Since time-to-follow is directly correlated with lead success rates and program ROI, its absolutely critical to make sure that as soon as leads get accepted via Lead Targeting Instant Connect they get automatically (and immediately) not only forwarded into your CRM but all fields get mapped and the lead gets created as an opportunity with source = HTR for you to be able to monitor and optimize your team's followup as well as track ROI.
A few more reasons to setup CRM Forwarding:
Benefit | Description |
⏰ Save time & reduce manual data entry | Avoid having to manually copy/paste all details from the HTR dashboard into your CRM. |
📈 Reduce Time-to-Followup to Improve success rates & ROI | Create leads in your CRM instantly and automatically right when you accept them on HTR to reduce your time-to-followup which is directly correlated with your success rates. |
❌ Never miss a lead | Manual data entry is prone to human error which means wasted leads every time your team forgets to do manual data entry. |
1. How it Works
Add a CRM forwarding email address to the leads tab in your dashboard to automatically forward all lead details into your CRM when you accept a lead on HTR either manually or via Instant Connect.
While you can input a CRM bcc email from any CRM (see example) into the 'Auto-forward to CRM' field in your lead inbox, this will just send a basic email with the lead details once you accept the lead in your dashboard, but you will still have to then go into your CRM and create the person and deal manually and assign them to a member of your sales team which can still be time consuming.
We STRONGLY RECOMMEND automating this process by using Zapier's email parser feature which you can setup in less than 10-minutes following the steps below. This will allow you to use Zapier's Email Parser to receive the lead data from your HTR dashboard and map each field into their corresponding fields in your CRM.
Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Zapier CRM Forwarding & Field Mapping
Step 1
Setup a free Zapier account | Create a Zapier account here. There are two options to choose from (shown here):
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Step 2
Create a Zapier email using the email parser tool |
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Step 3
Highlight the text areas that you want to map into your CRM | Simply highlight each field in the test email and give it a recognizable label to tell Zapier what each field is so that you can map them to your own CRM fields (shown here) |
Step 4
Create a zap connecting your email parser to your CRM | Now that you have your mailbox setup and its receiving new lead notification emails from your HotelTechReport dashboard, its time to create your Zap that will use this as a trigger (Watch Video Tutorial) |
Step 5
Add a step to the Zap to create a new person in your CRM | Since this lead is a new person being added to your CRM, you'll want to first create the step for 'create person' or 'create contact' (shown here). NOTE: Make sure you that you have fields setup in your CRM for each of the fields that HTR sends along with each lead prior to setting up your Zap View list of fields |
Step 6
Add a step to the Zap to create a new deal in your CRM | Now that you created a new person in your CRM in step 6, we'll want to setup another step of the Zap to create a deal in your CRM (shown here)
Tip: Make sure you have each item in the HTR template email setup as a field in your CRM so that they will appear in Zapier for you to use including 'lead type', '# of rooms', 'category of interest', 'product of interest', etc. |
Step 7
Turn on your Zap | That's it! Once you turn on your Zap (shown here) anytime you accept a lead going forward the following steps will happen automatically:
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Want to track of your HTR leads & ROI?
You probably already have a 'source' field in your CRM for deals, but if you don't we recommend setting one up. Once you do, you can input 'Hotel Tech Report' into this field in Zapier so that you can automatically track your leads over time (shown here) or set the deal title to something like 'HTR Lead | [hotel_name]' like this.
3. Mapping Lead Fields to Your CRM Fields
You can send yourself a test email from the CRM Forwarding modal in the vendor dashboard to see what data points and fields are included with each lead and we have also listed them below.
TIP (RECOMMENDED): Create HTR specific fields in your CRM for opportunity fields since they are either HTR specific fields or if you have them, will likely have different values (ie. our room count ranges likely don't perfectly match yours.
Field | Category | Type | Details |
First name | User | Text |
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Last name | User | Text |
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User | Verified email address | ||
Phone Number | User | Phone # | Validated (not verified) phone # |
Job Title | User | Text |
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Linkedin Profile | User | URL |
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Hotel / company | Company | Text |
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Website | Company | URL |
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City | Company | Text |
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Region | Company | Text |
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Inquiry type | Opportunity | Single-select | Options: Demo request, Price quote, Matched Lead |
Category of Interest | Opportunity | Text | |
Product of Interest | Opportunity | Text | Which of your products they requested info about |
Number of Rooms | Opportunity | Single-select |
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Deal Size | Opportunity | Text |
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PMS* *optional | Opportunity | Text |
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Multi-Property* *optional | Opportunity | Single-select | Single property, Multi-property |
This article is part of a 3-part series