A practical guide to setting up your CRM Pipeline in UniLink — how contacts get in, how to move them through your sales stages, and how to turn a list of names into booked clients and closed deals.
- The CRM Pipeline is a Kanban-style contact manager built into UniLink — contacts enter automatically from Form submissions, Shop purchases, and email subscribe blocks, and you drag them through customizable deal stages toward a close.
- Find it under CRM in the left sidebar of your Dashboard; pipeline stages are configured in CRM → Settings → Pipeline Stages.
- The most important setup step is mapping each stage to a specific action you take — "Contacted" means you sent a message, "Proposal Sent" means a quote went out — so the column a card sits in always reflects reality, not hope.
- Automation rules (trigger → action) do the repetitive work: when a form is submitted, tag the contact, move them to the right stage, and send a welcome email — all without manual intervention.
Every person who fills out a form on your UniLink page, buys a product from your shop, or subscribes to your email list is a lead. Without a system to track those leads, the best you can do is search through email notifications and try to remember who said what, who you followed up with, and who fell through the cracks. A busy week means lost contacts, missed follow-ups, and revenue that never materialized because the conversation did not continue. UniLink's CRM Pipeline turns that unstructured list of notifications into a visual, stage-based workflow where every contact has a home, every conversation has a history, and nothing falls through unless you deliberately let it go.
What the CRM Pipeline does
The CRM Pipeline is a Kanban-style contact management system embedded directly in your UniLink Dashboard. It organizes your leads and contacts into columns — pipeline stages that you define — and lets you drag contact cards from one stage to the next as the relationship progresses. Each contact card carries the person's name, email, phone, source (which block or form they came from), tags, notes, full activity history, and any linked orders from your shop. Everything you know about a contact in one place, no external spreadsheet or CRM tool required.
Contacts enter the pipeline from multiple sources. When someone submits a Form block on your page, they are automatically added as a contact with the source labeled as the form name. When someone completes a purchase through your Shop block, they are added as a contact with their order linked to their card. Email subscribes from a Data Collect block flow in the same way. You can also import contacts in bulk via CSV upload, or add them manually for contacts who reached out through other channels. Every entry method creates the same fully-featured contact card, regardless of how they arrived.
The CRM Pipeline manages the contacts you already have — it does not find new ones, score leads algorithmically, or integrate with external marketing platforms beyond the email send function built into UniLink. If you need predictive lead scoring, deep Salesforce or HubSpot integration, or AI-driven outreach sequences, the CRM Pipeline is not designed for that. It is a focused, practical tool for creators, coaches, service businesses, and small shops that need to track the status of every lead and every conversation without the complexity of an enterprise sales stack.
Getting started
- Open the CRM from your Dashboard: Log in to UniLink, click CRM in the left sidebar. If this is your first time, the pipeline will show the default stages: New Lead, Contacted, Proposal Sent, Won, Lost. These work as a starting point and can be fully customized.
- Define your pipeline stages before adding contacts: Go to CRM → Settings → Pipeline Stages. Add, rename, reorder, or remove stages to match your actual sales or client process. A coaching business might use: Inquiry, Discovery Call Scheduled, Proposal Sent, Enrolled, Alumni. A freelancer might use: Lead, Scoping, Contract Sent, Active Project, Delivered, Repeat Client. Stages that match your real workflow are stages you will actually maintain.
- Assign a clear definition to each stage: Before you start using the pipeline, write one sentence for each stage that defines what it means for a contact to be there — not what you intend to do, but what action has been completed. "Contacted" means a message was sent, not that you plan to send one. This discipline prevents cards from sitting in a stage indefinitely based on good intentions rather than completed actions.
- Review your existing Form and Shop blocks: If you already have Form or Shop blocks on your page, check whether they are configured to send submissions to the CRM. In your Dashboard, edit each block and confirm the "Send to CRM" toggle is enabled. Any new submissions from those blocks will then create contact cards automatically.
- Import existing contacts if needed: If you have a list of existing contacts in a spreadsheet, go to CRM → Import and upload a CSV with columns for name, email, phone, and any custom fields. Map the CSV columns to CRM fields in the import wizard. Imported contacts can be tagged and assigned to a pipeline stage during import so they land in the right column immediately.
- Set up at least one automation rule: Go to CRM → Automations and create a rule for your most common entry point. A minimal starting rule: "When Form [Your Form Name] is submitted → Add tag 'Lead' → Move to 'New Lead' stage → Send email [your welcome email template]." This ensures every new submission gets the same first response, immediately, without manual effort.
