FormSpring Blog

User Profile: Easy Web Recruitment

erica — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:05:49 +0000

Easy Web Recruitment is the UK’s leading flat fee internet recruitment service. They can count some of the UK’s largest and most recognizable employers as clients, including Tesco, Canon, Nike & Thomas Cook. It was great to talk with the Managing Director, Adrian McDonagh on how they use FormSpring.

FS: Tell us a little bit about your position with Easy Web Recruitment:

I am the Managing Director at East Web Recruitment and I also take the lead role in looking at software and systems to implement around our core services.

FS: How did you hear about FormSpring?

We previously used one of your competitors, but we were not entirely happy so we did an online search and found FormSpring via Google.

FS: How do you currently use FormSpring?

We use FormSpring to help us manage some of the large response recruitment campaigns we have. The forms we build allow us to easily drill down through large candidate pools and focus on those that are most relevant. We also use it for getting customers to register for our products and internal HR events.

FS: How has FormSpring solved a business/organizational issue?

We use FormSpring for about 10% of our campaigns. That saves us over 50 hours of work per month making it the best employee I ever hired!

FS: What features do you find most helpful?

We think FormSpring is very easy to use. It requires little training to get all of the staff to build forms. The integration with other products is also a great feature. We love how we have the ability to use the conditional logic so specific fields are displayed if the applicant chooses a certain answer. We also like the smart routing feature where we can have certain forms emailed to a specific member of our staff depending on the answers chosen in the form.

FS: Any other tips/tricks/words of wisdom you would like to share with other users/readers?

The data reporting features are a great tool to have so you can get your customers involved. With the ease of use of FormSpring, anybody will be able to use it!

FS: Tell us a little bit about your position with Easy Web Recruitment:

I am the Managing Director at Easy Web Recruitment and I also take the lead role in looking at software and systems to implement around our core services.

FS: How did you hear about FormSpring?

We previously used one of your competitors, but we were not entirely happy so we did an online search and found FormSpring via Google.

FS: How do you currently use FormSpring?

FS: How has FormSpring solved a business/organizational issue?

We use FormSpring for about 10% of our campaigns. That saves us over 50 hours of work per month making it the best employee I ever hired!

FS: What features do you find most helpful?

FS: Any other tips/tricks/words of wisdom you would like to share with other users/readers?

The data reporting features are a great tool to have so you can get your customers involved. With the ease of use of FormSpring, anybody will be able to use it!Recent Posts:

Creating A Successful PPC Campaign

austin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:07:52 +0000

In the conversation of organic versus paid search, the latter can sometimes receive a bad rap. To the small business owner or novice marketer, paid search can be a scary subject with all the rumors of high cost, low ROI and click fraud. The truth is that paid search can be profitable and provide valuable data for your business if done correctly. You just have to have the right system in place.

Building a successful SEO program is important, but it can take several months before you see any type of impact on your search placement. The benefit of PPC is that it provides immediate, qualified traffic to your website, and you can have a program up and running in a matter of days. This allows you to collect information about your visitors, sales funnel and what search terms people are using to find your site. The information you obtain from PPC can help you with your SEO.

PPC Tools of the Trade

At FormSpring, we use both Google AdWords and Google Analytics to track our PPC campaigns, along with some advanced in-house tracking systems. AdWords allows us to track what happens during the initial search and click of a keyword, and Analytics gives us valuable post-click data. These tools have helped us discover a few techniques to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our PPC campaigns.

Tips and Tricks

Our first technique is that we optimize our landing pages. Many businesses make the mistake of sending all of their paid search traffic to their homepage. Imagine your website is a store with lots of different items for sale. If you only have one entrance, people have to wander around searching for the one item they need. Wouldn’t it be helpful to have several entrances where the customer can walk in and is immediately greeted by the product they were searching for? We create specific landing pages based on our keyword campaigns and direct users to them according to their search criteria. This is a very simple concept, but often overlooked.

Another one of our tricks is to use UTM tags to build very detailed URLs that pass information along to Analytics. This enables you to see exactly where your traffic is coming from. Below is the anatomy of a destination URL using UTM tags.

Test, Test Again…Then Test Some More

A good PPC campaign doesn’t end at tracking. You should constantly test and optimize your ads.

