The Ellipsend Inbox is your team’s central workspace for managing conversations, qualifying contacts, and progressing contacts through each stage of your sales pipeline.
In this guide, you’ll learn how the Inbox is organized and how to use its core features—including Filters, Spotlights, Saved Responses, messaging tools, and contact activity tracking.

To get the most out of this guide, set up your Pipeline Stages and Activities first. Every account starts with a default Campaign, so there's nothing to build. See Pipelines and Activities in the Settings guide.

Use the numbered guide below to understand the how the Inbox is laid out—each section corresponds directly to the matching number in the image below for easy navigation.

#1: Top Left Lightbulb Icon: Spotlights — saved, multi-filter views for easy one-click access.

#2: Top Left Bar: Search, Bulk Actions, and Filters dropdown.

#3 Center: List of contacts + current open conversation. Select a contact to view your full conversation history; compose at the bottom.

#4 Stages Dropdown: Quickly move the opened contact through the stages of your Campaign(s).
​#5: Right Panel: Contact Profile — set/view the contact's Assignment, Campaigns/Stages, Activities, Labels, Location/Time Zone, and Notes.

The Inbox allows you to manage every part of the conversation with a contact—from sending messages to tracking delivery and activity.

The avatar next to a message you sent shows where it came from. No badge means a teammate sent it from Ellipsend, on web or in the app.

Hover over a badge, or tap it on a phone, to see what it means.

This matters at the handoff. A robot means the contact hasn't talked to a person yet. A clock tells you whose follow-up it was, so your reply can pick up as that person. An arrow means someone already answered from the app, so check before you reply twice.

To access Filters, go to the Search bar in the top left of the Inbox and click the Filter icon.

Filters let you zero in on exactly the conversations you need—whether that’s new contacts, follow-ups, or hot prospects. You can stack multiple Filters and save the set as a Spotlight for one-click reuse.

Pro Tip: Use the Pipeline Stage filter to build “work queues” like New Lead, Qualified, or Booked Call. Only use Campaign filters when you’re working within a specific Campaign.

You can manage individual conversations directly from the Inbox by clicking the three dots next to a contact's username. This allows you to control visibility, filter out unwanted messages, and organize your workflow more efficiently.

Marking as Spam
Mark a conversation as spam to remove it from your active workflow. This helps filter out irrelevant or low-quality messages so your team can stay focused on real contacts. You can view these conversations again using the Show Spam filter.

Marking as Private
Mark a conversation as private to restrict access. While anyone can mark a conversation as private, private conversations can only be viewed and responded to by the business owner role, making this useful for personal interactions. As the owner, you see private conversations in your inbox by default. To take them out of view, open the inbox filters and turn on Hide Private under Spam / Private.

Marking as Unread
Mark a conversation as unread to revisit it later. This is helpful when you want to come back to a message or ensure it remains visible in your workflow.

To access Spotlights, click on the lightbulb icon in the top left corner of the Inbox.

Spotlights let you save any combination of Filters so you can return instantly without having to rebuild your Filter set each time. This allows you to create real-time work queues so you can work similar contacts in batches according to you team's ideal workflow.

Click any Spotlight to toggle it on/off. Click the Edit icon to change the name or turn on/off sharing.

Pro Tip: Build a short Spotlight sequence that matches your daily workflow:
​1) New Lead → 2) Primary.

To open the Saved Responses library, click the purple "+" by the message bar and select Saved Responses. For the quick menu, type / in the message box.

Saved Responses are a powerful messaging tool within Ellipsend. They allow you to quickly reply with pre-planned, reusable content—including messages, button links, voice audios, videos, or images. They’re especially useful for common scenarios such as answering FAQs, sharing booking links, qualifying contacts, or sending consistent follow-up messages.

To create a Saved Response, follow these steps:

Pro Tip: Keep videos under 10 seconds to avoid compression.
For longer clips, use a Button Message that links to a hosted video.

Type / in the message box to open the quick menu, or open the full library from the purple +. To keep a team library tidy with folders, pins, Recently Used, and a shared order, see Organize Saved Responses.

The Contact Profile gives you a complete view of a contact’s Location, Assignment, Campaigns, Pipeline Stages, Activities, and key identifiers—all in one place.

The Campaigns section in the Inbox shows where a contact currently sits across all your active workflows and allows you to quickly update their position.

Each contact can exist in multiple Campaigns at once (Premium and Enterprise plans only), with a unique Stage in each. This gives you flexibility to manage different funnels that a contact may be in (e.g., Evergreen, Webinar, etc.) without losing context.

Understanding How Campaigns Appear

Only Active Campaigns are fully interactive in the Inbox.

Understanding Multi-Campaign Visibility

When a contact is in multiple Campaigns:

For how Pipeline Stages work, see Pipelines in the Settings guide. Building another Campaign is covered in Build a Campaign.

When a contact is moved to a new Pipeline Stage with an Activity attached, a window will open for you to complete the custom fields of that Activity (e.g., Lead Owner, Call Date, Notes). Any required field must be completed before saving.

For example:

Activities are stored on the contact & Inbox conversation.

No message is sent to the contact when an Activity is completed.

Pro Tip: Activities can also be tracked and updated automatically through integrations when a contact clicks a Button Link containing your Ellipsend Tracking Token. Check out the How Tracking Works guide to learn more!

The Stages dropdown, located in the top-right corner of the Inbox, allows you to quickly move a contact through your Campaign stages while actively messaging them.

If a contact is in multiple Campaigns (Premium and Enterprise plans only):

Spotlights help you create reliable daily workflows so you always know which contacts to prioritize. Below are the two Spotlights we recommend every team builds. Neither one comes built in, so build each one once and toggle Shared so your whole team has it.

Use this Spotlight for every new contact who has come in and is waiting on a reply from you.

Filters:

After you message a contact from this Spotlight, move them to your Engaged Lead stage, or whatever your next stage is called. This is also where you triage. Mark a conversation as spam or private, or move the contact to a Lost stage.

Save as: “1) New Lead”

Use this Spotlight for every contact you've already triaged who is still in progress.

Filters:

Leave out the stages you're finished with for now. If you run a book-a-call funnel, you wouldn't include Call Booked.

Save as: “2) Primary”

Not adding a contact to a Campaign before sending a trackable link
Always add the contact to a Stage first. More on this in the How Tracking Works guide.

Sending plain (“naked”) links
Always use Button Messages so Tracking Tokens attach automatically.

Unmapped Activities
Make sure to map each Activity to its correct Stage (Settings → Campaigns → Pipelines → Edit Stage). Activities that aren't mapped aren't accessible in the Inbox. More on this in Mapping Activities to Stages.

Label sprawl
Keep your label list small and relevant. Review periodically.