7 reasons why not to use your email marketing platforms forms

While every email marketing platform includes signup forms, there are better alternatives. Why should you consider using external signup forms instead of your email marketing platform's built-in forms?

Any email marketer uses forms in some way to collect leads or allow subscriptions to their mailing list. This could be a minimal form, such as collecting only an email address, or a detailed, interactive questionnaire that gathers many details, as in surveys. It might be a permanent form embedded on a website, a landing page, or a pop-up.

While many email marketing platforms (ESPs) offer their own forms, there are significant advantages to using an external form platform over the built-in forms provided by email marketing platforms, especially if the form is embedded on a website or a landing page on a WordPress site.

What are the main advantages of using an external form platform compared to forms from email marketing platforms?

Data Security and Data Quality

We wouldn’t dream of allowing strangers access to our information systems or CRM. In many cases, even within the organization, not all employees can access the CRM or ESP. Yet, we all have sign-up forms that allow everyone to enter data into systems!

It’s like a backdoor that allows anyone to input information into our systems (ESP, CRM, etc.), so it must be protected. Security is a critical topic when collecting information from potential customers. In this area, professional external form platforms generally offer significant advantages over the forms provided by most email marketing platforms.

Professional form platforms are equipped with advanced security options to protect against spam bots and fake identities, including the ability to have multiple layers of security, like advanced Captcha, Honeypot protection that hides fields from bots, geographic checks that can block registrations from certain countries, and real-time email validation. All these help ensure that only genuine and high-quality registrations reach CRMs and Email platforms. While some email marketing platforms include basic protection in their forms, they often lack the comprehensive features mentioned above. Moreover, a significant drawback of forms from email marketing platforms is the direct integration, which doesn’t allow for data validation, cleansing, or formatting before transferring the data to the ESP.

Protection Against Spam and Bots

Spam bots scan the web looking for vulnerable forms, creating “false” registrations. These registrations can cause various damages, including “infecting” your email lists with fake sign-ups that may report spam or contain known spam traps, potentially leading to blocks and harming your reputation and email deliverability.

Protection against spam bots through multiple layers is a reason to prefer a robust external form platform over the forms provided by most email marketing platforms. Professional forms platforms have advanced tools to detect and prevent registrations from spam bots and fake profiles. They can analyze user behavior, identify suspicious registration patterns, and implement protection mechanisms such as reCAPTCHA, HCaptcha, and Cloudflare Turnstile. Additionally, they offer extensive support for real-time email verification services.

Real-Time Email Validation

One common issue with signup forms is the entry of incorrect or fake email addresses. Real-time email verification can prevent invalid addresses from entering your mailing list, improving contact quality and reducing bounce rates. External form platforms often integrate with email verification services to validate addresses in real time.

Independency

An external form platform lets you separate the data collection process from your email marketing platform. This separation provides flexibility. For instance, if you switch email marketing platforms, you won’t need to rebuild your forms from scratch. Instead, you can update the integration settings in your external form platform to connect with the new email marketing platform.

Here is the list of the most common WordPress forms: Fluent Forms, Happy Forms, Gravity Forms, WP Forms, Formidable Forms, Ninja Forms, Contact Form 7, ARForms, Wufoo, Elementor, SureForms.

Advanced Data Processing Capabilities

Indirect integration between external independent forms offers advanced data processing features, such as data cleansing, formatting, and enrichment, before the information reaches your email marketing platforms and other platforms where you want the captured data. This ensures the data collected is accurate, standardized, and ready for effective campaign segmentation and targeting.

Enhanced Flexibility and Customization

Compared with the built-in forms in many email marketing platforms, external form platforms offer greater design and functionality flexibility. They enable more extensive customization to match your brand’s look and feel, as well as the ability to implement complex logic, conditional fields, and integrations with other tools and services.

Improved User Experience on WordPress Sites

Many external form plugins integrate seamlessly with WordPress, offering WordPress users enhanced features and better performance than native forms from email marketing platforms. These plugins often include user-friendly interfaces, drag-and-drop builders, and templates to streamline form creation.