Capture demo requests as leads in a CRM base
Every demo request becomes a Leads record with name, company, work email and source, ready for an owner and a status.
New form submission
Create a record in the Leads table of your Airtable CRM base
One-directional. A submission triggers the action — nothing is written back into your form.
A demo request is only useful while it is warm. This flow moves each one out of an inbox and into the Leads table of your Airtable CRM the moment it is submitted, so the record exists before anyone has read the notification.
Marketing teams reach for it when a spreadsheet of demo requests has started to drift out of date. Because Airtable gives you a single-select status column and a collaborator column, an owner can be assigned and the lead moved through the pipeline in the same grid the rest of the team already watches.
Setting it up
- 1
Publish your demo request form and make Company and Work Email required — a lead without either is not worth assigning to anyone.
- 2
In Airtable, open your CRM base and add a Source single-select to the Leads table with one option per answer in the form's "How did you hear about us?" question. The option names have to match the answer text exactly.
- 3
Add a Status single-select with your pipeline stages and an Owner collaborator field to the same table. Leave both out of the Zap; a human sets them after the record lands.
- 4
In Zapier, pick formformform as the trigger app and the New Submission trigger, then choose your demo request form and pull in a real test submission.
- 5
Add the Airtable Create Record action, connect your account, and select the CRM base and its Leads table.
- 6
Map First Name and Last Name into one Name column, putting a literal space between the two tokens, then map Work Email to Email and Company to Company.
- 7
Map "How did you hear about us?" to the Source single-select and "What problem are you trying to solve?" to a long text Notes column, so the first call starts with context.
- 8
Send a test, confirm the row appears in the Leads grid with Source filled and Status blank, then switch the Zap on.
What maps where
Using the Demo Request Form as the starting point. These are its real fields — swap in your own and the mapping works the same way.
| Form field | Airtable |
|---|---|
| First Name | Name column in Leads, joined with Last Name |
| Work Email | Email column in Leads |
| Company | Company text column in Leads |
| Company Size | Segment single-select in Leads |
| How did you hear about us? | Source single-select in Leads |
| What problem are you trying to solve? | Notes long text column in Leads |
Variations worth knowing
If your base already has a Companies table, change the Leads column from plain text to a link-to-record field and map Company into it. Airtable matches on the primary field, so the name typed on the form has to match the company row exactly, otherwise you get a second company. It is worth constraining the question to a select list when you sell into a known account list.
Build a second Zap on the same form with a Zapier filter on "When are you looking to implement?", letting only the soonest answers through to a Create Record action in a Hot Leads table. The main Zap keeps writing every submission, so nothing is dropped by the filter — the second table is a shortlist, not the record of truth.
If something isn't arriving
Airtable only accepts a single-select value that already exists as an option, and the match is case-sensitive. Copy each choice from the form's "How did you hear about us?" question into the Source field's options character for character, or change the column to plain text and group by it instead.
Zapier joins adjacent tokens with nothing between them. Open the Name mapping box, put a space between the First Name and Last Name tokens, and re-test. Mapping them to two separate Airtable columns avoids the problem entirely and makes sorting by surname possible.
Frequently asked questions
What happens if the same person requests a demo twice?
Create Record always adds a row, so a second request creates a second lead. Put a Zapier Find Record step before the action if you would rather update the existing row, or group the Leads grid by Email and merge the duplicates by hand once a week.
Can the lead's status in Airtable show up back on the form?
No. The connection runs in one direction only: a submission triggers a Create Record action, and nothing is ever written back into the form or shown to the person who filled it in. Anything you want the lead to see has to be sent from Airtable or your email tool.
How quickly does the record appear in Airtable?
The New Submission trigger fires in real time rather than waiting for a polling interval, so the Zap starts as soon as the form is submitted. The record usually appears within seconds; the remaining delay is Zapier running the action, not the form waiting to report it.
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Build the form first
The automation needs somewhere to fire from. Publish a form, connect it once, and every submission from then on runs this flow.
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