences to their paid accounts a while ago, this is one of the many reasons that I personally prefer Mailerlite. However, one work around if you have multiple staff (or multiple work email accounts) is that each email address can have a Mailchimp account, then they can each have the audience that is relevant to that email address and be responsible for responding to those enquiries.

If you created audiences before Mailchimp turned this feature off (I had two audiences) then in order to find the relevant audience or group you go to the ‘Audience’ tab at the top of the Mailchimp page, and then use the drop down down box called ‘Manage audiences’ to choose ‘View audiences’.

As I already had two audiences in this account, when I go to the audiences tab I need to choose. You my just be choosing the one audience that is there.

I am choosing ‘Corporate and Business law enquiries’ which you can see currently has no contacts or subscribers.

Now I am going to click on the drop down box next to ‘Stats’ and choose ‘Signup forms’. For some reason the site is not allowing that drop down box to stay while I get a screen shot so you will just have to take my word for it, that there is in face a ‘Signup forms’ option when you click ‘Stats’.

When you click Signup Forms you will get this screen. Click ‘Select’ next to the ‘Form Builder’ option.

Now you are on the form builder page. You will use this form to collect information from your perspective client so that the correct staff member can call them and have an intelligent conversation, rather than sorry, I don’t do family law, let me have Jane Smith call you back.

Under ‘Forms and response emails’ the option ‘Signup form’ should already be selected. That is what you want. Scroll down to the ‘Build it’ heading.

The first thing I am going to do is edit that heading to be more relevant to the person filling out their details. If you hover over the title itself you will get some options, including ‘edit’. I changed the title to ‘We want to talk to you’ to make sure that they realise they are in the right place.

Now hover over the explanatory text below the heading and you will again get an edit option. Again I am changing this to be more relevant to the goal that I am trying to achieve (which is getting them to give me enough information to respond meaningfully to them.)

Now to make the form data relevant. You can simply drag and drop information that is already in the form.

Over to the right of the screen we can add text boxes, check boxes and other details (like Number for phone number).

I use the text box to try and get them to tell me what their question is, the check boxes to get them to answer some basic questions, and obviously the number box to make sure that they give me their mobile number so that I can call them back. Then I head over to the ‘Design it’ tab, (look for three tabs, ‘Build it’ and ‘Design it’ and ‘Translate it’).

Here you can change the look and feel of the form to make it feel more personal, and less like they are merely submitting their details.

When you hover above the heading (where it says “We want to talk to you.” above) then you get the option to change it to an image, which I decided to do. The image I used was our logo. I also changed the background colour to our brand colour, but honestly anything other than that stock standard grey would help personalise it.

Now I am going to embed this form into our Facebook business page’s automatic replies, because we get a lot of enquiries there. Here are some instructions from Facebook regarding how to set up an automatic reply.

If you want to follow along with the other automations that I am doing and receive instructions to do them then please join my specific mailing list for automations here.