How lead capture works in Drry

Collecting an email address and following up automatically involves five separate things in Drry. None of them is complicated on its own. What trips people up is how they connect, because the connection is not where you would expect it.

This article is the map. Every other article in this section assumes you have read it.

The five pieces

• A form. The thing with boxes in it. Someone types their email and presses a button.

• A contact. The person record the form creates. Also called a lead.

• A list. A named bucket you put contacts into. Inside the form builder this is called an audience. Same thing.

• An automation. A sequence that runs by itself: send this, wait three days, send that.

• An email. The message an automation sends. Written once, reusable anywhere.

The chain, in order

Someone opens your form and types their email. Drry creates a contact for them. The form adds that contact to the list you chose. The automation, which has been watching that list, notices and starts them at step one. Step one sends an email. A wait step holds them for three days. Step two sends another.

Every one of those handoffs is a thing you configure. The two that matter most are the form's audience setting, and the automation's trigger.

Lists, segments and tags

Three ways to group people, and they are not interchangeable.

• A list is static. People are put on it and stay there. This is the only one an automation can watch.

• A segment is live. It is a saved question, like "members who cancelled", and it re-answers itself every time you look. Great for a one-off email, useless as a trigger, because there is no moment when someone joins it.

• A tag is a label you stick on a person. You can email everyone with a tag, and an automation can add or check one mid-sequence, but a tag cannot start a sequence.

If you take one thing from this: if you want it to trigger something, it has to be a list.

Where each thing lives

• Forms are under Funnels, on the Forms tab.

• Contacts, lists, segments and tags are under Emails, on the Audiences tab.

• Automations are under Emails, on the Automations tab.

• Emails themselves are under Emails, on the Broadcasts tab.

Forms are free on every plan, one on the free plan and unlimited above it. Automations need the Creator plan or higher.

Marketing consent, if you are based in the EU, EEA, UK or Canada

Whether your pages ask people to opt in to your emails depends on where you are based, never on where the visitor is. You set it in Settings, under General, in the community's country field. If you are based anywhere else, or no country is set, nothing changes and your pages look the same as they always did.

If you are based in the EU, the EEA, the UK or Canada, every place a stranger's email address reaches your list asks first:

• The email box on a funnel page carries one line, "We'll email you occasional updates", and pressing the button is the yes.

• Free doors, meaning forms, guide gates, free downloads, free event sign-ups, free bookings and joining a free community, show an unticked box: "Email me occasional updates from your community."

• Paid doors, meaning the shop, event tickets, payment links, paid bookings, selling forms and joining a paid community, show the same box ticked by default. Unticking it is the buyer's refusal.

What someone came for always arrives either way. The box only decides whether they join your list. Someone who says no is still saved as a contact, marked Not opted in, and your email broadcasts skip them. A no never takes anybody off your list: if the person is already on it, for example a member who unticks the box, they stay subscribed. A yes adds them, or puts back someone who had left. Drry records every answer.

Two places cannot ask: a signed-in visitor opening the room or watch page of a public event, and the email step of an Instagram auto-reply. Someone new who arrives that way is saved as Not opted in. Anyone already opted in stays opted in.

In the form builder, a locked Marketing consent step shows what visitors will see. Its switch, "Ask for marketing consent on this form", is yours to turn off for a single form. The step does not appear at all outside those countries, and it is not on a booking intake form, because the booking page asks.