I read an article recently called “Split Testing Adwords: You’re Doing It Wrong,” that got me thinking about our testing strategies. Dan Thies explains that although the way we perform A/B split tests for our PPC ads is normal, it’s also “completely, utterly and totally wrong.” Ouch.

So what is considered “normal” when A/B split testing? Our method has always been to run 3-4 ads at a time with only one variable changed in each ad such as the ad title, display URL or call-to-action. After roughly 1000 impressions, we determine which ad is performing best, pause the underachievers and create new ads to test against the winner.

Thies’ argument against this method is that a winning ad has performance history and is more likely to be given a higher ranking and placement compared to your newly created test ad. Placement is obviously important for increasing impressions, clicks and conversions so you cannot accurately compare ad A and ad B if they aren’t on an equal playing field.

Our Method

To test this theory, we made three exact duplicates of our control ad (the winning ad), created one test ad (the competitor) with different ad copy and kept our original control ad running. This method spreads out the impressions so your test ad, which could potentially fail, doesn’t receive a large percentage of impressions.

Our plan is to pause the test ad if it’s obviously a failure, or pause the control ads one at a time and keep the test ad running if it’s doing well. Once the test ad has enough performance history and we’ve paused all of our control copies, then we can have a 50/50 matchup vs the control.

To Be Continued…

We’ll let you know how the test goes once we receive enough impressions. In the meantime, we’d love to hear your thoughts on this and other testing methods along with your PPC success stories or failures.Recent Posts:

Service Update

erica — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:10:00 +0000

FormSpring experienced an outage this morning for 33 minutes from approximately 5:38 AM to 6:11 AM EST. We experienced no data loss. Our load balancers went down, cutting off traffic, so forms could not be built, viewed or submitted. As of 6:11 AM EST all forms are back up and operating normally.

We are waiting on more info from our data center as to what exactly happened to cause the outage. We will update this post when we have more to report.

Recent Posts:

Keep Your Form from Becoming a Dead Zone

erica — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:17:02 +0000

Using online forms for customer service is a great way to interact with your customers – if you are doing it the right way! People often times shy away from submitting their information into an online form because they believe they are not contacting a real person and therefore they won’t be receiving a response, especially right away.

There are several key things for you to do so your online form doesn’t become a dead zone on your site.

Set Expectations:

First, place a short message above the form letting your customer know details about what will happen after they submit their information. By being upfront about the level of service they can expect they will have a realistic time frame and won’t make assumptions about how the information will be processed.

Be Smart:

Make sure the form is being submitted to the correct person so that the form can be responded to. Smart Routing allows the form to be routed to the proper person or team based on information that is selected in the form. For instance, if you have a lead generation form for three different regions, East Coast, Mid West and West Coast, you can route proper submissions to each areas sales manager. Making sure that the information is handled by the proper person and information can be acted upon much quicker.

Take Action:

Last, take action! Make sure you stay true to your word and let customers know you are really behind that form and are ready to help them.

How We Do It

At FormSpring, above our customer support form we tell the customer that someone will contact them as soon as possible – always within 24 hours in our case. We also give them other options of contacting us if they aren’t comfortable filling out the online form. After the form has been submitted, a screen pops up telling them thank you and we will contact them right away just so they are even more confident that we will reply.

By following all of these key items your customers will trust that you will always reply when they fill out y our form and also decrease your chances of your form from becoming a dead zone.

There are several key things for you to do so your online form doesn’t become a dead zone on your site.

Set Expectations:

Be Smart:

Take Action:

Last, take action! Make sure you stay true to your word and let customers know you are really behind that form and are ready to help them.

How We Do It

At FormSpring, above our customer support form we tell the customer that someone will contact them as soon as possible – always within 24 hours in our case and usually sooner than that. We also give them other options of contacting us if they aren’t comfortable filling out the online form. After the form has been submitted, a screen pops up telling them thank you and we will contact them right away just so they are even more confident that we will reply.

