Never Miss a Rightmove Enquiry: Automatic Lead Capture for Your Agency

It's 2:47pm on a Wednesday. You're showing a couple around a three-bed terraced house when your phone buzzes. Another Rightmove enquiry. You make a mental note to follow up later.

By 5pm, there are four more enquiries. You spend the next 20 minutes copying names, emails, phone numbers, and messages from Rightmove into your CRM. One enquiry mentions they're looking for something specific, but you're not sure which property they viewed. You bookmark it to investigate later.

Later never comes.

This week, we built a system that eliminates this entire workflow. Rightmove enquiries arrive in LetAdmin automatically. No copying, no manual entry, no missed leads.

The Problem: Manual Enquiry Processing

Every letting agency with properties on Rightmove faces the same workflow:

1. Enquiry arrives via Rightmove's messaging system
2. You receive an email notification with the enquiry details
3. You manually copy the applicant's details into your system
4. You match the enquiry to the correct property
5. You respond to the enquiry

Steps 3 and 4 are pure data entry. They take time, they're error-prone, and they don't add value to the applicant relationship.

Time Costs

For an agency managing 100 properties on Rightmove:

• Average enquiries per week: 15-20
• Time per manual entry: 3-4 minutes
• Monthly time cost: ~70 minutes of admin work

That's over an hour per month spent copying and pasting. Not responding to enquiries—just moving data around.

The Real Cost: Response Time

But the bigger problem isn't time—it's delays. An enquiry that arrives at 2:47pm might not get entered into your system until 5pm or later. Your response time to that applicant is measured in hours, not minutes.

In lettings, speed matters. The agent who responds in 10 minutes wins the instruction more often than the agent who responds in 2 hours.

The Solution: Automatic Lead Capture

LetAdmin now captures Rightmove enquiries automatically using email forwarding. Here's how it works:

1. Email Forwarding Setup

Each agency gets a unique email address:

enquiries-{your-agency}@mail.letadmin.com

You configure Rightmove to forward enquiry notifications to this address. That's it—one-time setup, takes 30 seconds.

2. Automatic Processing

When an enquiry email arrives:

1. ActionMailbox receives the email and routes it to LetAdmin
2. Email parser extracts the data: Applicant name, email, phone, message, property reference
3. Property matching happens automatically using Rightmove's property ID
4. Contact record created or updated with the applicant's latest details
5. Enquiry logged against the correct property with timestamp

This happens in under 2 seconds. While you're showing that couple around the terraced house, the enquiry is already in your system, matched to the property, ready for follow-up.

3. Real-Time Notification

A badge appears on the Enquiries menu showing "3 this week". Click through and you see:

• All enquiries in chronological order
• Status badges: New, In Progress, Converted, Not Interested
• Property links: Click to view the property they enquired about
• Full message thread: Everything the applicant wrote
• Contact details: Phone and email ready to copy

No manual entry. No missing information. No delays.

What Your Team Will Notice

Instant Lead Visibility

Enquiries appear in LetAdmin within seconds of arriving at Rightmove. Your team sees them immediately, whether they're in the office or on-site.

The Enquiries This Week badge in the menu provides instant visibility: "We've had 8 enquiries this week" becomes a glanceable fact, not something you need to count.

Zero Data Entry

Nobody copies and pastes anymore. The applicant's details are already in the system, correctly matched to the property they viewed, with their message preserved.

For busy agencies, this saves genuine time. For smaller agencies, it removes a friction point that makes lettings software feel like more work instead of less.

Better Response Times

Because enquiries arrive automatically, you can respond faster. An enquiry that comes in at 2:47pm gets entered at 2:47pm, not 5pm. Your first response reaches the applicant while your agency is still fresh in their mind.

Audit Trail

Every enquiry is logged with:

• Exact timestamp of when they enquired
• Which property they viewed on Rightmove
• Full message content (preserved as-is)
• Contact details at time of enquiry

If an applicant says "I enquired two weeks ago but never heard back", you have the record. You know when they enquired, what they said, and whether your team responded.

Under the Bonnet: How Email Processing Works

The technical implementation has three layers:

Layer 1: Email Ingress

LetAdmin uses ActionMailbox (Rails' email processing framework) integrated with SendGrid for inbound email routing.

When an email arrives at enquiries-{agency}@mail.letadmin.com:

1. SendGrid receives it and POSTs the raw email to LetAdmin
2. ActionMailbox parses the email structure (subject, body, headers)
3. Custom mailbox routes Rightmove enquiries to the processor

The routing is simple: if the email subject contains "Rightmove" and the sender is Rightmove's notification address, process it as an enquiry.

Layer 2: Data Extraction

Rightmove's enquiry emails have a consistent structure. The processor extracts:

• Applicant email: Parsed from the message body
• Property reference: Rightmove's unique property ID
• Message content: The applicant's question or comment
• Contact name and phone: When provided

The email parser handles edge cases:

• Multiple email addresses (picks the applicant's, ignores system addresses)
• Phone numbers in various formats (UK mobile, landline, international)
• Mixed-case or all-caps names (normalized to title case)
• Property IDs in different formats depending on Rightmove's email template version

Layer 3: Multi-Strategy Matching

Once data is extracted, the processor matches the enquiry to your system:

Property matching uses Rightmove's property ID stored in your Rightmove app integration settings. If a match is found, the enquiry links to that property automatically.

Contact matching is more nuanced:

1. Check if a Person record exists with that email address
2. If yes, update their details (phone, name) if newer information is provided
3. If no, create a new Person record

This prevents duplicate contacts while keeping information current. If someone enquired 6 months ago with an old phone number, the new enquiry updates their contact card.

Error Handling

The processor handles failures gracefully:

• If the property ID doesn't match any property in your system, the enquiry is still created (you see it in the Enquiries list, just without a property link)
• If email parsing fails, the error is logged to Sentry with the raw email content for investigation
• If the Rightmove API is unavailable, the processor retries automatically

Testing and Edge Cases

Week 47 included extensive testing for:

Duplicate Enquiries

If the same applicant enquires about the same property multiple times, LetAdmin treats them as separate enquiries (they might have follow-up questions). But the Person record is shared—you see one contact with multiple enquiry threads.

Missing Data

Not all Rightmove enquiries include phone numbers. The system handles this:

• If no phone is provided, the contact record is created without one
• If a phone is added later (via manual update or a new enquiry), it's filled in

Email Format Variations

Rightmove occasionally changes their email templates. The parser is defensive:

• Uses regex patterns that match known variations
• Logs unexpected formats for investigation
• Defaults to preserving the raw message if structure is unrecognised

What's Next

The automatic enquiry capture is live, but there are improvements planned:

1. Automatic Follow-Up Sequences

Currently, enquiries arrive automatically but you still respond manually. Future updates will add:

• Template responses for common enquiry types
• Automated follow-up if no response within 24 hours
• Integration with your email system to send replies

2. Lead Scoring

Not all enquiries are equal. Some applicants are ready to view immediately; others are "just browsing". Adding lead scoring based on message content and response patterns will help prioritise follow-up.

3. Applicant Portal Access

Once an enquiry is processed, the applicant could receive an email with a link to their own portal view—where they can see properties matching their requirements, book viewings, and track application status.

Get In Touch

If your agency receives Rightmove enquiries and you're tired of manual data entry, this feature might save you hours per month.

Questions about how it works or how to set up email forwarding for your agency?

Email: paul@letadmin.com

LetAdmin is built by letting agents for letting agents. Automatic enquiry capture is live and being tested with real Rightmove leads at Phillip James (370 properties). If you'd like to try it for your agency, we'd love to hear from you.