How to manage contacts and move deals forward
- Review new contacts in the first pipeline column: Make it a daily or every-other-day habit to check the first column of your pipeline. New contacts appear here automatically (if your automations are set up) or are waiting for you to review and classify them. This column is your inbox — the goal is to keep it as close to empty as possible by either acting on each contact or moving them to the appropriate stage.
- Open a contact card and read the details: Click any contact card to open the full contact view. Read their name, source (which form or block they came from), the message or data they submitted, and any previous activity history. The source field is especially useful — it tells you what prompted them to reach out, which gives context for your first response.
- Add a note to capture context: In the contact card, use the Notes field to record anything relevant to this contact that does not live elsewhere — a phone call summary, a pricing discussion point, a specific deadline they mentioned, a referral source. Notes are timestamped and append-only, so you build a chronological record of the relationship over time.
- Send an email directly from the contact card: Click Send Email inside the contact card to compose and send an email to that contact using UniLink's built-in email sender. You do not need to switch to your email client. The sent email is logged in the contact's activity history so the full thread is visible on their card. Use this for follow-ups, proposals, onboarding emails, and check-ins.
- Tag contacts for filtering and bulk actions: Add one or more tags to each contact to categorize them — by product interest, geographic market, lead quality, or any other dimension relevant to your business. Tags let you filter the pipeline to show only contacts with a specific tag, and they enable bulk actions (e.g., email everyone tagged "coaching-inquiry" who is in the "New Lead" stage).
- Drag cards between stages as the relationship progresses: When you take an action that advances a contact to the next stage, drag their card from the current column to the next. The stage change is logged in the contact's activity history with a timestamp. This drag-and-drop movement is the primary daily interaction with the pipeline — keeping cards in the correct stage is what makes the pipeline a useful at-a-glance view of your business rather than just a contact list with colored columns.
- Use bulk actions for efficiency: Select multiple contacts using the checkbox on each card, then use the bulk action menu to tag, move to a stage, or send an email to all selected contacts simultaneously. Bulk email from the CRM sends individualized emails to each selected contact (not a group reply), making it suitable for personalized batch follow-ups without copy-pasting the same message twenty times.
- Export contacts when needed: Go to CRM → Export to download your full contact list or a filtered subset as a CSV. The export includes all contact fields, tags, stage, source, and activity dates. Use this for external reporting, backup, or importing into a dedicated email marketing platform when your list grows large enough to need it.
Key features and settings
| Feature / Setting | What it does | Best practice |
|---|---|---|
| Pipeline stages editor | Lets you create, rename, reorder, and delete pipeline columns to match your sales or client process | Design stages around completed actions, not intentions. "Proposal Sent" is a completed action (you sent a proposal); "Considering Proposal" is not your action — it lives in your head. Keep stages to 5–7 maximum; more than that creates decision fatigue when dragging cards and the pipeline loses clarity. |
| Contact source field | Automatically records which block or form the contact came from — Form block name, "Shop Purchase," "Data Collect," "Manual," or "CSV Import" | Use source data to evaluate which blocks on your page are generating the most valuable contacts. If your "Free Consultation Form" generates 80% of your paying clients but your "Newsletter Signup" generates none, that is a prioritization signal for where to invest your page real estate and ad spend. |
| Tags | Freeform labels you add to contacts to categorize them across stages and sources | Create a small, consistent tag vocabulary before you start — avoid creating a new tag for every nuance. Useful tag categories: product interest (e.g., "1:1-coaching," "course"), lead quality (e.g., "hot," "nurture"), geographic market, or campaign source. Inconsistent tagging makes filtering and bulk actions unreliable. |
| Activity history | A timestamped log of every event on a contact's record — form submission, stage moves, emails sent, notes added, orders placed | Read the activity history before every follow-up so your message is informed by context. Nothing undermines a sales conversation faster than asking someone a question they answered in a form submission three weeks ago. The history is there — use it. |
| Automation rules | Trigger-based rules that automatically execute CRM actions when conditions are met (e.g., form submitted → tag + stage + email) | Start with one automation per entry point. A new form submission should automatically tag the contact, move them to your first pipeline stage, and send a confirmation or welcome email. This ensures no lead sits unacknowledged while you are busy. Add more complex automations only after the basics are running reliably. |
| Email send from contact card | Compose and send emails to individual contacts directly from the CRM without switching to an email client; sent emails log to the activity history | Use this for personal, context-specific follow-ups — proposals, onboarding instructions, answers to specific questions. For mass broadcasts to your full list, use a dedicated email marketing tool (or UniLink's email send bulk action) rather than opening hundreds of individual contact cards. |
| Linked orders | Attaches Shop block purchases to the purchasing contact's CRM card, showing order details within the contact record | For product-based businesses, check linked orders before any outreach — knowing what a contact purchased informs every message you send them. A buyer of your beginner course who has not upgraded is a very different follow-up than a first-time visitor who filled out an inquiry form. |
How to get the most from the CRM Pipeline
The CRM Pipeline's value is proportional to how consistently you maintain it. A pipeline updated daily is a reliable picture of your business — you can open it in a meeting, on a sales call, or before sending a message and have an accurate view of every active opportunity. A pipeline updated sporadically is worse than no system, because it creates false confidence: you think you know the state of your pipeline, but half the cards reflect intentions from two weeks ago, not reality. Reserve 10–15 minutes at the end of each workday or every other day to move cards, add notes, and archive dead leads. That maintenance habit is the difference between a pipeline that generates revenue and one that collects digital clutter.
