Constant ContactPRO

This knowledge base article relates to the WS Form Constant Contact add-on. Included with the Freelance & Agency editions or buy separately for the personal edition.

The Constant Contact add-on lets you push new contacts using an action, pull contact data using the WS Form autocomplete feature, and create new forms from your lists in a single click on the add form page.

Installation

The Constant Contact plugin is installed in the same way as installing the WS Form PRO plugin.

Once installed you will need to activate the license for the plugin. When you purchase the Constant Contact plugin, you will be given a license key. If you have lost your license key(s), click here.

To activate your license key:

  1. Click ‘WS Form’ in the WordPress administration menu.
  2. Click ‘Settings’.
  3. Click the ‘Constant Contact’ tab at the top of the page.
  4. Enter your license key.
  5. Click the ‘Activate’ button.

If your license key fails to activate, please ensure you are using the correct license key and not your WS Form PRO license key.

Connecting to Constant Contact

In order to use the add-on, you need to connect it to Constant Contact. Connecting is easy!

  1. Click ‘WS Form’ in the WordPress administration menu.
  2. Click ‘Settings’.
  3. Click the ‘Constant Contact’ tab at the top of the page.
  4. Click ‘Connect’ and follow the onscreen prompts

If you do not have a Constant Contact account, you can create a new account here.

Creating a Form for Constant Contact

Automatically

WS Form can create a form for any of your Constant Contact lists in a single click. This process not only creates a form but also fully configures WS Form so that the form is ready to use immediately.

To create a Constant Contact form in WS Form:

  1. Click ‘WS Form’ in the WordPress administration menu.
  2. Click ‘Add New’.
  3. Select the ‘Constant Contact’ tab at the top of the page.
  4. Click on any of your Constant Contact lists to create a form.
  5. Wait a few moments while the form is created.

That’s it! Your form will be created and is ready to add to your website.

If your list does not appear, click the refresh icon in the ‘Constant Contact’ tab.

Manually

It is also possible to use any form created in WS Form and add an action so that it is submitted to Constant Contact when a user saves or submits their form.

To add a Constant Contact action:

  1. When editing your form, click the ‘Actions’ icon at the top of the page. The ‘Actions’ sidebar will open on the right-hand side of the page.
  2. Click the ‘Add’  icon to add a new action.
  3. Select ‘Add to a Constant Contact List’ from the Action pulldown. A series of settings will appear.

As with all sidebars in WS Form, click to the ‘Save’ button at the bottom to save your changes, or click ‘Cancel’ to disregard your changes.

The Constant Contact action settings are as follows:

When Should This Action Run?

You can choose to run the Constant Contact action when the form is saved, submitted, or both.

Who Is Submitting?

You will usually leave this setting on the ‘Visitors’ option. This indicates to Constant Contact that a website visitor is completing the form, and therefore a welcome email will be sent. We recommend keeping this setting to ensure you adhere to the Constant Contact terms of use.

Only use the ‘Account Owner’ option if you will be adding the contacts via this form.

Opt-In Field

Use this setting to select which of your fields to act as the opt-in field. We recommend adding a checkbox field with a single checkbox. It is always recommended that you have an unchecked opt-in checkbox on your forms to ensure you comply with GDPR requirements.

Field Mapping

Field mapping tells WS Form which of your form fields relate to the corresponding fields in Constant Contact. For example you would want to map your Email field to the Email field in Constant Contact.

To map a field:

  1. Click the ‘Add’  icon at the bottom right of the field mapping section.
  2. In the left-hand column, select your form field.
  3. In the right-hand column, select the corresponding Constant Contact field.
  4. Repeat this process for each field on your form.
  5. Click the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the sidebar to save your changes.

Populate Forms Using Constant Contact

As well as pushing form data with this add-on, you can also retrieve contact data and populate the fields on your form.

This feature is only available if a website visitor is signed in and their WordPress email address matches the email address of a contact in Constant Contact.

To enable this feature:

  1. Click the form settings icon in the top toolbar when editing a form.
  2. Click the ‘Auto Populate’ tab in the sidebar on the right.
  3. Enable the ‘Populate Using Action’ setting.
  4. Choose ‘Constant Contact’ from the ‘Action To Populate From’ pull-down menu.
  5. Select the list you wish to populate data from in the ‘List To Populate From’ pull-down menu.
  6. Map the Constant Contact fields to your form fields.
  7. Click ‘Save’ at the bottom.

Note that if you created your form using a Constant Contact template the field mappings will automatically be created for you.