Not enough customization!

@Anthony Meiring welcome to the community and sorry to hear it’s been a disappointing welcome to the product. Could you tell us a bit more about your business and the services you provide? What kind of services are your prospective clients inquiring about? Were you using Constant Contact and MailChimp as a click funnel for leads? Ideally, how would you like to use HoneyBook to manage your clients from the prospect stage through to booking and delivering services—are you wanting to manage your marketing through HoneyBook as well as your booking process?

I know those are a lot of questions, those will help me know how to share resources, get other members chiming in with ideas, and also help me direct feedback to our product team as well! 

I'm interested in this both the question and solution. I'd like to move away from MailChimp and use Honeybook for CRM. I'm in the process of setting up an email template to send to leads and would like them to reply to me via my business email and/or use a lead form that I've set up as well. 

I have a Virtual Assistant Business

Services include andmistrative, content creation, social media management, scheduling, event planning and travel arrangements.

I used MailChimp for e-newsletters and campaigns to current and potential clients, I'll be using my website for this moving forward but Id like to use Honeybook to reach out to leads I've acquired from referral (mostly word of mouth right now) that will prompt them to reply via email and reply using a lead form to book services or schedule intro meetings, etc.

If I can manage marketing through Honeybook that would be a plus but I'm interested in managing the booking, projects, and correspondences right now. 

April Lynee

@Kait M, I have a beach wedding business.  We offer ceremony and reception packages for small (under 150) weddings in Florida.  We are a small business with 2 employees and do about 100 ceremonies a year.  

I have two contact forms on my website.  One is a general “Contact Us” form that anyone can use to reach me by email.  The other is on the webpage with my packages and prices.  Prospective clients use this to request additional info or ask questions about our services, check availability, ask about locations, etc.  

Because these are potential customers and not booked clients, I don’t want to communicate with them via a third party portal.  I want them to get an immediate automated reply from me with general information until I have time to send a personalized response.  Then, 2 to 3 followup automated messages.  I want the emails to come from my email address so that they can reply directly to the email.  I don’t want them click a button and going to HoneyBook.

I was happy with MailChimp.  It worked well for several years.  I was able to build beautiful automated emails that included embeded photos.  I was disappointed to learn that I couldn’t included embeded photos in my emails (attachments are not a solution).  The only reason I wanted to try HoneyBook was that I needed the ability to electronically sign contracts. I thought I would be able to combine both functions from one provider.  With MailChimp, the emails came from 1. My email address.  2. With embeded photos and 3. didn’t send leads to some random third party portal.  Clients find that confusing and I hate that this is their first impression of my company.  

I can envision eventually using the portal and projects features for booked clients.  But, that likely won’t happen as you will likely lose my business if you aren’t able to fix this issue with my leads right away.  

Hi @Anthony Meiring , Michal from HoneyBook here.
I understand your frustration. HoneyBook’s mailing system works a little differently than what you may know from other mailing systems, as its focus is on collecting the clients' communication under a project.
I do have a few things to offer that might address at least some of your points:

1. If you haven’t done so already, integrate your personal/business email address with HoneyBook to ensure emails you send via HoneyBook appear as coming from your personal email in the client's inbox. For additional information, you can find this article, which walks you through the integration process.
2. I can assure you that if a client hits “reply” in their own inbox, instead of hitting the “Reply to” button, their message will surface inside their project, and, in case you have your own inbox integrated, it will also be received in your inbox.
   So a possible solution would be to direct the lead, in the automated email template text, to reply directly to the email instead of hitting the button.

As we constantly evaluate improvements in the emailing process, you are more than welcome to visit and upvote this feature request, asking for the option for embedded photos in emails you’re missing so you receive updates on the request status.
I didn’t spot an existing request targeting the “reply to” button (which only appears for emails sent by automation), so please feel free to add that idea to the list to get upvotes and be notified of the request status.

Let me know if any of these works better for you and if I can assist with anything else.