Calendly integration question

That's a great question about connecting your lead qualification in Typeform with better context in Calendly for your closers.

You're right that simply getting the booking link back isn't enough for efficient handover.

The scenario you're describing where you qualify a lead in Typeform and then direct them to a specific Calendly event based on that qualification, requires transferring that qualification data.

Unfortunately, Calendly's standard integration with Typeform doesn't natively support transferring custom data points like "lead type" that can be easily displayed on the Calendly event itself or in your closer's view beyond the basic form fields.

However, a Zap or Make scenario is absolutely the right approach, potentially combined with a more robust data layer solution, to achieve this.

A Zapier or Make automation would listen for a new Typeform submission.

When the submission comes in, the automation would capture the lead type based on the Typeform answers.

The next step is where the complexity lies: Calendly's API.

You would need to use a step in your Zap or Make scenario to interact with the Calendly API after the Typeform is submitted but before the Calendly booking is complete.

The Calendly API allows for a couple of options.

One is to use the data captured from Typeform to create an Invitee with specific questions and answers or tracking fields.

Alternatively, if you're using Calendly's Custom Tracking Links feature, you can construct the link that is passed to the user so that it includes a UTM parameter or a custom tag (e.g., ?utm_source=typeform&utm_campaign=credit_qualified) that reflects the lead type.

While the latter is simpler, it relies on your closers or your calendar/CRM setup being able to read and interpret those UTMs or tags associated with the booking, which might not be native to the main Calendly UI but is excellent for CRM integration.

A more advanced, and often better, solution for tracking this kind of event data uses the DataLayer and Google Tag Manager (GTM).

When the user completes the Typeform and is redirected to Calendly, you can push the lead qualification status (e.g., credit qualified) into the DataLayer on the success page of your Typeform or the page before the Calendly embed.

GTM would then fire a custom event (e.g., lead_qualified_for_calendly) with this lead type data as a parameter.

Since Calendly appointments are often tracked as a Standard Event like PageView or Lead for general marketing tracking, you can piggyback on this by ensuring your GTM setup tracks the Calendly conversion and attaches your custom data.

Now, to get this data back into your internal systems, you need a server-side solution because the data needs to be associated with a specific appointment time and lead.

Services like Stape (a server-side GTM solution) or even a custom setup on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are great for this.

They capture the GTM data server-side and then, using the Calendly Webhooks or API, they can associate the custom 'lead type' parameter with the specific appointment once it's booked, potentially pushing this enhanced appointment data directly to your CRM for your closers to see.

This method is more involved but provides a robust, future-proof, and highly flexible tracking and attribution system that gives your closers the exact overview they need.