Nobody argues the fact that having more data about your leads means that you can deliver more informed, better performing marketing messages. More information about leads also means that your sales team can have meaningful interactions that are more likley to result in closed business. But how do you collect more data about your leads without scaring them off with long, multiple question forms?

Progressive Profiling

It's a tough balance to strike, but HubSpot's new progressive profiling feature can help. Progressive profiling allows you to control which questions appear on a form based on what you already know about a lead. That way, each time a lead fills out a form, you are collecting valuable new information about them while keeping your forms short and easy to fill out - not squandering the opportunity by asking the same questions twice.

There are a number of benefits to using progressive profiling -

  • Achieve higher conversion rates by using shorter forms. With progressive profiling, you don't need to cram everything you want to know about your leads into the first form they see. By asking only the critical questions first, you are likely to see higher conversion rates than you would with longer, more involved forms.
  • Avoid repetition in your forms. When a lead is willing to fill out a form, they expect to give a bit of information about themself in exchange for something valuable. Don't squander that opportunity by annoying them in asking the same questions that you already know the answers to.
  • Build a deeper, more comprehensive profile of each lead. Progressive profiling allows you to ask more detailed questions over time that you otherwise wouldn't be able to ask in a single, short form. Start with the basics - name, email address, and move on to more telling questions centered around things like business pain and product needs over time.
  • Reuse the same forms across multiple landing pages. When you use progressive profiling, you don't have to worry about controlling which fields appear on which landing pages, or when leads encounter different landing pages. The right questions are always asked regardless of what landing page a lead is converting on.

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Using progressive profiling in HubSpot is easy. In fact, if you've built a form in HubSpot using our familiar drag and drop interface, you already know how to do most of the work! 

You can simply continue building your form the way you used to, adding additional fields you have been wanting to ask in the Progressive Profiling Queue. By tagging each of your fields as smart (by checking “hide field if data previously captured), you make it eligible for Progressive Profiling. So after it has been filled out by a contact, that contact will see a different question in its place. You can also control the ordering of which questions are asked and when by setting a priority order of each of your questions.

Progressive profiling is now available to HubSpot Professional and Enterprise customers - simply go to Contacts > Forms to get started.

An All New Forms Interface

In addtion to progressive profiling, you'll also find a number of other enhancements to HubSpot's forms tool, including - 

  • Easy property search - Have dozens or hundreds of fields that you use in your forms? We've made them easy to find with a new property search box. Find the fields you want and drag them into your new form as you always have.
  • Easier access to frequently used features - We've also made a number of small but meaningful improvements that make using forms faster than ever. Frequently used features, like hiding, requiring, or making a field a smart field now have larger buttons right on the main forms screen.
  • Better labeling, tooltips, and explanations of features - Creating a form in HubSpot has always been easy - but with better labels, tooltips, and feature explanations, we've made building sophisticated forms with HubSpot easier than ever.

 

The new forms interface is now available to all customers using HubSpot's new landing pages. Progressive profiling is available to all HubSpot Professional and Enterprise customers using HubSpot's new landing pages. If you aren't yet using HubSpot's new landing page tool, you can find out about the status of your migration here. Not yet a HubSpot customer and ready to learn more? Check out our software and request a demo today. 

Originally published Jan 14, 2013 3:51:00 PM, updated January 17 2023