How to capture and assign website leads to your sales team in Airtable using Bardeen

If you're managing sales leads in Airtable and tired of chasing down form submissions or manually forwarding emails, you're not alone. This guide is for anyone who wants to get website leads straight into Airtable—then automatically hand them out to the right sales team member—without duct-taping together half a dozen tools or losing their mind over flaky zaps and webhooks.

We're going to use Bardeen. It's an automation tool that's genuinely good for connecting apps without writing code. But this isn’t a sales pitch. I’ll show you what works, what’s a pain, and what you can skip.

Step 1: Get Your Website Lead Capture in Order

Let’s start with the obvious: leads have to come from somewhere. That usually means a form on your website. Here’s what matters:

  • Use a form tool that supports webhooks or email notifications.
    Think Typeform, Tally, Webflow Forms, or even Google Forms (with a little extra work). If your form can’t trigger something, automating this will be a headache.

  • Collect what your sales team actually needs.
    Name, email, company, maybe a message. Don’t overcomplicate it.

Pro tip: If you’re using a website builder like Webflow or Wix, check if they can natively send form data to a webhook or email. If not, you might need to add a service like Formspree or Basin that can.

What to ignore:
Don’t get lost in endless custom field debates. Start simple—you can always add more fields later.

Step 2: Set Up Your Airtable Base

Before you automate anything, your Airtable base should be ready to catch leads. Here’s a straightforward setup:

  • Table: “Leads”
    Fields should include:
  • Name
  • Email
  • Company (optional, but useful)
  • Message/Notes
  • Status (e.g., New, Assigned, Contacted, Closed)
  • Assigned To (a sales rep)

  • Date Submitted

  • Table: “Sales Team”
    Fields:

  • Name
  • Email
  • Lead Count (optional, but can help with assignments)

Pro tip:
Link the “Assigned To” field in the Leads table to the Sales Team table. This lets you track who’s working on what.

What to ignore:
Don’t mess with Airtable’s automations yet—they’re useful, but for this workflow, Bardeen is more flexible and less brittle.

Step 3: Connect Your Form to Airtable With Bardeen

Now for the fun part. Bardeen is like Zapier, but more focused on browser-based and SaaS workflows. You’ll use it to catch new leads and send them to Airtable.

3.1 Set Up Bardeen

  1. Sign up and install the Bardeen extension.
    It’s a Chrome extension—not a standalone app. Some people hate extensions, but this one’s lighter than you’d expect.

  2. Connect Airtable to Bardeen.

  3. Go to Bardeen’s dashboard.

  4. Find the Airtable integration and connect your account using an API key (get this from your Airtable account settings).

  5. Set up your trigger.

  6. If your form tool supports webhooks, use Bardeen’s webhook trigger.
  7. If your form only sends email notifications, you’ll need to use an email trigger (like connecting your Gmail inbox to Bardeen and filtering for new lead emails). This is less direct, but it works.

What’s actually reliable:
Webhook triggers are best. Email parsing works, but it’s more likely to break if your email format changes.

3.2 Build the Automation (“Playbook”)

Here’s the basic flow:

  1. Trigger: New lead submitted via webhook or email.
  2. Action: Create a new record in your “Leads” table in Airtable.
  3. Action: Assign the lead to a sales rep (more on this below).
  4. Action (optional): Notify the assigned rep by email or Slack.

Bardeen’s Playbook builder is drag-and-drop. Map your form fields to Airtable columns—don’t overthink it.

Step 4: Automatically Assign Leads to Your Sales Team

Here’s where most automations fumble. Random, round-robin, or “just send everything to one person”—pick your poison.

The Simple Round-Robin Assignment

The easiest way is round-robin: assign the next lead to the next person on your team, cycling through everyone.

  • Store the last assigned rep somewhere.
    Airtable can do this with a simple formula or a dedicated “Assignment” table.
  • In Bardeen, fetch the list of sales reps.
  • Assign the new lead to the next rep in line.

If you only have a few reps, you can keep this logic in Bardeen. For large teams or more complex rules (territories, product lines), you might need to get clever and use a lookup in Airtable or a more advanced script. But start simple.

What works:
- Round-robin is dead simple and keeps things fair… as long as your reps have similar workloads.

What to ignore:
- Don’t build a big, complex assignment engine unless you have a real need. Complexity breaks, and you’ll spend more time fixing than selling.

Step 5: Notify Your Sales Team

Once a lead is assigned, someone has to actually follow up. You can automate notifications:

  • Send an email to the assigned rep.
    Bardeen can send emails directly if you hook up Gmail or Outlook.

  • Post in Slack.
    If your team lives in Slack, send a message to a channel or DM.

Either way, keep it short: name, contact info, message, and a link to the Airtable record.

Pro tip:
Give reps the Airtable mobile app if they’re often on the go—they’ll get updates live.

Step 6: Test the Entire Flow

Don’t assume it works. Try submitting a test lead from your website. Make sure:

  • The lead shows up in Airtable, with all fields mapped correctly.
  • It’s assigned to a real sales rep.
  • The assigned rep gets notified (and can find the lead in Airtable).

Test edge cases: missing fields, weird characters, duplicate emails. Fix anything that breaks now, not after you miss a hot lead.

What’s Good, What’s Annoying, and What to Watch Out For

What works well:

  • Reliability: Bardeen’s webhooks are generally solid—fewer dropped leads than some other tools.
  • Simplicity: Once set up, reps don’t have to touch the system. New leads just show up.

What’s annoying:

  • Browser dependency: Bardeen runs as a Chrome extension, so you need Chrome running for the automation to fire unless you’re on a paid plan with cloud automations.
  • Email triggers: Parsing emails is always fragile. If your form provider can do webhooks, use them.

Watch out for:

  • Airtable API limits: If you get a ton of leads, you might hit rate limits. Most small teams won’t, but if you’re running high-volume ads, check Airtable’s docs.
  • Assignment fairness: If you don’t review the assignment logic now and then, it can drift. Check in monthly to make sure it’s still fair.

Keep It Simple—Iterate Later

Capturing and assigning leads automatically doesn’t have to be complicated. Start with a basic workflow that works, and let your sales team use it for a few weeks. You’ll quickly spot what’s missing (or what’s more hassle than it’s worth). Don’t get caught up in building a monster system on day one—just make sure leads get to the right person, fast.

And if you ever find yourself debugging a spaghetti mess of automations at 2am, remember: simple beats clever, every time.