Auto Reply to new leads — Help

The lead that gets answered first usually wins, and leads have a habit of landing at the worst possible moment. You are mid-ceremony, or in a service, or driving to a site visit. By the time you are back at a keyboard the lead has messaged three other people and heard back from two of them.

Auto Reply answers a new web lead for you, a set number of minutes after it arrives, using the reply template that lead type already has. The part that makes it safe to leave on: before anything sends, 1pm checks the date the lead asked about against your bookings. If you are already working that date, nothing goes out and you get told instead.

You choose which lead types take part, so weddings can answer themselves while corporate leads wait for the quote only you can write.

This article covers turning it on, choosing your lead types, what gets sent, sending a quote with the reply, how the date check works, what happens during the wait, and what to do when a reply is held back.

What it is, and what it is not

Auto Reply is a real reply: the lead type's reply template, merge fields filled in, sent from your sending address, landing in the lead's thread like anything else you send. To the lead it reads as you answering quickly.

It is not the same thing as the short "we got your lead" acknowledgement, which goes out the instant somebody submits and says nothing about availability. Auto Reply is the actual answer, and it only goes out on a date you could genuinely take. You can run both, and most accounts that turn Auto Reply on do.

It is also not you replying. The lead stays New, keeps its place in Awaiting reply, and still needs a proper answer from you. Auto Reply buys you a few hours of goodwill, not a closed sale.

Turning it on

Turning Auto Reply on is two steps, and both are deliberate. The account switch decides whether the feature runs at all and how long it waits. Each lead type then decides whether it takes part.

Step one, the account switch. Open Leads, then Lead Types. The Auto Reply panel sits at the top of the page, above your list of lead types.

Flip Enabled on. The rest of the panel appears.
Set Wait before replying in minutes. The default is 60. Anything from 0 to 1440 (a full day) is accepted.
Click Save.

Nothing sends yet. On its own the panel is a master switch: with it off, nothing replies automatically anywhere, including replies already waiting in the queue.

Step two, the lead types. Open a lead type, expand Default reply template, and tick Send this reply automatically (Auto Reply). Save. Repeat for each lead type you want answered this way, and leave the rest alone.

The panel on the Lead Types page then reports the picture back: which types reply automatically, which are left to you, and (in amber) any that are switched on but have no reply template, because those would send nothing. Each lead type's card shows the same thing in its Auto Reply line.

New lead types start switched off, on purpose. A type you create months from now should not begin emailing strangers because of a decision you made on a different type.

Choosing which lead types take part

This is the setting worth thinking about, and the answer is usually not "all of them".

A wedding or party lead is often answerable on the spot: your availability, your starting price, a link to the brochure. That is exactly what a template does well, and a reply within the hour is worth more than a perfect one tomorrow.

A corporate or conference lead usually is not. It needs a quote, which means reading the brief, guessing at hours, and pricing rooms and staff. There is no template for that, and a warm "yes we're free" that says nothing about money can make the real quote land worse. Leave those types off and answer them yourself.

A useful test: if you would be happy for the lead to receive that template while you are standing in a field holding a camera, switch the type on. If your honest answer starts with "it depends", leave it off.

What gets sent

The lead type's Default reply. That is the template you pick in a lead type's settings, under Default reply template, and it is the same template that fills the reply box when you answer that type's leads by hand.

Because the reply belongs to the lead type, each one answers in its own voice. A wedding type can send warm and long, a photography type can send a package list, and a corporate type can send nothing at all.

Merge fields work exactly as they do when you send by hand, so the lead gets their own name, their own date, and their own guest numbers rather than a form letter. If the template has no subject line of its own, the reply goes out as "Re: your lead".

Two things follow from the reply being a normal reply. It threads: when the lead answers, their answer lands in the same conversation in your inbox. And it is visible: open the lead and the message is there in the thread, badged Auto Reply, with the same delivery status and retry button every other reply gets.

Which leads qualify

Web leads only. A lead that arrives through your embedded lead form is eligible. A lead you add by hand in the inbox is not, on the grounds that if you were at your desk typing it in, you can answer it too.
Still new and still unanswered. If the lead has moved out of New, or anyone has already sent a real reply on the thread, the automatic reply stands down. Notes and logged phone calls do not count as replying, so logging a call does not cancel it.
Has an email address. Obvious, but it is checked, and you are told if it fails.
From a lead type that takes part. The tick on that lead type is checked when the reply is due, not when the lead arrived, so unticking a type stops the replies already waiting on it.
From a lead type with a reply template. No template, nothing to send.

