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Leads

When a guide includes a Lead Form step, every submitted form creates a lead. Leads are stored alongside the visitor’s session — so you get the contact details plus every selection they made during the guide. The leads view and lead form step are Pro features.

How leads are stored

There is no separate leads table. A lead is simply a session where the visitor submitted a lead form. The form data (name, email, and any custom fields) is saved as part of the session record. This means every lead automatically includes the visitor’s full guide journey — which steps they completed and what they selected at each one.

Viewing leads

Go to GuideForms → Analytics and click the Leads tab in the sidebar. The table shows all leads with these columns:

  • Name — The visitor’s name (from the Name or First Name field).
  • Email — The visitor’s email address.
  • Guide — Which guide they completed.
  • Date — When the lead was submitted.
  • Actions — A View button to open the lead detail.

Lead detail

Click View on any lead to open a detail modal with three sections:

  1. Contact information — All submitted form fields with their labels and values (name, email, phone, custom fields, privacy consent, etc.). Field names like “first_name” are automatically formatted as “First Name”.
  2. Guide information — The guide title and the submission timestamp.
  3. Guide selections — The complete list of selections the visitor made before submitting the form. Shown as “Step Title: Selection Label” for each step.

The selections context is what makes GuideForms leads valuable — you don’t just get a name and email, you get the visitor’s exact preferences, budget range, or requirements based on what they chose in the guide.

Finding leads in sessions

You can also find leads through the Sessions tab. The sessions table has a “Lead” column showing a badge for sessions that include lead data. Use the With Lead Data filter to show only sessions with submitted leads.

How lead data flows to integrations

When a visitor submits a lead form, the following happens in sequence:

  1. Validation — The backend checks anti-spam protections (a hidden honeypot field and a time-based check that rejects submissions faster than 3 seconds). Required fields and email format are validated.
  2. Storage — The lead data is sanitized and saved to the session record. The session status is set to “completed”.
  3. Integration queue — GuideForms checks which integrations are enabled for this guide (in the Integrations tab of the Guide Editor). Each active integration is queued for background processing.
  4. Delivery — Queued integrations are processed via WP-Cron. The lead data — along with the session’s selections — is sent to the configured services (webhook URL, FluentCRM, etc.).

See Integrations Overview for details on configuring each service.

Anti-spam protection

Lead forms include two invisible anti-spam measures:

  • Honeypot field — A hidden field that is invisible to real visitors but gets filled in by bots. Submissions with a filled honeypot are silently rejected.
  • Time-based check — Submissions that arrive less than 3 seconds after the form was loaded are rejected. Real visitors take longer to fill out a form.

No CAPTCHA is required. These measures handle the vast majority of automated spam without adding friction for real visitors.

Next steps