Convert to contact
What this page is — the rules that turn a qualifying lead into a contact.
What it is for — promoting someone from "might buy" to "we have a relationship", automatically, when they reach a status that means it.
The problem it solves — leads are transient and contacts persist. Without conversion, the person stays a lead forever and the relationship has no permanent record. This page also covers the Run action, which applies the rules retroactively and can create hundreds of contacts in one click.
Route: /org/marketing/leads/settings?tab=rules&rule=convert-contact
Permission: Manage Conversion Rules for Lead to Contact or Deal — correctly enforced, unlike scoring and assignment
1. What conversion means
A lead becomes a contact when the relationship outlives the enquiry. The lead record stays — it is marked converted and linked to what it produced.
| Lead | Contact | |
|---|---|---|
| Lifespan | Ends at conversion or loss | Persists |
| Has a pipeline | Yes | No |
| Has a score | Yes | No |
| Groups | No | Yes |
2. The three conversion families
| Family | Produces | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Convert to Contact | A contact | this page |
| Convert to Deal | A deal, and its contact | Convert to deal |
| Add to VOX Backlog | An outbound-call backlog item | Vox backlog |
All three enforce Manage Conversion Rules for Lead to Contact or Deal on every write and on Run.
3. What a rule is
| Part | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Name | For humans |
| Conditions | Field / operator / value, the same shape as scoring |
| Trigger | Typically a status change into a converted status |
| Active | A toggle |
4. The Run action
Run applies the rules to leads that match now, retroactively.
It creates contacts for every currently-matching lead. There is no dry run, no count beforehand, and no report of what it did afterwards — the screen simply completes.
On a project with hundreds of qualifying leads this creates hundreds of contacts in one action. Narrow the rule's conditions and verify against a handful of leads before running it.
5. What conversion writes
| Field on the new contact | From the lead |
|---|---|
| First and last name | first_name / last_name, or split from full_name |
| Email, phone, mobile | email, phone, alternate_phone |
| Company, job title | company_name, job_title |
| Address, city, state, country, postcode | The lead's address block |
| Owner | The lead's owner |
| Link back to the lead | Set automatically |
| Lifecycle stage | customer — or opportunity if a deal is created too |
Conversion looks the email up in the project first. If a contact exists it is linked rather than duplicated, so converting the same lead twice does not produce two contacts.
The lookup ignores case and surrounding spaces, so a differently-capitalised address still matches. See contacts.
6. The admin contract
| Needs | Or |
|---|---|
| Manage Conversion Rules for Lead to Contact or Deal | Rules render but every save fails |
| A converted status to trigger on | Rules never fire automatically |
| Contacts enabled for the org | Conversion has nowhere to write |
The Rules section is shown regardless of permissions, so a user without manage_conversion sees the
rule editors in full and is refused when they save. See the hub section 3.
7. Downstream
A converted lead is marked converted, linked to its contact, and moved to the target status. The contact appears in the contacts list and can be added to groups.
8. Don't confuse this with…
| This | Not this |
|---|---|
| A conversion rule | The Convert button on the lead record |
| Run | A bulk action on the leads list |
| A contact | A Storefront customer |
9. Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause |
|---|---|
| Rules save with an error | Missing manage_conversion. Section 6 |
| Rules never fire | No status change triggers them. Section 3 |
| Run produced far more contacts than expected | Conditions too broad. Section 4 |
| A duplicate contact appeared | Case-sensitive email lookup. Section 5 |