Ashley Walsh
VP, Marketing, Formstack

Salesforce Dreamforce is one of the biggest software conferences in the world. In the run-up to this event, we unveil our special TechByte series featuring high-profile Dreamforce attendees and MarTech Champions. We spoke to Ashley Walsh, VP, Marketing, FormStack, to see what she had to say about attending Dreamforce.

MTS: As a technology partner of Salesforce CRM, what excites you at Dreamforce?
Ashley Walsh: Dreamforce gives you access to the largest gathering of software users globally so we’re extremely excited to be a part of it. This year is especially meaningful for us since Formstack just announced the acquisition of Fast Forms—now called Formstack for Salesforce—so we’re thrilled to be at Dreamforce to introduce our new AppExchange integration to our new and existing users.

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MTS: What are your expectations from the event and how do you intend to share your experiences with your colleagues and community members?
Ashley: We have 3 key goals for the event.

1. To meet with and show appreciation to our existing customers both at the booth and through sponsored events and parties.
2. To increase exposure of the Formstack brand and our newly launched Salesforce app to Salesforce users.
3. To further identify key relationships and partnerships that can help us improve our app and extend our reach within the Salesforce ecosystem. We’re bringing a mix of Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Product, and Leadership team members and hope to come back with fresh ideas from many different growth perspectives.

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MTS: How does Formstack’s integration with Salesforce CRM simplify lead generation?
Ashley: Formstack users can quickly create mobile-friendly forms with our drag-and-drop builder, either from scratch or from one of over 100 pre-made templates. Users can pass new lead information to Salesforce, auto-update existing records, attach objects to form submissions, and more, quickly and easily.

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MTS: What’s the next frontier for form conversion tools? How do you see AI/ML impacting form-building technology?
Ashley: Tools like Salesforce are alreading making form-filling faster and smarter. For instance, our new Salesforce app allows for CRM data to auto-populate fields on your form. Beyond that, AI and even text will definitely shape form-building technology. The forms of the future will be lighter, more mobile, and smarter: your forms will have a lot more information about you right off the bat than they do today, thanks to AI/ML.

MTS: What are the benefits of using Formstack in tandem with top-tier marketing automation platforms, for B2B customers?
Ashley: Most marketing automation systems offer forms, but they aren’t “smart” forms and forms often seem like an afterthought when choosing a marketing automation platform. Most marketers are evaluating that investment on what you can do with the data rather that how you get the data in. Formstack offers set of conversion tools that are not found in any other platform and focus on converting more data at the moment of truth. Everything from seeing what fields are causing friction, A/B testing fields on your forms, firing events to Google Analytics, auto-filling forms with your Facebook or Google info can be done. If you’re investing in marketing automation, smart forms are a really great complement and can help you get more leads into your system.

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MTS: What buzz have you heard about GDPR and its impact on the way B2B companies manage data for CX and intelligence?
Ashley: As a company that’s centered around data collection we’ve engaged consultants to ensure our personal preparedness for GDPR. I don’t anticipate it having a huge impact on our day to day, but there’s certainly some due diligence that’s required and something we want to pay close attention to as it unfolds.

MTS: What marketing technologies are you specifically looking to explore at Dreamforce?
Ashley: From a marketing perspective, we’re highly focused on Account Based Marketing and CX platforms to support our growth strategy. We’re considering launching an online user community next year so I’m excited to dig into what technologies are available there to drive more user engagement.

MTS: Thanks for chatting with us, Ashley.
Stay tuned for more insights on marketing technologies. To participate in our Tech Bytes program, email us at news@martechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com
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