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Following up leads with playbooks

This guide takes you from "leads arrive somewhere" to "an agent contacts every one within minutes". You need at least one connected channel (WhatsApp or email) first.

Step 1: choose where leads come from

Open Work → Playbooks → Lead sources and create a source:

  • Hosted form: Appricity gives you a form link and an embed snippet for your site, or an address your own form can post to.
  • Webhook: for systems that can send a signed web request. Copy the signing secret when it's shown; it's shown once.
  • CSV import: upload a file with a header row and columns for name, email, phone, WhatsApp, company, interest and consent (up to 5,000 rows).
  • CRM: new leads (recommended) or new contacts from Salesforce, HubSpot or Pipedrive.

Edit the source's consent text so it says what people agree to. WhatsApp outreach needs consent; email doesn't.

Step 2: create the playbook

  1. Open Work → Playbooks → New playbook and pick the starting point closest to what you want, such as Form or webhook lead → email intro.
  2. Under When a lead arrives from, tick your new source.
  3. Under Who writes, pick the agent and write What the agent sets out to do, for example: "Find out what they want to automate and offer a 20-minute intro call".
  4. Under How to reach them, order the channels and choose which numbers or mailboxes to send from.
  5. If WhatsApp Business is in play, pick an approved first-message template and map its placeholders.
  6. Check Timing: first contact within 15 minutes, one follow-up after 48 hours, stop after 5 days.
  7. Save.

Step 3: try it

Choose Try it, enter a made-up lead and See the first message. Reply as the lead a few times. Adjust the brief until the conversation feels right. Nothing is sent.

Step 4: switch it on

Choose Switch on. From now on every new lead from the source is contacted, inside your contact hours and in the lead's own time zone.

Step 5: send yourself a lead

Submit your own form, or post to the webhook, with your own email address. Check:

  • the lead appears in Work → Leads as New, then Contacted;
  • the message arrives;
  • when you reply, the lead becomes Engaged and the agent answers.

Step 6: watch the results

The playbook shows the last seven days: leads, contacted, replied and meetings. A lead's page shows its conversation, timeline and any meeting. If a lead wasn't contacted, its page says why: no reachable channel, no consent, an opt-out, an open conversation, or the playbook was switched off.

Optional: write status back to your CRM

On a CRM lead source, tick Write status changes back to the CRM lead to keep the CRM up to date as leads are contacted, book meetings, qualify, are disqualified or convert.