How to Send Gravity Forms Leads to Your Dealer CRM with ADF/XML

Car dealership websites run on forms. “Check availability”, “Book a test drive”, “Get your e-price”, “Value my trade-in” and finance pre-approval pages all end in a form, and many dealers and dealer website agencies build those forms with Gravity Forms because it is flexible and lives on their own WordPress site. The sales team, however, works in a dealer CRM or DMS. This guide shows how to send every Gravity Forms entry straight into that CRM as a proper lead, using ADF/XML, the lead format almost every automotive CRM already understands, without copying anything by hand and without paying per lead.

The problem: website leads that never reach the CRM properly

In car sales, speed to lead decides the deal. A shopper who asks whether a used SUV is still available has usually asked two other dealers the same question within the same hour. The salesperson who answers first, with the right vehicle in front of them, has the best chance of booking the appointment. Yet on many dealer websites a Gravity Forms entry ends as a plain notification e-mail. Someone in the business development centre reads it, retypes the name, e-mail and phone into the CRM, picks the vehicle from memory, forgets the stock number and the trade-in, and assigns it to whoever is free. By then the shopper has moved on, and half of what they told you never reached the CRM.

Retyping also breaks your reporting. The CRM cannot tell which page or campaign produced the lead, so the website looks less productive than it is. Trade-in details end up in a free-text note instead of the trade-in fields your appraisal team uses. And when the BDC is busy on a Saturday, website leads are the ones that wait.

Dealer CRMs solved this long ago for the big listing sites: they import leads automatically from a special e-mail address, in a format called ADF, the Auto-lead Data Format. ADF is an open XML standard from the late 1990s that describes a lead: the request date, the vehicle the shopper wants, the customer and their contact details, the dealership and the lead provider. Almost every automotive CRM and DMS gives each store an ADF lead inbox address. Gravity Forms on its own does not speak ADF, and a normal notification e-mail, with HTML and labels, is not something a lead parser can read.

Why middleware, direct APIs and custom code fall short

The usual workarounds all have a catch. Direct CRM APIs in the automotive world are mostly partner-only: you need a vendor agreement, certification and often a fee before you can create a single lead. An automation service such as Zapier or Make can format an e-mail, but you pay per task every month, you build and maintain one workflow per form and per store, and the shopper’s data passes through a third company. Getting valid XML out of a template, with every ampersand and quote escaped and the elements in the right order, is fragile. Custom code works until the developer who wrote it moves on, or until a form changes and the hand-written XML quietly breaks.

The Gravity Forms ADF/XML Auto Dealer Leads Add-On by GravityExtra is a normal Gravity Forms feed add-on. It builds the ADF/XML 1.0 document on your own WordPress site and sends it with WordPress’s own mail function to the ADF inbox address your CRM gives you. It works with dealer CRMs and DMSs that accept ADF/XML lead e-mail. There is no partner approval to wait for, no API key and no middleman.

Step-by-step: send Gravity Forms leads to your dealer CRM

Step 1: install the add-on and get your ADF inbox address

Install the add-on and activate your GravityExtra licence in Forms → Settings → ADF/XML Leads. Then ask your CRM provider, or whoever manages lead sources for your store, for the ADF lead import address. It is usually one address per rooftop, and it is the same address the listing sites already send to. While you are there, ask two questions: should the XML be the e-mail body or an attachment, and must the sender address be registered? The answers decide two settings below.

Step 2: add a feed and enter the lead inbox

Open your vehicle enquiry form, go to Settings → ADF/XML Leads and add a feed. Paste the ADF inbox address into Send to. You can add your BDC mailbox too, and each address gets its own e-mail with one lead. Keep the default format, XML as the whole e-mail body, unless your CRM asked for an attachment. If your CRM only accepts mail from a known sender, set the From e-mail to an address on your own domain.

Step 3: map the customer and the vehicle

Map the name, e-mail, phone and address of the shopper. Answers such as “Text me” or “Evening” become the right phone type and best time to call, and state names become the 2-letter codes CRMs expect. For the vehicle, the cleanest setup is a set of hidden fields on each vehicle detail page, filled with the year, make, model, trim, VIN, stock number and price by dynamic population. Map them in the Vehicle of interest section. A radio button such as “I would like to buy / lease / book a test drive” sets the ADF interest for you, and “New” or “Used” sets the status. Prices like “$26,995.00” and mileages like “18,240 mi” are turned into the plain numbers ADF wants.

Step 4: trade-in, dealer and a test

If your form asks about a trade-in, tick Trade-in and map its year, make, model and mileage. The add-on adds it as a second vehicle with interest “trade-in”, so it lands in the trade-in fields of the CRM instead of a note. Enter the dealership name, the contact and, only if your CRM asks for one, a dealer ID. Then press Preview the XML. You see exactly what will be sent, and the result of the ADF 1.0 structure check. Send a test e-mail sends it to you, never to the dealer inbox, so you can forward it to the CRM’s test address.

After the first real submission, the entry note shows a tick for every inbox and the XML that was sent. The entry screen has a Resend lead button, which marks the lead as a resend, as the ADF standard asks.

Pro tips for dealers and dealer website agencies

• One feed per store. For a dealer group, add a “Store” field to the form and one feed per rooftop with conditional logic, each with its own ADF inbox and dealership name.
• Name the source. Set the ID source to something your CRM reports on, for example “Northgate Motors website”, or a merge tag per campaign landing page, so the website gets credit for its leads.
• Put the appointment in the comments. Use merge tags in the customer comments: “Preferred visit: {Visit date:24}”, the shopper’s question and the page they came from.
• Separate test drives and trade-ins. A “Value my trade-in” form can send the vehicle with interest “sell”. A test drive form sends interest “test-drive”, so the CRM can route each one to the right team.
• Deliver reliably. Send WordPress mail through an SMTP or transactional e-mail service. Failed inboxes are retried after 10 minutes and 1 hour, and every attempt is written to the entry.

Frequently asked questions

Which CRMs does it work with? Dealer CRMs and DMSs that accept ADF/XML lead e-mail, which is how most automotive CRMs import leads from listing sites and OEM programmes. Ask your provider for the ADF import address of your store. GravityExtra is not certified by, or a partner of, any CRM vendor. The add-on simply speaks the open ADF format.

Body or attachment? The ADF 1.0 specification describes both: a simple e-mail whose whole body is the XML, and a multipart e-mail with the XML as an application/xml part next to a readable version. The add-on offers both, and both together. Most lead inboxes read the body. If yours does not, switch the format.

What if the form changes and the XML breaks? It cannot silently break. Every lead is built with PHP’s DOMDocument, so names like O’Brien or comments with “&” and “<” are escaped. It is then checked against rules written from the ADF 1.0 DTD before it is sent. A lead that fails is not sent, and the entry note says why.

Does it read anything back from the CRM? No. ADF by e-mail is one-way. The add-on sends the lead, and the CRM imports it, assigns it and starts its own follow-up. The entry keeps the XML that was sent, for your records.

Does it work with multi-page forms, payments and conditional logic? Yes. It is a standard Gravity Forms feed: conditional logic, several feeds per form and “send only after payment” all work, on Gravity Forms 2.8 to 3.1 and PHP 7.4 to 8.5.

ADF/XML is an open industry format. Product names mentioned belong to their owners. This add-on is made by GravityExtra and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any dealer CRM or DMS vendor.