Replying to leads — Help

When an enquiry comes in, the next move is usually a reply: a price guide, a "yes, that date's free", a few questions back. 1pm lets you have that whole conversation from inside the inbox. You reply by email without opening your mail client, the lead's answer threads straight back underneath, and you never lose the trail of who said what.

This article covers opening a thread, sending a reply, using templates and merge fields, and sending from your own address.

Open the conversation

In the Leads inbox, click anywhere on a lead's row. The row expands to show the conversation thread: every message between you and the enquirer in order, oldest first, with a reply box underneath. The first "message" is their original submission. Opening the thread also marks any unread reply as read, clearing the red badge on the row.

Send a reply

Type your message in the reply box. There's a subject line above it (it defaults to "Re: your enquiry", change it if you like) and the message body below. Click Send reply and it goes out as an email from you to the enquirer.

Here's the part that makes it a real conversation rather than a one-way send: when the lead replies to your email, their response comes straight back into this thread, live, without you doing anything. You don't have to go hunting in a separate mailbox, and the next person who opens the lead sees the full back-and-forth. If a reply lands while you're elsewhere in the inbox, the lead's row picks up an unread badge so you know to look.

Reply templates

The replies a venue sends are often the same handful: a pricing and packages note, a "sorry, that date's already booked", a warm first thank-you. Save those once and reuse them.

Go to Leads, then Reply templates (there's a button at the top of the inbox, and a link in the sidebar). Give each template a name, an optional subject, and a body. Once you've saved a template, an Insert a template dropdown appears above the reply box in every thread: pick one and it fills the subject and body for you. You can edit the text before sending, so a template is a starting point, not a straitjacket.

Merge fields

Templates can carry merge fields, little tokens that get swapped for the lead's own details when you send. While editing a template, click a field to drop it in at your cursor:

[first name] becomes the enquirer's first name
[surname] becomes their last name
[name] becomes their full name
[event type] becomes the type of event they entered
[event date] becomes their event date, written out in full
[guests] becomes the guest count they gave

So "Hi [first name], thanks for asking about your [event type] on [event date]..." comes out personalised on every send. If a lead didn't give a particular detail, its field simply comes out blank.

Send from your own address

By default, your replies and acknowledgements go from [email protected], and replies still come back to you. If you'd rather the email come from your own domain (so it reads as [email protected]), set it on your Profile page under Enquiry sender address. Sending from your own domain needs that domain verified with us first, so contact support to set it up. Until it's verified, leave the field blank so your emails keep sending reliably.

A note on spam leads

You can reply to any lead except one you've marked as spam. That's deliberate: marking something spam takes it out of your working conversation, and 1pm never emails a spam sender.

Working the leads inbox covers the pipeline tabs and triaging what comes in.
Capturing enquiries with a form covers the forms that start these conversations.
Turning a lead into an event covers converting a warm lead into a booking.