Working leads and prospects
A lead is a family who has shown interest but hasn't applied or enrolled. They might have filled in a lead form, called the office, or met you at a school fair. This article covers adding leads by hand and moving them toward enrollment. For building the forms that collect them, see Managing your leads.
Leads and applications are different things
Two stages look similar and mean different things:
Lead - someone who has expressed interest. They haven't chosen sessions or committed to anything
Applied - someone who has submitted an enrollment application for a session that needs approval
Keeping them apart matters because leads are your pipeline and applications are your queue. A lead needs following up. An application needs a decision.
Neither stage takes up a spot in a session. You can hold as many leads as you like without affecting availability, which is what makes a lead list safe to grow.
Adding a lead by hand
When interest arrives outside a form, add it yourself. Go to Campers and choose Add prospect.
The form has two parts. First the parent or guardian:
Name - first and last, with preferred and middle names if you have them
Email and phone number - how you'll follow up
Family - attach to an existing family, or create a new one
Attaching to an existing family is worth a moment's care. Searching for the family name first keeps siblings together on one record instead of creating a duplicate family you'll have to merge later.
Then add one or more campers. You can add several in a single pass, which is quicker than repeating the form for each sibling.
Saving creates the family, the parent's account, the campers, and an enrollment for each camper at the Lead stage in the current season.
Working your list
Leads sit in the campers table alongside everyone else, so filter by the Lead stage to see just your pipeline. From there you can:
Tag them - group by source, interest, or campaign so you can filter later
Add a note - keep a record of the conversation on the camper or family profile
Set a task - give the follow-up an owner and a due date
Send a broadcast - email or message a filtered group of leads at once
Save the filtered view once you've built it. A saved view of open leads is the fastest way back to your pipeline each morning.
Turning a lead into an enrollment
There are two routes forward, and which you pick depends on how much you want the family to do.
Invite them to enroll. Send an invitation from the camper's record and the family completes enrollment themselves, choosing sessions and paying. Their stage moves on as they progress. This is the usual route, and it works during a priority window without an access code.
Enroll them yourself. If you've already agreed the details, move the enrollment forward from the admin side and record the sessions and payment directly.
Either way the same record carries through, so the notes, tags, and history you built up while they were a lead stay attached.
Leads that don't convert
Not every lead becomes a camper. Leaving them at the Lead stage keeps them in your pipeline, which makes the pipeline less useful over time. Move a dead lead to Withdrawn to take it out of your working list while keeping the record and its history for next year's outreach.