Inbound Automation — Overview

The inbound automation system handles the full lifecycle of brand outreach emails — from first contact through follow-ups, bookings, and response tracking.

System Components

Component	What It Does	Where It Lives
Main Inbound Zap (347165805)	Catches brand emails to intake@, classifies, drafts + sends AI reply, logs to Airtable	Zapier
Follow-Up Cron	Sends Day 3/7/11/14 follow-ups to brands who haven't responded. Claude Sonnet generates personalized emails, sent from agent's address in-thread.	Python cron on Mac Mini (Mon/Wed/Fri 8:45am CT)
Companion Zap — Brand Reply (356311797)	Detects when a brand replies and marks them as Responded in Airtable	Zapier
Companion Zap — Booking	Detects when a brand books a call and marks Responded + Has Booked	Baked into Cal.com handler Zap

Data Store

All inbound activity is tracked in a single Airtable table:

• Base: Inbound Leads (appt783peNrkiYMHB)
• Table: Inbound Messages (tblRfRTEd6kfW9slT)

Key fields:

Field	ID	Purpose
email	fld2Cl3RSKZBcu97B	Brand sender email (used for matching)
Thread ID	fldS6OHvxDod6vNUl	Gmail thread ID
assigned_agent_email	fldO9YkmrZdL4u5QO	Agent assigned to this lead
Responded	fldjDZdTmKt46zMid	Checkbox — brand has replied or booked
Has Booked	fld1QCoZaOiPyomxl	Checkbox — brand has booked a call
Follow Up Count	fldt03M5kKQSHy947	Number of follow-ups sent
routed_at	fldv83HliHa55i5tq	When the record was created (auto)

Flow Diagram

Brand emails intake@creatorsagency.co
        ↓
Main Inbound Zap fires
  → Classifies (BRAND_DIRECT / AGENCY / OTHER)
  → Finds or creates Close CRM lead
  → Assigns agent via round-robin
  → Claude drafts reply
  → Reply sent from agent's email address (charlie@, annie@, henry@) via Gmail
  → BCC'd to bccsales@creatorsagency.co for team visibility
  → Record logged to Airtable Inbound Messages
  → Sender added to Mailchimp with "Inbound" tag
        ↓
Follow-Up Zap runs Mon/Wed/Fri 9am CT
  → Sends Day 3/7/11/14 emails if Responded = false
  → Stops when Responded = true or 4 follow-ups sent
        ↓
Brand replies to agent           OR        Brand books a cal.com call
        ↓                                           ↓
Close CRM syncs email                    Cal.com webhook fires
        ↓                                           ↓
Companion Zap 1 fires               Cal.com handler Zap (markAirtableBooked)
  → Finds ALL Airtable records            → Finds ALL Airtable records
    for sender email                         for booker email
  → Sets Responded = true                 → Sets Responded = true
    on all matches                         → Sets Has Booked = true
                                             on all matches
        ↓                                           ↓
Follow-up Zap sees Responded = true → stops sending follow-ups