If your sales team is missing hot leads because they don’t know who's hitting your website, you’re leaving money on the table. Real-time lead alerts sound great on a sales dashboard—but they only work if you set them up right and your team actually uses them. This guide is for sales managers, team leads, and honestly anyone who wants their salespeople to stop chasing stale opportunities. We’ll walk through setting up real-time alerts in Canddi from scratch, share some hard-won lessons, and help you avoid the usual pitfalls.
Why bother with real-time alerts in Canddi?
Here’s the main point: the faster your team knows about a lead, the more likely they are to close it. Real-time alerts turn anonymous visitors into actual conversations. But—and this is important—alerts are only useful if they’re relevant, timely, and don’t drown your team in noise.
What Canddi alerts can actually do: - Notify you instantly when someone important visits your site. - Let you filter by company, location, or specific web pages. - Send alerts to Slack, email, or directly into your CRM.
What they can’t do: - Magically give you every visitor’s name and phone number. (Sorry.) - Replace good sales follow-up. The alert is just the start.
Step 1: Get the basics right—Canddi setup and tracking
Before you can get fancy with alerts, you need Canddi tracking to work. Sure, this sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many teams skip this and then complain nothing works.
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Install the Canddi tracking code on your website.
- You’ll find your unique code in Canddi under Setup > Tracking Code.
- Paste it into the
<head>of every page you want tracked. - Double-check with a test visit (ideally in a private browser window) to make sure Canddi logs your visit.
Pro tip: If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, there are plugins—but check they’re actually inserting the code on every page.
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Connect your email and CRM accounts (optional, but smart).
- Canddi can enrich data and make alerts more useful if hooked into your sales stack.
- Go to Integrations and follow the prompts for your CRM or email platform.
Honest take: If Canddi isn’t picking up visits, 99% of the time it’s a tracking code issue, not a Canddi bug.
Step 2: Define what’s actually a “hot lead” for your team
You don’t want the sales team pinged every time someone lands on the homepage. Before you set up any alerts, nail down what makes a visitor worth your team’s time.
Ask yourself: - Is it anyone from a target company list? - People who hit pricing or request-a-demo pages? - Visitors from a specific geographic region? - Returning visitors who’ve been on the site before?
Don’t: Try to solve this with tech alone. Have an honest conversation with sales about what’s actually actionable. Less is more.
Step 3: Set up your first Canddi alert
Canddi calls these “Streams.” You’ll set up a Stream with filters, and then connect real-time alerts to that Stream.
- Log in to Canddi and go to Streams.
- Create a new Stream.
- Click New Stream.
- Pick your filters: company, location, URLs visited, return visits, etc.
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Name it something obvious (e.g., “Pricing Page Leads,” not “Stream 3”).
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Test your Stream.
- Use the Preview option to see if the Stream catches the right kind of traffic.
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Adjust filters if you’re getting junk or missing good leads.
Pro tip: Start simple. You can always get fancier later.
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Set up the alert.
- In the Stream, look for the Alerts or Notifications tab.
- Choose how you want to be notified: email, Slack, or both.
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Add your sales team’s emails or Slack channel.
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Decide on frequency.
- For true “real-time,” set alerts to fire immediately.
- If your team gets overwhelmed, you can batch alerts (e.g., every hour).
- Don’t default to instant for everything—alert fatigue is real.
Step 4: Test, tune, and don’t annoy your sales team
This is where most alert setups go wrong. You want to catch the best leads, not become background noise.
Checklist: - Send a few test visits and make sure alerts actually arrive. - Ask your sales team: “Is this helpful, or just more email noise?” - Adjust filters. If you get too many alerts, make them stricter. Too few? Loosen up.
What to avoid: - Setting up a million Streams for every possible scenario. Start with one or two. - CC’ing the whole company “just in case.” Only notify those who’ll act. - Relying only on email—if Slack works better for your team, use it.
Step 5: Make sure sales actually follow up
The best alert system in the world is useless if nobody takes action. Canddi can tell you someone’s interested, but your team still needs to pick up the phone or send that email.
Best practices: - Assign clear ownership—who responds to which alert? - Track what happens after an alert (even a simple spreadsheet is fine). - Review results weekly: Did these alerts lead to real conversations?
What doesn’t work: - Assuming everyone will jump on alerts without a plan. - Setting and forgetting—review what’s working every few weeks.
Step 6: Get smarter over time (but don’t overcomplicate it)
Canddi’s filtering and tagging can get pretty granular, but it’s easy to overthink things. Start with the basics, then refine.
Ways to improve over time: - Add filters for high-value companies (upload a target account list). - Set up different Streams for different teams or geographies. - Tweak alert frequency based on team feedback.
Don’t: Spend hours building “perfect” alert logic before you’ve tried it in the real world.
Honest answers to common questions
Q: Will Canddi show me the name and email of every visitor?
A: Nope. If someone fills in a form or clicks a tracked email, Canddi can often identify them. Otherwise, you’ll usually see company info, location, and browsing behavior—still useful, but not magic.
Q: Can I get alerts in my CRM?
A: Sometimes. Canddi supports integrations with some CRMs, but setup can be fiddly. For most teams, email or Slack is faster and more reliable.
Q: Are real-time alerts annoying for sales?
A: They can be, if you overdo it. Make sure every alert is something a salesperson can actually act on.
Q: Is there a risk of missing leads if I make alerts too strict?
A: Sure. That’s why it’s smart to review your Streams every week or two, and adjust as you learn.
Keep it simple (and adjust as you go)
Setting up real-time lead alerts in Canddi isn’t rocket science, but it takes a bit of trial and error to get right. Start with one or two high-impact Streams, make sure alerts actually help your sales team, and tweak as you learn what works. Don’t chase perfect—just make sure your team gets the info they need to act fast. And if something’s not working, change it. That’s the beauty of these tools: you can always update your setup as your team or business evolves.