On their surface, website forms are simple tools. But when used correctly, they can do incredible things. Forms let you build mailing lists with subscription sign-ups, collect user feedback with surveys, and engage your audience with polls and quizzes. You can even receive files and schedule appointments.

If you're using WordPress, the powerful form-building plugin Gravity Forms is your best bet for making your website a successful two-way communication tool. With the Gravity Forms plugin, you can build a variety of forms and begin collecting information right away.

But once your poll is active, you'll need a way to collect, organize, and use all that valuable user data. Automation is the best way to do that. 

Zapier uses automated workflows called Zaps to integrate Gravity Forms with the other tools you need to manage the data it collects. Using these workflows, you can organize your data, set your team follow-up tasks, and even reach out to customers directly—all automatically. Take the work out of managing your form submissions by using automation.

Table of contents

• Track form submissions in a spreadsheet

• Add contacts to your mailing list or CRM

• Send notifications for form submissions

• Create follow-up tasks in your project management app

• Connect your forms to your calendar app

• Back up submissions and files

Track form submissions in a spreadsheet

The most important thing with form submissions is keeping track of them. And automation is much better at doing this than people are. Automated workflows will quickly, efficiently, and, most importantly, accurately transfer data from Gravity Forms into your spreadsheets.

Once your form submission data is in your spreadsheets, you can track, store, and organize all your data much more easily. You can also more easily share submission results with teammates and collaborators without them having to access Gravity Forms. And—most importantly—you always have a backup of important information. 

Try one of these workflows to get started:

Add contacts to your mailing list or CRM from Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is a great lead generation tool, but you need to add those leads to a mailing list or CRM to reach them successfully. Don't spend your valuable time copying and pasting details from every submission. That doesn't scale and inevitably leads to errors in your important customer data.

Set up one of these workflows to transfer all the info you need instantly. Automations like these can add or even update contact info when someone submits a form through your site. If you have multiple mailing lists or targeted outreach, you can add more granular details for each new subscriber. Your contact list will never fall out of date if you automate it.

Send notifications for form submissions

Whenever a new submission comes through, it's likely someone needs to know about it. Keep on top of it by setting up automated workflows that trigger an email or Slack notification whenever a new form submission comes through.

Get notifications in team chat

You and your team need to know what's happening with your forms. And likely take action from them.

Keep your team in the loop where they're spending the most time—in team chat. These automations give your team a useful record of new submissions. They also keep everyone informed of what's happening at all times so you can be faster, more responsive, and on top of all your work.

Respond to customers with an automatic email

A form submission shouldn't just go into a black hole when sent. You want to acknowledge you've received it. Use these workflows to trigger an automatic email when someone fills out your form. 

You can use this automation to send thank you emails, follow up on requests or questions, offer discount codes, or simply confirm receipt of a submission. Whatever you're using it for, an instant response makes users feel appreciated and builds a positive relationship.

Create follow-up tasks in your project management app

Analyzing and reacting to new form submissions is part of your daily workflow. Make sure you've assigned the appropriate follow-up task with automation.

Scale how quickly you can follow up on form responses by automatically creating a new task in your to-do or project management app with these workflows. When tasks are added automatically, you'll never miss following up again.

Connect your forms to your calendar app

Do you use Gravity Forms to schedule important meetings with customers or clients? Manually creating calendar events can be risky—nothing loses a customer faster than missing a call or follow-up.

Automation makes it easy to generate detailed calendar events for new incoming Gravity Forms submissions with no missed details. 

And if you use forms to follow up after meetings—maybe you want to see how you and your team did on that sales call—you can use a Zap to automatically create a form for each new client you schedule:

Back up submissions and files

Do you use Gravity Forms to collect files? It's an easy way to gather needed documents or even give clients an easy way to submit drafts of work. But it's also an easy way to lose track of important images and docs.

Integrate your forms with your cloud storage tool of choice to automatically upload, store, and organize all your important assets. That way, you not only have an organized archive of all your important files, you can also more easily share them with the right people when needed.

Ensure your files are safely stored for convenient access later by backing them up instantly every time you get a new submission.

Make your form submissions work for you

Dive into a world where your website forms do more than just collect information. When you pair up Gravity Forms on your WordPress site with Zapier's automation magic, things get a whole lot easier and faster. With just a few clicks, you can set up workflows that take your form data where it needs to go, without you having to lift a finger. 

From tracking form submissions in spreadsheets to creating tasks in your project management app to even scheduling follow-up emails with your customers, automation lets you do it all, and then some. Say goodbye to the boring copy-paste routine, and hello to a smoother, more organized way of handling your form data.

And this is just the start of what you can do with Gravity Forms and Zapier. What will you automate first?

This article was originally published in August 2020, written by Nick Moore. It was most recently updated in October 2023 by Wren Noble.