The quickest way to stop losing leads in a social inbox is to give every message one of six labels the moment it arrives: hot, warm, question, support, partner or noise. Each label gets one owner and one reply window. That's the whole system.
TLDR: Label by buying stage, not by platform or by when the message came in. Six labels, one owner each, one reply window each. Hot leads get a human within an hour, noise gets nothing.
Most inboxes fail for a simple reason. Everything lands in one pile, so someone asking "how much for 20 seats?" sits between a heart emoji and a complaint about a late parcel. Sort by time and the newest message wins. Sort by label and the most valuable message wins.
The six labels, with the rule that triggers each
The test for every label is what the person just asked. Don't guess at their company size or follower count.
| Label | Trigger | Owner | Reply window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hot | Asks price, demo, availability, how to buy | Sales or founder | 1 hour in work hours |
| Warm | Interest with no sales question: "love this, tell me more" | Community manager | Same day |
| Question | Asks how something works before buying | Community manager | Same day |
| Support | An existing customer has a problem | Support | By your support standard |
| Partner | Press, collab, reseller, supplier | Whoever owns partnerships | 2 working days |
| Noise | Emojis, spam, "great post", tags of friends | Nobody | None |
Reply windows are a starting point. Pick numbers your team can actually hit and write them down.
Why six and not fifteen
Every extra label adds a decision. Someone who has to choose between "pricing question", "pricing objection" and "pricing comparison" will skip all three. A label that gets applied 90% of the time beats a perfect label that gets applied 30% of the time.
If one label holds more than half your inbox, split it. If a label holds fewer than five messages a month, merge it into its neighbour.
Four edge cases that break the system
- A support message that contains a buying signal. "My plan is great, can I add 10 more seats?" is hot. Label it hot and tell support.
- A warm message that turns hot. Re-label it the moment they ask a price. The owner and the clock change with the label.
- A hot lead on a public comment. Reply in public with one short line, then move the details to a private message. Never quote prices in public unless you already publish them.
- A message you can't place. Label it question and reply with a clarifying line. Don't let it sit unlabelled.
Label by what they asked, then let rules do the rest
Hand labelling works until volume rises. After about two weeks, you'll notice the same phrases in the hot and question piles: "price", "demo", "how do I", "do you ship". Those are your trigger words.
In Mydrop, trigger-word automation can react when a comment contains a phrase like that, and the social inbox keeps every conversation from every connected channel in one list. Start by labelling by hand for two weeks. Turn the repeated phrases into rules afterwards, so you automate patterns you've actually seen.
A 10 minute audit to test your labels
Pull the last 30 conversations and relabel them using the table above. Then ask three things:
- How many were hot, and how long did each wait for a first reply?
- Did any hot message sit under a noise or warm message?
- Which label did you struggle to apply?
The answers tell you where leads leaked. For most teams the leak isn't a missing tool. It's a hot message nobody saw because it looked like every other message.
Your first week with the labels
Day 1: copy the table into your team doc and name an owner for each label. Day 2 to 5: label by hand and note every message you couldn't place. Day 6: merge or split labels based on those notes. Day 7: run the audit above and compare the reply times for hot messages with your window.
If you manage several brands, keep the six labels identical across all of them and change only the owners. For the wider system around this, see how to build a response system that never misses leads, and when you're ready to bring it into one inbox, start free with Mydrop.
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