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Capturing leads with a form

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Capturing leads with a form

Most leads start on your website. Instead of a plain "email us" link that lands in a shared mailbox nobody really owns, 1pm gives you a lead form you embed on your own site. Every submission drops straight into your Leads inbox, tagged to the form it came from, ready to qualify and turn into an event.

This article covers creating a form, choosing its fields and wording, adding it to your website, running more than one form at once, and the combined form that puts every lead type behind one link.

Where forms live

In the sidebar, open Leads, then Lead types (there's also a Lead types button at the top of the inbox). This is where you create and configure every lead form. You start with one form, and you can add more for different purposes: one for weddings, one for corporate and conference, one for a specific campaign. Each form has its own embed snippet and settings, and the inbox always tells you which form a submission came from.

Create a form

Click New form. A new draft appears in the list. Open it to reach its settings page, which is laid out in two columns: every setting on the left, and a live preview of the public form on the right that updates as you edit. Nothing is visible to the public until you embed the form, so edit freely and click Save when you're happy. The preview is there to show you exactly what a visitor will see.

There is one Save button for the whole lead type, at the bottom of the settings column. Change the wording, the fields, the notification address, the default reply and the terms in one pass, then save once. Everything on the left posts together, so nothing you edited is left behind.

Choose the fields

Open the Form fields section. Name and email are always asked. The standard fields (phone, event date, guests, type of event, and a message box) are all optional for the visitor. If you'd rather build a form entirely from your own questions, turn on Hide the standard fields, which hides everything except name and email.

Under Extra custom fields you can add any of your own contact fields to the form: a dropdown of event types, a "how did you hear about us", a preferred-date field, and so on. Tick the fields you want, drag them into the order they should appear, and mark any that are Required. These come from your Fields list (under Contacts), so define them there first. The useful part: when you later convert the lead to an event, the visitor's answers are saved straight onto their contact record, so the dropdown they picked or the number they entered is there for good.

A field's description shows under its label on the form as help text, in smaller type. Use it for the instruction a visitor needs to answer well, for example "Please include a breakdown of adults, children and babies" under a guest count, or "Tick any you'd like to know more about" above a list of drinks. You write the description on the field itself in your Fields list, so it appears the same way on every form that uses that field.

Where the event date comes from. When you convert a lead into an event, 1pm sets the new booking's date from the built-in event date field, so the day the lead chose carries straight through with no re-typing. If you hide the standard fields and gather the date through one of your own Date fields instead, 1pm uses the first Date field on the form for the event date, and the picker tags that field with Sets event date so there's no guesswork. Either way, you can change it on the event afterwards. For the cleanest result, prefer the built-in event date field when you can.

You can also let people give you a start and end time with their date. It is off by default, because most lead forms are better short, and worth turning on where the time genuinely changes your answer, for example a venue juggling a lunch and a dinner sitting in the same room. The two fields sit under a heading that reads "Event times (optional, a rough estimate is fine)", so someone who has not settled their timings yet sends the form anyway instead of stopping to work them out.

Word it in your voice

The Form wording section lets you set the heading, the introduction, the labels on the event-type and notes fields, and the submit button text. Leave any of them blank to use 1pm's default wording, which shows as the greyed-out placeholder so you can see what you'd get. A wedding form might lead with "Tell us about your day" and a button that says "Send lead"; a function-room form might be all business.

Set the look and what happens next

Under Appearance & behaviour, pick the button color from one of your branding themes (or leave it on your account default, which falls back to 1pm orange). You can also set a redirect after submit: send the visitor to a thank-you page on your own site, or leave it blank to show a thank-you message inside the form. The redirect is carried out by the script at the end of the snippet, so paste the whole snippet rather than only the iframe line. If a browser or website builder blocks it, the visitor sees the thank-you message with a Continue link to your page. The form background is transparent by design, so it takes on the color of whatever page you paste it into.

Three more settings help the form sit naturally on your own website:

  • Dark background. The form's text is dark, which suits a light page. If your website is dark behind the form (a deep green, charcoal or black section), turn this on: the text turns white and the fields stay white, so everything reads clearly. The preview beside the editor shows the form on a dark grey so you can check it.
  • Font. A form embedded from another site can't borrow your website's own font, so pick the closest match from the list. There are serifs, clean sans-serifs and geometric sans-serifs. Futura shows as real Futura on Macs, iPhones and iPads, which all have it installed. Windows and Android don't, so visitors there see Jost, a free font that is very close to it. Leave it on the default to use 1pm's font.
  • Minimum height. The height the form starts at before it resizes to fit its fields. Leave it blank and 1pm works it out from the fields you've chosen. Set a height in pixels only if your website blocks the resizing, so the form shows cut off or with empty space below it. A value close to the form's real height gives a tidy fixed-size form.

