Automate Lead Follow-Up in Pulse Digital Labs

How do you automate lead follow-up in Pulse Digital Labs?

Connect your inquiry form to a workflow with a Form Submitted trigger. Create a pipeline opportunity, assign an owner, send a confirmation email, and notify your team. Add reply, booking, and opt-out checks before further outreach. Test the workflow with your own contact details before activation.

The Problem: New Leads Arrive, but Follow-Up Gets Missed

Someone submits your contact form while you're working with a client. Another inquiry arrives after business hours. A team member assumes somebody else replied. By the time you check, the prospect has already moved on.

Even when your business receives plenty of inquiries, inconsistent follow-up makes it difficult to turn interest into conversations and appointments. The solution starts with a process that records each request, confirms receipt, and gives one person responsibility for the next action.

Here's How to Build Your First Automated Follow-Up Workflow

In this tutorial, you'll use Pulse Digital Labs to connect a website inquiry form to a sales pipeline and an automated workflow. You'll set up an acknowledgment email, notify your team, and establish follow-up rules that respond to what the lead does next.

You'll finish with a workflow you can test before activating it. You don't need an AI agent or a complicated sales sequence to get started.

Before You Begin: Map One Real Lead Inquiry

Take five minutes to write down how your business currently responds when someone asks for information. Use a recent inquiry as your example, or choose the type of request you receive most often.

1. Write down where the inquiry arrives, such as your website contact form.

2. Identify the person who should respond.

3. Decide what the customer needs to hear immediately.

4. Choose when the team should follow up if no conversation has started.

5. Decide what should stop outreach, including a reply, booking, decline, or opt-out.

Keep these answers next to you. They will guide the settings you choose instead of letting the automation builder dictate your process.

You'll also be using Sites, Opportunities, Contacts, and Automation in your Pulse Digital Labs account. Confirm your business email sender is configured, and use a test email address you control.

Step 1: Create your lead pipeline

1. Open Opportunities from the left navigation.

2. Find the Pipelines management area, then select the option to create a new pipeline.

3. Name it Website Leads.

4. Add these stages: New Inquiry, Contacted, Conversation Started, Appointment Booked, and Closed.

5. Save the pipeline.

Keep stages tied to meaningful actions. “Contacted” means someone initiated an actual response, not merely that the system stored the lead. If your account already uses a suitable pipeline, reuse it rather than creating duplicates.

Step 2: Prepare the inquiry form

1. Open Sites and navigate to the area for forms.

2. Open an existing contact form or create one named Website Inquiry.

3. Include name, email, and a brief question or service-interest field. Add phone only if you need it.

4. Add appropriate consent language for the communication channels you plan to use.

5. Save the form and place it on the appropriate website page, if it is not already installed.

Submit a test inquiry. Go to Contacts and confirm the information appears in the expected contact record. If the form creates duplicates, check your account's contact matching and form settings before proceeding.

Step 3: Create the workflow

1. Open Automation → Workflows.

2. Select Create Workflow and choose to start from scratch.

3. Name it Lead Intake | Website Inquiry.

4. Add the Form Submitted trigger.

5. Filter the trigger to your specific Website Inquiry form so unrelated submissions do not enter this process.

6. Save the trigger configuration.

Menu labels occasionally vary by account configuration. If you cannot locate a named option, look for the equivalent form-submission trigger in the workflow builder.

Step 4: Add the pipeline opportunity

1. Under the form trigger, select the action to Create Opportunity.

2. Choose the Website Leads pipeline.

3. Set the initial stage to New Inquiry.

4. Map the contact to the opportunity and save the action.

Review how repeated form submissions are handled. A returning customer should not automatically create an unlimited number of identical open opportunities. If your workflow builder offers duplicate or existing-opportunity controls, select the behavior that matches your sales process and test it.

Step 5: Assign a lead owner and internal notification

1. Add an owner-assignment action if your business uses assigned contacts or opportunities.

2. Select the team member or assignment rule responsible for new website inquiries.

3. Add an internal notification or task for that person.

4. Include the lead's name, requested service, and a clear next action such as Review inquiry and respond during business hours.

5. Save the action.

Automated acknowledgment is not a substitute for answering a prospect's question. Make sure a person is responsible for the conversation.

