New Lead » Send First Message make · scn 5607012
The automation that sends every brand-new wedding lead their first text — and quietly fixes the wrong booking time Dubsado hands it.
▸ How the first text goes out — and the fix for Dubsado's wrong booking time
What this does
The moment a brand-new wedding lead lands in Dubsado, a Zapier automation catches it, packages up their name, phone, and requested date, and hands it to this scenario over a webhook. From there it's automatic: confirm it's actually a wedding lead, find or create their SalesMSG contact, text them hello with the correct date and time, and tag them as a Lead.
The one thing to remember: the date and time in that first text don't come from Dubsado's booking date — they're rebuilt from the requested date/time field, because Dubsado's own booking-date time is wrong.
Where it sits
Step 1 · MakeDubsado InquiriesFiles the lead
lead
Step 2 · HereFirst MessageTexts the lead
text
Step 3 · MakeSales CallsBooks & logs the call
call
Step 4 · MakeSip & See ToursSchedules the tour
tour
Step 5 · MakeBooking NotificationsConfirms the booking
booked
Downstream · MakeOpt-OutsMarks Lost
One thing this diagram doesn't show: Opt-Outs (06) isn't queued up after Booking — it watches this node's SalesMSG contact directly. Any lead who texts back STOP after this first message gets marked Lost, whatever stage they're actually at.
How it works
Every wedding lead moves through the same five steps, in order.
- A Zapier automation is watching Dubsado for brand-new leads. The moment one appears, a Python step inside Zapier packages up the workflow type, first and last name, phone, source, created-at, and the requested date/time, then posts it to this scenario's webhook.
- The scenario checks the workflow field against the wedding-inquiry form types. Anything that isn't a wedding lead stops right here — nothing else runs.
- It searches SalesMSG for a contact matching that phone number, capped at one result.
- No match → create a new SalesMSG contact: number, first name, last name, email (if given).
- Match found → update that contact using the ID from the search, with the same details.
- Either way, it sends the first text: "Hi {first name}, I'm Janelle from the McKenzie House. I see you've enquired about {date} at {time} CST for your wedding."
- The date comes from Dubsado's booking date field — but only the date part (day name, month, day, year). Its time gets dropped, because that's the part Dubsado gets wrong.
- The time comes from requested date/time instead — the field that actually holds what the couple picked.
- Last step: the contact is tagged Lead in SalesMSG.
The moving parts
What this automation touches, at a glance. 7 steps in total.
Starts from
A webhook, called by a Zapier automation watching Dubsado for new leads
Filters to
Wedding leads only — every other workflow type is dropped, silently
Searches
SalesMSG contacts, by phone number
Creates or updates
The lead's SalesMSG contact record
Sends
The first text message, via SalesMSG
Tags
Contact gets the Lead tag in SalesMSG
Good to know
• Dubsado's booking date field is bugged: it holds the right date, but the wrong time — it's actually recording when the couple submitted the form, not the time they asked for. This automation works around it by pairing booking date's date with requested date/time's time.
• "Wedding lead" isn't one single form — Dubsado has more than one workflow type that counts. Add a new wedding-type form later and it needs adding to this filter, or those leads go silent here.
• Create vs. update is decided purely by the phone-number search — no email or name matching involved.
• Dubsado's booking date field is bugged: it holds the right date, but the wrong time — it's actually recording when the couple submitted the form, not the time they asked for. This automation works around it by pairing booking date's date with requested date/time's time.
• "Wedding lead" isn't one single form — Dubsado has more than one workflow type that counts. Add a new wedding-type form later and it needs adding to this filter, or those leads go silent here.
• Create vs. update is decided purely by the phone-number search — no email or name matching involved.
What you can safely change
Green = go ahead. Amber = fine, but text yourself a test lead after. Red = leave it, call us.
| Green | The message wording — reword the greeting or sign-off freely, as long as the name, date, and time still land where they should. |
| Green | The SalesMSG tag applied at the end — rename it or add a second one. |
| Amber | The wedding-lead filter — add a new Dubsado workflow type here if you add a new wedding form. Get it wrong and leads that should text just don't. |
| Amber | The date-formatting tokens on the message — powerful, but easy to fat-finger into a garbled date. Test after any change. |
| Red | The webhook trigger — this is the exact address the Zapier automation posts to. Regenerate or delete it and leads stop arriving, with nothing telling you. |
| Red | The Zapier side — it lives outside this Make scenario. A change there needs its own test before it ever reaches this webhook. |
| Red | Swapping requested date/time back for booking date in the message — that's re-introducing the exact bug this automation exists to fix. |
What connects to this
This node sits right after the lead is filed, and it feeds two different things downstream.
◀ Comes in from
- Dubsado Inquiries
A Zapier automation watches Dubsado for that same new-lead event and pushes it here by webhook — it runs alongside, not through, the Airtable filing in Unit 01.
Goes out to ▶
- Sales Calls (Calendly) — once they book off the text, Unit 03 picks it up.
- SalesMSG Opt-Outs — not next-in-line, but cross-cutting: it watches this contact for a STOP reply any time after this text goes out.
Not covered in this breakdown: the Zapier automation that catches the Dubsado lead in the first place — that piece lives outside Make, on the Zapier side.
If something looks wrong
| A wedding lead came in, but no text went out. Check the workflow-type filter first — it's probably a form type not yet on the wedding list. Then confirm the Zapier automation actually fired. |
| The text sent, but the date or time is wrong. Check the requested date/time field on that Dubsado inquiry, and the date-formatting tokens on the message step. |
| A duplicate SalesMSG contact got created instead of updating the existing one. The match is on phone number only — check the number came through clean (no missing digits, wrong country code). |
| Contact created and texted, but never tagged. Check the add-tag step ran — it's the very last one, right after the message send. |
You can't permanently break this. A full restore copy of the automation is saved alongside this page. If anything gets misconfigured, we rebuild it exactly as it is today from that file.
Call us if: leads stop getting texted altogether, or more than one lead in a row gets the wrong date — a single wrong date is Dubsado's usual glitch; a run of them means the fix itself has broken.
Call us if: leads stop getting texted altogether, or more than one lead in a row gets the wrong date — a single wrong date is Dubsado's usual glitch; a run of them means the fix itself has broken.
Jargon buster
- Webhook
- A listening address. Zapier posts to it, and that's what starts this automation.
- Router
- A fork in the automation — it sends the lead down the "new contact" path or the "existing contact" path, never both.
- Filter
- A gate on a step. If the data doesn't match, nothing past that point runs.
- Booking date vs. requested date/time
- Two different fields on the same Dubsado inquiry. Booking date's time is the unreliable one; requested date/time is the field that's actually correct.
- Tag
- A label added to a SalesMSG contact — here, "Lead" — so you can filter or automate off it later.