Send Yirlo replies and hot leads to Airtable

What Yirlo sends to Airtable

You give Yirlo a webhook URL, and it posts two kinds of events there. reply.received goes out for each genuine reply to a campaign. hot_lead.received goes out when a reply is judged interested, the same moment Yirlo emails it to you as a hot lead.

Each payload carries the lead's email address, name and company, the campaign that sent the first email, and what the lead wrote back. Yirlo signs every delivery using HMAC-SHA256 and places the result in a header called X-Yirlo-Signature. Your workflow can recompute that value to confirm the sender.

Airtable needs a go-between to receive Yirlo events. A light automation tool catches the event, and a following step creates the Airtable record. Zapier, n8n and Make each handle this within minutes. Dedicated Yirlo apps for those three are coming soon. For now, each one's own webhook trigger does the work.

• reply.received: one record per real reply
• hot_lead.received: one record per interested reply
• Fields: email, name, company, campaign, reply text
• Signature: HMAC-SHA256 in X-Yirlo-Signature

Prepare the Airtable base first

Build the table before the automation so the field mapping has somewhere to land. A simple layout is one table called Replies and one called Hot Leads. If you prefer a single table, add a Single select field named Event with the values reply and hot lead.

Use an Email field type for the lead's email, Single line text for name and company, Single select or Single line text for campaign, and Long text for the reply. Reply text can run to several paragraphs, and Long text keeps it readable in an expanded record.

Add a few fields of your own for working the lead: Owner, Next step, Follow-up date and Stage. Yirlo fills the first five fields, and your team fills the rest. An agency selling to ecommerce brands, for example, might add a Stage field with the values Replied, Call booked, Proposal and Closed, then build a Kanban view grouped by that field.

Create an Airtable personal access token with permission to create records in that base. Each of the three tools asks for it when you connect Airtable.

Set it up with Zapier

Zapier uses Webhooks by Zapier as the trigger and Airtable as the action.

1. Start a fresh Zap and choose the Webhooks by Zapier trigger with the Catch Hook event. Zapier then gives you a unique URL to copy.

2. In Yirlo, add that address as a new webhook endpoint and select which events should fire it: reply.received, hot_lead.received, or both.

3. Use the test button in Yirlo to fire a sample event. It lands in Zapier, and the fields email, name, company, campaign and reply text become available to map into your Airtable record.

4. Add an Airtable action, Create Record. Connect your account, pick the base and the table, then map each Airtable field to the matching value from the sample.

5. Test the step, check that the record appears in Airtable, and turn the Zap on.

If you want one Zap for both events, map the event type into your Event field. If you want two tables, build one Zap per event, each with its own Catch Hook URL.

Set it up with n8n

To set this up in n8n, add a Webhook node and set its method to POST. Paste the node's production URL into Yirlo and tick the events you want. Switch the node to listen for a test call, then fire a test event from Yirlo. A sample payload shows up in the node's output, so you can start mapping fields right away.

Next, place an Airtable node in the flow and pick its Create record action. Point it at your base and table, then connect the reply text, the campaign, the company, the contact's name and the email address to the columns that hold them. Dragging values from the webhook's output into each field works well.

In n8n, verifying signatures is the simplest of the three tools. Insert a Code node between the Webhook trigger and Airtable. It should hash the untouched request body with HMAC-SHA256 using your Yirlo signing secret, then compare the result with the signature Yirlo attaches to each request in the X-Yirlo-Signature field. Records move on to Airtable only when the two values agree.

You can also add an IF node that sends reply.received to the Replies table and hot_lead.received to the Hot Leads table.

Set it up with Make

In Make, create a scenario and add the Webhooks module with Custom webhook as the trigger. Make generates a URL. Paste it into Yirlo and select your events.

Click Send test event in Yirlo while Make is waiting for data, and Make learns the structure of the payload on its own. Once it reports success, the fields are available to every later module.

Add an Airtable module, Create a Record, connect your token, choose the base and the table, and map the fields. A Router module after the webhook lets you send each event type to its own table with a filter on the event name.

Set the scenario to run immediately so records appear as replies arrive.

Import the full lead CSV into Airtable

The webhook covers replies as they happen. The CSV export covers the whole list: everyone Yirlo has contacted, with their status. Download it from Yirlo, then in Airtable choose Add or import and select CSV file. You can create a new table from it or add to an existing one.

Each row holds contact details (email, name, job title, LinkedIn profile), company details (company, website, industry, size), a location (country, state, city) and pipeline details (campaign, status, deal status, conversation, note). While importing, assign Airtable field types: Email for the email column, URL for website and LinkedIn profile, Long text for conversation and note, and Single select for status, deal status, industry and country.

A good pattern is to keep the CSV table as the full lead list and the webhook table as the live feed of replies. Add a Link to another record field from replies to leads, matched on email, and each reply sits next to the company's industry, size and location. A sales lead can then filter hot leads by company size or by country before deciding who to call first.

Import the CSV again whenever you want a fresh snapshot of statuses. Airtable's import dialog can update existing records when you pick a unique field such as email.

Pull data on a schedule with the API

If you would rather pull data on a schedule than react to pushed events, call the Yirlo API with your key in the X-API-Key header. It exposes hot leads and conversations. The full reference is at yirlo.com/api-docs.

In n8n or Make, use a Schedule trigger, call the Yirlo API with an HTTP request step, then pass each result to the Airtable step. Zapier can do the same with Schedule by Zapier and Webhooks by Zapier.

Scheduled pulls suit a nightly sync that updates conversation status or deal status on records that already exist. Webhooks suit instant notifications. Many setups use both: webhooks for new records and a nightly job for updates.

Keep the base clean

Avoid duplicate records by searching Airtable for the lead's email before creating a record. Zapier has Find Record, n8n has the Search operation on the Airtable node, and Make has Search Records. Use the email plus the campaign as the match, since the same person could reply to follow-ups in the same thread.

Keep the webhook URL private, and verify the X-Yirlo-Signature header wherever your tool allows it.

Airtable views can turn the incoming rows into a working pipeline. Create one view for hot leads that have no owner yet, another for follow-ups due this week, and a third grouped by campaign. Every record carries its campaign, so you can see which audience starts the most conversations. That pairs well with Yirlo's own results summary, which lands in your inbox three times weekly.

Teammates can be invited to the Yirlo project by email, and the same people can be added to the Airtable base, so everyone who answers leads sees the same records.

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