How to Make All of Your Marketing Forms Multilingual

In today’s global marketplace, it has never been more important to provide personalised digital experiences. One of the most effective ways to do this is by offering marketing forms in multiple languages. 

Providing multilingual forms enables customers worldwide to engage with your brand in the most convenient way possible. This has a tangible impact on customer decisions and business outcomes: 

• 89% of marketers see a positive ROI when they use personalisation in their campaigns
• 84% of businesses state that content localisation has a positive impact on revenue growth

So what’s stopping more businesses from providing multilingual forms? The answer is simple: managing multiple forms in multiple languages can be fiddly, time-consuming, and error-prone. 

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be. 

With a platform like Formulayt, managing multilingual forms is simple, fast, and efficient. You can provide highly engaging and personalised experiences that customers love with minimal effort. In this article, we’ll show you how. 

Understanding the Need for Multilingual Forms

With almost 1.5 billion speakers worldwide, English is considered the first truly global language. Even so, that accounts for less than a fifth of the world’s population, with less than 5% speaking English as a native language. 

If you cater to a global audience, English-only marketing campaigns won’t cut it. They demonstrate a lack of understanding or consideration of your audience’s needs. To truly engage leads, you need to talk to them in their own language — and multilingual marketing forms play a key role in this.  

Integrating multilingual forms into your marketing strategy yields real benefits, enabling you to:

• Expand your reach to new markets and regions
• Improve form accessibility and engagement
• Tailor marketing campaigns to the needs of your audience
• Increase lead conversion rates

All of these benefits lead to one thing: increased sales. The key, then, is to find ways to integrate multilingual forms into your marketing strategy effectively. That means ensuring that form localisation is a seamless part of your marketing workflows, not a time-consuming hassle. 

Steps to Make Your Marketing Forms Multilingual 

So how do you go about deploying marketing forms in multiple languages? In this section, we’ll explain how this process works in Formulayt, our market-leading form management platform.

1. Initial Configuration and Setup

The first step is to set up and configure your marketing form elements and templates so that they’re ready for translation. This process includes: 

• Defining fields and labels: You start by setting up all fields (e.g. email, name) and their labels in English. Include any custom validation messages, dropdown options, and placeholders.
• Configure form templates: Set up form templates that will serve as a base for different languages.
• Create example forms in English: Build out the English version of the form using the initial templates. Add any necessary dynamic logic (using our no-code rules engine) for fields, such as conditions for opt-ins based on GDPR.

2. Enable and Prepare Translations

Next, it’s time to translate the English original into your target languages. 

• Select your languages: Activate the languages needed for the form. For example, you can add options like German, French, or Spanish. Formulayt even covers regional variations such as Swiss French.
• Translate fields and labels: Export the form’s English text for translation. This includes field labels, error messages, dropdown options, etc.
• Manage translations: Once translated, import the text back into Formulayt. Alternatively, you can input translations manually in Formulayt's translation area.

3. Configure Language-Specific Rules and Variations

In addition to language translation, you may also need to adapt the formatting or messaging for different regions. Here’s how you do it:

• Set up dynamic rules for regional adaptations: Create rules to tailor the form based on location. For example, you might need a different opt-in language for GDPR compliance in EU countries.
• Ensure compatibility with right-to-left languages: If using languages like Arabic, ensure that your form templates can accommodate layout and alignment differences.

4. Test and Review Translations

Before deploying your multilingual forms, you should test and review them for any inaccuracies or formatting issues:

• Review all translations: Test each translated form version to check for accuracy, consistency, and layout issues — e.g. text overflow in dropdown menus.
• Adjust layouts: Ensure that the form layout is flexible enough to handle varying text lengths across languages. German text is often longer than other languages, for example.

5. Embed and Deploy

The final step is to embed your multilingual forms in the relevant webpage and go live:

• Group forms by language: Formulayt offers a "language group" feature, where multiple language versions of a form are embedded into a single object. This automatically adapts based on page language.
• Embed in webpage: Use the provided code to embed the multilingual form into your content management system or landing page, ensuring it aligns with the language of the webpage.

Common Pitfalls and Challenges of Multilingual Forms

While deploying multilingual forms brings huge benefits, it also poses several challenges. Here are 10 of the main pitfalls to be aware of. 

