Can I track where each person is - lead, customer, press?
Say you sell to a mix of people. Some only read your news. Some are asking about a price. Some have paid. A few are journalists. Four fields are already on every contact, on every site, so you can say which is which without building anything first.
The prompt
“Set the lifecycle stage to [stage] and the contact type to [type] for [a person or a list] on [my site]. Then show me everyone who is [stage] in [country].”
Signed in, Get my prompt fills in your site for you. Otherwise press Copy and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard once: Use your own AI (opens in a new tab).
The four fields
- Lifecycle stage. Where they are with you: Subscriber, Lead, Marketing qualified lead, Sales qualified lead, Opportunity, Customer, Evangelist or Other.
- Lead status. What is happening now: New, Open, In progress, Unqualified, Attempted to contact, Connected or Bad timing.
- Contact type. What they are to you: Prospect, Client, Partner, Press, Supplier or Other.
- Sector. The kind of business they are in. It starts with no choices. You add your own, such as “Rail” or “Education”.
They work like the fields in Can I keep my own details on a contact, like a membership level or a renewal date?. A person’s Details card shows each one, or “Not filled in”.
Set them
Ask Bernard in plain words:
Make Jo Bell a Customer, and her lead status Connected.
Set the contact type to Press for everyone on my Press list.
For one person, Bernard does it and tells you. For more than one person, Bernard first says what it is about to do, for example “set Lifecycle stage to Customer on 40 people”, and waits for your approval. You can do up to 200 people at once.
Make the choices yours
You can rename any of the four fields. You can add a choice, rename one, or retire one. A retired choice stays on the people who have it, but you cannot give it to anyone new. You cannot archive the four fields themselves.
They do not count towards the limit on your own fields.
Country
Each contact can also hold a country. Give Bernard a country name or a two-letter code, such as “Ireland” or “IE”, and it is stored as the country. It shows on the person’s page.
Find people by them
The Contacts page has filters for lifecycle stage, lead status, country, where they came from and who looks after them. They sit beside the search and the contact type filter. The page shows a Stage column, so you can see it at a glance.
You can ask Bernard the same questions: “who is a Lead from Ireland?”
A smart list (a saved audience) can use these fields too, to reach a narrower group. See Can I send only to people with a certain field, or who opened recently?. When you ask Bernard to list the people in a smart list, it shows everyone the smart list describes, including people who have not agreed to email. Sending is unchanged: an email still goes only to people who agreed.
Next
Can I say which of us looks after each contact? and How do I know where a contact came from? cover the two other details bernard keeps on each person.
Questions people ask
- Do these four fields use up my limit of fields?
- No. The limit of 50 is for fields you add yourself. The four fields every contact has do not count towards it.
- Can Bernard set a stage on many people at once?
- Yes, up to 200 people in one go. For more than one person, Bernard first says what it is about to do and waits for your approval before it changes anything.
- Can I delete one of the four fields?
- No. You cannot archive them. You can rename a field, and you can add, rename or retire its choices.
- Does changing someone’s stage email them?
- No. A field is a note on the person. Emails still go only to people who agreed to hear from you.