The date check

This is the part worth understanding, because it is what stops Auto Reply telling a stranger you are free on a day you are already booked.

1pm does not invent a separate rule for this. It asks exactly the same question it asks when you try to save a booking: would this clash? Auto Reply is stopped by precisely what would stop a double booking, so the two can never drift apart and disagree.

In practice:

Only real holds count. Events at Tentative, Confirmed and Completed occupy a date. Events still at Lead, and anything Cancelled, do not. Another live lead on the same day is not a booking, so it does not silence a reply.
It respects your Spaces. If your leads carry a default Space (a venue's usual setup), the check narrows to that Space. The Ballroom being taken does not kill a lead the Rooftop could host. If a lead carries no Space at all (the usual case for a photographer, celebrant or planner who books themselves rather than a room), the check widens to every overlapping hold in the account, which is the right reading of "I am already working that day".
Times narrow it, no times mean the whole day. If your form collects a start and end time and the lead gave them, a lunch lead does not clash with a dinner booking. If either side has no times, the day is treated as taken.
A divisible Space still replies. If the Space is set to allow concurrent bookings and the two things sit in different Zones, that is a booking you have already declared you can take, so the reply goes out.
Appointments do not block. A thirty-minute consultation call in your diary does not mean the day is gone. Only bookings count.

For more on the underlying rule, see preventing a double-booked Space, and for where a lead's Space comes from, a default Space for new leads.

Why there is a wait at all

Every check above runs when the reply is due, not when the lead lands. That is the whole point of the delay, and an hour is long enough for a lot to change.

The wait gives you four things:

A chance to get there first. Glance at your phone between two things, fire off a personal reply, and the automatic one quietly stands down. Yours is better than the template every time.
A spam window. Junk that gets past the form's bot protection is caught by a person, and marking a submission as spam takes it out of New, which stands the reply down too. Nobody wants a warm personalised reply going to a scraper.
Room for the date to change. If a booking lands on that date during the wait, the reply is held. The check runs against how things stand when it fires.
An off switch that actually means off. Turn Auto Reply off, for the account or for one lead type, and the replies already waiting stop as well, rather than trickling out for another hour.

You can set the wait to 0, and some markets really are decided in the first ten minutes. Just know what you are choosing: every lead gets answered the moment it arrives, including the ones you would have deleted.

Seeing and stopping a pending reply

While a reply is waiting, the lead's row in the inbox carries a blue Auto Reply chip showing the time it is due, in your account's time zone. Next to it is a Cancel button.

The chip lives in the app, which is not where you are when a lead arrives, so the new-submission email names the deadline too: it says what time the automatic reply goes out, that replying by hand stops it, and links straight to the lead.

Cancel stops that one reply and nothing else. Use it when you have read the lead and want to answer it properly yourself. You do not need to open the lead first, and it works whether the row is expanded or collapsed.

You do not have to cancel before replying by hand, though. Sending your own reply stands the automatic one down on its own.

What goes out with it

An automatic reply sends the lead type's reply template, and it sends the whole thing, not just the words.

The template's attachments go with it. A lead type set up to send a brochure or a price list sends them automatically too. They are read at the moment the reply goes out rather than when the lead came in, so if you swap the brochure on the template during the wait, or replace it in Files, the new one is what the client receives.
Attachments that are too big stop the reply. If the files on the template come to more than the 30 MB an email can carry, 1pm refuses the reply and tells you, rather than quietly sending the text without the file. A brochure that never arrived is worse than a reply that waited for you.
A proposal link needs an event. Where your reply template is tied to a proposal, inserting it by hand appends a link to it. An automatic reply can only do that when the lead already has an event attached, because that is what a proposal hangs off. For an ordinary web lead from a stranger there is no event yet, so the reply goes out without the link rather than not going out at all. The lead types list says so on any type where this applies, once, instead of nagging you on every lead it captures.

Sending a quote with the reply

A reply template can carry a package, and when it does the automatic reply quotes the lead as well as answering them. The client gets your words, your brochure, and a live quote they can open, change and accept, all inside the hour.

