Automate your lead generation funnel

Every business has their own way of collecting leads. Do you use a landing page or a form? Social media ads or webinars? What about chatbots? 

But lead generation doesn't stop at the most obvious choices. You're probably also collecting prospects through free trial signups, that "subscribe to our newsletter" box on your website, or even in unlikely places like support tickets. And without a system to capture and route those leads to a centralized place, it's all too easy to lose track of where they came from, how qualified they are, and who should follow up. 

That's where automation comes in. Not just to move leads into your CRM or spreadsheets after they're captured, but to help you organize and act on them in real-time. From grabbing UTM details from ads to routing high-intent prospects to the right sales rep, automation can become the front line of your lead generation strategy.

Skip ahead

• Capture leads from forms and landing pages

• Track leads from webinars and newsletters

• Extract key details from emails

• Pull leads from ads

• Use AI to classify lead data

• Identify sales opportunities in tickets

• Use webhooks to get the most out of your data

• Advanced tips for automating your lead funnel

Capture leads from forms and landing pages 

Forms and website embeds are a tried-and-true method of gathering information from people interested in your business.

And keep in mind: people who take the time to reach out this way are often serious buyers—decision-makers or business leaders actively looking to talk to sales, request a demo, or explore pricing. These are high-intent leads, and they shouldn't sit unnoticed in an inbox or form tool. But manually exporting and importing them into the right tool slows down your response time and increases the chance of a lead slipping through the cracks. 

Instead, you can use these Zaps (our word for automated workflows) to send every incoming form submission straight to your CRM or a Zapier table for tracking: 

Not every lead should be entered into your CRM or database the same way (or at all). A multi-step Zap can save your team from wasting time wading through unqualified leads to get to the gold.

For example, a filter step can send only the right kinds of form activity to your CRM. Or, you might even add an extra step to verify the identity of each lead before they're submitted. That way, you're not wasting time on unqualified leads.

Pro tip: Want to create a custom form that actually knows what it's doing? With Zapier Interfaces, you can quickly whip up lead capture forms that, when submitted, automatically feed data straight into Zapier Tables. Get started with one of these templates:

Contact us form

Automate the way you handle incoming messages using a customizable contact form template.

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AI Form Template

Streamline data collection with an AI-powered form.

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Lead Capture Template

Easily capture new leads and email them from within the connected table.

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Track leads from webinars and newsletter subscriptions

Not every lead starts with a form fill. Some raise their hand by signing up for a webinar or subscribing to your newsletter—signals that they're already engaged and looking to learn more.

These touchpoints often sit with brand or events teams, using tools that don't always feed cleanly into your CRM. That disconnect can leave sales teams out of the loop. With automation, you can bridge the gap—automatically capturing signups, syncing them to the right tools, and triggering follow-ups while interest is still fresh.

This is how you turn passive interest into a pipeline and make sure your best leads don't get stuck in someone else's spreadsheet.

Extract key data from emails

If you get new leads delivered straight to your inbox, set up an automation so that information is tracked whenever you add a specific label or tag to that email or it matches a specific search term.  

This is especially useful for capturing inbound interest—without relying on manual tracking or forwarding.

Pull leads from your ads

When your advertising team invests in paid ads, you need a way to make sure every lead is captured, attributed to the right campaign, and routed to the systems where your team works—like your CRM or team chat app. Without that visibility, it's nearly impossible to track ROI or justify further investment.

With these Zaps, you can send that information straight to a spreadsheet or CRM whenever someone fills out your advertising form. That way, your team can follow up quickly and evaluate performance across campaigns. 

But here's the catch: Ad platforms often format data differently than the tools you're sending that data to. One tool might list dates in MM/DD/YYYY, while another uses a timestamp. Job titles may come through inconsistently, or name fields might need capitalization before your CRM can use them effectively.

That's where formatter steps come in. You can format lead data automatically—so it lands in your CRM or database ready to go, without manual cleanup or broken fields.

Use AI to classify lead data

Some leads arrive with incomplete or messy data—job titles that vary wildly, missing company details, or no clear signal of intent. Instead of sending that raw input straight to another app, you can add an AI step to enrich and even classify leads automatically.

Use tools like ChatGPT or AI by Zapier to standardize job roles, identify company names, or gauge buying intent from form responses or emails. That way, your sales team only receives structured, sales-ready data—so they can focus on qualified leads, not cleanup.

Identify sales opportunities in support tickets

Not all leads come through marketing channels—some are hiding in your support inbox. When a customer asks about upgrading or expanding usage, that's a signal your sales team should see. But that ultimately depends on clear communication between sales and support—and high-intent leads could easily slip through the cracks without automation. 

With these workflows, Zapier automatically scans incoming support tickets for keywords, intent, or product signals that may indicate a sales opportunity. An AI step using ChatGPT can summarize or score the conversation, and based on that insight, Zapier routes the ticket to your sales team—via Slack, your CRM, or another follow-up channel.

By turning support insights into sales actions, you not only reduce churn—you uncover new revenue opportunities already within reach.

Pro tip: To avoid cluttering your sales team's workspace with constant notifications, you can use conditional logic in a paths step to route different leads to the appropriate sales rep based on certain criteria.

Want to see how our team at Zapier implemented a similar workflow? Click on the pre-made template below to set up this Zap and start identifying high-value sales opportunities automatically.

Increase sales leads from support tickets

Identify whether support tickets contain buying signals so you can easily route new leads to sales.

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Use webhooks to get the most out of your lead data

Not every lead can be as easily tracked as the above use cases. Some might sign up for free trials, take action on your website, or do something specific within your product without ever contacting your team directly. And it might just be that you're using a custom app or a tool not supported by Zapier.

When this happens, you can use webhooks to capture lead data from virtually any platform (that supports webhooks) and send it where it needs to go. Here are a couple of Zap templates to get you started: 

You can also use webhooks to send information from your lead capture tools (including UTM campaign details) to another platform that doesn't have a Zapier integration, like a custom CRM.

Pro tip: Collecting and organizing lead data can be overwhelming. Simplify the process with our lead capture template, which gives you a scalable, centralized system that collects your leads from multiple sources and adds it to your CRM.

Unified lead capture

Easily channel leads from multiple sources into your CRM.

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Advanced tips for automating your lead generation funnel

As we've established, the best way to streamline your lead capture workflows is to go beyond a simple two-step Zap. When you start with the bigger picture, you can find even more opportunities for scaling while improving efficiency.  

For example, here's a visualization (using Zapier Canvas) of how a sales ops team might build an automated lead capture system that collects leads from multiple sources, organizes that data, and funnels them into the sales pipeline. (Click to see a larger image in a new tab.)

Supercharge your lead capture process

When your tools are disconnected or your data is messy, even the most promising leads can get stuck in limbo. With automation, you can build a system that collects, organizes, and routes leads exactly where they need to go.

Whether you're pulling in leads from ads, forms, support tickets, or anywhere else, Zapier gives you the power to streamline your entire sales process, reduce manual work, and help your team move faster on the opportunities that matter most.

And if you're looking for even more inspiration for streamlining and supercharging your sales operations, we've rounded up the best ways to automate your lead management:

• How to enrich your lead data and qualify your leads

• How to manage your leads

• Streamline sales with AI and automation

• Automate your CRM with Zapier

• Optimize your ads with automation

• Automate your forms with Zapier