How to Turn a WordPress Contact Form Into a Deal Tracking System

Every contact form submission is a potential deal. A project inquiry. A sales lead. A partnership opportunity.

But in most WordPress setups, that submission lands in a table — or worse, just an email — and the "deal tracking" happens in someone's head. "I think I emailed that person back. Did they reply? What did they want again?"

If you're a freelancer juggling 5 prospects, that sort of works. If you're getting 10+ inquiries a week, it falls apart fast. Leads slip through. Follow-ups get forgotten. You lose deals you should have closed.

Here's how to fix that without bolting together 4 plugins and a Zapier account.

The problem with "I'll just check my submissions"

WordPress form plugins are great at capturing data. They're terrible at doing anything with it.

Here's the lifecycle of a typical form submission:

1. Someone fills out your contact form
2. You get an email notification (maybe)
3. You reply from your inbox
4. The conversation continues in email
5. You lose track of where things stand
6. You check your form submissions table a week later and find 3 leads you forgot about

There's no pipeline. No stages. No way to see "I have 4 leads waiting for proposals and 2 that need follow-up." The form plugin's job ended at step 1.

What deal tracking actually means

When I say "deal tracking," I'm not talking about Salesforce-level pipeline management with weighted forecasts and multi-touch attribution. I mean the basics:

• Seeing every lead in one place — not scattered across email, form submissions, and your memory
• Knowing what stage each lead is at — new inquiry, contacted, proposal sent, waiting for response, won/lost
• Tracking the timeline — when did they first reach out? When did you last respond? How long has this been sitting?
• Moving deals through stages — drag a card from "New" to "Contacted" to "Proposal Sent" to "Won"
• Not losing people — the lead from 3 weeks ago that you definitely meant to follow up with

This is basic CRM functionality. But most WordPress users don't have a CRM. They have a form plugin and an email inbox.

The usual approach (expensive and fragile)

Want deal tracking from WordPress form submissions? Here's the standard recommendation:

Option A: External CRM

• Sign up for HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Salesforce
• Connect your form plugin via Zapier ($20+/mo)
• Map form fields to CRM fields
• Debug when it inevitably breaks
• Cost: $240-$1,000+/yr

Option B: WordPress CRM + integration

• Install FluentCRM or Groundhogg
• Install your form plugin
• Set up webhooks or use a connector plugin
• Map fields manually
• Cost: $129-$299/yr for CRM pro tiers + form plugin costs

Option C: Spreadsheet

• Export form submissions as CSV
• Import into Google Sheets
• Manually update stages
• Hate your life
• Cost: Free, but you're paying in time and lost leads

None of these are great. Option A is overkill for most small businesses. Option B works but costs real money and requires ongoing maintenance. Option C is what most people actually do, and it's why they lose leads.

The integrated approach

SkunkForms + SkunkCRM takes a different angle: the form plugin and CRM are built to work together. Both are free WordPress plugins. Install both, and you can set any form to automatically create deals in your CRM pipeline — no Zapier required.

Here's what the flow looks like:

Form submission → Contact created → Deal created at configured stage → Tagged with form name

All automatic. No Zapier. No field mapping configuration beyond the initial setup.

What you see in SkunkCRM after someone submits:

Contact record:

• Name, email, phone (mapped from form fields)
• Tag: "quote-request-form" (auto-applied)
• Activity log showing the form submission with all field data
• Any previous form submissions from the same email

Deal card:

• Title: Contact name + form name
• Stage: "New Lead" (or whatever you configured)
• Created date: timestamp of form submission
• Linked to the contact record

Pipeline view:

• Kanban board showing all deals across stages
• Drag cards to move deals through your process
• See at a glance how many deals are at each stage

Real-world example: freelance web designer

Let me walk through a concrete scenario.

Sarah is a freelance web designer. She gets 8-12 project inquiries per month through her website contact form. Before this setup, she tracked everything in Gmail. She'd search for emails, try to remember who she'd sent proposals to, and occasionally discover leads she'd completely forgotten about.

Now her setup:

SkunkForms contact form with fields: Name, Email, Project Type (dropdown), Budget Range (dropdown), Project Description (textarea).

SkunkCRM pipeline stages: New Inquiry → Discovery Call → Proposal Sent → Negotiation → Won → Lost

CRM integration settings: Every submission creates a contact and a deal at "New Inquiry" stage.

When someone fills out her form:

• They immediately appear as a contact in SkunkCRM
• A deal appears in the "New Inquiry" column of her pipeline
• She gets an email notification (SkunkForms handles this)
• She reviews the deal, adds notes, and moves it to "Discovery Call" after reaching out

She can see at a glance: "I have 3 new inquiries to respond to, 2 discovery calls scheduled, and 1 proposal outstanding." That visibility didn't exist before.

Setting this up (under 10 minutes)

1. Install the plugins

WordPress dashboard → Plugins → Add New:

• Search "SkunkForms" → Install → Activate
• Search "SkunkCRM" → Install → Activate

2. Create your pipeline

SkunkCRM → Pipelines → Create New:

• Name your pipeline (e.g., "Sales" or "Client Inquiries")
• Add stages: New Lead, Contacted, Qualified, Proposal, Won, Lost

3. Build your form

Create a new form in SkunkForms. Add your fields. Standard stuff.

4. Enable deal creation

In the form's CRM settings:

• Toggle "Create contact on submission"
• Toggle "Create deal on submission"
• Map form fields to contact fields
• Choose target pipeline and starting stage
• Add an auto-tag (optional but useful for filtering)

5. Test and go live

Submit a test entry. Verify the contact and deal appear in SkunkCRM. Embed the form on your page. Done.

What this costs

SkunkForms free tier: form builder, email notifications, spam protection, entry storage, CRM integration.

SkunkCRM free tier: contacts, pipelines, deals, tags, activity history.

Together: $0/yr for form-to-deal tracking.

Pro tiers exist for both plugins if you need conditional logic, advanced fields, email sequences, or priority support — see our pricing page for details. But the deal tracking workflow described here? All free.

The bottom line

You don't need a $600/yr CRM stack to track deals from contact form submissions. You don't need Zapier. You don't need a spreadsheet and good intentions.

Two free WordPress plugins. Ten minutes of setup. Every form submission becomes a trackable deal in a visual pipeline.

Get SkunkForms + SkunkCRM →