Fields arriving blank on the receiver

Estimated reading: 3 minutes

Your integration is firing — the log shows green entries — but the receiver record has blank fields, wrong values, or placeholder text instead of the real submitted data.

Cause 1 — single braces instead of double

AFI special tags use double curly braces: {{first_name}}, not {first_name}. Single-brace tags are passed through literally as plain text.

Forminator users especially: map as {{hidden-2}}, not {hidden-2}.
Sender plugins like CF7 also use {{field-key}} form when you reference their fields by their input name="" attribute.

Cause 2 — free version field coverage

AFI’s basic version only exposes name and email fields for mapping. Phone, address, dropdowns, file uploads, custom fields, and dates require AFI Pro.

If you’re on Pro but still seeing blanks, confirm you’ve activated the Pro license in AFI > Account.

Cause 3 — sender plugin’s field name doesn’t match what you mapped

AFI maps by the form-field’s internal key, not its display label.

Open the sender plugin’s form editor and check the actual field key / name (e.g. CF7’s your-email, Forminator’s email-1, WPForms’ wpforms[fields][2] alias).
If the field was renamed since you set up the integration, re-open the AFI integration and re-pick the field.
Some sender plugins lazy-load field schema. Submit the form once with sample data before mapping — see Form / field not in dropdown.

Cause 4 — receiver requires a different format

Many APIs reject values that don’t match an expected format:

Phone numbers (Klaviyo, Brevo, Twilio, Attentive, Sinch, JustCall): E.164 format required — +15551234567, not (555) 123-4567. Pre-format on the form side or use a phone-field plugin with international validation.
Dates (Google Calendar, Smartsheet, Zoho): RFC 3339 / ISO 8601 with timezone. Map {{_submission_date}} for the submission timestamp, or format the source field correctly.
Numbers vs strings (EmailOctopus): AFI used to send numeric fields as strings — fixed in v1.126.5.
Picklist / dropdown values: must match exactly. Case-sensitive for Zoho CRM, ClickUp, Asana, SharpSpring. Use the exact option value, not a near-match.

Cause 5 — receiver’s custom field doesn’t exist yet

Most receivers (Klaviyo, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho) require the destination custom field to exist on the receiver side before you can map to it. AFI doesn’t auto-create receiver-side custom fields.

Add the field on the receiver, then re-open the AFI integration to refresh its field list.

Cause 6 — false / empty values being skipped (Brevo)

AFI used to skip empty / false attribute values when updating an existing Brevo contact (to avoid wiping good data). Fixed in v1.109.x — update if you need empty-update behaviour.

Cause 7 — capturing UTM / GCLID

If {{utm_source}} etc. are blank: enable Send UTM Variables in AFI > Settings > General. AFI then captures UTM and click-ID values from the URL into a cookie on first visit and surfaces them as tags on submission. GCLID specifically may need a third-party tracking plugin to capture into a hidden form field if the user navigates between pages.