Before you even start nurturing leads, it's important to "qualify" them.
Qualifying—or "scrubbing"—leads means determining which prospects are worth your sales team's time. For example, perhaps your product or service is expensive, so you've discovered your most important leads are companies with an annual revenue of $10+ million. These would be your "qualified" leads.
It's a critical part of the lead research process and makes sales outreach more efficient. But it can be a daunting task, particularly if you're manually processing hundreds of leads in a short amount of time. To avoid bottlenecks (like hot leads going lukewarm before sales have a chance to reach out), you should think about automating that process.
By creating automated workflows—what we call Zaps—you can automate the tasks involving lead research and deliver qualified prospects to your sales team faster. From automatically tracking engagement to enhancing lead data, here are the top ways to automate the lead research process.
New to Zapier? It's workflow automation software that lets you focus on what matters. Combine user interfaces, data tables, and logic with thousands of apps to build and automate anything you can imagine. Sign up for free to use this app, and thousands more, with Zapier.
Skip ahead
Enrich your lead data
Obviously, the more data you have about a company or an individual, the more able you are to qualify them effectively. But if you have limited resources, you can't expect your team to spend all day searching online for detailed information. Instead, you can use a contact management tool like Clearbit to locate that info for you.
With these Zaps, anytime a new lead is sourced through your CRM, database, or ads tool, Zapier will find the prospect and add any missing gaps to your other tools (think phone numbers or email addresses).
Add data via Clearbit to new HubSpot contacts
HubSpot + Clearbit
More details
Make sure you have all the information you can on your CRM, and you'll always know how to engage your clients. After you've activated this integration, it will trigger with every new contact you add on HubSpot. Zapier will search for more information on them via Clearbit, and update their entry on HubSpot with the results. All the information you need will always be within reach!
Enrich company data from Clearbit with new or updated rows in Google Sheets
Google Sheets + Clearbit
More details
Once active, this Zapier integration will find the domain of a company name as soon as you add it to a row in a specified Google Sheets spreadsheet. Then, it will automatically enrich that row with company data from Clearbit, no added clicks required!
Enrich Livestorm webinar attendees with social and company info from Clearbit and log in Google Sheets rows
Clearbit + Google Sheets
More details
The more information your team has, the easier it is to send targeted messages that close deals. Use this Zapier automation to enrich Livestorm webinar attendees with social and company information from Clearbit. Then, log that info in a Google Sheet. That way, you can segment your email lists and send messages that nurture these leads toward a sale.
Enrich new Facebook Lead Ad leads with Lead Score by Zapier and log them in Google Sheets
Facebook Lead Ads + Lead Score by Zapier + Google Sheets
More details
Personalized outreach is easier when you have detailed customer information. With this integration, Zapier can enrich the leads you capture via Facebook with additional information, like their name, company, company size, industry, location, and more! It also scores the customer fit of the person to help you prioritize the leads most likely to convert.
Add new companies from Seamless AI to Salesforce
Seamless.AI + Salesforce
More details
Are you sick of wasting your time copying and pasting company info? With this automation, you no longer have to! Just a one time set up, and all new companies entered into Seamless AI will also be saved to Salesforce as well.
Score leads based on engagement
The more information you have about a lead's movements, the more you can tell if they're qualified. Did they open a marketing email you sent them? Or click a link in an ad campaign? Maybe they even attended a webinar and spent an hour getting to grips with your product.
Understanding how a lead engages with your company before they've converted should give you a general idea about where they're at in the sales funnel. Once you've determined that level—or "lead score"—you'd update the prospect in your CRM so your sales team can actively reach out to them.
Doing this manually is a lot. Instead, use these Zaps to actively track lead engagement in tools like Mailchimp or Go To Webinar. When a lead opens an email or attends a webinar, Zapier will track that engagement then automatically log it in your CRM, ready for your sales team to tackle.
Create engagements in HubSpot from new emails opened in Mailchimp
Mailchimp + HubSpot
More details
You need to track your campaign's effectiveness in real time, but doing that by hand can overwhelm your workday. That's where this integration comes in. Set it up to automatically generate an engagement in HubSpot whenever a new email is opened in your Mailchimp campaign.