1. Incomplete or Incorrect Translations

We all know from experience the effect that poor translations can have on our perception of a brand or product. In some cases, offering a poorly translated marketing form may be worse than not offering multilingual forms at all. Besides damaging your credibility, bad translations can lead to confusion and potential disputes. 

2. Translation Coverage Across All Elements

While marketing forms may look fairly simple, they contain multiple different elements, including field labels, dropdown options, disclaimers, buttons, and more. All of these elements need to be translated effectively. If a disclaimer message is left in English, for example, it could hinder comprehension and compliance.

3. Dropdown Data Consistency and Standardisation

Translating dropdown options without standardising backend data can lead to inconsistent datasets. For example, if "CEO" is translated differently across different languages, it can be difficult to analyse this data. You can avoid this issue by using standardised codes (e.g. ISO country codes) to ensure consistent backend data.

4. Ordering and Localising Dropdown Options 

When translating dropdowns, the natural ordering of options may be different in different languages. This could lead to navigation issues and poor UX. You can avoid this by reordering dropdown options according to language norms. You may also need to remove irrelevant questions in certain regions. Salutation fields are not common in some Asian countries, for example.

5. Meeting Regional Compliance Requirements

Compliance terms and opt-in messages should be tailored to match each user’s region-specific requirements. For example, a Chinese language form may still need GDPR compliance options if the company operates in the EU or serves EU citizens. 

6. Localisation within Languages 

Language nuances sometimes differ by region. For example, Swiss German or Austrian German may differ in some ways to regular German. Applying a "one-size-fits-all" translation approach across regional dialects might not work. The solution to this issue is to incorporate "language inheritance," which allows regional adaptations without fully re-translating the entire form.

7. Issues with Form Layouts for Different Languages

Some languages tend to take up more space than others. German is a prime example. If your form templates are too rigid, you’ll experience formatting issues with more voluminous languages. Make sure your form layouts are flexible enough to expand for different language lengths, especially vertically, to prevent text overflow.

8. Issues Supporting Right-to-Left Languages

Right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew require unique layouts that differ significantly from left-to-right languages. Without the right tech, it can be very difficult to create forms that support these differences. With a form management platform like Formulayt, however, you can adapt form templates specifically for right-to-left text alignment and spacing requirements.

9. Issues with Country List Variations and Geolocation

Users may refer to their countries differently. For example, "United States" vs. "USA". This can complicate dropdown selections. To avoid this issue, you can implement a type-ahead feature or use geolocation to make finding the correct country easier and more intuitive.

10. Rigid Templates That Impact Regional Sales Needs

Rigid form templates don’t allow for regional adaptations, making them less effective at driving regional sales. To avoid this issue, use flexible form templates that allow sales teams to make adjustments based on specific market needs.

Choosing the right tools

The importance of multilingual marketing forms cannot be understated. In a world where people expect personalised digital interactions with businesses, communicating in a language they know is essential.  

Without the right tools, however, the process of creating multilingual forms can be highly complex and time-consuming. Marketing teams end up relying too heavily on web developers every time they need to publish a new form or update an existing one. The more steps involved in the process, the higher the risk of errors. 

This is where form management software can be a game-changer. With the right platform, your marketing team can: 

• Design, deploy, and manage highly effective marketing forms
• Speed up form creation with customisable templates
• Automatically translate forms into different languages
• Track form performance with real-time reporting

Formulayt makes managing multilingual forms a breeze

As the world’s leading form management platform, Formulayt is packed with powerful features designed to make managing large digital form estates simple. Our multilingual support enables you to: 

• Engage a global market of leads and customers without needing technical expertise
• Quickly create forms in multiple languages with our built-in translation module
• Leverage multilingual form components, cultural inheritance, and support for right-to-left languages
• Use smart templates with predefined rules to meet internal compliance standards
• Ensure compliance with local and international regulations

Unlike marketing automation platforms, there are no clunky workarounds when updating your forms. Instead, you can update thousands of forms in real time by making a single change. And unlike traditional form builders, you get a suite of tools to streamline enterprise-level form management.

The result is a powerful solution for businesses with complex form estates and a global audience. 

Ready to take your marketing forms to the next level? Book a demo today.