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Replying to leads

Leads
Replying to leads

When a lead 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 in one place. You can answer from the Leads inbox without opening your mail client, or answer from your own email app and have it land in the same thread. Either way the lead's response comes straight back underneath, and you never lose the trail of who said what.

This article covers opening a thread, sending a reply, answering from your own inbox, 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 email between you and the lead, every call or note you logged, and everything the client did on their portal, in order, oldest first, with a reply box underneath. Their original lead is summarised on the lead row itself, so a brand new lead you haven't answered yet opens with an empty thread and a ready composer. Opening the thread also marks any unread messages as read for everyone on the account, clearing the red badge on the row. If you'd rather come back to it, Mark as unread in the row's ⋯ menu puts the badge back.

The thread reads as a timeline, one entry under another down a line on the left, and the icon on that line tells you what each entry is:

  • Emails show a paper plane when you sent them and an inbox when the lead did. Emails 1pm sends for you, such as a confirmation or a receipt, carry an Automated badge.
  • Calls, texts, meetings and notes you log show a phone, a message, people or a pencil, on an amber background. Only you and your team see these.
  • What the client does on their portal shows as a single bold line with their name, for example "Chris Jack accepted this quote" or "Chris Jack paid $500 by card". Accepting, signing and paying have a solid green icon (a tick, a pencil and a dollar sign), the same marks that light up on the lead's progress steps. A request for changes is amber. Anything the client typed with it, such as a note on the acceptance or the changes they want, sits underneath.

Older emails and notes fold down to one line each so the newest one and the reply box stay in view. Click a folded line, or its icon, to open it. To fold an open one again, click its icon, click its header line, or press Collapse under the date in its top right corner. The client's portal actions never fold, because they are already one line. A long conversation opens on its 20 most recent entries; Show earlier messages at the top brings in the rest.

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 lead.

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.

Bold, lists and a booking link

The reply box shows formatting as you type it: bold looks bold and a list looks like a list, the same way the lead will see them in the email.

A row of small buttons sits under the reply box for the things that go into the message, as opposed to the attachment buttons below them.

  • B bolds whatever you have selected, or turns bold on for what you type next. Press it again to take the bold off. Ctrl+B (Cmd+B on a Mac) does the same thing while you are typing. The button stays lit while the cursor is in bold text.
  • Bulleted list turns the line you are on, or every line you have selected, into a bulleted list. Press Enter for the next item, and press Enter on an empty item to finish the list. Typing a dash and a space at the start of a line starts one too.
  • Numbered list does the same with numbers. Typing 1. and a space at the start of a line also starts one. Lines that start 4. and 5. are a list that begins at 4, and numbered lines that don't count on from each other, such as 25. Dec above 27. Dec, stay as the text you typed.
  • Insert link adds a clickable link. Select some words first and they become the link's text.

There is no italic or underline, and no fonts or colors. When you paste from a document or a web page, the words, bold and lists come across and the rest of the formatting is left behind, so a reply never arrives in three fonts.

  • Book an appointment link inserts a link to your public booking page, so a lead can pick a time for a tasting or a site visit without another round of emails. If more than one of your Spaces takes bookings, the button opens a short list to choose from. It only appears once a Space has bookings turned on, which is covered in appointments and the booking page.
  • Insert You're up! link inserts the edit link for the lead's You're up! run of show / runsheet, so the client can open the sheet and fill it in themselves. Anyone who opens that link can change the sheet, so send it only to people you want editing it. The button only appears when the lead holds an edit link, which is covered in add a You're up! run of show to the client portal.

On the right of the same row, Quote raises a quote for the lead and opens the quote editor beside the thread, so your reply stays where you left it. Quotes and invoices covers building one.

The same spot shows what the lead already has:

  • Unsent draft is a quote you've started but not added to the lead. Click it to carry on, or click Add to lead. While it's there the Quote button is hidden, because the draft is the quote you're working on.
  • Once a quote is added, its number, total, date and status show here with Open, Insert (adds its link to your reply), Copy (copies the link) and Edit. The button becomes New quote, which starts another quote and leaves the first one as it is.

Fifteen seconds to change your mind

A sent reply does not leave immediately. It sits for 15 seconds with an Undo send button on the message and a countdown running down, which is long enough to catch the wrong attachment, the name you spelled wrong, or the paragraph you meant to delete.

Hit Undo send inside that window and the email is pulled before it goes anywhere. The lead goes back to awaiting a reply, the attachments are cleared, and your draft comes back into the composer, text, subject and files, so you can fix the thing and send it again rather than retyping it.

The window runs on our side, not in your browser, so closing the tab does not cancel the send and does not delay it either. If you leave it too late the button tells you so rather than pretending: past the countdown the reply is gone, and the message settles to sent. For the full detail, see Undo send countdown explained when sending lead replies.

One thing Undo does not reverse. If your reply had a quote or invoice link embedded in it, that document stays sent or issued. See Sending a quote or invoice in a reply for why, and what to do about it.

If a reply doesn't send

Once it leaves the undo window, a reply can still fail: the address is refused, a file can't be attached, or the send itself errors. The message is marked as not sent in the thread with the reason and a Retry button, you get a notification on the bell, and the lead goes back on Awaiting reply, because the client hasn't heard from you. Press Retry once the cause is fixed, or write a new reply.

