Automated Client Intake System

The Problem

Harbourview Creative was winning clients. The intake process was losing them.

Every new inquiry followed the same painful loop: a prospect fills out a contact form, the response sits in someone's inbox, the account manager copies details into Notion manually, sends a welcome email written from scratch, then posts a message in the team Slack — usually hours later, sometimes the next morning. One project coordinator estimated she spent 45 minutes per new lead just on the administrative shuffle, before any actual work began.

The bigger problem: leads were cooling off. When a prospect fills out a form and hears nothing for four hours, they've already emailed two other agencies. Harbourview was losing jobs not because of their work — their portfolio was strong — but because their intake felt like a small operation.

In Q4 2025, they brought in 34 new inquiries. Twelve converted to discovery calls. Of those 12, they later confirmed that three had actually sent a note to a competitor first. The response lag was measurable revenue.

Our Solution

We built a fully automated intake pipeline that handles everything from the moment a prospect submits their information to the moment the team is briefed — with zero manual intervention.

The moment someone submits the intake form:

1. Their information is written directly into the Harbourview Notion CRM database — deal name, contact details, project type, budget range, timeline, and a calculated lead score based on project size

2. A personalized email confirmation fires within 90 seconds — pulling their first name and project type from the form, not a generic "we got your message" template

3. The account management Slack channel receives a formatted card with all lead details, a direct link to the Notion record, and a one-line suggested next step based on the project type

4. If the stated budget is above $5,000, the message is also pinged directly to the studio director with a priority flag

Nothing waits for a human to start the chain. The prospect hears back before they close the browser tab.

ARCHITECTURE

[Website Contact Form]
         |
    [Google Forms]
         |
   [n8n Workflow Engine]  ←─────────────────────┐
         |                                        |
    ┌────┴──────────────────────────┐             |
    |                               |             |
    ↓                               ↓             |
[Notion Database]           [Email Service]       |
  • New lead record           via Cloudflare       |
  • Lead score field          Workers              |
  • Auto-linked to            • Personalized       |
    project type                confirmation       |
                                • Client-specific  |
                                  tone/template    |
                                                   |
                        ┌──────────────────────────┘
                        |
                  [Slack Webhook]
                  • #new-leads channel card
                  • Lead summary + score
                  • Direct Notion link
                  • Priority DM if budget > $5K

What we configured:

Google Form with 9 fields including project type, budget range, and timeline

n8n cloud workflow with three parallel branches (Notion, email, Slack)

Notion database with custom properties, filtered views by lead status, and a formula field calculating lead score

Cloudflare Workers email handler using Mailchannels for reliable delivery — no third-party email service subscription required

Two Slack message templates: standard lead card and priority director alert

Error handling with fallback notifications if any branch fails

Total components: 1 form, 1 automation workflow, 3 integrations, 2 email templates, 2 Slack templates.

Tech Stack

| Component | Tool |

|-----------|------|

| Form | Google Forms |

| Workflow engine | n8n (cloud) |

| Database | Notion |

| Email delivery | Cloudflare Workers + Mailchannels |

| Team notifications | Slack (webhooks) |

| Lead scoring formula | Notion formula field |

Results

The numbers after 30 days:

45 minutes → 0 minutes manual admin time per new lead

4–6 hours → 90 seconds average response time to new inquiries

3 of 5 new clients in the first month mentioned the fast response as a deciding factor in choosing Harbourview

The studio coordinator reclaimed roughly 8 hours per month she was previously spending on intake admin

Zero missed leads — previously one or two inquiries per month would fall through when the coordinator was on a deadline

One month after launch, Harbourview's account manager said: *"I feel like we went from a one-person reception desk to having an actual system."*

The system has handled 41 inquiries since deployment without a single manual intervention.

Timeline

| Day | Work |

|-----|------|

| Day 1 (morning) | Discovery call with Harbourview (30 min). Scoped the workflow, confirmed tool access, reviewed existing Notion structure. |

| Day 1 (afternoon) | Built n8n workflow, configured Notion database schema, wrote email templates, set up Slack webhooks. |

| Day 2 (morning) | Testing with 12 sample form submissions across different project types and budget ranges. Fixed one edge case where budget field was blank. |

| Day 2 (afternoon) | Delivered to client with documentation and 15-minute walkthrough. Harbourview went live same day. |

Total delivery: 2 days from first call to production.

Investment

Quick Win tier: $750–$1,500

The build took approximately 6 hours of hands-on work. Harbourview estimated the system saves 8 hours per month in admin time — at $50/hr in coordinator time, that's $400/month in direct savings. The system paid for itself in under three months, not accounting for the revenue recovered from faster lead response.

Ongoing cost to Harbourview: n8n cloud subscription (~$20/month). Everything else runs on their existing tools.

*Want a system like this for your business? Intake automation is one of our fastest builds — most clients are live within 48 hours. [Get a quote →](https://jsterlinglabs.com/contact)*