Sales & Marketing
Sales & Marketing is a prospecting tool for businesses on United Pet Club: find pet businesses (groomers, vets, trainers, stores, shelters, breeders…) on a map, keep track of every conversation with them, and turn them into customers. Every business you touch becomes a prospect with a stage, an owner on your team, a timeline of everything that happened, and the messages you sent and received — kept for good, including whether an email was opened, a link clicked, a reply received, or a call answered.
Starting Sales & Marketing
Section titled “Starting Sales & Marketing”Open any Sales & Marketing page while it is off and you see Unlock Sales & Marketing over a preview, with what it costs:
| Price | |
|---|---|
| One-time setup | $50.00 |
| Each business you add to your pipeline | $10.00 |
| Each message sent or received (email or SMS) | $0.10 |
Prices are in US dollars, whatever your country. Usage is billed with your platform fees.
- Choose Start Prospecting — $50.00 one-time.
- The Start Prospecting window explains the prices again. Pay the setup by card.
- Sales & Marketing opens right away: Sales & Marketing is on. Welcome aboard!
If the payment went through but the section is still locked, wait a moment — Your payment went through. Sales & Marketing opens in a moment — then choose Already paid? Check again. Questions before you buy? Questions? Contact sales emails our team.
What you pay for, and what is free
- $10 per business, the first time you add it — from the map, by hand or any other way. Adding back a business you had before is free. A business you type in by hand (not picked on the map) counts as a new one each time.
- $0.10 per message you send, and per reply you receive. A message that could not be sent costs nothing, and neither do delivery notices, opens, clicks, invitations to claim a page, or the calls, meetings and notes you log.
- The add and send windows remind you: Adds $10.00 to your platform fees for each new business. Adding back a business you had before is free. and $0.10 per message sent or received, billed with your platform fees.
- Fees are added to your platform fees once a day as one Prospecting usage line, taken from your next payout or charged to your card when they reach your credit limit — see Credit limit and prepaid balance.
If your Sales & Marketing was switched on by our team, you don’t pay the setup — only the per-use fees.
When an add or a send is refused for billing
Section titled “When an add or a send is refused for billing”Before each new business and each message, we check that your account can pay. If it can’t, the window shows why and the one link that fixes it — nothing is charged:
| Message | Why | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Add a card for platform fees | you have no card on file and your balance can’t cover the fee | Add a card — nothing is charged now (Why we ask for a card) |
| Paid services are paused | charges for your platform fees failed several times | Pay now |
| Add prepaid balance | your account is on prepaid billing and the balance is too low | Add prepaid balance |
| Billing check unavailable | we couldn’t check just now | try again in a moment |
Follow-up sequences don’t stop when this happens: the next step waits and is tried again later.
Find businesses (the map)
Section titled “Find businesses (the map)”Find businesses is a Google map with a search box. Type what you are looking for (e.g. dog groomer, veterinarian, pet store), optionally pick What kind of business, and search; pan the map and use Search this area again to re-run the search where you are looking.
Moving to another city or area. Three ways, all in the map’s toolbar:
- Go to a city, neighbourhood or address — the second box. Start typing (Toronto, Plateau Mont-Royal, 123 Main St, Ottawa), pick a suggestion, and the map jumps to fit that place and re-runs the current search there — no second click needed.
- Drag the map and zoom with the + / − buttons in its bottom-right corner, the mouse wheel (no Ctrl + scroll is required) or a pinch on a phone, then Search this area again. A button greys out when the map is zoomed all the way in or out.
- Use my location (the crosshair) centres the map on you and searches there. It relies on the browser’s location permission: Location permission was refused means the site is blocked in the browser (click the lock / location icon in the address bar and allow it); couldn’t work out where it is means the browser was allowed but the operating system’s location service is off. Either way, the Go to box gets you there without any permission.
Larger map. The console keeps its pages in a fixed-width column, which leaves the map small on a wide screen. Larger map (in the header, or the expand icon in the map’s toolbar) fills the whole window with the map and the result card; Esc or the same icon brings the page back. The choice is remembered per browser, and the selected pin survives the switch.
Every result is a pin. Coloured pins are already in your pipeline (the colour is the stage — see the stage table below); white pins are new ground. Clicking a pin opens a card beside it with what Google knows: name, address, phone, website, rating and review count, Opening hours, and a link to Open in Google Maps. From the card:
- Add to your pipeline — creates the prospect with the Google details filled in (name, address, phone, website, rating, hours, the Google place id and the raw Google record). The business type is guessed from Google’s own categories (a pet_store becomes Pet store, a veterinary_care becomes Veterinarian, and so on); the agent completes the rest on the prospect page. Adding the same place twice is refused (Already a prospect) and the existing record is opened instead.
