AI Lead Follow-Up Automation: Reply to Every Enquiry in Seconds with n8n

Why speed matters

When someone fills in your form, they're often contacting other businesses too. A fast, specific reply makes you the obvious choice. Doing that by hand means watching your inbox all day. Automation does it for you.

What the automation does

Receives the enquiry from your website form through a Webhook.
Cleans up the details: name, email, phone or WhatsApp, message and source.
Asks AI to score the lead from 1 to 10, label it Hot, Warm, Cold or Spam, summarise what they want and write a personal reply.
Saves everything to a Leads tab in Google Sheets.
Emails the reply to the lead (spam is never emailed).
Alerts you when a lead scores 7 or higher, so you can call while they're keen.

What you need

n8n Cloud or self-hosted n8n
Gmail and Google Sheets
An API key from OpenAI or any OpenAI-compatible provider. A small, low-cost model is enough.
A website form that can send to a webhook: Elementor, Webflow, Typeform, Tally, Jotform or a custom form

Step 1: Catch the lead

Add a Webhook node (POST) and set it to respond using a Respond to Webhook node, so your form gets an instant "thanks" while the rest runs. Copy the Production URL into your form's webhook setting.

Step 2: Score and draft with AI

Add an HTTP Request node that calls your AI provider's chat completions endpoint with JSON mode on. Ask for a reply in this shape:

{"score": 1-10, "category": "Hot|Warm|Cold|Spam",
 "summary": "one sentence", "reply_subject": "...", "reply_body": "80-120 words"}

Tell the model never to invent prices or promises. That one line keeps replies safe to send automatically.

Step 3: Save, reply and alert

Use a Google Sheets node to append the lead, an IF node to skip spam and leads without an email, a Gmail node to send the reply, and a second IF and Gmail pair to alert you about hot leads.

Step 4: Test it

Click Execute workflow, then send a test enquiry to the Test URL, for example with curl:

curl -X POST "YOUR_TEST_URL" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"Ada","email":"you@yourbusiness.com","message":"Catering for 80 guests on Saturday?"}'

Check the sheet, your inbox and the alert, then click Publish.

Make it even better

Send hot-lead alerts to WhatsApp or Telegram instead of email.
Add your services and starting prices to the prompt so replies are more specific.
Track where leads come from with a source field on each form.

Skip the build: the AI Automation Kit includes this AI Lead Catcher ready to import, plus an inbox assistant, invoice chaser, content machine and review booster. Or hire me to set it up for your business.