Sales lead qualification

Sales inquiries have a shelf life. Someone emails sales@yourdomain.com on a Tuesday afternoon, and if nobody checks that inbox until Thursday morning, you've already lost momentum. Maybe the lead. Maybe the deal.

The fix isn't "check the inbox more often." The fix is to stop relying on an inbox entirely.

What this looks like

You set up an address like sales@yourdomain.com or demo@yourdomain.com in EmailConnect. When someone emails it, you get a webhook with the full message — who they are, what they wrote, any attachments — delivered to your automation platform in seconds.

From there, your workflow takes over:

Prospect emails sales@yourdomain.com
  → EmailConnect delivers webhook
    → Your automation creates a CRM contact/deal
    → The right person on your team gets notified
    → Prospect gets a quick reply

The lead is in your pipeline before anyone had to check an inbox.

Why this matters for small teams

If you're a large company with a dedicated sales ops person monitoring inboxes all day, maybe this is less urgent. But if you're a smaller team where "checking the sales inbox" is something people do between other work, leads sit. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for days.

With a webhook, the email arrives and your system reacts immediately. A Slack message, a CRM entry, an auto-reply — whatever makes sense for your process.

What you can do with the webhook data

EmailConnect gives you structured data for every incoming email. That's enough to build useful automation without anything fancy:

Create a CRM entry automatically: Pull the sender's name and email from the webhook payload, create a contact and deal in HubSpot, Pipedrive, or whatever you use. The email body becomes the first note.

Notify the right person: If you have multiple salespeople, route based on simple rules — geographic keywords, company size mentions, product interest. Or just round-robin.

Send an immediate reply: A quick "Thanks for reaching out, someone will follow up shortly" buys you time and tells the prospect their email didn't vanish. You can include a calendar booking link to let them self-schedule.

Flag high-intent signals: An email mentioning pricing, timelines, or specific integration needs is probably further along than a generic "tell me more." Your automation can flag these for faster follow-up.

A practical tip

You probably already have a sales@ address with emails going to someone's regular mailbox. You don't have to change that. Set up an auto-forward rule to your EmailConnect address so the original recipient still sees the email and your automation processes it. Best of both worlds — nothing changes for the person, but now you also have it in your pipeline automatically.

Getting started

  1. Create your sales address in EmailConnect (or set up forwarding from your existing one)
  2. Connect a webhook to your automation platform
  3. Build the flow: receive webhook → create CRM entry → notify team → send auto-reply
  4. Test by emailing yourself and confirming the lead shows up in your CRM

Takes about 30 minutes to set up. After that, no lead sits unnoticed in an inbox again.

The faster you respond to a sales inquiry, the more likely it converts. This isn't about fancy lead scoring — it's about making sure every email reaches your team immediately instead of waiting for someone to check a mailbox.