Follow-ups

Most people who abandon a form never come back on their own. If they gave you an email address before they went, follow-ups ask them to finish — and the link in that email drops them back into the same conversation, on the question they stopped on, with every answer they already gave still there.

That last part is the bit worth knowing. The answers live on our side, keyed to the response, not in the browser that started it. So the link works on a phone when the form was started on a laptop, in a different browser, after clearing cookies, or three weeks later.

Turning it on

Settings → Follow-ups. Pro plan and above.

The default sequence is two emails: one four hours after they leave, one a day later. You can add a third, and three is the maximum.

Where the address comes from

The first of these that yields an address wins:

1. A verified respondent. If the form signs people in with Google or an email code, we already have an address they proved they control. Phone sign-in proves a number, not an address, so the steps below apply.
2. An email question, or the email field of a contact_info question, in the order they appear in the form.
3. A hidden field, if you name one under Address from a hidden field. This is for the case where you already knew their email and put it in the link.

If none of them yields anything, nothing is scheduled. A form that never asks for an email cannot follow anybody up, and switching the feature on will not change that.

What gets sent

One screen, one link, and the progress they made:

You answered 3 of 7 questions in Get a quote — 4 to go, about a minute.

You can add your own text above the button, and use {{ref}} to pull in answers they already gave — the same syntax the auto-reply uses. {{remaining}} is the number of questions left, which is what makes a subject line like "You're 3 questions from finishing" work.

When they arrive

Reminders are held out of the respondent's night. With Quiet hours on — under Settings → Follow-ups — nothing sends between 9 PM and 9 AM, and the hours are read on their clock, not yours. A reminder that falls due at two in the morning waits until nine that same morning; one that falls due at ten in the evening waits until nine the next day. Nothing is dropped, and nothing is ever sent earlier than the delay you set.

Which clock, in order:

1. The respondent's own, from the browser they opened the form in.
2. Your form's, recorded from your browser when you switched quiet hours on. This covers the respondents whose browser did not say.
3. UTC, if neither is known — which in practice means a session opened through the API, where there is no browser to ask.

Two things worth knowing. If a night swallows two steps — say one due at ten in the evening and one at two in the morning — they land two hours apart in the morning rather than arriving together. And a reminder that the hold would carry past your form's close time is dropped rather than sent, because an invitation to a form that has already closed is worse than no reminder at all.

Quiet hours is on for forms created from now on, and off for forms that existed before it shipped — switching it on is one toggle, and it applies to reminders scheduled from that point.

When a follow-up is not sent

Every reminder is re-checked at the moment it is due, not when it was scheduled. It is dropped if:

• the respondent finished, or was screened out, in the meantime
• the form closed, or would be closed by the time the email lands — including when quiet hours would hold it past the close
• the address unsubscribed, bounced, or opted out on the form itself
• the plan lapsed, or the monthly email allowance is spent
• the response was made in test mode

Consent, and why the form asks

A reminder to somebody who did not finish is marketing email, not a service message — in the US, the UK, the EU and Canada alike. Two consequences you will see in the product:

• Respondents are offered an opt-out beside the question that asks for their address. It has to be there rather than at the end, because the whole premise is that they never reach the end.
• Every reminder carries an unsubscribe link and your postal address. Both are legal requirements, and the unsubscribe works in one click with no login.

Use follow-ups for forms people fill in to get something from you — a quote, a demo, a trial, a booking. Not for surveys, job applications, feedback forms or event RSVPs: those are not sales negotiations, and a reminder about one is marketing to somebody who never entered into anything.

When a reminder gets the credit

A reminder is credited with a response if that response is finished within 24 hours of the reminder going out. That is the whole rule, and it is the same one affiliate links and ad platforms use, for the same reason: almost nobody finishes a form in the tab they opened from their inbox. They read the mail on a phone at lunch, and answer on a laptop that evening.

Three consequences worth knowing:

• They do not have to click anything. Opening the link is recorded, and reported separately as the mail's click-through rate, but it is not what earns the credit. Counting only clicks missed most of the responses reminders actually brought back.
• Only one reminder is credited per response. Three messages to one person recovered one response, not three. The credit goes to the last one that could plausibly have done it — the most recent send, or the most recent open where there was one.
• A completion outside the window is not a recovery. Somebody who wanders back a week later shows as Finished later in the results table: they finished, and no reminder claims them.

The reminder column, state by state

The Follow-up column carries one word per response. Hover it for the full sequence, with real times and — where there was one — which message brought them back.

Measuring whether it worked

Under Options you can hold back a share of abandoners and send them nothing. The results table marks those Held back.

This is worth switching on. Published recovery rates for this kind of email are almost always the share of recipients who converted, with no control group — so they count everybody who was coming back anyway. A holdout is the only way to know what the reminders actually added. The held-back people are judged through the same 24-hour window, measured from the moment the reminder they were denied would have gone out, so the two sides are answering the same question.

Webhooks

Two events, both documented in webhooks: followup.sent when a reminder goes out, and response.resumed when somebody comes back through one.

Other channels

WhatsApp and SMS are listed in the channel picker and disabled. Both are blocked on approvals outside this product — WhatsApp does not deliver marketing templates to US numbers at all at present, and US SMS needs per-sender 10DLC registration — so neither has a date attached to it.