By following all of these key items your customers will trust that you will always reply when they fill out your form and also decrease your chances of your form from becoming a dead zone.Recent Posts:

FormSpring Launches New Data/Report Features

ryan — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:35:46 +0000

FormSpring users have been asking for better reporting features for their data, and we have listened to those requests. As a result, we have completely rewritten the Data features of FormSpring to give you more flexibility in searching your data, creating charts, sharing data and more.

The main change is that rather than a static Data page, you now have the ability to configure the page yourself to display only the data you want and the charts you want. More than that, you have the ability to create as many Data pages as you want, or Reports as we call them.

Each Report can be configured as a saved Search for specific data or it can display all submissions. You can add/remove charts for each select list, radio button, checkbox, matrix and number field on your form.

You can also choose to Share reports, which allows others to view your data via a link without needing access to your username and password. Each Report can be shared/not shared separately. You can also choose Limited or Full data sharing. Limited data sharing only allows others to view a summary of your data. They cannot view the full submissions nor search the data. Full data sharing allows those you share the unique URL with to view all of your data and search it.

Once you have enabled Full Data Sharing, RSS and Share buttons will show up for that Report.

FormSpring users now have a lot more control over how they search their data and how they configure their saved searches (now called Reports). Each Report has a search box for basic searches, as well as an advanced search link.

You can also click on the Configure button on a Report to filter the results for that Report in order to create a Saved Search.

You can create a new Report by clicking on the “Create New” button. When you have multiple Reports, you can choose which one you want to view from the Report drop-down menu.

You can still export your Data in CSV, RTF (Word) and Excel format, but we have added a new option for printing reports and charts, a “Save as PDF” link.

We hope you like the major overhaul we have made of our Data functionality. All of the old features are still there, but there’s a lot of new stuff as well. You can see some of the new features in this quick video tutorial below, and as always let us know what you think in the comments below.

Recent Posts:

Winners Announced! Inbound Marketing Book Contest

chris — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:24:58 +0000

We had great response to our Inbound Marketing Book giveaway this week and we are happy to announce the winners. Now, we couldn’t just do a simple blog post so we also included a little video of the winners being announced “live” by Erica.

Thanks to everyone who submitted a comment or retweeted the contest. We appreciate it very much and look forward to some more useful contests and promotions to help your business. Now, without further ado – here are your winners!

Recent Posts:

Win a Free Copy of Inbound Marketing

chris — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:24:33 +0000

Everyone knows how important it is to have a solid online presence, but many people don’t know how to truly leverage the power of search, blogging, social media, and other online channels to take their business to the next level. Fortunately some really smart people have written a solid book to teach you. We purchased some extra copies of Inbound Marketing because we thought it was such a good guide to online marketing and we want to give some away! It is written by HubSpot co-founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah and it shows you how to use Google, Social Media, and Blogs to drive traffic to your website and leverage the power of the internet to really grow your online marketing.

You can download an excerpt of the book and then you can enter to win your own free copy! Entry is easy. Leave a comment below or send a tweet through twitter with: Win a free copy of Inbound Marketing written by @dharmesh from @formspring, details here: bit.ly/7y9628″ and you will be entered automatically.

We will be giving away five copies of the book on Thursday December 17, so comment and tweet away!

http://bit.ly/61MlKM

Recent Posts:

5 Reasons Why Your Website Needs A Contact Form

ryan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:04:50 +0000

1. Spam – Placing your email address on a contact page allows spam bots to find it and greatly increases the amount of spam you receive.

2. Appearance – A contact form simply looks more professional than slapping your email address on a page. You want your website to look as nice as possible, right?

3. User friendliness – Why make the user open their email client, cut and paste your email address, open a new message and compose an email? Think how much more convenient it is for them to just fill out a form and hit “Submit”. What if they’re not using their own computer, and they don’t have a web-based email account? They’ll have to remember to visit your site again once they have access to their email account.

4. Accurate delivery – Your contact form can have a drop-down menu of all the departments in your organization. The user chooses the department they want to contact and their email is sent there. If you just list the email addresses of 30 departments or employees on your contact page, lazy users are going to email either the first address they see or maybe even all of the addresses on the list rather than search for the correct department or employee.

5. Convenience – With a form, you can control the subject line of the emails users send you, you can control the email address those emails are sent from. You can store the emails you receive in a database in addition to receiving them via your email client. All of this will make it easier for you to find specific emails, search them, gather statistics on your users and keep better track of who is contacting you and why.

