Welcome to a Smarter Inbox
The Ellipsend Inbox is your team’s central workspace for managing conversations, qualifying leads, 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.
Before You Start
To get the most out of this guide, you should already be familiar with how Campaigns, Pipelines, and Pipeline Stages work in Ellipsend. If you’re not, please review the Ellipsend Campaigns Guide.
Important: You should ensure that every contact you handle in the Inbox belongs to a Campaign and a Pipeline Stage. This ensures that filtering, tracking activities, and reporting remain accurate.
Learning the Inbox Layout
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.
How Messaging Works in Ellipsend
The Inbox allows you to manage every part of the conversation with a contact—from sending messages to tracking delivery and activity.
Sending Messages
Press Enter or click the Send icon to send your message.
Click the purple “+” to send an audio, image, video, or one-off link.
Message Status Indicators
✓ — Message sent
✓✓ — Message delivered
Colored ✓✓ — Message read
Important: Always send URLs as Button Messages — not plain links.
This improves deliverability and adds the Ellipsend Tracking Token for conversion tracking. You can learn more about how this works and why it's important in the Ellipsend Tracking & Integrations Guide.
Using Filters
To access Filters, go to the Search bar in the top left of the Inbox and click the Filter icon.
Why Filters Matter
Filters let you zero in on exactly the conversations you need—whether that’s new leads, follow-ups, or hot prospects. You can stack multiple Filters and save the set as a Spotlight for one-click reuse.
Common Filter Options
Last Correspondence (Contact/Agent)
Unread
Availability (Meta 24h/7d)
Country
Assignee
Labels
Campaign
Pipeline / Pipeline Stage
Activity (e.g., Booked Call)
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.
Marking Conversations as Private, Spam, or Unread
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 leads. 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. Those with owner permissions can view these conversations using the Show Private filter.
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.
Setting Up Inbox Spotlights
To access Spotlights, click on the lightbulb icon in the top left corner of the Inbox.
Why Spotlights Matter
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 leads in batches according to you team's ideal workflow.
How To Create a Spotlight
Select your Filters.
Click Save at the top and name it clearly (To-Do #1).
Toggle Shared if your team should be able see and use it as well.
Click the checkmark on the right side to finalize.
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 Leads → 2) Hot Prospects → 3) Follow-ups.
Leveraging Saved Responses
To access Saved Responses, click the purple "+" by the message bar and select Saved Responses.
Why Saved Responses Matter
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 leads, or sending consistent follow-up messages.
Creating & Managing Saved Responses
To create a Saved Response, follow these steps:
Click “+” → Saved Response → “+ Add New”.
Add a shortcut using 10 characters or less (e.g., “Booklink”).
Choose the Message Type:
Basic Message – reusable text you can edit.
Button Message – message + clickable button (adds the Tracking Token).
Image / Video / Audio – reusable media.
Click Allow Shared Access if you'd like to share with your team, then Create.
Type “/” in the message composer to search and insert a Saved Response instantly.
Pro Tip: Keep videos under 10 seconds to avoid compression.
For longer clips, use a Button Message that links to a hosted video.
Understanding Contact Profiles
The Contact Profile gives you a complete view of a lead’s Location, Assignment, Campaigns, Pipeline Stages, Activities, and key identifiers—all in one place.
Assignment & Automation Control
Pause Automations: Temporarily stop Automations (e.g., for 30 minutes) while you’re chatting live to prevent automated messages from interrupting the conversation.
Location & Time Zone: Automatically captured when a contact interacts with Button Messages. All data collection is GDPR-compliant.
Assignee: Assign the conversation to a team member manually, or enable automatic assignment in Settings → Inbox.
Campaigns & Pipeline Stages
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, 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.
If a Campaign is active, you can view and update the contact’s Stage normally.
If a Campaign is not active, it will still appear if the contact was already in it—but it will be locked (grayed out) and the Stage cannot be edited.
Important: If you cannot change a Stage, it is typically because the Campaign is not marked as active.
Understanding Multi-Campaign Visibility
When a contact is in multiple Campaigns:
Each Campaign will appear separately
Each will show its own current Stage
You can update them independently
For a full overview of how Campaigns and Pipeline Stages work, see the Ellipsend Campaigns Guide.
Activities
When a contact is moved to a new Pipeline Stage with an Activity attached, a modal 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:
Moving a contact to “Booked Call” may require entering a date or owner.
Moving to “Purchased” may require entering payment details.
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 Ellipsend Tracking & Integrations Guide to learn more!
Relationships, Labels, & Notes
Relationships: High-signal identifiers such as Current Client or Do Not Contact that help prioritize and segment contacts.
Labels: Filterable tags used to organize contacts. Keep your Label list focused and essential.
Notes: Add quick context for your team without needing to read through the full message history.
The "Stages" Dropdown Tool
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:
Each Campaign will appear separately
Each will show its own current Stage
You can update them independently
Using Search & Bulk Actions
Search: Find contacts by name or partial match.
Bulk Actions: Select multiple contacts to reassign or apply actions at once. Use Shift for range selection.
Proven Spotlight Workflows
Spotlights help you create reliable daily workflows so you always know which contacts to prioritize. Below are two recommended setups used by high-performing teams.
A) New Leads — Start of Day
Use this Spotlight to focus on fresh inbound conversations that still need your attention.
Filters:
Last Correspondence = Contact
Availability = 7d
Assignee = Yourself
Pipeline Stage = New Lead
Save as: “1) New Leads (7d) – Me”
B) Follow-Ups — End of Day
Use this Spotlight to review contacts who are waiting on you to respond or move forward.
Filters:
Last Correspondence = Agent
Assignee = Yourself
Hot Stages or Labels
Save as: “2) Follow-ups – Me”
Common Inbox Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
Not adding a contact to a Campaign before sending a trackable link
Always add the contact to a Stage first. More on this is the Ellipsend Tracking & Integrations 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 the Ellipsend Campaigns Guide.
Label sprawl
Keep your label list small and relevant. Review periodically.