Inbound Lead Follow-up

Overview

Your best conversion window is the first 5 minutes after a prospect fills your form. By then, you're usually in a Slack thread or on a call. This workflow kills that gap. Here's the pattern: a lead lands → the system routes them to your CRM and assigns an owner based on territory, product fit, or round-robin → you get a Slack alert with the lead's context (company, intent signal, source) → you approve or reject the first outreach in 30 seconds → if approved, a timed sequence fires (first email in 2 hours, second in 24 hours, third in 72 hours). The approval gate is critical. It's not about slowing things down—it's about catching the lead that's already a customer, the spam, or the competitor research before your team wastes cycles. One founder we know rejected 40% of inbound because they were competitors doing research. That's $8K in labor saved per month. The sequence itself is templated but personalized: first touch is lightweight ("saw you signed up, here's what we do"), second is value-driven (a use case or customer win), third is urgency (limited-time offer or social proof). Each email has a reply-tracking trigger—if they reply, the sequence stops and a human takes over. Failure modes: leads assigned to someone on vacation, sequences firing to the same person twice (CRM duplication), approval gate ignored so leads go cold, or sequences firing after a lead already replied. All preventable with the right gates and data hygiene.

Flow

Trigger: New form submission (web form, landing page, or API webhook from your signup flow)

1. 1
   Trigger

   Form submitted

   Webhook receives inbound lead payload

2. 2
   Action

   Normalize & enrich

   Clean fields; optional company enrichment

3. 3
   Integration

   Create/update CRM contact

4. 4
   Condition

   Score against ICP

5. 5
   Notify

   Assign owner + notify

6. 6
   Approval

   Approve first-touch draft

7. 7
   Action

   Send and schedule reminders

Setup instructions

1. Connect your form platform (Typeform, HubSpot, Unbounce, or custom webhook) to your automation tool (Make, Zapier, or native CRM automation). 2. Map form fields to CRM fields: name, email, company, product interest, source. 3. Set up assignment logic: territory (if you have regions), product fit (keyword match on company description), or round-robin (if you don't). 4. Create a Slack notification template that includes: lead name, company, form question responses, and two buttons: "Approve First Touch" and "Reject / Review Later." 5. Build the approval workflow: if approved, trigger the email sequence; if rejected, move lead to a "manual review" queue and notify a manager. 6. Create three email templates in your email platform (Gmail, Outreach, or HubSpot): intro, value, urgency. Use merge tags for personalization ({{firstName}}, {{companyName}}). 7. Set delays: first email 2 hours after approval, second 24 hours after first, third 72 hours after second. 8. Add a reply-tracking trigger: if the lead replies to any email, pause the sequence and send a Slack alert to the assigned owner. 9. Test with a test lead: submit a form, approve, check that email fires on time, reply to it, and verify the sequence stops.

Failure cases

• Lead assigned to a founder who's on PTO for two weeks—approval gate sits idle and lead goes cold. Mitigation: check team availability before assignment, or auto-reassign if no approval within 4 hours.
• CRM has duplicate records for the same prospect (one from form, one from LinkedIn import), so the sequence fires twice. Mitigation: deduplicate on email before routing; use a CRM merge rule.
• Approval gate is ignored because Slack notifications are muted or buried. Mitigation: use a dedicated Slack channel, or escalate to SMS if no approval within 30 minutes.
• Lead replies to the first email, but the sequence still fires the second email 24 hours later because reply tracking didn't trigger the pause. Mitigation: test reply detection in your email platform; use a CRM field to mark "replied" and check it before sending the next email.
• Sequence fires to a lead who already converted (they signed up for a trial or became a customer). Mitigation: add a CRM status check before each email—if status is "customer" or "trial," skip the sequence.