So what’s your excuse for not having a contact form on your website? Too difficult? Not enough technical knowledge? Well, I’ve created a video that shows how you can build a contact form and place it on your website in two minutes flat using a FormSpring form. Watch below:

It’s as easy as that. If you just sign up for an account with FormSpring, you can have a contact form on your site in a few minutes. Let us know below if you have any comments or questions.Recent Posts:

Make Your Event Registration Form Tweet

chris — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:19:46 +0000

Today’s guest post is from Noah Coffey, a web developer/designer and creator of Tweetbrite.

One of my favorite uses for FormSpring is throwing together a registration form for a conference or event. As the popularity of Twitter continues to explode, I’ve noticed more event registration forms asking for attendee’s Twitter user names. If you are organizing and event, wouldn’t it be nice if you could automatically tweet every time someone registers for your event?

A site that provides such a service has just integrated with FormSpring. Tweetbrite now allows you to connect your FormSpring account to your Twitter account. Every time someone uses your Formspring event registration form, Tweetbrite can automatically tweet through your selected Twitter account. For example, “@johnsmith just registered for MBO 2009.”

To get started, just create a new FormSpring API key from your FormSpring account (tutorial). Then, head over to Tweetbrite.com, create a free account, and click the big “Get started” link once you log-in. A simple setup wizard will guide you through the steps to link your FormSpring account, your Twitter account and create your mashup. Another great feature provided through the use of the FormSpring API key is that you never have to reveal your FormSpring user name or password.

For those interested in details of the integration, the FormSpring API was very intuitive and easy to use. Once Tweetbrite is granted access to a user’s FormSpring account and a mashup has been created, selected FormSpring forms are checked regularly for new attendee data. Based on which form fields the user selected, Tweetbrite stores the new attendee’s first and last name and their Twitter user name. Another process tweets the new attendees in the format specified by the user and marks the attendee as having been tweeted (to prevent duplicate tweeting). I wish I could go into more detail about the integration, but the FormSpring API is really straightforward and the documentation is excellent.

Noah Coffey is a developer trapped inside a web designer. While spending his days enjoying the challenges of web and email design, his true passion lies in side projects developing unique and creative web apps in the social media space. He is also the co-founder of Blog Indiana, an annual blogging and social media conference located in Indianapolis, IN. Noah lives and works in Indianapolis, is married and a proud new fatherRecent Posts:

FormSpring welcomes Austin Dillman

austin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:00:10 +0000

I’m very excited to dive into my new role as Marketing Specialist at FormSpring. I was first introduced to FormSpring by my brother, Ryan, who is the Support Specialist here. Having grown up the youngest of three boys and taking my fair share of lumps, I was somewhat apprehensive about working with my older brother. However, I’m happy to report that I read through the employee handbook and swirlies and pink bellies are a big “no-no” here at FormSpring. I just hope that Ryan read his handbook as well.

I was born and raised in Kokomo, Indiana – “The City of Firsts” – or more affectionately known as “Stoplight City”. Not venturing too far from home, I attended Purdue University where I received my BA in Visual Communications Design. I worked my way down to Indianapolis in 2005 where I’ve spent my career as a designer and developing, testing and analyzing marketing programs. I’ll actually be taking on a bit of both roles here at FormSpring. When not in the office, you can find me cheering on the Colts and Boilermakers, enjoying the outdoors and training for 5K’s and half marathons.Recent Posts:

FormSpring Blog

User Profile: Easy Web Recruitment

Other Related Posts

Creating A Successful PPC Campaign

Other Related Posts

Service Update

Other Interesting Posts

Keep Your Form from Becoming a Dead Zone

Other Related Posts

FormSpring Launches New Data/Report Features

Other Related Posts

Winners Announced! Inbound Marketing Book Contest

Other Related Posts

Win a Free Copy of Inbound Marketing

Other Related Posts

5 Reasons Why Your Website Needs A Contact Form

Other Related Posts

Make Your Event Registration Form Tweet

Other Related Posts

FormSpring welcomes Austin Dillman

Other Interesting Posts