Automation rules compound your effort over time. Every rule you set up — "when someone submits the consultation form, tag them as 'hot-lead,' move them to 'New Lead,' and send the welcome email" — runs for every contact who comes in after that point, without any manual work from you. A service provider who gets ten form submissions a week saves roughly 30 minutes per week on manual data entry and first-contact emails once those automations are in place. Over a year, that is 26 hours of administrative work replaced by a one-time 15-minute setup. Prioritize automation rules for your highest-volume contact entry points first — the forms and blocks that generate the most submissions — and add rules for edge cases only once the main flows are solid.
The "Won" and "Lost" stages deserve as much attention as the active working stages. When a contact converts, moving their card to "Won" creates a historical record of your conversion rate from each pipeline stage. If you consistently lose leads at the "Proposal Sent" stage, that is a pricing or proposal quality problem, not a volume problem — and you would not know that without clean Won/Lost data. Review your Won/Lost ratio quarterly by looking at how many cards ended in each column over the last 90 days. The number and pattern will tell you more about the health of your business than any traffic metric.
Custom fields in the contact card extend the CRM's usefulness beyond the default fields. If your business has qualifying criteria that matter for every prospect — budget range, timeline, specific service interest, company size — create a custom field for each one and populate it from your Form block by mapping the form field to the CRM custom field. When a contact card opens, every piece of pre-qualifying information is right there, so your first conversation is informed rather than exploratory. Custom fields also work in filters — you can view only contacts in a specific budget range or timeline window across all stages, which is useful for prioritizing outreach when you have a high volume of leads.
Troubleshooting common issues
| Problem | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Form submissions are not appearing in the CRM | The Form block's "Send to CRM" toggle is disabled, or the form was created before CRM integration was enabled | Open the Form block in your page editor, go to the block settings, and confirm the "Send to CRM" option is toggled on. Save the block and submit a test entry. If the test entry does not appear in the CRM after a few minutes, check the block settings again — some older form blocks may need to be recreated rather than edited in place. |
| Duplicate contact cards for the same person | The same person submitted multiple forms or purchased multiple times, and each event created a separate card | Use the merge contacts function in the CRM (select both cards, choose Merge from the action menu) to combine them into a single card with the full activity history from both entries. To prevent future duplicates, check the "Match existing contacts by email" setting in CRM → Settings — when enabled, new submissions from an email address that already exists in the CRM update the existing card rather than creating a new one. |
| Automation rule is not triggering | The rule is inactive (toggled off), or the trigger condition does not exactly match the block or form name specified in the rule | Go to CRM → Automations, find the rule, and confirm it is toggled on (active). Check the trigger condition — if the rule is set to trigger on form "Consultation Form" but the form is named "Consultation Request," the rule will not fire. The name must match exactly. Edit the rule to correct the trigger name, save, and test with a new form submission. |
| Emails sent from the CRM are going to spam | UniLink's email sender domain may not be configured with your custom domain's SPF/DKIM records, causing deliverability issues | Go to Settings → Email Settings and check whether a custom sending domain is configured. If you are sending from a generic UniLink address, deliverability is decent but not optimal. For better inbox placement, configure your own sending domain — add the SPF and DKIM records UniLink provides to your domain's DNS settings. This takes 10–30 minutes to set up and 24–48 hours for DNS propagation, but significantly improves email deliverability for CRM outreach. |
| CSV import fails or fields are not mapping correctly | The CSV file has formatting issues — merged cells, non-standard encoding, or column headers that do not match the expected field names | Download UniLink's CSV import template from the CRM → Import screen and use it as the base for your contact data. Fill in your data directly in that template rather than reformatting an existing spreadsheet. The template has the correct column headers and encoding. If only specific fields are not mapping, check that the column headers in your file exactly match the field names shown in the import wizard. |
