Available with the following plans, except where noted:
Quickly insert approved form links directly into Copper emails and email templates. Built-in controls and guardrails ensure forms are only sent to compatible contacts, helping you avoid mistakes and work more efficiently.
Admins choose which form links can be emailed. Admin users can choose which forms are able to be inserted in Copper emails. Any user can insert an enabled form into a Copper email or email template.
Copper ensures "compatibility" between the form and the recipient. Users won't be able to send Lead forms to People or vice-versa––in emails, templates, or email automations.
This article will walk you through:
How to enable a form to be shared via email
In order for a form to appear in the email composer toolbar, it must first be enabled for sharing via email. By default, no forms are enabled for sharing via email.
Only Admins and Account Owners can enable a form to be shared via email.
From the web app, navigate to Forms
Find the form you want to enable for emailing and click Edit
Click on the Share tab
Check the box, as shown below
Click Publish changes
What is form compatibility?
When you created your Copper form, you chose whether your form would create/update Leads or People. In Copper, Leads cannot be related to Companies or Pipeline records. If users were to accidentally send a Lead a form that creates/updates People records and creates Pipeline records, it could lead to erroneous records being created and operational overhead to clean up the records.
To help protect against user error, Copper has several built-in controls to ensure the form is compatible with the recipient(s). Throughout this guide, we will refer to this as "form compatibility".
At a high-level:
Users won't be able to insert a Lead form into an email to a Person, or vice-versa
Users won't be able to insert both Lead and People forms into email templates
Users won't be able to insert an email template with a form link into an email where the recipient is not compatible
Users won't be able to insert incompatible forms or email templates into email automations
There are scenarios where users are able to change the email recipient after a form/template has been inserted but before it has been sent. Copper has also taken steps to warn the user when they've changed the compatibility of the recipient and form.
These behaviors are further detailed in sections below.
Adding a form link to an email template
When creating an email template, all forms that have been enabled for emailing will appear in the composer toolbar grouped by Lead Forms and Person Forms.
When creating an email template, Copper is not able to ensure compatibility between the form(s) and the recipient(s) because there are no recipients on an email template. Instead, to help avoid user error, Copper only allows forms of one entity type to be inserted in email templates. This means you cannot add both Lead and People forms to an email template.
To add a form to an email template:
In the web app, click your user avatar in the upper right, and select Email Settings & Email Templates
Create a new email template or edit an existing template
Click Forms in the composer toolbar
In the dropdown, click on the form you want to insert. It will appear as a chip-style element.
It will not render in the composer as a clickable link, but it will appear as a clickable link when sent.
In the composer, click the form element to set display text for the form hyperlink.
Save your email template.
Once you have inserted a form into an email template, you will only be able to add forms of the same type. If you choose to add another form to your email template, the Forms dropdown in the toolbar will show incompatible forms as greyed-out will a tooltip explaining that emails can't contain both Lead forms and Person forms.
You can remove the form from the email template to "reset" this state.
Sending an email with a form link
When composing an email, Copper checks the first recipient to ensure the user can only insert form links that are compatible.
To insert a form link in an email, reply, or bulk email in the web app:
From the composer toolbar, click Forms
In the dropdown, click on the form you want to insert.
If the recipient is not compatible with the form, the form displays as disabled with a tooltip explaining that the form cannot be sent to that email recipient.
When inserted, the form will appear as a chip-style element.
It will not render in the composer as a clickable link, but it will appear as a clickable link when sent.
In the composer, click the form element to set display text for the form hyperlink.
Finish composing your email and Send.
If you insert a form link and then change the recipient to one that isn't compatible, Copper will show a message letting you know you need to remove or replace the invalid form(s) before sending.
Forms are not yet able to be added to an email in the mobile app.
Inserting an email template with a form link
In the web app, Copper takes steps to ensure that email templates with form links are not sent to incompatible recipients.
If the recipient is incompatible with the form contained in the email template, that template will appear greyed-out with a tooltip explaining that the template contains a form that can't be sent to the recipient. In the case of emails with more than one recipient, only the first recipient in the TO is checked.
If you insert an email template and then change the recipient to one that isn't compatible, Copper will show a message letting you know you need to remove or replace the invalid form(s) before sending.
In the Chrome Extension, Copper is not able to enforce compatibility between the recipient and the form in an email template. Ensure your email templates are named appropriately to ensure users don't send the wrong form to contacts. In the Chrome Extension, when an email template with a form is inserted, Copper will:
Render the form hyperlink, honoring the display text set in the template
This is similar to how merge fields behave in the Chrome Extension.
Using form links with email automations
When you select a template from the email automations gallery, Copper will ensure you aren't able to insert an incompatible form.
In Lead automations, you won't be able to insert a People form or an email template that contains a People form.
In People automations, Company automations, and Pipeline automations you won't be able to insert a Lead form or an email template that contains a Lead form.
If your form has pipeline fields and responses create pipeline records, you will only be able to use it in People and Company email automations.
Incompatible forms and templates will appear greyed-out with a tooltip.
💡 Good to know
For customers on our Business plan, click tracking is disabled for form links inserted via the composer toolbar in emails and templates. Form links are generated at send time, which means there isn’t a visible URL in the composer, and click tracking would overwrite the form’s display text when the email is sent. Disabling click tracking ensures users can control how the email reads and that recipients see exactly what the sender intended.
FAQs
What happens if I edit an email template and replace the form link with one of a different compatibility?
For example, if your email template had a Lead form and you replace it with a People form. Moving forward, the email template will only be able to be inserted into emails where the recipient is compatible. There is no retroactive impact on emails that were already sent using that template.
If the email template is associated with an email automation, no automated emails will send and Copper will display an error message in your list of email automations. To fix this, you can update the email template or replace it with a compatible one in the automation. Once you do, emails will resume sending.
What if a form used in an email template is later deleted, or the "allow this form link to be inserted in Copper emails and templates" box is later unchecked?
For both of these scenarios, the form link is no longer able to be sent to any recipients.
In the web app, when the email template is inserted:
The form element will appear in a "broken" state and show a tooltip explaining that the form has been deleted or can no longer be sent.
When the user clicks the Send button, they will see a message letting them know they need to remove or replace the form before sending.
In the web app, if you are editing the email template:
The form element will appear in a "broken" state and show a tooltip explaining that the form has been deleted or can no longer be sent.
When the user clicks the Save button, they will see a message letting them know they need to remove or replace the form before sending.
In the Chrome Extension, when the email template is inserted:
If the form has since been deleted, it will appear as <<Deleted.LinkDisplayText>>
If the form has since been disabled for emailing, it will appear as <<Unshareable.LinkDisplayText>>
Have a question? Contact our Customer Success Team using the in-app chat 💬