OpenAI Lead Qualifier: Gmail Replies & Sheets Logging

Automatically qualify website leads and draft Gmail replies—powered by OpenAI

This n8n workflow captures leads from a webhook, uses OpenAI to screen and score them, logs every result to Google Sheets, and creates Gmail reply drafts (optionally alerting Slack for hot or risky leads) so your team can review before sending.

What this workflow does

• Receives leads via a POST webhook (or you can run a manual test lead). It can also run on a weekday 9 AM schedule to handle follow-ups.
• Normalizes and validates inputs, including email validation and checks for spam, bots, prompt-injection patterns, risky content, and an optional shared secret.
• Deduplicates by looking up the email in Google Sheets to skip drafting if the same contact was handled recently.
• Qualifies with OpenAI and returns structured data: fit score, category, intent, budget, timeline, urgency, missing info, and a short owner summary, then assigns a tier (hot, warm, poor fit, spam, or needs review).
• Creates Gmail drafts: for hot/warm leads, drafts a personalized first reply using OpenAI; for poor-fit leads, drafts a fixed polite decline. It also scrubs prices/discounts/guarantees by replacing them with confirmation tags.
• Logs everything to Google Sheets, including lead details, qualification results, and Gmail draft/thread IDs. Optionally posts Slack alerts for hot leads or anything marked “needs review”.
• Runs follow-ups on schedule: reads “waiting” leads from Sheets, checks Gmail for replies/sent messages, drafts an OpenAI follow-up in the same thread when due, and updates records in Sheets.

Use cases

• SaaS teams that want automatic lead qualification from contact forms and consistent first responses
• Automation engineers building an OpenAI-powered outbound workflow with audit-ready logging
• Ops teams needing human review triggers for risky, spammy, or uncertain leads

Technical details

• n8n nodes used: if, set, code, gmail, slack, switch
• Integrations: OpenAI for structured qualification and draft generation; Google Sheets for lead storage and deduping; Gmail for draft/thread management; Slack for optional alerts