Form Submission Segments Best Practice

When a contact submits a form in Force24, you choose which Segment they're added to. It can be tempting to send submissions straight into an existing send Segment, but doing so makes reporting, segmentation and Journey building much harder later on.

This article explains the recommended approach for form submissions, and why keeping Submission Segments separate from your broader send Segments gives you more flexibility.

What's the recommended approach?

The best practice is to create a dedicated Segment for each form. For example:

• Newsletter Sign Up Submissions
• Salary Guide Download Submissions
• Contact Us Form Submissions
• Webinar Registration Submissions

When a contact submits the form, they're added to that dedicated Submission Segment and nowhere else at first. This means that being in the Segment becomes a reliable sign that the contact submitted that specific form.

Why are dedicated Submission Segments useful?

Keeping form submissions in their own Segments has two main benefits.

You can easily identify who submitted a form

The Segment only contains contacts who completed that form, so checking whether a contact is in it is the same as checking whether they submitted the form. This is particularly useful when building Journeys. For example, you may want to:

• Send a follow-up email only to contacts who submitted a particular form.
• Exclude contacts who have already completed a form.
• Trigger a Journey based on a form submission.

You can track when a form was submitted

You can also use the Segment Date Added contact search rule. Contacts are added to the Segment when they submit the form, so the date they joined it tells you when the submission happened. This lets you find contacts who:

• Submitted a form in the last 7 days.
• Submitted a form this month.
• Submitted a form during a specific campaign period.

Without a dedicated Submission Segment, this is much harder to track.

What's the problem with sending submissions straight into an existing Segment?

A common setup is to send form submissions directly into an existing newsletter Segment:

At first glance this looks simpler, because the contact lands straight in the audience that receives newsletters. The catch is that a send Segment usually has several ways in, such as:

• Form submissions
• CRM synchronisation
• Manual imports
• Dynamic Segments
• Journeys

As a result, being in the newsletter Segment no longer tells you how the contact got there. You can't reliably answer questions like:

• Did this contact submit the newsletter form?
• When did they submit it?
• Have they completed this specific form before?

What's the better alternative?

Keep the Submission Segment separate, then use a Dynamic Segment to fill the send Segment. The setup looks like this:

Newsletter Signup Form
        ↓
Newsletter Submission Segment
        ↓
Newsletter Send Segment

The Newsletter Send Segment would then have an Add to List rule like this:

This gives you the best of both worlds. Contacts still reach the newsletter Segment automatically, but you also keep a dedicated record of the form submission. You can still:

• Identify who submitted the form.
• Check when they submitted it.
• Use form submission data in Journeys.
• Build reporting around form activity.
• Create future automations based on form submissions.

How do I manage multiple forms?

If you have lots of forms, consider creating a master Submission Segment. This is a Dynamic Segment that collects contacts from all of your individual Submission Segments. For example:

Newsletter Submission Segment  ─┐
Salary Guide Submission Segment ─┤
Webinar Submission Segment      ─┼→ Master Form Submissions Segment
Contact Us Submission Segment   ─┘

This gives you a single audience of everyone who has submitted any form, while the individual Submission Segments stay in place for more detailed analysis.

Summary

For the most flexibility, give each form its own dedicated Submission Segment. Sending contacts straight into an existing send Segment may look simpler, but it removes valuable information about how and when contacts entered your database. If you keep Submission Segments separate and use Dynamic Segments to feed your broader audiences, you keep accurate submission tracking and still get the same marketing outcomes.