The follow-up system, start to finish

What it does

A new enquiry arrives. It lands in your CRM as a contact, gets a reply within minutes written in your voice, and if that reply goes unanswered it follows up twice more on a schedule. You do nothing after setup.

What you need

• Make, free tier, the canvas the whole thing runs on.
• HubSpot, free CRM, where contacts and deals live.
• Claude, which writes the replies inside the workflow.

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The build, in order

• 1. Catch the enquiry. Point your website form or inbox at a Make webhook. Every submission becomes a bundle you can act on.
• 2. Create or update the contact. Search HubSpot by email first, so a repeat enquiry updates the existing record instead of creating a duplicate.
• 3. Draft the reply. Send the enquiry text to Claude with a prompt that carries your tone, your services and your prices. Ask for a short reply that answers the actual question and proposes one next step.
• 4. Send it. Out through your own mailbox so it threads normally and replies come back to you.
• 5. Chase twice. A scheduled scenario checks for contacts with no reply after two days and after six, then sends a shorter nudge. Anyone who replies drops out of the sequence automatically.

The prompt that does the work

Give the model the enquiry, then constrain it. Something close to: "You are replying on behalf of [business]. Answer the specific question asked, in under 120 words, in a warm and plain tone. Do not invent prices. Propose exactly one next step. If the enquiry is unclear, ask one clarifying question instead." The constraints matter more than the persona.

What breaks at scale

The free Make tier covers a real small business comfortably. The usual first ceiling is operations per month, and the usual cause is a polling trigger checking too often. Move to webhooks wherever the source supports them and the cost mostly disappears.