If the send was interrupted partway (rare, and usually a server restart), the reply is marked as not sent after 15 minutes with a note that the client may already have it. Check with them before you press Retry.

Half-written replies are saved for you

You often need something from elsewhere in 1pm partway through a reply: a price off a quote, a date off the calendar. Go and get it. Your reply is saved as you type, so when you come back to the lead it's exactly where you left it, subject and all.

A saved draft is yours alone. If you share the account, the person beside you sees their own drafts on the same lead, never yours. Nothing is sent until you press Send reply, and if you decide against it, Discard draft clears the box.

Printing one email

Sometimes the thing worth keeping is a single message: the client email that lays out the whole day, the reply that agreed a change. Every sent email in the thread carries a small print icon in its top right corner. Press it and a plain black-and-white page opens for that one email (who it was from and to, when it was sent, which lead it belongs to, the body and the names of any attachments) with the print dialog already open, so it is two clicks to paper or to a PDF.

Internal notes never get the button, because a note is your own record rather than a document to hand out, and neither does a reply still queued or one that failed to send, since neither is a sent email yet.

Attaching files

Two buttons sit under the reply box. Attach from Files picks something already in your Files library, a menu or a terms PDF you send often. Upload a file takes a PDF or an image, up to 10 MB each, straight off your computer.

Files upload the moment you choose them, while you carry on typing, so pressing Send doesn't leave you waiting. It also means a file that's too large, or the wrong sort, is refused there and then rather than after you've written the whole message. Attachments stay on an unsent draft the same way the words do, so wandering off mid-reply doesn't cost you them.

One limit worth knowing: files attached to a reply you never send are kept for 60 days, then tidied away. The draft's text stays longer. If that happens, the reply box tells you how many files went so you can attach them again. Anything you actually send is kept with the message on the thread and isn't affected.

Replying from your own inbox

You don't have to be in 1pm to answer a lead. When a lead replies, 1pm emails you a notification, and you can reply to that notification straight from your own email app: Gmail, Outlook, your phone on the way to a site visit. Your answer goes to the lead, and the same message is recorded in the 1pm thread, so the conversation reads the same whether you sent it from the app or from your inbox.

Four things are worth knowing before you rely on it:

  • Reply from an address 1pm recognises, which means your 1pm login, the login of anyone you share the account with, or the inbox your lead notifications go to. Reply from the inbox the notification arrived in and you are fine. From an address 1pm has never seen, it cannot tell you from the lead, so it will not pass the message on.
  • It is held before it goes. A reply you email in waits in an outbox rather than leaving straight away, and 1pm emails you a copy of it with a button that sends it there and then. Depending on your mail provider it either releases itself after four hours or waits for you to press send. Replies you send by email covers the whole thing.
  • The lead never sees your personal address. Your reply is re-sent from your venue's sending address, exactly as if you had typed it into the thread.
  • Attachments come along, and are saved on the thread with the message.

If a reply cannot be sent, you get an email back saying so, and the thread shows it with a one-click retry. How lead reply emails work covers the whole route in detail, including what the lead sees at their end.

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.

The body is the same box you type a reply in. B, Bulleted list and Numbered list sit under it, bold looks bold and a list looks like a list while you write, and that formatting comes across when you insert the template into a reply.

Leave your sign-off, logo and contact details out of templates. Your email signature adds them to the first reply to each lead.

Templates that send a quote

A reply template can name a package from your items catalog. Pick one under Send a quote package when you edit the template. From then on, every time that template is sent, it quotes the lead as well as answering them.

When you insert a template like that, an On Send reply, creates a new quote from the ... package chip appears under the reply box. Nothing is created yet. When you click Send reply, 1pm raises a quote on the lead from the package, marks it Sent, and puts a View your quote link to it at the end of your email. The client opens the link, adjusts what they picked if the items allow it, and accepts.

  • Don't want the quote this time? Click the cross on the chip. The template's words still go, without a quote.
  • Sending a quote you built yourself? Adding it to the lead from the Quote button while the template is in the reply box takes the chip away, so the client gets your quote and not a second one from the package. A reply that already links one of the lead's quotes never creates another.
  • Swapping templates swaps the quote with it. A template with no package takes the chip away.
  • Undo send takes the quote away again, since the client never received it. Send the reply again and a fresh quote goes with it.
  • The quote is made out to the booking's Client contact if the lead has a booking, and otherwise to the lead's company and name, the same as the Quote button.

If the quote can't be raised, the reply is not sent, and the reply box tells you why. That happens when the package prices anything per guest and the lead gave no guest count, when the package or every item in it has been archived, when you already have an unfinished quote open for the lead, or when your trial has ended. Finish or delete the open quote, or click the cross on the chip to send the reply without one.

The same template sends the same quote when Auto Reply sends it for you.

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 lead'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. Once the lead has a booking it is the booking date, whatever date they first asked about
  • [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]), you can set that up yourself from Profile, then Sending domain: enter the address you want, publish the DNS records it shows you (the usual DKIM and SPF entries), and 1pm checks for them automatically. Once the domain verifies, your lead mail, invoices and other client emails send from your address automatically. Until then it keeps sending from the shared [email protected] default, so nothing breaks while you set it up. See verifying your sending domain for the full walkthrough.

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.

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