- Email, Log a call — available straight away for a pin that is already a prospect, without leaving the map.
- Open prospect — the full record.
The Google details are stored indefinitely with the date they were fetched and are never refreshed on their own. Refresh Google on a prospect (map card or prospect page) fetches them again and writes a Google details refreshed entry on the timeline, so an out-of-date phone number or a closed business is a deliberate, visible update rather than a silent one.
Add by hand (top right, also Add a business on the list) opens the same form the prospect page uses: business name, type of business, address, business email, business phone, website, an optional contact person, and the first follow-up.
The pipeline and stages
Section titled “The pipeline and stages”A prospect is always in exactly one stage. The stages, in funnel order:
| Stage | Meaning | Moves there on its own when… |
|---|---|---|
| New | Found or added; nobody has reached out yet. | a prospect is created |
| Contacted | At least one email, SMS or call went out. | the first message is sent, or a call is logged that did not connect |
| Engaged | They answered — a reply, a returned call or a meeting. | a reply arrives, a call is logged as connected, or a meeting is logged |
| Qualified | A real fit: right business, interested, decision maker known. | (manual) |
| Onboarding | Signing up — account being created, plan being chosen. | (manual) |
| Converted | On the platform with a profile (and usually a plan). | Move stage → Converted (the API’s convert command also records the new profile / account ids) |
| Lost | Not happening, for a recorded reason. Can be reopened. | Mark lost |
| Do not contact | They asked us to stop. Outreach is blocked. | Do not contact |
Automatic moves only ever go forward (a reply never demotes a Qualified prospect to Engaged), and never out of Converted or Do not contact. Lost can be reopened by moving the prospect to any working stage.
Pipeline shows one column per working stage with a card per prospect (name, type, owner, engagement score, next follow-up, unread-reply badge). Drag a card to another column to change its stage, or use the card menu: Send email, Send SMS, Log a call, Assign, Move stage…, Do not contact. Three tiles sit above the board — In the pipeline, Follow-ups due (red when any are overdue) and Unread replies (with Open the inbox). Show filters the board to one team member’s prospects.
All prospects
Section titled “All prospects”All prospects is the working list: Search prospects (name, city, email, phone…), and filters by Stage, Type, Assigned to and Sort (last activity, next follow-up, engagement score, name, date added). Each row shows the business, its stage, the Owner, the Engagement score bar, the Next step (the follow-up chip, red when overdue, or Not contacted yet) and Last activity. The row menu carries the same actions as a pipeline card. Unread replies at the top jumps to the inbox.
A prospect’s page
Section titled “A prospect’s page”Opening a prospect shows everything the team knows and does about the business:
- Header — name, stage badge, priority badge (Low / Normal / High / Hot), owner, and the action buttons: Email, Log a call, Move stage, Edit details, Do not contact, Archive (Restore on an archived record).
- Six tiles — Emails (with opened), SMS (with replied), Calls (with reached), Meetings, Days in stage, Since last contact.
- Business — the details, the Google card (rating, hours, Open in Google Maps, Refresh Google), Priority and the assigned team member.
- People — the contact people at the business (name, role, email, phone, Main for the primary contact). No contact person yet — add the owner or manager so emails go to a name. A primary contact’s email and phone are used for outreach when the business itself has none. Beside an email you may see where it came from: from their website (a link to the page it was read on) or they wrote to us; an address a team member typed shows nothing extra.
- Sequence — Start a follow-up sequence (The steps go out on their own; a reply stops it.) and Stop for a running one.
- Timeline — every activity in reverse order, each with who did it and when: notes, calls (with the outcome and duration), meetings, tasks, Email sent / delivered / opened / Link clicked / Email reply / Email bounced, SMS sent / delivered / SMS reply / SMS failed, Stage changed, Assigned, Marked lost, Converted, Google details refreshed, Sequence started / stopped, Follow-up scheduled, Details updated. The timeline is append-only: nothing on it is ever edited or deleted.
- Notes — free text the team keeps on the business.
Reading the business’s website for contact details
Section titled “Reading the business’s website for contact details”The Website panel on a prospect’s page shows the business’s own site and offers Find contact details: the platform reads the site’s home and contact pages and lists every email address and phone number it publishes, each with the page it was found on (from email link, from page text, from phone link) and already on file when you hold it already. Nothing is saved until you choose: Use as business email / Use as business phone copies it onto the business, and the address remembers that it came from the website — the prospect’s page and the contact list show from their website with a link to that page. An address you found yourself goes in through the box below the list (leave the name blank to save it as the business address, or give a name to add a contact person). Many sites publish a form instead of an address, and many refuse to appear in the preview; the panel says so and offers the site in a new tab.