| Contact search returns no results even though the contact exists | The search query may have a typo, or the contact's name or email was entered with different formatting (e.g., accented characters, name order reversed) | Try searching by email address rather than name — email is always unique and exact-match search on email is more reliable than name search. If the contact does not appear in an email search, check whether they might be in a different pipeline (if you have multiple pipelines) or have been accidentally deleted. Deleted contacts can be recovered from CRM → Settings → Deleted Contacts within 30 days of deletion. |
Best fit for
- Service providers — coaches, consultants, freelancers, and agencies — who need to track the status of every inquiry and proposal in a visual workflow without managing an external CRM tool
- Small e-commerce shops and creators who want to see every customer in one place alongside their purchase history and any follow-up communications
- Businesses that use UniLink's Form block heavily and want every submission to automatically route into a tracked, staged workflow rather than arriving as an email notification
- Any solo operator or small team who currently tracks leads in a spreadsheet and wants something more interactive with automation capabilities built in
Not the right tool if
- You have hundreds or thousands of active deals simultaneously — the Kanban pipeline is most effective for up to a few dozen active deals per pipeline view; very high volumes need list view and advanced filtering that enterprise CRMs provide
- Your sales process requires deep integrations with tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Pipedrive, or you need bi-directional sync with an existing CRM that already holds your contact history
- You need advanced sales forecasting, revenue projections by stage, or quota tracking — the CRM Pipeline tracks contacts and stages but does not calculate projected deal values or forecast close rates
Frequently asked questions
Yes. You can create separate pipelines for different lines of business — a coaching pipeline, a course sales pipeline, and a consulting pipeline — each with its own custom stages. Contacts can exist in multiple pipelines simultaneously (for example, someone who bought a course and is also in your consulting inquiry pipeline). Go to CRM → Settings → Pipelines to create additional pipelines. Each pipeline is selected from a dropdown at the top of the CRM view.
Emails sent using the "Send Email" function inside the CRM are automatically logged to the contact's activity history. Emails you send or receive in your external email client (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) are not automatically synced — those require manual note-taking in the contact card. For high-volume email workflows where you need full inbox sync, consider using a dedicated CRM with email integration. For the majority of service business use cases, logging key emails as notes in the contact card is sufficient and practical.
Contacts remain in the CRM even if the source block is deleted. The source field on their contact card will still show the original block name even after deletion, so you retain the record of where they came from. Deleting a Form block only prevents new submissions from that form — it does not affect existing contact cards that were created by previous submissions.
Yes. Team members added in Settings → Team can be given CRM access. You can set per-member permissions: view-only (they see contacts but cannot edit), edit (they can add notes, move cards, send emails), or admin (they can change pipeline settings and automations). For most teams, the "edit" permission is the right starting point — team members need to be able to move cards and log interactions, but not necessarily change the pipeline structure.
If your contacts have linked orders (from Shop block purchases), you can see the total order value for any individual contact in their card. For stage-level revenue reporting, use CRM → Export to pull contact data with stage, tags, and source, then calculate revenue by stage in a spreadsheet. Built-in stage-level revenue reporting (deal value aggregation per column) is not currently a native CRM feature — that calculation requires the export. If revenue forecasting is a core need, this is the main limitation of UniLink's CRM relative to dedicated sales pipeline tools.
- Contacts enter the CRM automatically from Form blocks, Shop purchases, and Data Collect blocks — enable "Send to CRM" on each block and set up automation rules so every new contact is tagged, staged, and acknowledged without manual work.
- Design pipeline stages around completed actions, not intentions — a card's column should reflect what has happened, not what you plan to do, so the pipeline is always an accurate picture of your business.
- The daily maintenance habit — 10–15 minutes to move cards, add notes, and archive cold leads — is what separates a pipeline that generates revenue from one that becomes an expensive contact list.
- Use tags, source data, and the Won/Lost ratio to identify which contact sources produce your best clients and which pipeline stage is where you most often lose deals — then fix the weak point rather than adding more contacts to the top of the funnel.
- Emails sent from contact cards are logged to the activity history automatically; read that history before every follow-up to ensure your message is context-aware and never asks something the contact already answered.