Track inbound accounts (Adwords, Instagram, referrals)

LeadHunter was built around outbound prospecting: you search, you find, you reach out. But once a company gets going, accounts start coming to you from other places too — someone clicks a Google Ads form, replies to a story on Instagram, gets introduced by a customer.

This guide shows how to log those inbound accounts with proper channel attribution, so you can answer questions like “how many customers came from Adwords last quarter?” and so the conversation history starts in the right state from day one. For the broader Acquisition channels model — channel-level monthly spend, CAC, customer-value rollups, and ROI per channel — see Acquisition channels and the companion guide on value tracking.

The acquisition channel field

Every Account carries an acquisition channel — the marketing channel that brought the account in. The default is outbound (you found them). The other values describe how the account reached you:

Channel	When to use
outbound	Default. You cold-prospected the account.
adwords	Click on a Google Ads result → form fill.
meta_ads	Facebook or Instagram paid ad → lead form.
linkedin_ads	LinkedIn Ads → form fill.
organic_search	Found you in Google search → form fill on your site.
organic_social	DM on Instagram, reply on X, organic LinkedIn message.
referral	Existing customer or partner introduced them.
event	Trade show, conference, meetup — exchanged details in person.
partner	Co-marketing partner sent them over.
influencer	Came via an influencer / creator promotion — a mention, a story, a sponsored post.
cold_inbound	Someone emailed you cold, or filled a generic contact form.
other	Doesn’t fit any of the above.

The channel feeds into:

• Initial status. Inbound channels (everything except outbound and other) auto-promote the account from prospect to contacted on creation. The account has already reached out — it would be misleading to call them a “prospect” still untouched.
• Filtering and segmentation. You can build saved views and read the funnel and costs by channel (Insights → Breakdown).
• The audit trail. The status change carries source: inbound_acquisition so it’s clear why the account opened in contacted state.

Setting the channel in the app

The most common path — add the account by hand and pick the channel from a dropdown.

When creating a new account

From Accounts → Add account, fill the standard fields (name, email, phone, website, …) and pick the channel from the Acquisition channel dropdown. Each option shows its icon plus a short hint of when to use it, and inbound channels are tagged with a green inbound badge.

When you pick an inbound channel, a green note appears: “Inbound channel — new accounts start at status “Contacted” instead of “Prospect”.” That’s a heads-up that your save will skip the usual prospect step. Save, and the account opens on its page already at Contacted, with the audit-trail entry in the Status history on its Admin tab.

Changing the channel on an existing account

Open the account page and go to its Profile tab. The Source channel card, under Relationship types, has the same dropdown — change the channel and the value saves immediately. Under it, Action or channel links the account to one specific channel or marketing action (actions are listed first, with their type and partner); the channel type above follows what you pick. Below it you’ll see the Acquired date and a collapsible Details block listing whatever channel-specific data the row carries (UTM parameters from the original submit, the Instagram thread URL, the referrer’s email, etc.).

Changing the channel on an existing account doesn’t retroactively re-promote the status — the audit trail is forward-only.

Filtering and searching by channel

The accounts list has no channel column; filter by channel instead. On Accounts, open Filter and pick the channel under Profile and source → Source channel; a Source channel chip shows the filter is on.

To slice by channel for reporting, build a saved view (Accounts → Filter → Advanced conditions → field “Source channel”). Combine with status, country, custom fields, and date ranges to build views like “Adwords accounts from last quarter that haven’t replied yet.”

Storing channel-specific data

Each channel comes with its own bag of metadata — UTM parameters from an ads click, the Instagram thread URL, the referrer’s name, a form id. There’s a free-form acquisition metadata field for that.

The account page shows the metadata as the collapsible Details block of the Source channel card (Profile tab). It’s most useful as a permanent attribution record — you fill it once when the account comes in, then refer to it later (for filtering, reporting, threading to the original ad).

The shape is up to you. Useful conventions:

• Adwords → utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, gclid, ad_id, form_id.
• Meta Ads → utm_source, utm_campaign, fbclid, ad_id, form_id.
• Instagram DM → network, handle, thread_url.
• Referral → referrer_account_id, referrer_email, referrer_note.
• Event → event_name, booth, date.

Anything you store is available afterwards for filtering, reporting, and threading through to the conversation history.

Worked example 1 — An account from a Google Ads form

Someone clicks one of your Google Ads, fills the form on the landing page, and lands in your inbox as a notification. Here’s the LeadHunter-side flow.

1. Accounts → Add account. Paste their company website or the email’s domain into the lookup box; pick Quick mode. LeadHunter auto-extracts the business name, sector, location.
2. Set Acquisition channel to Google Ads. The form shows the green “Inbound — starts at Contacted” hint.
3. In Acquisition metadata, paste whatever the form submission gave you — UTM parameters, the gclid, the ad campaign id, the form id. Conventions are above; the field is free-form, so the keys are whatever fits.
4. (Optional) Set Acquired at to the submission timestamp from your form-builder. Otherwise the default of “now” is fine.
5. Save.

The account opens at status: contacted, with an inbound_acquisition entry in its status history naming the channel. The funnel will count this account as initiated the moment your first outbound message goes out via the conversation log.

Worked example 2 — An Instagram DM

Someone slides into your DMs asking about your product. You want to track the account properly and keep the conversation log threaded.

1. Accounts → Add account. Type the company name or the IG handle into the form (LeadHunter can’t auto-discover from an Instagram URL the way it can from a website — you’ll fill the fields by hand).
2. Set Acquisition channel to Organic social.
3. Fill Acquisition metadata with the IG handle, the thread URL, and a short note about what they asked.
4. Save.
5. Open the account. On its Activity tab, under Conversation, paste their first message with Log inbound reply to start the thread.

The account is now at status: contacted with the IG thread URL one click away on the account’s Profile tab, and the conversation log carries the back-and-forth — auto-translated into your reading language if they wrote in a different one.

Worked example 3 — A referral from a customer

A current customer sends a contact your way. You want to track both the new account and the referrer.

1. Accounts → Add account. Fill the new account’s details (or paste the company website into the lookup).
2. Set Acquisition channel to Referral.
3. In Acquisition metadata, record who sent them: the referring customer’s name, email, and a short note about what they’re after.
4. Save.

The account starts at contacted, the referrer trail lives on the account permanently, and a quarter from now you can build a saved filter for “every account acquired via referral that became a customer” to see which existing customers send you the most business.

Filtering by channel

Once you start tagging accounts with their channel, slice your database however you want — the Advanced conditions of the Accounts list’s Filter panel have Source channel in their field picker. Combine with status, date, and custom fields to build views like “Adwords accounts from last quarter that haven’t replied yet.” Save it as a view to re-use it across campaigns.

See Build a saved filter for the field/operator surface in detail.

What about accounts that came from multiple places?

You can only set one acquisition channel per account — pick the one that first introduced you. If the same account later showed up at an event, log that as a regular conversation event rather than overwriting the original channel. The channel is “where they came from”, not “every place we’ve crossed paths.”

If the new account is a duplicate of one you already had, it usually isn’t created at all (see what happens on a match). If both rows exist and you merge them, the survivor keeps its own channel; use the field override in the merge dialog when the absorbed row’s channel is the right one.

Read next

• Account — the broader concept this field lives on.
• Log a conversation — once the inbound account exists, capture the back-and-forth.
• Build a saved filter — segment by channel for reporting and campaign targeting.