Lead emails
Point your lead sources at one address and every notification becomes a contact plus a drafted first reply to the buyer.
Marketplaces and dealer systems announce a new lead by email — but that email comes from a robot, not from the buyer. Reply to it and you're talking to yourself. InboxTender reads the notification, pulls the buyer out, and treats the lead as if the buyer had written in directly: the contact is the buyer, the conversation is with the buyer, and the drafted first reply goes to the buyer's own inbox.
Your leads address
Take your workspace email address from the Channels page and add +leads
before the @ — signed in, this shows your workspace's actual address:
Anything sent there is treated as lead-source traffic: recognized notifications become buyer conversations, and nothing on this address ever gets an automatic reply to the robot that sent it.
Where to plug it in
Anything that can send an email works. These are the usual suspects:
Dealer systems
Add the address as an alert or lead-notification recipient — the same place your salespeople already get lead emails.
- Lightspeed EVO
- CDK Global
- DealerSocket
- VinSolutions
- DealerCenter
Marketplaces
Add it as a lead-delivery email in your listing dashboard.
- CycleTrader
- ATV Trader
- Cars.com
- CarGurus
Real estate
Add it wherever your leads are emailed today — portal notifications and CRM lead routing alike. Real-estate sources use the RELS standard, which is parsed like ADF.
- Zillow
- Realtor.com
- Redfin
- Follow Up Boss
- kvCORE
- BoomTown
- Lofty
- CINC
- Real Geeks
- Your website — send your form-fill notification emails to it.
- Or just forward — a forwarding rule from the mailbox that already
receives your lead alerts works too. Recognition also runs on your plain
address, so existing forwarding keeps working without the
+leadssuffix.
Use one route per source: if your dealer system emails us directly, don't also forward the same alert from your mailbox, or the same lead can show up twice.
What happens to a recognized lead
- The buyer becomes a contact — name, email, and phone, merged into an
existing contact when one already matches, tagged
leadplus the source (for examplecycletrader), with the vehicle of interest noted. - A conversation opens from the buyer — what they wrote ("I would like to make an offer…") plus the vehicle, price, location, and trade-in details underneath.
- A first reply is drafted — the assistant answers the buyer's actual message. Email replies always wait for your approval before sending.
Who each lead is assigned to
When a notification names a salesperson, the buyer is assigned to them. That
covers the Salesperson line on Lightspeed EVO alerts and the assigned agent
in RELS lead metadata. There's nothing to set up, and the people named don't
need an InboxTender login.
Filter by Assigned to in the Inbox and on Contacts, or pick a person as a broadcast's audience. A newer notification moves the buyer to whoever it names. Once someone on your team changes the name on the contact, or removes it, notifications leave that buyer alone.
Recognized formats
| Format | What it is |
|---|---|
| Lightspeed EVO system alerts | ONLINE_LEAD_RECEIVED notification emails, including embedded marketplace lead details |
| ADF/XML | The automotive lead standard emitted by marketplaces, OEM sites, and dealer website providers |
| RELS lead metadata | The real-estate standard (leadmetadata.org) that portals and agent CRMs embed in their notification emails |
A message on the leads address that doesn't match a known format still lands in your inbox — visible, untouched, and never auto-replied to. If a lead arrives without any email address for the buyer, the contact (with phone, tags, and notes) is still captured; only the drafted reply is skipped.
Prefer pushing leads from code or an automation tool instead? Use the contacts API.