This works because a quote does not have to be exact to be useful. A client picking six hours of coverage rather than eight is a number they choose on the quote itself, so there is nothing for you to work out first.

Setting it up. Open Leads, then Templates, and edit the reply template a lead type sends. Under Send a quote, choose the package you want quoted. Choosing a package is what switches quoting on for that template; leaving it on No quote sends the reply exactly as it does today.

Build the package first, in Items. What the client is allowed to change comes from the items in it, not from the template: an item saved as adjustable between four and ten hours arrives on the quote as a stepper the client can move, and an item marked optional arrives as a line they can untick. See letting a client adjust a quote for how those are set, and quotes and invoices for the document itself.

What the client gets. A quote raised against the lead, numbered like any other, valid for your usual number of days, with one line per item in the package grouped under the package name. The reply carries a link to it. Opening that link puts them in your booking portal, where they can adjust what they picked, see your terms, and accept.

What you get. A notification saying who was quoted and for how much, so you see the figure the day it goes out rather than the day somebody accepts it. The quote shows on the lead's thread like one you raised yourself, and you can open it, change it and re-send it.

Accepting is theirs to do. A client who accepts an automatic quote turns the lead into a booking without you touching it, which is the point, and is worth being sure about before you switch it on. Nothing is quoted unless you have chosen a package on the template, so this stays off until you ask for it.

When the quote is skipped. The reply always goes, but the quote is held back and you get a notification when:

the package prices anything per guest and the lead did not give a guest count, since a per-guest price with no number to multiply would quote them for one guest
the package has been archived, or every item in it has
a quote for that lead is already open, so you are part-way through one yourself
your trial has ended, which stops new documents but not replies

The first of those is worth designing around. If a lead type sends a per-guest package, make guest count a required field on that form, or quote that type by hand. The template's package picker warns you when the package you have chosen prices per guest.

When a reply is held or fails

Two outcomes raise a notification, because in both of them you would otherwise assume a reply went out when it did not. They appear in the bell in a warning tint with a spark, so an "Auto Reply held" notice never looks like an ordinary "new lead arrived" one. Clicking through opens the lead.

Held: the date is already booked. The lead is real, the lead is worth answering, and the automatic reply is exactly the wrong thing to send. You get told which date and that the lead is waiting for you. This is usually the most useful notification the feature produces: it hands you a lead that needs a human answer, along with the reason.

Failed: something else stopped it. The reasons are:

the lead has no email address
its reply template's attachments are over the 30 MB an email can carry
its lead type no longer has a reply template (deleted or unlinked during the wait)
your daily email limit was already reached
your monthly email allowance is used up

The quiet outcomes raise nothing, because nothing went wrong. If you replied first, or marked it spam, or turned Auto Reply off for the account or for that lead type, the reply simply stood down.

Email allowance

An automatic reply is a send like any other. It draws on your monthly email allowance, and it shares a ceiling of 200 automatic emails a day with your automation emails. Both are far above what a normal week of leads uses, and if either is ever hit, the reply fails loudly with a notification and a row in your email activity rather than going quiet.

A sensible way to start

Start with one lead type, and make it the one you answer most predictably. Weddings, parties, anything where your first reply is more or less the same every time.
Read its default reply template back as though you were the lead before you tick the box. It is going out unattended, so it should not promise anything you would not.
Leave the wait at 60 minutes for the first fortnight. It is short enough to beat most competitors and long enough that you can still get in front of it.
Add more lead types once you have watched that one for a couple of weeks. There is no hurry, and the ones you quote by hand may be better left off for good.
Watch the bell. Held replies tell you which dates your leads are landing on, which is worth knowing on its own.
If you want a longer sequence rather than a single reply, that is what Automations are for. Auto Reply answers once, quickly, on a free date. Automations chase over days.

Capturing leads with a form covers lead types, the embed snippet, and the acknowledgement email.
Replying to leads covers reply templates and merge fields, which are what Auto Reply sends.
Working the leads inbox covers statuses, spam, and the Awaiting reply chip.
Preventing a double-booked Space covers the availability rule Auto Reply borrows.
Letting a client adjust a quote covers the item settings that decide what a client can change on a quote.
How lead reply emails work covers the sending address and how a reply threads back.
Notifications and the bell covers where held and failed notices turn up.