Follow up on leads

Every message from your forms can be followed as a lead: someone who might become a customer. Your Inbox keeps where each one stands, what you told them, and when to get back to them, so a quote never slips through the cracks. It's included in every plan, and there's nothing to set up.

Set a message's stage

1. Click Inbox in the left menu of the editor (or in your dashboard), and open a message.
2. Under the message, pick a Stage:
   • New: you haven't answered yet. Every message starts here.
   • Replied: you've answered. Replying from the inbox sets this for you.
   • Quoted: you've sent a price or an estimate.
   • Won: they said yes.
   • Lost: they went elsewhere, or it wasn't a fit.

The stage shows next to the message in the list. To see only one stage, pick it from the menu above the list (it says All stages to start).

When you mark a lead Lost, a menu asks Why was it lost? You can pick Price, Chose someone else, No answer, Not a fit or Other, or skip it. Nothing makes you answer. If you move the lead to another stage, the reason goes away.

Stages are separate from the Inbox, Done and Spam folders. You might keep a quoted job in the inbox until it's won, then click Mark as done.

Write yourself a note

Type in Note (only you see this), like what you quoted or what they asked for on the phone. It saves when you click away. Visitors never see it.

Get a reminder to follow up

1. Open the message and pick a date under Follow up on.
2. The evening before, at about 6pm your time, we email you a list of tomorrow's follow-ups with your notes.
3. On the day, the message shows Follow up today in the list. Pick Follow-ups due from the menu above the list to see every follow-up that's due or late.

You'll also see them in your dashboard. When a follow-up is due, Overview and Business show "3 follow-ups are due" under Needs you, and Open inbox takes you to the Inbox with Follow-ups due already picked. If you use To-dos, a Follow-ups due box sits above your tasks, and the number in the menu counts them too. They're your leads, not tasks, so finishing a task never changes a lead: you clear a follow-up in the Inbox.

The evening email goes to every business, including one with no website.

Click Clear to remove the date. Messages in Done or Spam aren't included in the reminder email, and don't show as due.

Reply from your inbox

1. Open the message and type your answer under Reply to.
2. Click Send reply.

It's emailed to them from your business's name, and when they answer, it comes to your own email. If an owner has connected your business's shared Gmail, replies from owners go from that address instead: see Connect Gmail and Google Drive. Your reply is listed under the message, with who sent it and when, so anyone on your account can see what was said. A message's stage moves from New to Replied when you send one.

Prefer your own email program? Click Use your email app. Those replies aren't listed in the inbox, so change the stage yourself.

See your leads on a board

At the top of the Inbox, click Board. Each stage is a column, and each lead is a card with the person's name, the form they used, how long ago it came in and any follow-up date. To move a lead, use the menu on its card. Click a name to open the message. Spam isn't on the board. On a phone, the columns stack one under another.

See how your leads are doing

Click Report at the top of the Inbox, then pick the last 30 days, 90 days or 12 months. For each form and each page you'll see how many leads came in, how many you won and lost, what share you won, and how long your first answer took. Below that, you can see the reasons you gave for lost leads.

• A Won % shows only once there are 5 leads, because "100% won" from one lead says nothing.
• First answer counts the replies you sent from the Inbox. Replies from your own email program aren't known to us, so a lead you answered there shows no answer.
• Spam isn't counted, and the report looks at your latest 500 messages.

Keep a list of your leads

Download (CSV) above the list saves the messages you're looking at as a spreadsheet, with each one's stage, note, follow-up date and, for a lost lead, the reason. Pick a stage from the menu first to download only those, like every Won job this year. See Forms and your inbox.