Auto Reply, but only when the date is actually free
The enquiry that gets answered first usually wins, and enquiries 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 enquirer 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 check that makes it safe to leave on
Before anything sends, 1pm checks the date the enquirer asked about against your bookings. It does not invent a rule for this: it asks exactly the question it asks when you try to save a booking, so Auto Reply is stopped by precisely what would stop a double booking and the two can never drift apart.
Only real holds count, so tentative, confirmed and completed events occupy a date and another live enquiry does not. It respects your Spaces, so the Ballroom being taken does not kill an enquiry the Rooftop could host, and a lead carrying no Space at all widens the check to every overlapping hold, which is the right reading of “I am already working that day”. Times narrow it where your form collects them. Appointments never block, because a thirty minute consultation call does not mean the day is gone.
When the date is taken, nothing goes out and you get a notification instead, in a warning tint with a spark so it never reads as an ordinary new lead. It hands you a lead that needs a human answer, along with the reason.
Two switches, both deliberate
Leads, then Lead Types. The panel at the top turns the feature on for the account and sets Wait before replying in minutes, defaulting to 60. Then each lead type decides for itself, under Default reply template, whether it takes part. New lead types start switched off, because a type you create months from now should not begin emailing strangers on a decision you made about a different one.
That per-type choice is the setting worth thinking about, and the answer is usually not “all of them”. A wedding enquiry is often answerable on the spot. A corporate enquiry needs a quote, and a warm “yes we’re free” that says nothing about money makes the real quote land worse. A useful test: if you would be happy for the enquirer to receive that template while you are standing in a field holding a camera, switch the type on.
Why there is a wait at all
Every check runs when the reply is due, not when the enquiry lands, and an hour is long enough for a lot to change. It gives you a chance to get there first, since your own reply stands the automatic one down. It gives junk that got past the bot protection a window to be marked spam. It gives a booking landing on that date time to hold the reply. And turning the feature off, for the account or one lead type, stops the replies already waiting rather than trickling them out for another hour.
While one is pending, the lead’s row carries a blue Auto Reply chip with the due time and a Cancel button. The chip lives in the app, which is not where you are when an enquiry arrives, so the new submission email names the deadline too.
It is a real reply
The lead type’s template with merge fields filled in, sent from your sending address, threading into the lead’s conversation and badged Auto Reply. Template attachments go with it, read at the moment it sends rather than when the lead came in, and attachments over the 30 MB an email can carry stop the reply loudly rather than sending the text without the brochure.
It is not you replying, though. The lead stays New, keeps its place in Awaiting reply, and still wants a proper answer. Auto Reply buys you a few hours of goodwill, not a closed sale.