Decide where submissions go

The Notifications section decides who is emailed. The notification email is where each submission is emailed (it defaults to your account email, and it's also the address shown to a visitor if the form ever fails to load). Turn on Email the submitter a confirmation to send a short "we got it" acknowledgement back to the visitor; it goes from a 1pm.app address, and if the visitor replies to it, the reply lands in that lead's thread in 1pm. The acknowledgement includes a copy of what the visitor submitted, unless their submission contained a web address. In that case it is acknowledged without the copy, so the form can't be used to email a link to somebody else under your name. You still see the full submission in the lead. An address is sent one acknowledgement in 24 hours, however many times it submits. On the free trial each acknowledgement counts toward your monthly email allowance. On a paid plan it does not: your forms can send 50 acknowledgements in any 24 hours, apart from the emails you send yourself.

When you run more than one form, the notification you receive names the lead type the submission came from, so "wedding lead" and "corporate lead" are one glance apart in your inbox rather than two identical-looking emails you have to open.

Tell the client if the date looks free

With Email the submitter a confirmation on, you can also turn on Tell them if the date looks free. The confirmation then carries a short note, above the copy of what they submitted, saying whether the date they asked about is free. It's off for every lead type until you turn it on.

1pm checks the date against your bookings and blocked time, the same check that stops a double booking, and picks one of three notes:

  • Date looks free: nothing is booked and no time is blocked on the date.
  • Date is booked: a Confirmed or Completed booking, or blocked time, already takes the date.
  • Date needs checking: only a Tentative booking clashes, or the date couldn't be checked.

You write the three notes once, under Date check on the Lead types page, and every lead type that has it on uses them. Each note can include [first name] and [event date]. Leave a note empty and nothing is added for that answer, which is useful if you'd rather never tell a client a date is booked.

The client only ever sees the note you wrote. They never see what else is in your calendar, and each check costs them a full form submission, so nobody can use the form to map out how busy you are. The notification you receive says which answer the date got and whether the confirmation carries a note for it. The confirmation, note included, appears in the lead's thread.

Add it to your website

Open the Embed code section and click Copy snippet. Paste it into a code or embed block on your site. Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, and most builders support this on plans that allow custom code. The form fills the width of wherever you paste it and keeps its fields centred; to make it narrower, change width:100% in the snippet to a fixed width like width:480px. Use Open in new tab to see the live form on its own and test a submission. There are step-by-step articles for Squarespace, Wix and WordPress, each covering the quirks of that builder.

The snippet includes a small "Powered by 1pm" credit beneath the form. Keep it if you can: it's how other venues find us, and the form works the same with or without it.

Spam stays out

Every form is protected against bots automatically, with a hidden honeypot field and (where it's switched on) an invisible Cloudflare check. You don't configure anything. Junk that still slips through is easy to clear from the inbox, and anything you mark as spam is deleted on its own after 30 days. See Working the leads inbox for how spam is handled.

Turn a form off, rotate its link, or remove it

A few controls sit at the bottom of the settings:

  • Form is live (in the General section) turns submissions on and off without touching the embed. Switch it off out of season and the embedded form shows your fallback email instead.
  • Rotate link generates a brand new embed link and stops the old one working. Use it if a form is being misused; you'll need to re-paste the snippet everywhere you've used it.
  • Remove lead type archives the lead type if it has captured any leads (those stay in your inbox) or deletes it outright if it never captured anything. An archived lead type stays switched off. Restore it from its settings page, then turn Form is live back on when you want it to take new leads.

Running more than one form

There's no need to cram every audience into one form. Spin up a form per purpose, embed each on the relevant page, and the inbox tags every lead with its source. When you have more than one form, a filter appears at the top of the inbox so you can view one form's leads at a time.

The combined form: one form for every lead type

Running several lead types usually means several snippets, one per page. If you'd rather have a single "Enquire" page that covers all of them, turn on the combined form.

It's one link and one snippet. The visitor picks what they are enquiring about from a dropdown, and the lead type they choose loads its own form underneath, with its own fields and wording. The lead lands against that lead type exactly as if they'd used its own link, so its reply template, terms and automations all run as normal.

To set it up:

  1. Go to Leads > Lead types and open the Combined form panel at the top.
  2. Switch it on. Set the heading, the intro and the label above the dropdown if you want your own words, and the button color, font and dark background to suit your website. These come from the panel, not from the lead type the visitor picks, so the page doesn't change under them when they choose.
  3. Open each lead type you want to offer and tick Show this lead type on the combined form, under Combined form. Set Label in the dropdown to the words a visitor should read; leave it blank and it uses the lead type's own name.
  4. Back on the Lead types page, open Link and embed code and copy the snippet, or use the link on its own.

A few things worth knowing:

  • Ticking a lead type adds it to the dropdown. It keeps its own link and embed code as well, so nothing you've already pasted stops working.
  • A lead type that's switched off or archived never appears, even with the box ticked. The Lead types page flags that combination so you're not left wondering.
  • Turning the combined form off takes it down everywhere you've pasted it. Visitors then see your email address instead of the form, the same as a lead type you switch off.
  • Replace link issues a new link and stops the old one working immediately, so re-paste the snippet everywhere you've used it. Leads you've already captured aren't affected.
  • Nothing is picked for the visitor when the page loads. They choose first, then the fields appear, which is what stops a lead arriving on the wrong lead type.

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