How to Use Keap to Follow Up Every Web Lead Automatically

The short answer: authenticate your sending domain first, decide the tags that will route people, put an opt-in form on your site, build an automation in the Automation Builder whose When is the form submission and whose Then sequence sends a welcome email, applies a tag and creates a task for the owner, mark it ready and publish, test it on your own address, and check email statuses when someone says nothing arrived.

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The job: a visitor fills in the enquiry form on a Friday night, and by Monday they have had a reply, carry the right tag and sit in the owner's task list for a call. Keap's automation builder is built for exactly that. For the product and its costs, see the Keap glossary entry.

Before you build:

• Price the person who calls back. Keap includes 2 users; if the lead owner is a third person, that is 12 x $39 = $468 a year on the pricing page, checked on 24 October 2026. A free trial also stops at 25 emails, so test with your own addresses and keep real leads for the paid account.
• Reuse your current form. The fields on the form you have today become the opt-in form fields, and the Keap WordPress plugin puts it on a WordPress site without new code.
• Name the checks now. Two: the automation's reports, which the builder article says carry the same information as before, and each contact's email status.

What you need

• An edition with the Automation Builder. Keap's help centre lists it on Pro, Max and Ultimate; on a Classic account you toggle on Ultimate first, per the builder article.
• Access to your domain's DNS, or the person who has it.
• Pop-ups allowed for Keap in your browser. The builder article warns that email and text editors may not open otherwise.
• For WordPress, your Legacy API Key and App ID from Keap's API settings.

Step 1: Authenticate the sending domain

Click your avatar, then Settings, then Domains, and under Email domains click Connect email domain, per the domain guide. If DMARC is missing, Keap offers to create it: Quarantine is the recommended start, with a default of 5% and daily reports to an address you choose. The Entri flow then adds an SPF record, two DKIM records and a DMARC record at your DNS provider. Verification can take up to 48 hours. Do this first: the guide says email from an unauthenticated domain does not leave Thryv's systems at all.

Step 2: Decide the tags

Write down one tag per route, for example Enquiry: Website and Enquiry: Partner. In Keap a tag applied to a contact starts every automation that uses it as a trigger, at once, according to the tags guide. That is useful for routing and a trap when two automations share one tag by accident.

Step 3: Put the opt-in form on your site

In WordPress, open Infusionsoft, then Opt-in Forms, then New Opt-In Form, pick a type (inline, pop up, below post and others), name it, enter the Legacy API Key and App ID and click Authorize, per the opt-in form guide. Add your fields; email is always required. Choose where it shows, then Save and Exit. Every submission becomes a contact and starts the automations tied to new contacts. Keap's own web forms and landing pages do the same job if your site is not on WordPress, per Keap's overview.

Step 4: Build the When and the Then

Open the Automation Builder and drag a When onto the canvas: the form submission. Whens are what the old builder called Goals, per the builder article. Connect it to a Then Sequence and fill it in order:

1. An email that answers the enquiry and offers a booking link.
2. A tag, Enquiry: Website, so the contact can be found and routed later.
3. A task for the contact owner to call, which the pricing page describes as task management that assigns tasks from triggers.

The sequence opens in a pop-up over the canvas, so the whole automation stays in view while you edit it.

Step 5: Mark it ready and publish

A Then Sequence is marked Ready by default; switch it off from the sequence's menu while you are still writing. Before publishing, look for the dots: yellow means unpublished changes and red means an element still needs setup, per the builder article. Then publish.

Step 6: Test it on yourself

Submit the form with your own work address and one personal address. Then open the contact record and read the email status under the address. The delivery guide lists four statuses that allow marketing email: Confirmed, Unconfirmed, Confirm (Legacy) and Unengaged Marketable. Anything else and the automation skips the email step for that contact. The Email Status Search report shows the status for any address, with the date and reason it was set.

Step 7: Let Claude find the leads that went quiet

The Keap connector for Claude can list contacts, tags and automations and add contacts to an existing automation, though it cannot create one. Once a week, ask it for contacts tagged Enquiry: Website who have not opened an email in 30 days, and to propose adding them to your re-engagement automation. The human check: read the list it returns before you tell it to act. The article calls the feature beta and asks you to verify responses, and it needs a paid Claude plan.

What Keap's guides warn about

• The From address. If the email template's From domain is not authenticated, the delivery guide expects the message to be blocked or filtered.
• Contacts who never got there. A contact may not have reached the email step yet, or never entered the automation; check their status inside the builder.
• Retired elements. Fax, Traffic Sources and Voice Broadcast are gone from the new builder, so remove them from older automations and republish.
• Free addresses on users. Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook addresses on a user profile cannot be authenticated, per the domain guide.

A trial is there to show you the builder, and 25 emails cannot show you whether your list reaches the inbox. Judge deliverability on the paid account, after the domain shows as verified.

FAQ

How long does domain authentication take?

Up to 48 hours after the records are added, per the domain guide. If it stays Pending longer, check for spaces or a wrong DNS zone before contacting support.

Can one form start different follow-ups?

Yes. Apply different tags by route, since a tag starts every automation that uses it, per the tags guide. Plan the tag list so two automations never share one by accident.

Why did a lead get no email?

Usually one of three causes in the delivery guide: an email status that blocks marketing email, a contact that has not reached the email step, or an unauthenticated From domain.