Make your coming soon plugin work harder for you, by adding a custom WordPress form to collect leads before your website even launches!
What can a coming soon plugin do for you?
Are you excitedly waiting for the launch of your brand new website? Your "Coming Soon" page may get you excited, but your website viewers may not feel the same. You could be missing an opportunity. Are you using your coming soon page to capture potential customers yet? If not, this guide is tailor made for you!
Learn how to collect leads NOW, even before your site launches. Kick start your online business without delay with a custom WordPress form in a coming soon plugin.
Formidable Forms has some amazing solutions for capturing leads. Our MailChimp plugin is our most popular option and can help you build a list of potential customers. Collecting leads, building and utilizing a high quality mailing list is the driving force behind many successful online enterprises.
For this example I'm going to be using the Pro version of the SeedProd Coming Soon plugin. This is one of the most popular options available, but the same basic principle should work to capture leads with other WordPress coming soon plugins.
Maintenance mode vs coming soon
Most coming soon plugins offer the choice between a Coming Soon page and a Maintenance Mode page. But which should you choose?
Both are perfect places for a lead collection form, but they should be used very differently.
A Coming Soon page should be used when you are launching a brand new website and the site is still under construction. This Coming Soon page gives your site a head start on getting indexed by Google and other search engines.
On the other hand, a Maintenance Mode page should only be used when an established website is undergoing maintenance. Maintenance Mode returns a header code (503) notifying search engines that the site is currently down. This prevents the temporary outage from negatively affecting your site’s reputation.
Decide what information you need to capture
Once you have chosen the type of landing page you need, it's time to create the lead collection form. As a general rule of thumb, shorter forms have higher conversion rates. Apart from the essential name and email address fields, what else would you consider vital information that must be collected now rather than later?
Remember that once a user is on your mailing list there will be many future opportunities to collect extra info. For my form I'm going to have 3 fields, First Name, Last Name and Email Address.
Pro Tip: See our 10 step guide to improving form conversion rates to maximize the effectiveness of your forms.
Give users a real reason to fill out your form
A simple "Enter your email address to be notified when the website launches" may not be enough to entice people. In a world where everyone is concerned about privacy, a more compelling reason may be required for a user to complete your form.
For my form I'm going to add a promotional message giving viewers motivation to complete the form. I'm using an HTML field above my form fields to display this message with a little formatting. Add a custom message to show visitors a real benefit they will get by entering their details.
Integrate the lead form with MailChimp
The advantages of a good email list should never be underestimated. Since visitors added to your list have already expressed an interest in your business, your leads are highly qualified. Regular promotional emails to high quality leads like these have a fantastic response rate and can drive a large number of sales.
Our MailChimp plugin is part of the Formidable Basic plan. If you're new to MailChimp, read our in-depth guide for setting up MailChimp integration with your Formidable form. This gives you a step by step guide to capturing leads from your form.
Add a MailChimp action to your form, map the fields correctly, and you're almost ready to go!
Looking for another email marketing solution? Formidable also offers direct integration with all of the following:
- AWeber
- MailPoet
- Constant Contact
- Campaign Monitor
- GetResponse
- ActiveCampaign
- Salesforce
- Hubspot
- Or choose from many more emailing options through Zapier.
Add a lead form on a Coming Soon page
Adding a custom WordPress form into your coming soon plugin couldn't be simpler. Once your form is built, you can place the form shortcode into the Coming Soon page the same way you would any other page or post. Go to Settings → Coming Soon Pro. Then click the blue button that says Edit Coming Soon/Maintenance Page.
Click the Content button and enter your shortcode here. You can also configure the page name and add a logo image in this section.
The shortcode for your form can be found on the Formidable → Forms page and looks like this: [formidable id=159].
The form ID number will be different for each form. Simply copy the shortcode for your form and paste it into the coming soon page content.
For more details, read our guide to publishing a Formidable form on a page or post.
Learn More: How to Add Email Subscription Forms in WordPress
You can also add a background image, social share buttons, links to social media pages, or even a countdown timer to show when the website will launch.
And that's it! Your contact form is now collecting valuable leads and helping you grow your business even before your new website is launched.
Not using Formidable yet? Take a look at all the great form builder features to see how Formidable Forms can help you capture leads from a coming soon plugin.
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