Hot Lead Detection
Hot lead detection is an email tracker flagging the recipients whose behaviour suggests they're ready to talk, usually from repeat opens, clicks and replies on the same email. Tools do it differently: some use a fixed rule, some a weighted score. Outsolvi uses a fixed rule: an email is a hot lead once it has five counted opens and two clicks.
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A list doesn't warm up evenly. A handful of people read your email again and again, click the pricing link and pass it to a colleague, and those are the ones worth a call today. Hot lead detection tries to spot them for you.
The signals that carry weight
- Repeat opens on one email. Someone going back to the same message over several days is rereading it, often with a colleague. One open on its own says very little.
- Clicks. A click takes a decision. Clicks on pricing, a booking link or a case study say more than a click on your logo.
- Replies. The clearest signal of all, and the one that doesn't need detecting. If they replied, answer them.
- Opens from new places. Opens from a new location after the first reader can mean the email was forwarded. A pixel can't prove it, so treat it as a hint.
The signals that mislead
Machines open and click email too. Apple Mail Privacy Protection loads every image when a message arrives, and company security scanners open emails and follow their links seconds after delivery. A tool that counts those raw will call people hot who never saw the email. Hot lead detection is only as good as the counts under it, so it has to start from opens graded as a person, not raw pixel loads. The Apple Mail Privacy Protection and click-through rate entries show what the machine traffic looks like.
Rule or score?
A fixed rule is easy to read: you know exactly why someone was flagged. A weighted score can blend more signals, but if the tool doesn't show you the weights, you can't check why it ranked someone first. Whichever you use, look at the flagged emails yourself before you pick up the phone.
How Outsolvi does it
Outsolvi flags an email as a hot lead once it has five counted opens and two clicks. Both counts are on the same email, opens only count when they're graded as a person, and scanner clicks don't count. There's no time window and the rule isn't adjustable.
A hot email gets a flame badge in your list of tracked emails. The Gmail extension and the desktop add-in for classic Outlook pop up a hot-lead notification, and hot leads are counted in your weekly summary email.
Track real engagement, not Apple MPP noise.
Start Free TrialFrequently asked questions
What makes a lead hot in Outsolvi?+
Five counted opens and two clicks on one tracked email. The rule is the same for every account and can't be changed.
Does Outsolvi score prospects?+
No. There's no per-prospect score. Each tracked email shows its counted opens, clicks and replies, with the reason for each open, and the hot-lead flag sits on the email.
Can a security scanner make someone look hot?+
It's the most common way trackers get this wrong. In Outsolvi, opens graded as a scanner or an Apple Mail prefetch aren't counted, and scanner clicks aren't counted, so they can't push an email over the line.
Put this concept into practice
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Related glossary terms
Want accurate tracking that handles Hot Lead Detection?
Outsolvi tracks Outlook and Gmail, grades every open as a person or a machine, and flags hot leads, from $7/user/mo billed yearly. 14-day free trial, no credit card.
Start 14-Day Free TrialNate built Outsolvi after watching every email-tracking tool he had ever used lie to him about opens. Outsolvi grades every open as a person or a machine, in Outlook and Gmail, so the number on the dashboard is one a rep can actually act on.
We update these pages when the underlying mechanics change. new mailbox-provider rules, new tracker behavior, new measurement gaps. The dates above are real revisions, not auto-touches.