Skip to main content
A Facebook lead ad asks people to fill in a short form without leaving Facebook or Instagram. Meta calls these Instant Forms. Once your Facebook Page is connected to DMLY, every form someone submits on that Page lands in DMLY as a contact, with their answers on the record, ready for an automation to follow up on WhatsApp. You don’t download a spreadsheet from Ads Manager, and you don’t copy anyone in by hand. The person who filled in the form is in your contacts moments later.

​
Before you start

  • Your Facebook Page is connected to DMLY. See Connect a Facebook Page.
  • You’re an admin of the Page, and you can advertise on it in Meta.
  • If your business restricts who can download leads (Meta calls this Leads Access), DMLY needs to be on that list. Most businesses never change it, and then everyone who manages the Page, DMLY included, already has access.

​
Turn it on for your Page

1

Reconnect the Page

Go to Integrations → Channels and reconnect your Facebook Page. Facebook asks you to approve the permissions DMLY needs, and lead access is now one of them.
2

Approve lead access

Approve everything Facebook asks for. If you turn lead access off on this screen the Page still connects for Messenger, but no lead form reaches DMLY.
3

Submit a test lead

Send yourself a test lead with Meta’s Lead Ads Testing Tool, then look for the person in Contacts.
Leads that arrived while DMLY couldn’t read them aren’t lost. When you reconnect the Page with lead access, DMLY fetches every lead from the last 90 days that it couldn’t read before. That’s as far back as Meta keeps a lead.

​
What happens to each lead

DMLY reads the answers and finds the person they belong to.
  • Someone you already have. If the phone number or email on the form matches a contact (including a WhatsApp contact with that number), the lead goes on that contact. DMLY only fills in what the record is missing: a name, an email or a phone number you didn’t have. It never overwrites what’s already there.
  • Someone new. Anyone else becomes a new contact, named from the form’s full name (or first and last name), with the email and the phone number in full international form.
Either way:
  • The contact’s Source reads Facebook lead form: <form name>, unless the contact already had a source. A source you set yourself is never replaced.
  • Every answer, including your own custom questions, is added to the contact’s Flow answers, with the question and the date. See Flow answers.
  • A line appears in Logs: Lead received from Facebook form "<form name>".
Each lead is saved once. If Meta sends the same lead twice, DMLY recognises it and nothing is duplicated. A lead is never turned away because your plan’s contact limit is full. Like a new customer messaging you, the person is saved and your admins are told you’re over the limit. See Plans.

​
Follow up automatically

The Facebook lead form trigger starts an automation the moment a lead is saved. Find it under Contact Events in the Start automation when… picker.
1

Pick the forms it listens to

Leave it on Any lead form, or choose A specific form and pick the form from the list. Forms appear there once a lead has come in from them, or once DMLY can read your Page’s forms. You can also paste a form’s ID from Meta Ads Manager into Form ID.On A specific form with nothing chosen, the automation never starts, and the trigger on the canvas says No lead form chosen yet.
2

Build it on a WhatsApp number

Someone who filled in a lead form has never messaged you, on any channel. DMLY reaches them at the phone number they gave, which only works for an automation on a WhatsApp number. On another channel, or for a lead who gave no phone number, the automation stops before it sends anything.
3

Send an approved template first

Because the person has never messaged you, WhatsApp’s 24-hour window isn’t open, so your first message has to go out as an approved template. See WhatsApp rules and limits.
The quickest start is the Follow up on a Facebook lead form template in the automation library. It tags the person Facebook lead and sends them a welcome. When their window is closed, which for a lead it always is, the welcome goes out as the system template dmly_lead_followup. Install that template first from Templates → System → Available to install, and wait for Meta to approve it. See System templates.
A lead that creates a new contact also fires the New contact trigger. A lead that matched someone you already had doesn’t.

​
Use the answers in your messages

The automation can read the form. The variable picker has a Facebook lead form group with the common ones, and you can type any answer by its question. For your own questions, <question> is Meta’s key for the question, lower-cased, with anything other than letters, numbers and underscores turned into _. A question Meta keys as what_is_your_budget? is {{lead.answers.what_is_your_budget}}. The easy way to read the keys is to submit a test lead and look at the questions under Flow answers. See Variables.

​
See which ad brought each lead

The ads report counts leads per ad, next to the conversations your Click-to-WhatsApp ads start. With your Meta ad account connected it also works out the Cost per lead. A lead ad shows up there even though nobody ever messaged you from it.

​
Tell Meta which leads became customers

Connect Meta Conversion Leads and DMLY reports each lead’s progress back to Meta: the lead itself, each pipeline stage they reach, and when they become a client. Meta then delivers your lead ads to more people like the ones who bought, instead of whoever is quickest to fill in a form.

​
Send leads to your other tools

Every saved lead fires the lead.created webhook, with the contact, the form, the ad and every answer under Meta’s own question keys. Subscribe to it under Integrations → Webhooks, or pick it as a Zapier trigger.

​
Troubleshooting

Check these in order:
  • The Page is connected in Integrations → Channels, and you reconnected it after lead forms became available, approving lead access.
  • If your business restricts Leads Access in Meta, DMLY is allowed there.
  • Logs has a line starting Couldn’t read a Facebook lead. Its wording says what to fix.
Then send a test lead with Meta’s Lead Ads Testing Tool.
The Page’s connection doesn’t include lead access, or your business’s Leads Access setting leaves DMLY out. Reconnect the Page from Integrations → Channels and approve lead access, then check Leads Access in Meta. Reconnecting fetches the leads DMLY missed.
Reconnect the Page from Integrations → Channels. The leads that arrived in between come in when you do.
The usual reasons: the automation isn’t on a WhatsApp number, the lead gave no phone number, or dmly_lead_followup (or whichever template you used) isn’t approved yet. Open the automation’s runs to see where it stopped.
That’s deliberate. The phone number or email on the form matched someone you already had, so the answers went on their record rather than a duplicate. Their name and details stay as they were, and only blanks were filled in.

​
Next

Triggers

Every way an automation can start, including the Facebook lead form trigger.

Ads report

Leads, conversations and cost per ad.

System templates

Install dmly_lead_followup and the rest.

Webhooks

Receive every lead in your own system.