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When someone submits an instant form on a Facebook or Instagram lead ad, lead capture creates or updates a contact and adds them to the list you choose. Any journey triggered by joining that list starts straight away for active contacts. A lead that matches an existing unsubscribed or bounced contact is added to the list but doesn’t enter the journey. You don’t need to download CSV files from Ads Manager.
Lead capture needs the Pro or Enterprise plan and a Meta Ads connection. Setting it up, pausing and testing need permission to manage integrations.

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Before you start

  • Meta Ads is connected with permission to your Pages and leads. See Connect your ad accounts.
  • The Facebook Page that runs the lead ads has at least one instant form.
  • The list new leads should join exists. Leads are added as single opt-in, because the person typed their address into the form themselves.

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Set up a capture

1

Open Lead capture

Go to Advertising → Lead capture and click Add capture.
2

Pick the Page

Under Facebook Page, choose the Page. If you see “The Meta connection was made before Page permissions were needed”, click Reconnect Meta first.
3

Pick the form

Under Instant form, pick one form, or choose All forms on this Page. If you pick one form, you can map its questions. All forms on this Page relies on the standard question names.
4

Pick the list

Under Add leads to list, choose the list new leads join.
5

Map custom questions (single form only)

Standard questions such as email, name and phone map automatically. Under Field mapping, set a target for each custom question, or choose Ignore.
6

Start

Click Start capturing. InstantCampaign subscribes the Page to Meta’s lead notifications.
If you set up one capture for a specific form and another for All forms on this Page, a lead from that form goes to the form-specific capture.

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How answers become contact fields

In Field mapping, each question can use Automatic (the table above), a standard contact field, “Custom field: …” for one of your custom contact fields, or Ignore. Answers that aren’t mapped are still saved on the contact, so nothing the person typed is lost.
A lead without an email address is skipped. If your form asks for email in a custom question, map that question to Email.

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Test before you spend

On a capture’s row, click Test with the newest lead. InstantCampaign fetches the most recent lead on the form and runs it through your mapping. For All forms on this Page, it uses the first form on the Page.
  • “Test lead processed — … is now a contact.” means the mapping works.
  • “The test lead was not processed: …” gives the reason, for example that there’s no email.
If the form has no leads yet, create one with Meta’s Lead Ads Testing Tool. A test lead made there arrives like a real one.

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Monitor captures

Each row shows the Page / form, the List, the Leads count and the status:
  • Listening: leads are being captured. Switch Capture active off to pause (“Capture paused — new leads on this form are ignored.”).
  • Not subscribed: the Page couldn’t be subscribed to lead notifications, so no leads arrive. Reconnect Meta, then remove the capture and add it again.
  • Last lead failed: the most recent lead couldn’t be processed. Its reason is shown.
Click a row to see its leads: Email, Status (Processed, Failed, Skipped or Received), when it was Received and the Detail. To remove a capture, click the bin icon and confirm. Leads already captured stay as contacts. New submissions on that form are no longer captured.

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Things to know

  • Your contact limit applies. If your plan’s contact limit is reached, new leads are marked Failed and kept. Upgrade, then use Test with the newest lead to process the latest one.
  • If your plan changes. If the workspace loses lead capture, leads are still recorded (as Skipped) but no contacts are created.
  • If the page warns “The Meta webhook is not configured on this server”, leads can’t be delivered to this InstantCampaign installation until its administrator finishes the Meta app setup. The Callback URL for the Meta app card shows the address they need.

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Troubleshooting