Logging a call, a meeting, a note
Section titled “Logging a call, a meeting, a note”Log a call opens the activity dialog with Type Call / Meeting / Note / Task. For a call, pick the outcome — Answered, Left voicemail, No answer, Busy, Wrong number, Callback requested — and the duration; a meeting is Completed or Cancelled. A connected call moves them to Engaged on its own; a missed one to Contacted. Every entry can set the next Follow up (Tomorrow, In 3 days, Next week, or a date) with a note, which becomes the Next step on the list and the Follow-ups due counter. Write down what happened so the whole team sees it on the timeline.
Engagement score
Section titled “Engagement score”The 0–100 score on lists and cards is recomputed after every activity: replies (+15 each, up to 30), connected calls (+10 each, up to 20), a meeting (+10), email opens (+2 each, up to 10) and clicks (+5 each, up to 10), a Google rating of 4 or better (+5), a website (+3) and an email address (+2), starting from 10; it decays when nothing happened for 14 / 30 / 60 days (−5 / −10 / −20), and is 0 for Do not contact. It is a sorting aid, not a verdict.
Assigning, losing, converting
Section titled “Assigning, losing, converting”- Assign — pick a Team member (Only active team members can be assigned), or Nobody (unassigned).
- Mark lost — pick Why? (Not interested, No response, Went with a competitor, Budget, Business closed, Wrong fit, Bad timing, Other) and an optional note. The reason feeds the Why we lost them breakdown of the report.
- Convert — Move stage → Converted once the business is on the platform; through the API the convert command also records the profile and account ids it now has. Running sequences stop.
- Do not contact — All emails, SMS and sequences will be blocked for this business. Sending to such a
prospect is refused with Do not contact and the Email / SMS / sequence buttons are disabled. The
pages offer no way back on purpose; clearing the flag is an API update (
doNotContact: false) that the audit log records. - Archive (managers) hides the record from lists and the board without deleting anything; Restore brings it back.
Inviting a business to claim its page
Section titled “Inviting a business to claim its page”United Pet Club’s own sales team only, managers only. The United Pet Club page card on a prospect’s page offers Invite them to claim it. The dialog asks for Send to (the business’s own email address, filled in from the record), the Suggested handle (Their page will live at @… if it is free. They can change it.) and an optional Note for our timeline. Send the invitation starts an ordinary United Pet Club sign-up on the business’s behalf, with everything you already know filled in. You never set a password for them: they receive the code at that address and choose their own password to finish.
The sign-up creates two profiles, as every business sign-up does:
- the business page — the business’s name, the suggested handle, its address and its kind of business;
- the person who signs in — named after the contact person when the invitation goes to that person’s own address (Sam Owner at sam@…). Sent to a shared inbox such as info@ or hello@, the person’s name and handle come from the address instead, and they can change them later.
The card then follows the business:
| The card shows | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Invite them to claim it | Never invited |
| Invited · Sent to … by … | Waiting on them: they enter the code and choose a password. Nothing exists until they do. The prospect is in Onboarding |
| They are on the platform · @handle | They finished. The prospect moves to Converted on its own, running sequences stop, and the timeline shows Claimed their United Pet Club page. A few seconds later the business page is linked (Their United Pet Club page is live): Google’s hours, phone number and website are copied onto it, and the map marks the business as an existing client |
A business that ignores the link and signs up by itself from the same address still closes its prospect the same way. A business that is already on the platform, already invited, or marked Do not contact cannot be invited.
When a business claims its page by itself
Section titled “When a business claims its page by itself”Businesses can also claim their listing without an invitation, while signing up (Create an account). The sign-up form recognises a business in United Pet Club’s own pipeline when the person picks it from the address suggestions. It shows them the business email with the first part hidden, and they type it in full. If it matches, the usual sign-up code goes to that inbox. The prospect converts like an invited one; its timeline says Claimed their United Pet Club page at signup. A prospect in another profile’s pipeline is never shown to anyone signing up.
