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Using The Calendly API to Accelerate Successful Demos

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in Conversion Optimization on

Integrate Calendly's free meeting booking API with website demo, trial and content forms together with custom JavaScript to improve successful demos attended by 50%+.

Integrating Calendly Free Into Website Demo Request Forms

Many SaaS companies use a standard sales team Calendly meeting booking link to support setting up sales demos. Sometimes, these are shared by BDRs (business development representatives) post-lead qualification but I often see these shared via an email as part of a nurture program when users submit a demo, free trial, or gated website content form.

For website-submitted forms, this is a poor approach as it requires users to re-enter almost all of the same information they entered earlier on their website form which reduces conversion rates. Integrating a Calendly meeting directly onto a thank you page, and auto-filling form information with Calendly's API growth managers can easily increase the booking rate/prospect follow-up response rate from website forms. By using this method, prospects can submit a meeting in 2-3 additional clicks on the thank you page at the moment they express interest without needing to re-enter their information.

Why does this matter? What Is the Business Impact?

Completing a sales demo/kick-off is key to driving SaaS opportunity creation and sales pipeline. By reducing the friction for prospects to successfully book and attend a demo web growth teams can potentially significantly accelerate closed win timelines.

Using the recommended approach below also limits risk (using a thank you page avoids impacting form conversion rates) similar to the a/b test mentioned in my article on reasons to start a formal CRO program. 

What I have seen across SaaS companies for this recommended Calendly free demo implementation flow:

  • 60% to 80% of users will successfully select a time if using meeting booking in this manner, with higher conversion rates on demo/sales forms 
  • 50% or greater improvement in MQL to Successful Demo Attended timelines
    • In one case I saw MQL to Demo Attended timelines decrease from 5.9 business days to 2.3 business days. 

Example Of a Poorly Optimized Demo Lead Flow

Creatio is a SaaS company that provides low-code / no-code automation workflows. Here is an example user flow of a prospect who submits a demo request with a poorly optimized Calendly booking flow.

1] Prospect submits a lead form on a demo request page: https://www.creatio.com/company/feedback/request-live-demo

2] Prospect receives a thank-you page with standard confirmation messaging.

3] Prospect receives a confirmation email that includes an email confirmation Calendly booking link.

A user has to click this and go to a third-party Calendly page and re-enter the same information as previously, in addition to booking a date/time.

Integrating Calendly API to Track (and Grow) Meeting Bookings

Embedding via iFrame

It's much more efficient to embed Calendly via an iFrame on the thank-you page. This can be done with Google Tag Manager or a dedicated a/b testing flow below the confirmation message. In Calendly's configuration, select Inline Embed which will generate HTML to embed your Calendly form.

Auto-Filling Fields via Calendly's API

Calendly's documentation details how to auto-fill information when embedding the Calendly in-line via JavaScript.

The "prefill" field will allow you to autofill any Calendly values you collect in your web form - this includes name, email, phone number, and even other custom questions in your Calendly form.

Calendly.initInlineWidget({
  "url": 'https://calendly.com/YOURLINK',
  "parentElement": document.getElementById('SAMPLEdivID'),
  "prefill": {},
  "utm": {}
});

Your prefill section may look like this where the values for firstName, lastName, and phoneNumber can be pulled from a cookie, local storage, or session storage depending on how and where you store form values. Note that custom answers match the order in your Calendly configuration - for example, the phone number needs to be first in this scenario.

prefill: {
  name: firstName + ' ' + lastName,
  email: email,
  customAnswers: {
    a1: phoneNumber,
    a2: customMessage,
  }
},

Calendly Funnel Reporting Using the API

Calendly also provides great documentation on how to trigger custom code on particular Calendly functions, which avoids typically iFrame tracking limitations by notifying the parent window. This includes the following events:

  • Calendly loads successfully in iFrame
  • The user successfully selects the date/time in Calendly
  • The user successfully books a meeting date/time

You can trigger actions into these events to via any javascript including changing website appearance, Google Analytics V4 event tags, or even Marketo form submissions to have a CRM reflect that a prospect booked a demo.

Recommended Approach: ConvertedGrowth.com Contact Form

I currently use the optimized thank-you state for Calendly on my contact form to simplify the meeting booking process and allow prospects to book a Calendly meeting with 2-3 clicks easily. All previous information is pre-loaded in the Calendly iFrame via the Calendly API.

Contact Form Example & Values

Calendly In-Line Embed Pre-Loads Fields 

Business Impact

Calendly Free Limitations and Going With Paid Options

Routing & Business Priority

The biggest challenge with Calendly's free tier will be intelligently routing leads to specific reps (or more than one calendar) depending on your organizational structure. You can upgrade your Calendly tier and add additional users to easily allow multi-user routing but if you want to route based on Salesforce account ownership do note this is an Enterprise-only feature. 

Integrating Meeting Booking with Drift

If your organization does not use Calendly, you can also use a Drift feature called FastLane to implement meeting booking on successful form submissions. The benefit of using Drift is leveraging the existing BDR / sales routing tree in Drift which is beneficial to route based on new/existing customers, geo, or other custom criteria. 

Using Dedicated Technology: Chilipiper & RevenueHero

I've previously explored dedicated meeting booking tools like Chillipiper and RevenueHero at other organizations looking to solver the above sales routing issue.

  • Chillipiper: The main blocker here was always the seats/licensing cost structure that makes scaling difficult. Each rep in Salesforce needed their login from what I recall and this was too cost-prohibitive. However, Chillipiper is the most well-known player in the enterprise space and the best for high lead volume with routing complexity. 
  • RevenueHero: A competitor to Chilipiper but they often offer extended trials (30 days) or free usage for a limited set of days to validate business impact as part of the sales process.