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An automation rule decides what happens to a new lead the instant it is created, before anyone on your team has looked at it. This walkthrough covers building a rule, ordering it correctly against other rules, and reading what it actually did once a matching lead arrives.
Automation rules: first 5 of 6 steps
- 1Open Lead Automation Rules from Settings
- 2Create a new rule and add conditions
- 3Choose the actions
- 4Order the rule against your others
- 5Save and watch a real lead hit
Before you start
- Automation rules are available on every plan, including Free, with no cap on the number of rules an organisation can create.
- A rule's actions (assign, enroll, send) only run once, at the exact moment the lead is created. It is not a retry mechanism; if the template send fails, it does not run again automatically on a later matching lead.
- If you plan to enroll leads into a sequence from a rule, create that sequence first, since the rule references an existing one.
- Only Owner and Admin roles typically manage automation rules; check your custom role's permissions if the settings page is not visible.
Steps
- Open Lead Automation Rules from Settings. The page lists every existing rule in the order it runs, with a plain-English summary of its conditions, such as "Source is Meta Lead Ad" or "Campaign name contains Diwali."
- Create a new rule and add conditions. Pick a field (Source, Campaign name, Form name, Pipeline, Label, or Chatbot), an operator where one applies (equals or contains), and a value. Add up to 5 conditions; every one of them must be true for the rule to match.
- Choose the actions. Assign the lead to a specific team member, pick a sequence to enroll it in, and pick an approved template to send the instant the rule fires. Set any or all three on the same rule.
- Order the rule against your others. Rules evaluate top to bottom, and the first match wins. Drag a rule to reorder it; put specific rules (one campaign, one form) above general ones (any Meta Lead Ad) so the specific rule fires first.
- Save and watch a real lead hit it. When a lead arrives from any source, whether a Facebook Lead Ad, a website form, a chatbot conversation, or a comment-to-DM capture, every active rule is checked in order and the first full match runs.
- Check the lead record. The assignment, sequence enrollment status, and any template sent are all visible on the lead, and the template, once sent, appears in the linked conversation's message history.
A D2C store running two Meta Lead Ad campaigns at once, say a discount offer and a new-arrivals teaser, is a typical case for two rules rather than one: each rule matches on Campaign name, sends a different welcome template, and enrolls the lead in a different sequence depending on which ad it came from. Because the first matching rule wins and stops evaluation, the two rules never both fire for the same lead even if their Source condition is identical.
What you will see
A new lead that matches a rule shows the assigned team member and enrollment status on its record within moments of being created, and if the rule sent a template, that message appears in the conversation thread exactly like one an agent sent manually. A lead that matches no rule at all is left untouched by automation and waits for manual triage, which is expected behavior for a catch-all-free setup, not a bug.
Because a rule-triggered send uses the same tracked path as a manual send, it inherits every protection that path already has: opt-out enforcement, so a rule can never message a contact who has sent STOP, and template pause detection, so a rule referencing a template Meta has since paused fails safely with a logged reason instead of silently vanishing. Nothing about running through a rule bypasses the checks a human-sent message would have to pass.
Settings and options
| Setting or field | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Conditions (up to 5) | Source, Campaign name, Form name, Pipeline, Label, Chatbot; combined with AND logic | None set on a new rule |
| Source values | Meta Lead Ad, Web Form, WhatsApp Form, Chatbot, Comment Rule, Manual | N/A |
| Operator | Equals or contains, on fields that support text matching | Equals |
| Assign to | Sets the lead's assigned team member | Unassigned |
| Enroll in sequence | Starts the referenced sequence for this lead | None |
| Send template | Sends an approved template immediately, only if the lead has a phone number | None |
| Rule order | Determines evaluation order; first full match wins and stops evaluation | Order created |
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| A specific rule never fires even though its conditions look right | A more general rule sits above it in the order and matched the lead first | Drag the specific rule above the general one so it gets first pick |
| The rule's template action did not send | The lead had no phone number attached at the moment the rule ran | Confirm the lead source actually captures a phone number; a rule cannot send to a lead it has nothing to reach |
| A lead matched no rule at all | Every rule has at least one condition the lead does not satisfy, and there is no catch-all rule with zero conditions at the bottom | Add a catch-all rule (no conditions) at the very bottom of the list if you want every unmatched lead to still get a default action |
| A rule scoped to one chat widget also fired for a different widget's leads | The Chatbot condition was left blank ("any chatbot") instead of set to the specific widget | Set the Chatbot condition explicitly to the widget you want to scope the rule to |
| A rule's sequence enrollment shows "pending" instead of "enrolled" | The lead has no resolvable WhatsApp contact yet | This is expected and resolves automatically once the lead's phone number first messages your connected WhatsApp number; see sequences |
| A retried template send never appeared after the first one failed | Rule actions run once, at lead creation, and are not retried automatically | Fix the underlying cause (for example, an accidentally paused template) and handle the affected lead manually; the next new matching lead will use the corrected template |
Related reading
Build the sequence a rule should enroll leads into before wiring up the rule itself, or use Flow Builder directly for anything a rule's fixed three actions cannot express, such as a branching qualification conversation.