Step 6: Write the first confirmation email

Add a Send Email action after the contact is recorded and assigned. Use a verified sender and test any personalization fields.

Subject: We received your inquiry

Hi [First Name],

Thank you for contacting us. We've received your request and will review the details. A team member will follow up during business hours. If there is anything else you'd like us to know, reply to this email.

Thank you,
Your Team

Replace the placeholder with the contact's first-name personalization field from your editor. Preview the email using a test contact to confirm it populates correctly. Do not promise a specific reply deadline unless your team consistently meets it.

If you decide to add text messaging, configure it separately and send only to contacts who have provided the required permission. Never treat a submitted email form as blanket consent for SMS marketing.

Step 7: Add one relevant follow-up

Start small. A workflow with one clear reminder is easier to maintain than a series of generic sales messages.

1. Add a Wait step for a reasonable period, such as one business day, based on your response policy.

2. Before taking another action, check whether the contact has replied, booked, opted out, or otherwise progressed.

3. If the inquiry still needs attention, create a task or notification for the owner.

4. If an additional customer-facing message is appropriate and permitted, write one relevant to the original inquiry rather than a generic sales pitch.

When a lead replies or schedules an appointment, the workflow should stop sending messages that no longer apply. Depending on your configuration, you might use a separate inbound-response workflow, a booking trigger, enrollment controls, or a goal/condition to remove contacts from an outdated sequence. Do not assume adding a Wait step automatically handles replies.

Step 8: Configure reply and booking handling

Set up explicit behavior for events that change the status of the inquiry:

1. Customer replies: Notify the assigned owner, review the message, and prevent inappropriate follow-ups.

2. Appointment booked: Move the opportunity to the relevant stage and stop booking-request reminders.

3. Customer opts out: Honor the opt-out and prevent further disallowed messaging.

4. Opportunity closed: Remove the contact from outreach intended only for open inquiries.

Use the workflow event specifically intended for an inbound customer reply. An event for messages sent by your team is not the same thing. Test this behavior before activation.

Step 9: Test before publishing

Keep the workflow unpublished or inactive while you test. Use contact information you control and check these cases:

1. A first-time prospect submits the correct form.

2. The same test contact submits it again.

3. A form from another part of your site is submitted.

4. The confirmation email arrives and its personalization is correct.

5. The lead is assigned to the right person and pipeline stage.

6. The prospect replies before the reminder is due.

7. The prospect books an appointment.

8. The prospect opts out.

Open the workflow execution history and related contact records after each test. Confirm that the system did what you expected. If it does not, correct the trigger, filter, or action before activating the workflow for real leads.

Step 10: Activate and review the first week

After the tests pass, publish or activate the workflow using the control in your account. Review the first real inquiries daily. Look for failed deliveries, duplicate opportunities, unassigned leads, and follow-up tasks that have not been completed.

Track four useful measures: number of new inquiries, time to first human response, percentage of leads assigned to an owner, and number of conversations progressing to an appointment. Adjust the workflow only after reviewing the actual outcomes.

Troubleshooting common issues

The workflow does not start

Check that the correct form is selected in the trigger, the workflow is published, and the test submission actually reached the contact record.

Contacts receive the confirmation twice

Check for multiple workflows using the same form trigger, repeated form submissions, or enrollment settings permitting duplicate runs.

The opportunity does not appear

Review the selected pipeline and stage, confirm the Create Opportunity action is configured, and inspect the execution history for an error.

Replies do not stop follow-ups

Review the inbound-reply trigger or condition and how the contact exits the original workflow. Test a real reply from your test contact rather than relying only on a workflow preview.

Messages are not delivered

Verify sender configuration, recipient information, opt-out status, and any delivery errors in the conversation or workflow history.

Where to get more help

Visit the Pulse Digital Labs Help Center for platform support and additional guidance. If your account's screens differ from this walkthrough, use the available feature names and your account permissions to locate the equivalent controls.

What to build next

Once this workflow is reliable, consider adding appointment reminders, lead-source reporting, and separate processes for different inquiry types. Build each addition around a real business requirement rather than automating for its own sake.

Need to organize your contacts first?

Follow the Pulse Digital Labs contact organization tutorial to add customer details, apply tags, and record the next action before building your workflow.