By: You gated your flipbook. Someone entered their email on page four of your product catalog. They're interested.
Now what?
If that lead sits in a spreadsheet for three days while your sales team doesn't know it exists, you've wasted the whole exercise. Speed matters. Research from Harvard Business Review found that companies who contact leads within an hour are seven times more likely to qualify them. Wait a day, and your odds crater.
So you need those flipbook leads in your CRM. Fast. There are three ways to do it.
Option 1: Zapier (Easiest Setup)
Zapier connects apps without code. You set up a trigger ("new lead from Flipbooker") and an action ("create contact in HubSpot"). Done. Takes about 15 minutes if you've used Zapier before, maybe 30 if you haven't.
How to Set It Up
Step 1: Connect Flipbooker to Zapier. In your Flipbooker account, grab your Zapier API key from Settings. In Zapier, search for Flipbooker as your trigger app and authenticate with that key.
Step 2: Choose your trigger. Select "New Lead" as the trigger event. This fires every time someone submits their email through one of your flipbook gates.
Step 3: Choose your CRM as the action. Search for your CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho, whatever you use). Select "Create Contact" or "Create Lead" as the action.
Step 4: Map the fields. Tell Zapier which Flipbooker fields go where in your CRM. Email to email. Name to name. You can also map the document title and page number so your sales team knows exactly what content the lead was reading.
Step 5: Test and turn on. Zapier will send a test lead through to verify everything works. Check your CRM, confirm the contact appeared with the right data, and flip the Zap live.
Making It Smarter
A basic Zap gets leads into your CRM. A smarter one makes them useful.
Add tags automatically. Tag each lead with the document they viewed. Someone who read your pricing guide is further along than someone who read your intro brochure. Your sales team should know the difference without asking.
Set lead scores. If your CRM supports lead scoring, add points based on the content type. Product catalog viewer gets more points than blog reader. That way hot leads float to the top.
Notify your sales team. Add a Slack or email notification step so someone knows the moment a lead comes in. A Zapier user on Reddit described their setup: "Webhook fires, Zapier catches it, pushes to HubSpot and pings our sales channel in Slack. Whole thing took twenty minutes to build." That's the speed you're going for.
For more on what to do with those leads once they're in your CRM, our lead generation guide covers the full follow-up strategy.
Option 2: Webhooks (More Control)
Webhooks are for teams who want tighter control or use a CRM that isn't on Zapier. A webhook sends data directly from Flipbooker to a URL you specify, every time a lead comes in.
How Webhooks Work
When someone enters their email in your flipbook, Flipbooker sends a POST request to your webhook URL with the lead data as JSON. Your server (or your CRM's API) receives it and does whatever you've programmed it to do.
When to Use Webhooks Over Zapier
- Your CRM has a direct API and you want to cut out the middleman
- You need real-time sync (webhooks are faster than Zapier's polling)
- You want custom logic like deduplication, enrichment, or routing to different sales reps based on the document viewed
- You don't want to pay for Zapier (webhooks are free on Flipbooker's end)
Basic Webhook Setup
Step 1: In your Flipbooker dashboard, go to your flipbook's lead generation settings and find the webhook configuration.
Step 2: Enter the endpoint URL. This could be your CRM's API endpoint, a custom server, or a service like Make (formerly Integromat) or n8n.
Step 3: Configure which fields to send. The payload typically includes email, name, document title, page number, and timestamp.
Step 4: Test it. Submit a test lead through your flipbook and verify the data arrives at your endpoint.
What Does the Data Look Like?
A typical webhook payload:
{
"email": "[email protected]",
"name": "Jane Smith",
"document": "2026 Product Catalog",
"page": 4,
"timestamp": "2026-02-15T14:30:00Z"
}
Clean and simple. Map those fields to your CRM's contact creation API and you're set.
Option 3: Manual CSV Export (Simplest)
No integrations. No setup. Just download your leads as a spreadsheet and import them wherever you want.
When Manual Export Makes Sense
This sounds old-school. It is. But it works fine when:
- Your volume is low. If you get 5-20 leads per week, a weekly export takes two minutes. Automation would save you almost nothing.
- You're testing. Before building a full integration, export manually for a few weeks to make sure your gating strategy is actually producing leads worth routing.
- Your CRM doesn't support integrations. Some niche industry tools don't play well with Zapier or webhooks. CSV import is universal.
How to Do It
Step 1: In your Flipbooker dashboard, navigate to the leads section for your flipbook.
Step 2: Select the date range and click export. You'll get a CSV with email, name, document, submission date, and page number.
Step 3: Import into your CRM. Every major CRM supports CSV import: HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho, even a Google Sheet that feeds into something else.
Step 4: Set a recurring reminder. Export every Monday morning, Tuesday afternoon, whatever cadence keeps your follow-up timely.
The obvious downside is speed. A lead from Friday night doesn't hit your CRM until Monday's export. For high-volume or time-sensitive content, that lag costs you conversions.
Which Method Should You Pick?
Quick decision tree:
Go with Zapier if you want fast setup, your CRM is on Zapier (most are), and you're okay with leads arriving within a few minutes of submission. It's the best balance of speed, simplicity, and flexibility for most teams.
Go with webhooks if you have a developer available, need near-instant delivery, want custom routing logic, or your CRM isn't on Zapier. More powerful, more work.
Go with manual export if you're just starting out, getting low volume, or testing whether content gating works for your audience before investing in automation.
And you can always start with CSV export and upgrade to Zapier or webhooks once you've proven the leads are worth automating.
What to Track After Setup
Getting leads into your CRM is step one. Knowing if they're any good is step two.
Lead-to-opportunity rate. What percentage of flipbook leads become real sales conversations? If it's below 5%, your gating might be attracting the wrong audience.
Response time. How fast does your team follow up after a lead hits the CRM? Measure this. Set alerts if it slips past one hour.
Content attribution. Which flipbooks generate the most leads? Which generate the best leads? Those are two different questions. A product catalog might generate fewer leads than a general guide but convert at twice the rate.
Our lead generation feature page covers the full lead capture setup, and the lead generation guide goes into what makes a strong follow-up sequence.
The Point
The email gate is just the start. What you do with that lead in the next hour determines whether your content investment pays off or just generates a spreadsheet nobody looks at. Pick an integration method, connect it to your CRM, and make sure someone follows up while the lead still remembers what they were reading.
FAQs
What CRMs can I connect to Flipbooker?
Any CRM that works with Zapier, which covers HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho, and hundreds of others. You can also use webhooks to connect to any CRM with an API, or export leads as CSV for manual import into any system.
Do leads sync to my CRM in real time?
With Zapier, leads typically arrive in your CRM within 1-5 minutes. Webhook integrations are near-instant, usually under 30 seconds. CSV export is manual, so that depends on how often you pull the data.
What data fields get sent to my CRM?
The standard fields are email address, name (if collected), the document they viewed, the page they were on when they submitted, and the timestamp. You can map these to any fields in your CRM during setup.
Do I need a paid Zapier plan for this?
Zapier's free plan supports basic two-step Zaps, which is enough for a simple lead-to-CRM workflow. If you want multi-step Zaps with filters, tagging, or conditional logic, you'll need a paid plan.
Can I send leads to multiple tools at once?
Yes. A single Zapier workflow can send the same lead to your CRM, email marketing platform, and a Slack channel simultaneously using multi-step Zaps. Or you can set up multiple webhook endpoints.