

Show HN: Create and collect forms directly from email - wim
http://emailform.io

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jbarciauskas
So, the purported benefits are that a) it's easier to create the form than
other form creators and b) you'll get improved response rates because people
fill out the form in-line and reply rather than clicking a link?

Marketing managers don't want to learn some type of special markdown, and I
can't imagine they would ever prefer it to a nice WYSIWYG form creator like
Wufoo or SurveyMonkey.

No one wants to try and figure out exactly where to click and put their "X"
for each choice - that's a much more frustrating user experience than native
form controls, even in a desktop browser. On a mobile device? Forget it, and
don't forget that something like 30% of emails are opened and clicked on
mobile devices.

Apparently Google Forms has a way of embedding native forms in emails,
although I'm not sure how they do it:

[http://www.gettingmoreawesome.com/2011/05/24/increase-
survey...](http://www.gettingmoreawesome.com/2011/05/24/increase-survey-
response-rate-by-embedding-it-in-an-email/)

Now that would actually improve response rates, and was what I was hoping to
see here.

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eli
Google just straight up embeds a <form> tag for those messages. Works if your
recipient uses gmail (usually), but not such a great idea in general.

<http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/forms/>

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Irregardless
How do I check the formatting before it's sent? How do I add a company logo or
change the styling (colors, fonts, etc.)? Do I have to go back and forth
through email if corrections are necessary? How do I send out a test survey
then delete the results from my data set so they aren't included with the real
one? Can I track who failed to respond and needs a follow-up email?

I'm (unfortunately) the one who gets stuck creating and sending out surveys
for my company whenever it's necessary, and those are just a few questions I
have after glancing at your demo. Right now, I can't see any situation where
this would be preferable to SurveyMonkey. It might be acceptable for a quick
and dirty internal survey, but I couldn't consider sending a questionnaire to
our vendors or clients without having full control over the format and
styling. Either that or I'd need to see evidence that your final product will
be professional looking -- including some screenshots of a finished survey
would help with that.

~~~
wim
Thanks for the feedback, those are all very good points.

Because we were looking for something to create forms fast and collect data
inline from emails, we created this initial version and decided to share it
already. So although it's currently still lacking features like rich
formatting and email list management, we're curious to see if people like the
concept, and if there's enough uses already for this first version. It's all
still pretty basic, so currently to make changes or start a new survey after a
"test" run, you'll need to send a new email to new@emailform.io. It can be
used already in combination with services like MailChimp though, e.g. for more
email list management.

Anyway, thanks for checking out the demo, and we hope to add more
functionality soon.

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mostlystatic
Looks really good and I like that you don't have to create an account. I
didn't run into any major issues. Just a few thoughts:

\- I found the copy after "Try a demo" a bit confusing. I wasn't aware of the
concept of creating the form by sending an email, so the first sentence didn't
make much sense initially. Maybe make the "To get started, copy the example
text below. " more prominent and break up the "We'll reply..." sentence into
something shorter.

\- Once I've created a form and go to the homepage, could you show a link to
it on the homepage?

\- When I got the email to fill out the form I wasn't sure if I was supposed
to edit the quoted text (even though that's exactly what you were telling me
to do). Maybe add a link to the web form just in case.

Keep up the good work!

~~~
wim
Thanks for the feedback! Good points, we'll also try to change the text a bit.
It's funny that we had some more people say they were really surprised that it
"just worked" to reply inline, but we'll probably add an option to include a
link to the webform in the email header or footer as well.

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kaolinite
Nice idea and congrats on shipping!

Just so you know, small typo on the "Collect data from replies" column:
"That's availabe too!"

~~~
wim
Thanks, fixed!

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danvoell
Feedback: I was confused by the demo. Just trying to help.

\- Cool! Just send us an email to new@emailform.io with your form.

Is the form the text below?

\- To get started with an example, copy the text below.

Once I copy it, is this what i send to you?

\- We'll reply you with a private link to access your online form & database,
so you can start sending out forms and collecting data.

~~~
danvoell
OK got it working. There might be a slightly simpler way to do this tutorial.
Step 1: Copy the text "form" below into your email. Step 2: Send the email to
new@emailform.io You're done! We'll reply... Great concept, best of luck!

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wim
We were looking for some kind of "posterous for forms", but couldn't really
find anything, so we created this side project. You can create (web)forms with
email, and collect data directly from replies to the form email you send out
(so people don't have to click on a link to an external form).

Any feedback is welcome, especially on whether this is something others might
find useful as well?

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e1ven
Looks really interesting, but I don't want to send all my emails through you.

I'd love to see something similar as a Python Library, though- It is unlikely
to be competitive to your business, since the overlap between marketing guys
who are going to pay you, and IT guys who would do it in Python are small ;)

I'd be happy to pay for a solution if you had one.

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jwdunne
It would be cool if I could import an email list from a CSV, similar to how
MailChimp does it. Including support to reference other things, such as name,
would also be useful but CSV is a big one. I say this because I am almost
always handed a CSV from the client when sending out a newsletter.

~~~
wim
Thanks, good to know. It's possible to paste in a list of comma separated
addresses in email format, but I suppose the CSV files usually have separate
columns for email/firstname/lastname/etc. We'll look into that! Of course you
can also use EmailForm in combination with e.g. MailChimp, just set the Reply-
to address to form+FORM_ID@emailform.io for the mails you send out.

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garagemc2
Looks good, just try to think about how to use this for lead generation
purposes.

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Fletch137
On the try a demo, it'd be nice if you could have an example email sent to
your email address (maybe the form that appears when you click the button now,
so that you can do a side-by-side comparison).

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artursapek
I am very impressed with how rapidly .io is becoming the cool new domain.

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RaSoJo
True...but i do wonder why it is so popular...

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highace
Because it hasn't been dominated by domain squatters and it has a techie
association (input-output).

But I still wouldn't use it for a serious business venture. Look at how a lot
of previous x.io companies have now switched to xio.com.

~~~
kaolinite
The trend appears to be starting out on .io and then when you get enough
traction / money, buying the .com which would previously have been too
expensive. I don't think many of the .io companies would consider their
original domain a mistake.

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woah
Hey guys, looks cool. I want to build an automated response email system for
an entirely different purpose, and I'm wondering what technologies you're
using. I've looked at Lamson a bit.

~~~
coreymaass
Mailgun and sendgrid both have email parsing. I've used them in a couple
projects and work quite well.

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andrewcooke
i just tried this. it worked very nicely.

but i'm someone who still reads email via a terminal program and composes the
message in emacs.

so for someone like me, this works great (and i was impressed by the parsing -
i didn't try to make your life easy, but you extracted exactly the right
data).

but i am not sure i have many uses for it. i suspect people that do have uses
also care about branding crap, html mess and the like... but, again, for me,
it rocks.

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muzrix
i used Google Sites and Google Forms mainly to collect the data of my
customer. If this form can be integrated to both would be nice

~~~
wim
Thanks, the results and the webform pages should be pretty easy to embed,
we'll have a look at some more integration.

