Prerequisites
- The Four Map Data To Options — Only mapped fields can pre-fill
Pre-fill a Form for Someone You Already Know
Stop asking people for details you already hold
Asking an existing client to retype their name, email and phone number is a small insult and a real cost — every field is a chance to abandon the form.
Zyntro can pre-fill a form from a contact record, so the person sees their details already in place and only has to supply what is genuinely new. It matters most on surveys, feedback forms and anything you send to people already in your CRM.
Before You Begin
- Fields mapped to CRM fields, since pre-filling works from the contact record
- Contacts in your CRM to pre-fill from
Steps
Understand the two routes
A link carrying a contact identifier. When you send a form to a specific person, the link can name their contact record and the form pre-fills from it. This is the one you control.
A returning visitor. After somebody submits any of your forms, their browser remembers them for a year. If they come back to another of your forms, it pre-fills from the same record without you doing anything.
The second happens automatically. The first is something you set up when you send the link.
Make sure the fields can be pre-filled
Pre-filling reads from the contact record, so a field can only be pre-filled if it is mapped to a CRM field.
A question mapped to Contact Notes or Profile Data, or left unmapped, has no field to read back from and will always arrive empty. That is expected — free-text answers are not the sort of thing you would want pre-filled anyway.
Send a pre-filled link
Append the contact identifier to the form's address as a parameter.
The practical way to do this at any scale is from a sequence or broadcast, where the contact's identifier can be inserted into the link for each recipient automatically — rather than building links by hand.
Decide what pre-filling should not cover
Think about what you do not want filled in.
Pre-filling identity details is helpful. Pre-filling an opinion is not — a satisfaction rating that arrives pre-answered is worthless, and a consent checkbox that arrives pre-ticked is worse than worthless.
Keep anything that must be a fresh answer out of the CRM fields that get pre-filled, or ask it as an unmapped question.
Test as a stranger and as a known contact
Open the form in a private browsing window to see it as a new visitor — nothing pre-filled.
Then open your pre-filled link and check the right details appear, and that they belong to the right person.
Finally, submit as a known contact and confirm the existing record was updated rather than duplicated.
Warning: A pre-filled link identifies a contact, so treat it as personal. Anyone who opens it sees that person's details. Do not post such a link publicly, do not reuse one link for several recipients, and be careful forwarding an email that contains one.
Info: A contact who submits a form they were pre-filled from is matched to their existing record and updated, not duplicated. They also keep their existing owner, so a survey response does not reassign a client to whoever owns the survey.
Where pre-filling earns its place
Identity pre-filled, the questions blank. The client sees a form that already knows who they are and asks only what you actually want to learn, which materially improves response rates.
Their answers attach to the contact you already hold, so the feedback sits alongside everything else you know about them.
Where somebody has already given you their details at stage one, stage two should not ask again. Pre-fill the identity fields and ask only the new questions.
The returning-visitor cookie often handles this on its own, if both stages are Zyntro forms and the person uses the same browser.
Pre-fill what you hold and ask what has changed. Somebody who has not heard from you in months is far more likely to answer three questions than twelve.
This pairs well with the re-engagement objective in the AI form builder.
Pre-fill last year's details and ask the person to correct what has changed. Easier for them than starting blank, and it keeps your records current as a side effect.
Result
People you already know meet shorter forms, and their answers land on the record you already hold rather than creating a second one.
If pre-filling does not appear to work, the most likely cause is that the fields are not mapped to CRM fields — there is nothing to read back from.
