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Chasing a lead that goes quiet

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Bookings rarely die with a "no". They die quietly. You send the quote, the client says they will talk it over with their partner or their board, and then nothing. Two weeks later you cannot remember whether you followed up, three weeks later it feels awkward to, and by the time you think of it again they have booked somewhere that emailed them on day four.

Until now nothing in 1pm could notice that. Every nightly sweep in the app walked events, invoices, appointments or crew. None of them ever walked leads, which left the one place bookings actually die with nothing watching it.

Three automation triggers now do. Each one watches for a step a lead has not taken, a set number of days after the step before it. This article covers what each is for, what the day count is measured from, how to stack them into a follow-up ladder, and what to write in them.

The three chases

They live under Leads when you pick a trigger for a new automation, alongside the instant ones (enquiry received, quote sent, quote accepted). The difference is that those fire on something happening, and these fire on something not happening.

Quote not opened. A set number of days after a quote is sent, if the client still has not opened it. This is the one people forget to build, and it is usually not a sales problem at all. An unopened quote after three days is far more likely a deliverability problem: it went to spam, they typo'd their address on the enquiry form, or the attachment tripped a corporate filter. So it wants a different email from a nudge. Short, plain text, no attachment, "did this land?".

Quote not accepted. A set number of days after a quote is sent, if they still have not accepted it. The classic chase, and the one to build first if you build only one. It fires whether or not they opened it, so a lead that has stalled after reading the quote is covered here.

Accepted, no payment. A set number of days after they accept, if no payment has come in. This is the expensive one to leave alone. The client believes the date is held. It is not, because nothing has been paid, and you have both been operating on different understandings of the same conversation for a fortnight. Every venue has lost a date this way, and usually to a diary conflict nobody spotted because the booking looked won.

What the day count is measured from

Each chase counts forward from the moment the lead crossed the step before it. Those moments are the same ones the pipeline gauge on each Leads row lights up:

  • Quoted is when the first quote was sent to that lead.
  • Opened is when the client actually loaded a quote or proposal you sent. Your own previews never count, so this is a genuine client view.
  • Accepted is when a quote was accepted, by them or by you on their behalf.
  • Paid is when the first payment landed against the booking.

Each of these is stamped once and never moves again, which is what makes "exactly seven days after they were quoted" a stable date to chase from.

It is worth saying what they are not measured from: the date of the last message on the lead. That looks like the obvious column for "gone quiet" and it is a trap, because your own automated emails would bump it. A chase built that way would reset the very silence it was watching for, so a lead would either be chased forever or never, depending on nothing you could predict.

Building one

Automations in the sidebar, then New automation. Give it a name for your own reference ("Quote follow-up, day 5"), pick one of the three triggers, and type the number of days into the sentence underneath it. Then add the actions, exactly as with any other automation: a client email, an internal heads-up to yourself, a Wait step if you want a two part drip, or planner tasks.

The email goes into the lead's existing conversation, so their reply threads straight back into your Leads inbox alongside everything else you have said to them. There is no 24 hour review hold on these, because a chase timed to a specific day is wrong if it sits in a queue overnight.

New automations start switched off. Preview the email, send a test to yourself, then arm it with the Active (running) toggle.

It fires once, so stack them for a ladder

Each automation fires once per lead. It will not chase the same lead twice on the same rule, however many nights the sweep runs.

To build an escalating follow-up, add more than one automation on the same trigger at different intervals. A sequence that works for most operations:

  • Quote not accepted, 3 days: light and friendly, "any questions on this?"
  • Quote not accepted, 10 days: the value email, or an offer to talk it through on a call.
  • Quote not accepted, 21 days: the polite close, "shall I release the date?", which produces more decisions than the two before it combined.

Add a Quote running out automation from the quote validity pair and the deadline itself does the last bit of work for you.

When a chase stops

A chase stops as soon as the lead takes the step you were waiting on. If a client accepts on day 6, a "not accepted after 7 days" chase never fires. If a drip has a Wait in it and they accept during the wait, the later step is dropped rather than sent, so nobody gets a nudge to accept something they already accepted.

Leads you have marked lost are never chased, and neither is anything you have marked spam. Chasing someone you have already written off is worse than not chasing at all. Archived leads are left alone too.

Converted leads are deliberately still in scope, because that is exactly where the accepted-no-payment chase lives. A lead converts when it becomes an event, which happens on acceptance, so excluding converted ones would have made that third trigger fire for nobody, ever.

Scoping a chase to one enquiry form

All three can be limited to a single lead type with the Only for this lead type picker, the same filter the other lead triggers carry. Leave it on "Any" to chase every enquiry, or pick one form to give it its own follow-up rhythm.

This is worth using if your enquiry forms cover genuinely different work. A wedding client deciding between three venues wants space and a soft touch at day 10. A corporate client who asked for a boardroom lunch next Tuesday wants a phone call on day 1. Same trigger, two automations, different lead types, different tone.

What to actually write

Three things worth keeping in mind, since these are the emails most likely to land badly if written on autopilot.

Do not pretend it is not automated by being weirdly specific. "I was just thinking about your wedding this morning" sent at 3am by a machine is worse than a plain, useful email. Write something you would be happy for the client to see arriving on a schedule, because sooner or later one of them will work it out.

Give them something to do. A chase whose only content is "just following up" puts the work back on the client. A chase that says "here's your quote link, and here's my calendar if it's easier to talk it through" gives them two doors. Merge fields fill in the client name, the event name and date, and you can drop your booking page link straight into the body.

Say what happens next. The most effective quote chase most venues send is the one that mentions the date is not held. That is true, it is useful, and it is the sentence that turns a stalled lead into a decision either way. Both outcomes are better than silence.

Checking they went out

Every chase shows in Recent activity at the foot of the Automations page, marked sent or failed with a reason. The full picture across the account, including whether anything bounced, is on the Emails page: see checking what emails went out.

If a chase you expected did not appear at all, when an automation email doesn't send covers the usual causes.

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