Number of Fields on a Form? Whats your best practice?

[Anonymous]

Hello -

We're currently having a few internal discussions on how to prioritize fields on a form, when is it "too many" and what information pieces are critical for marketing qualification and sales follow up. We're also trying to figure out how to improve the customer experience because our current form has 6 parts (first name, last name, company, phone, email, address). Our sales team wants more information (add role/title) and our marketing team wants less (name/email/company).

We also use progressive profiling, but we know that our average touches per prospect is fairly low - so gathering the right information on the first touch is critical.

I've downloaded a few white papers for guidance and we're already talking to SiriusDecisions, but I'd love to also get the community's input on what they see work best, how they've tested this process, and any other tips & tricks.

Thanks!

Tabitha

[Darrell_Alfons2]

We've been going back and forth on this too.

One way to settle it is to capture the minimum amount of information it takes to route the lead to the right seller/team.

If lead routing is general, like a queue, or there is an internal person assigning leads, then you can settle with fewer fields.

If you have the budget for it, Reachforce and Ringlead can append the data for you so you can receive in-depth info while only asking for a few data points like name and email address.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Tabitha,

Of course, the lower, the better, but in reality, one cannot always follow that rule.

We usually adapt the number of fields to the position in the funnel of the marketing offer that is behind the form. Typically :

• a blog newsletter registration will be a very short form (even only the email address).
• A TOFU white paper about market trends, will be a short one as well (email, name, company)
• A MOFU ebook about setting the buying criteria right will be longer (all the above + company and position)
• A BOFU action such as a product trial, demo request or quote request will be long one, including a phone number.

-Greg

[Chris_Johnston]

With Sales, my first question to them is would you rather more leads or to know their job title? Suddenly sales becomes more resourceful with Linkedin and other tools to find out some missing information in my experience. Gregoire is right with regards to being able to get more information based on the value of the information you are giving.