Adding leads by hand
Add a lead for someone who called, walked in or was referred to you, and learn how hand-added leads differ from form leads.
Not every lead fills in a form. People call, walk in, get referred by a friend or message you on social media. Add them with New lead so they sit in the same pipeline as everyone else.
Adding leads is a Pro feature. See Basic and Pro plans.
Adding a lead
- Open Leads in the sidebar and pick the site the lead belongs to.
- Click New lead.
- Fill in what you know and click Add lead.
The lead is created in the first open stage of your pipeline, and its page opens so you can carry on working.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name, Email, Phone | Enter at least one of the three |
| How did they reach you? | The channel: Phone, Walk-in, Referral, Email, Social or Other. Phone is preselected |
| Company | Optional |
| Note | Optional. It becomes the first note on the lead |
| Follow-up | Optional date. It creates a task called “Follow up” due that day |
| More fields | Your custom fields, if the site has any |
If you leave name, email and phone all empty, you’re asked to “Enter at least a name, an email or a phone number”. An email or phone number that doesn’t look valid is refused as well.
A brand-new site with no leads shows an Add your first lead button that opens the same dialog.
What a hand-added lead looks like
It works like any other lead: you can move it between stages, assign it, log calls and add follow-ups. Two things mark where it came from:
- Source is Added by hand, followed by the channel you chose, for example “Added by hand · Referral”. You’ll see it in the Lead panel, and you can filter the list by source.
- It has no form submission in its timeline, because there wasn’t one.
When the person already exists
PageFork checks the email address you typed against the people already on the site.
If the email belongs to someone you already have, the dialog says “This person exists.” Choose:
- Add a new lead for them to create the lead on the existing person. Their record is kept as it is. The name and company you typed are not applied, but any custom fields you filled in are saved to the person.
- Back to change what you typed.
If that person already has an open lead, the dialog says “They already have an open lead.” A person can only have one open lead at a time, so click Open their lead and continue there instead of creating a second one.
If the existing person was archived, adding a lead for them restores them.
Only the email is checked here. If you add someone by phone number alone and they’re already on the site, you get a second person. When two people share a phone number, the lead page shows a banner where you can merge the duplicates.
Starting from the person’s page
You can also begin from the person. Open them from the People view and click New lead. The dialog is titled “New lead for” and their name, and skips the name, email and phone boxes because it already knows who the lead is for.
The button only appears when the person has no open lead. If they have one, it reads Open lead instead.
Other ways leads get created
| Source | How |
|---|---|
| Form | A visitor submits a form on your site. This is the usual way |
| Added by hand | The New lead dialog described above |
| Import | A CSV import can optionally create a lead for each person. See Importing people |
| API | The PageFork apps for Zapier and Make can create leads from another tool |
Leads created from Zapier or Make follow the same matching as forms: if the person is already on the site and has an open lead, no second lead is created for them.
Hand-added leads and automations
This is the rule to remember:
A lead that didn’t come from a form submission never triggers destinations or Zapier and Make triggers.
Destinations send a form submission to your other tools. A lead added by hand, imported or created through Zapier or Make has no submission to send, so:
- Nothing fires when the lead is created.
- Nothing fires when you move it to another stage, even if a destination is set to fire on that stage.
One thing follows from how leads work: if that person later submits a form on your site, the submission is attached to their open lead. From then on the lead carries a submission, and stage changes can trigger destinations like on any form lead.
Good to know
I can’t see the New lead button. Pick a single site in the site dropdown. The button isn’t shown for All sites or on a Basic site.
I added a lead for the wrong site. Leads can’t be moved between sites. Add the lead again on the right site.
The follow-up I set has no owner. A follow-up created from this dialog starts unassigned. Open the lead and give it to someone in the Follow-ups panel.