FanBase DM Lead Capture Automation (n8n, Apify, Google Sheets)

Turn FanBase DM purchase intent into tracked leads automatically

This n8n workflow scans your FanBase Copilot DMs every 15 minutes for purchase-intent messages, enriches the matching fans via FanBase MCP + Apify Instagram scraping, and writes (or updates) clean lead records in Google Sheets—using a saved watermark so you never re-scan the same messages.

What this workflow does

• Runs on a schedule: Executes every 15 minutes.
• Reads a timestamp watermark: Uses an n8n data table to store the last processed time. On the first run, it falls back to scanning the last 24 hours.
• Queries FanBase MCP for new DM activity: Fetches events since the watermark using the FanBase MCP OAuth2 credential (for https://api.copilot.fanbase.gg/mcp).
• Filters DM events + detects purchase intent: Keeps DM-only events, identifies intent via keyword matching, and maintains one lead per fan (including a reply link for the conversation).
• Updates the watermark: Writes back the new “last seen” timestamp so only newer messages are processed next time.
• Enriches using FanBase CRM data: Pulls two pages of FanBase MCP CRM data, merges them, and joins each intent lead to its profile to resolve the fan’s handle and profile URL.
• Scrapes Instagram details with Apify: Runs apify/instagram-profile-scraper for each resolved handle to retrieve profile information (e.g., bio, follower count, external links).
• Upserts into Google Sheets: Builds a normalized lead record (including an extracted email when available) and appends or updates the row in the Leads tab using fan_id as the unique key.

Use cases

• SaaS operators capturing warm leads from purchase-intent DMs without manual triage
• Automation engineers maintaining a “single source of truth” CRM-style sheet fed by FanBase conversations
• Brands qualifying inbound interest and enriching prospects with Instagram context automatically

Technical details

• Integrations: FanBase MCP (OAuth2), Apify (apify/instagram-profile-scraper), Google Sheets
• n8n components/nodes: code, merge, data table, sticky note, google sheets, apifyn8n-nodes-apify (Apify node)
• Workflow state: n8n data table with string columns key and value for the watermark read/write steps