WhatsApp Drip Campaign + Close CRM Sync for a Course Recruitment Business
Client: UK-based course enrollment and university-placement recruitment business
The problem
Leads arrived from two different channels (Facebook Lead Ads and a website enquiry form), each shaped differently, and needed to reach the CRM and a consistent follow-up sequence without duplicate entries or manual re-typing. Course-interest leads who don't convert immediately need long-tail nurture across both WhatsApp and email for weeks, and any lead who actually replies needs to stop receiving scripted messages immediately and get a real response instead.
The system
Two parallel intake paths (a Facebook Lead Ads trigger and an n8n form) each run through a Code node that normalizes the differently-named fields (Facebook's snake_case webhook payload vs. the form's plain labels) into one shape, and validates the phone number into E.164 format for both UK and international numbers. Before creating anything, the workflow searches Close CRM by email; only if no match exists does it create a new lead with custom fields for course, residency status, preferred campus, and lead source, so the same person submitting twice never creates a duplicate record.
The same normalized lead is written into an n8n Data Table that acts as the lightweight state store for the messaging cadence, and immediately enrolled in a Day-0 WhatsApp template plus a matching nurture email. A daily scheduled workflow loops over every active lead, calculates days-since-signup, and routes through a Switch node to fire the correct next WhatsApp template and email (Day 1, 3, 5, 7, 14, 21, 28), marking each step off in the Data Table so nothing repeats or gets skipped, and marking the lead Completed after the final touch.
A separate WhatsApp trigger listens for inbound replies at any point in the sequence: a reply flips the lead's status to Replied (which removes them from all further scheduled sends), sends the lead an immediate acknowledgment that an adviser will follow up, and pushes an internal WhatsApp notification containing the full reply so a human can take over the conversation within the same conversation thread.
The workflow
Explore the actual workflow (drag to pan, scroll to zoom)
Results
- Leads from two different intake channels are normalized into one consistent shape before they ever reach the CRM or the messaging system
- A Close CRM email-lookup before every lead creation prevents duplicate records even when the same person submits more than once
- An 8-touch WhatsApp + email drip (Day 0 through Day 28) runs automatically with zero manual sending
- The sequence stops the instant a lead replies; no scripted messages ever go out to someone already in a live conversation
- Inbound replies trigger both a same-second acknowledgment to the lead and an internal alert with the message content, so a human adviser can step in immediately
- Data Table-driven state (last_msg_index, status) makes the whole sequence resumable and auditable: every lead's exact position in the cadence is visible at a glance
Stack: n8n, WhatsApp Business API, Close CRM, Facebook Lead Ads, Gmail
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This system was built as part of my close crm automation & integration work.
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