Update HubSpot contacts when new links are clicked in Mailchimp
Mailchimp + HubSpot
More details
This integration automatically updates a contact in your HubSpot account, or creates a new contact, whenever a new Mailchimp link is clicked in a campaign. Make sure your contact data reflects all the possibilities, while saving yourself from tedious data entry at the same time!
Create HubSpot engagements when new Mailchimp links are clicked
Mailchimp + HubSpot
More details
Make sure you're ready to close at a moment's notice, without waiting around for manual updates to your HubSpot account. This integration helps by automatically creating an engagement for a contact in your HubSpot account whenever a specified Mailchimp campaign has a new link clicked.
Add new GoTo Webinar attendees to HubSpot contact list automatically
GoTo Webinar + HubSpot
More details
Streamline your marketing efforts with this simple workflow. As soon as a new attendee registers for your GoTo Webinar, they are immediately added to your HubSpot contact list. This eliminates the hassle of manual data entry, freeing you up to focus on content creation and fostering valuable relationships. Enhance your customer engagement and foster business growth through consistent communication.
Notify your sales team about qualified leads
You've finished the research side of things. You've got a list of qualified leads to hand over to sales, and you want to strike while the iron's hot. The problem is your sales team might not spend every waking minute in your CRM (or wherever else you're storing those leads).
They're probably in Slack or communicate via email. With these Zaps, whenever your list of leads is ready, you can automatically ping the right people in the right channel to let them know.
Send Slack messages whenever Google Sheets rows are updated
Google Sheets + Slack
More details
If you use Google Sheets to collaborate with your team on spreadsheets, it can be tough to keep track of every change your coworkers make. This Zap makes it simple: it sends you a new Slack message whenever a Google Sheets spreadsheet row is updated.
Send Slack messages for new HubSpot contacts
HubSpot + Slack
More details
Want to make sure the team on Slack knows about all those new customers on HubSpot? Don't take time away from your important work just to send an update notification—let us take care of that. Once you've set up this automation, every new contact on HubSpot will automatically and reliably trigger a Slack message, sending all the information to the channel of your choice so you can be sure everyone is in the loop at all times.
Send Gmail emails for new Pipedrive leads
Pipedrive + Gmail
More details
Use this integration to send automatic email notifications about new leads, so you can easily stay on top of managing your business. A Gmail email will be sent for each new Pipedrive lead.
Improve your sales feedback loops
Obviously, lead qualification isn't a science. What might sound like a perfect match on paper doesn't automatically guarantee success.
But feedback—especially from the sales folks on the front lines—can make a difference for future research. For example, they might be able to shed light on why a specific prospect went cold so you can fine-tune your criteria accordingly.
If you use a tool like Typeform or Google Sheets to routinely gather feedback from your team, you can use these Zaps to streamline the process. Once someone fills out a form, Zapier can either send that response straight to a spreadsheet, or ChatGPT can first provide a summary and categorize responses to save you time.
Categorize Typeform responses with ChatGPT
Typeform + ChatGPT (OpenAI) + Google Sheets
More details
Automate the process of categorizing and archiving responses from Typeform. With ChatGPT's text classification, each entry can be swiftly categorized into predefined segments or topics. These classified entries are then systematically stored in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, ensuring organized data storage and easy access for future analysis.
Save new JotForm responses as Google Sheets rows
Jotform + Google Sheets
More details
With this integration, you can have your JotForm submissions automatically added to Google Sheets so it's easier to share results with colleagues. After you set this up, every time there is a new JotForm response, a new row will be automatically added to a Google Sheets spreadsheet you specify.
Qualification made easy with automation
There are so many moving parts to lead research.
But with a few automatic workflows, you can easily streamline that process from start to finish. Whether you need to automatically enrich lead data or streamline the feedback process, Zapier can help you make the whole sales process a breeze.
This article was originally published in March 2017, written by Jamie Irish. It was substantially updated in February 2024 by Elena Alston.
