Last Updated: May 26, 2022

Websites where the majority of conversions happen offline, often rely on leads generation for driving sales.

The most common type of leads is form leads. These are the leads generated through a form, which is embedded on a website.

Form leads can be classified into:

#1 Qualified leads – leads that meet your customers’ qualification criteria.

#2 Won leads – qualified leads that converted into actual sales.

There are two methods to track web form leads as conversions in GA:

#1 Traditional method

#2 Via CRM (client relationship management)

Customer Relationship Management (or CRM) is a tool that is used to track and manage leads and store all of the information about the leads.

The traditional method for tracking Web Form Leads as conversions in Google Analytics

In the traditional method, a user fills out the lead generation form on your website and then submits it.

You then track the confirmation page URL (the URL of the page which is shown to a user on successful form submission) as the destination goal in Google Analytics:

This is one of the most common and widely used methods in GA.

But with this method, you will not be able to track qualified and won leads, as well as the sales associated with each form lead.

Tracking Web Form Leads as conversions in Google Analytics via CRM

Here is how this system works:

#1 A user fills out the lead generation form on your website and submit it.

#2 As soon as the user hits the ‘submit’ button, all of the lead information goes straight into your CRM software (like salesforce).

#3 You or your staff, qualify and categorise the lead via the CRM. So if a qualified lead turns into sales then it is labelled as ‘won’ and a monetary value is assigned to it.

#4 Your CRM stores all the lead data along with the corresponding client ID/user ID values.

#5 You download (or submit a request to download) the web form lead data from your CRM once a week or so.

#6 You import the leads data (along with qualified leads, won leads & monetary value attached with each lead) from your CRM into Google Analytics.

This is the best way to track web form leads in Google Analytics.

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Requirements for tracking qualified and won leads in Google Analytics

Before you can track qualified and won leads in Google Analytics, make sure:

#1 You use CRM software (like Salesforce). You need CRM software to qualify leads and add monetary value to them.

#2 Your CRM software provides web to lead functionality. You need theweb to lead’ functionality so that every form submission on your website automatically creates a corresponding lead record in your CRM. For example, ‘Salesforce’ provides ‘web to lead’ functionality.

Follow the steps below to track qualified and won leads in Google Analytics:

Step-1: Decide the data you will send along with lead data to your CRM.

Step-2: Capture the additional data you will send along with lead data.

Step-3: Create one or more custom fields in your CRM.

Step-4: Send additional data along with lead data to CRM on form submission.

Step-5: Qualify and categorize the lead data.

Step-6: Download data from your CRM once a week.

Step-7: Import CRM data into Google Analytics.

Step-1: Decide the data you will send along with lead data to your CRM

It is important, that you at least send client ID (or user ID) along with the lead data, to your CRM. Otherwise, later on, you will not be able to map web form lead to its correct user in Google Analytics.

In addition to client id/user id and lead data, you should also consider sending additional data to your CRM. This additional data could be campaign source, campaign medium, referral etc.

Step-2: Capture the additional data you will send along with lead data

You can capture additional data in GA by writing a script.

For example, in order to capture client ID, ask your developer to write a script that is fired as soon as a user visits your website.

This script should automatically capture the client ID from the Google Analytics cookie and store it in a custom dimension with a user-level scope.

If you rely more on user id then capture user ID instead of the client ID.

Similarly, you can ask your developer to write a script that can capture referral data.

Step-3: Create one or more custom fields in your CRM.

In order to capture additional data in your CRM, you would need to create one or more corresponding custom fields in your CRM.

For example, you can create one custom field for storing the client ID and another custom field to store campaign source and so on.

Refer to your CRM help documentation to learn about creating custom fields or contact their customer support.

Step-4: Send additional data along with lead data to CRM on form submission

Additional data (such as client ID, campaign source, campaign medium etc) is not the type of data that you directly ask your website users to submit via a web form.

So in order to send this additional data (along with the web form lead data), you will need to write a script. This script should be able to send the additional data via form hidden input fields. These hidden fields will not be visible to your users.

Depending upon the type of data you want to send to your CRM, add one or more hidden input fields to all of the lead generation forms embedded on your website.

For example, you can add one hidden field for sending client ID on form submission, like the one below:

<form action=”” name=”myForm”>
Name: <input type=”text” name=”name”>
<input type=”hidden” id=”clientID_field” name=”clientID_field” value=””>
<input type=”submit” value=”Submit Form” name=”btnSubmit”>
</form>

Similarly, you can add another hidden field for sending campaign source on form submission and so on.

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Step-5: Qualify and categorize the lead data.

You or your staff, qualify and categorise the lead via the CRM. So if a qualified lead turns into sales then it is labelled as ‘won’ and a monetary value is assigned to it.

Step-6: Download data from your CRM once a week

Refer to your CRM help documentation to learn about downloading data or contact their customer support.

Step-7: Import CRM data into Google Analytics

There are two methods you can use to import/send CRM data to Google Analytics:

1. The data import (user data) feature. 
2. Measurement protocol.

Sending CRM data to Google Analytics via the data import feature

If you wish to use the data import feature then follow the steps below to send CRM data to Google Analytics:

Step-1: Create a custom dimension for storing client ID or user ID.

Step-2: Create a custom dimension for storing the form lead type (e.g. qualified lead, won lead).

Step-3: Create a new user data set in GA.

Step-4: Use the client ID custom dimension as key and the form lead type custom dimension for imported data.

Step-5: Set the ‘overwrite hit data’ setting to yes.

Step-6: Download the data set schema template.

Step-7: Prepare the downloaded CRM data for import, according to the data set schema template.

Step-8: Upload the CRM data into Google Analytics

Step-9: Create a custom report to report on the CRM data.

If you are brand new to data import, then read this article: How to correctly measure Conversion Date & Time in Google Analytics where I have explained data import features in great detail.

Sending CRM data to Google Analytics via the measurement protocol

If you want to send CRM data via measurement protocol, then follow the steps below:

Step-1: Convert your CRM data into payload data. That is format your CRM data according to measurement protocol.

Step-2: Send the payload data to the Google Analytics server via a GET or POST HTTP request.

Note: There is one big downside of using measurement protocol. And that is the measurement protocol does not allow you to upload aggregated data (like tables). So implementation is pretty tricky.

To learn more about using the measurement protocol, read this article: Google Analytics Measurement Protocol Explained in Great Detail

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