Two things can then appear on the United Pet Club page card:
| The card shows | What to do |
|---|---|
| Asked to claim it at signup · name · email · phone | Someone signing up can’t use the email on file, or there is none, and asked us to verify them. A follow-up is due now. Call the number on the listing, not the one they gave, and confirm they work there. Then Invite them to claim it: the dialog fills in the address they gave, and the invitation is written in their language. Nothing they typed is checked until you call |
| Claims by email are paused until … | Someone typed five wrong addresses for this business. The form stops checking for an hour, so the hidden email can’t be guessed. The timeline records it too. Usually it’s an owner who has forgotten which address you hold, so expect a request or a call |
Outreach: email and SMS
Section titled “Outreach: email and SMS”Send email / Send SMS (list, board, map card or prospect page) opens the composer:
- Channel Email or SMS. SMS needs a phone number and an SMS from number in settings.
- Template — one of the active templates for that channel, or Write my own. Templates use placeholders
which the composer fills in from the record:
{{business.name}},{{business.city}},{{business.phone}},{{business.website}},{{contact.firstName}},{{contact.fullName}},{{contact.role}},{{agent.name}},{{agent.email}},{{today}}. Preview shows the final text; a placeholder the record cannot fill is listed so you can fix it before sending. - Move to a stage (optional) and a Note (optional).
- Send from (email only) — United Pet Club sends through the platform’s mail service; a connected mailbox sends from your own address (a mailbox you connected under Email). The default is your own preference from the Sales team page, otherwise the team default from Outreach settings, otherwise United Pet Club; the option reads Team default (…) and names what that resolves to. Only mailboxes that are connected and working are offered. See Sending from your own mailbox.
Sending hands the message to the platform’s messaging service (the same one that sends every other UPC email and SMS) — or, for a connected mailbox, to that mailbox’s own outgoing mail. The message is stored with its status — Queued, Sent, Delivered, Bounced, Failed, Suppressed, Received — and every provider event afterwards updates it and writes the timeline entry: Email delivered, Email opened (first open and count), Link clicked (with the link), Email bounced, SMS delivered, SMS failed. A failed or rejected send is kept too, with the reason, so the timeline never has a gap.
Sends are refused when the prospect is Do not contact, has no address for the channel (No address for this channel), or when the team’s Daily send cap is reached for today (Daily send limit reached — it resets at midnight in the team time zone).
Sending from your own mailbox
Section titled “Sending from your own mailbox”Some businesses answer a person, not a platform. If you have connected your own mailbox under Email (Gmail, Microsoft 365, Zoho, Yahoo or any IMAP account), you can send outreach from that address instead of United Pet Club’s:
| United Pet Club | Connected mailbox | |
|---|---|---|
| The email comes from | the team’s from-address (Outreach settings) | your own address, with your mailbox’s signature |
| Replies | land on the business through the reply handle | land in your mailbox and on the business — the platform matches them by the message id, or by “we emailed this sender from this mailbox” |
| Opens and link clicks | tracked on the timeline | not tracked (no tracking pixel goes out from your mailbox) |
| Delivery / bounce | reported by the mail provider | the send either succeeds or fails on the spot; a failure is recorded as a failed message with the reason |
| SMS | always United Pet Club | — |
| Follow-up sequences | as the enrolling member’s default sender | as the enrolling member’s default sender |
Where the default comes from, in order: your own choice on the Sales team page (Emails I send go out from), then the team default in Outreach settings (Default sender for emails), then United Pet Club. A message can always override it in the composer. If the mailbox you chose is disconnected or failing, the send is refused (Connected mailbox unavailable / No mailbox to send from) rather than silently falling back — pick United Pet Club or reconnect the mailbox.
Replies and the inbox
Section titled “Replies and the inbox”Every email goes out with a per-message reply address on the Reply host (reply.upcrelay.com by
default). A reply to it — or an SMS from a number we messaged — is matched back to the prospect and the
message it answers, stored, written on the timeline as Email reply / SMS reply, moves the prospect to
Engaged if it is earlier in the funnel, and stops any running sequence.
Inbox lists replies newest first — filter Unread / Everything, by Channel and Assigned to — and shows the thread on the right (Pick a message to read it.). Reply answers on the same channel from the thread. Opening a reply marks it read; unread counts appear on the pipeline tiles, the list and the report. Inbox items are kept for 30 days in the inbox view; the messages themselves stay on the prospect’s timeline for good.
Templates and follow-up sequences
Section titled “Templates and follow-up sequences”Templates (managers) — Emails and SMS the team sends again and again. A template has a Name, a Channel, a Purpose (Introduction, Follow-up, Offer, Onboarding, Thank you, Other), a Subject (email) and the Message with placeholders. Active off hides it from the composer but keeps it in sequences that use it. A template used by a sequence step cannot be deleted (Template in use). Five starter templates ship with the system (an introduction for groomers and one for vets, a follow-up, an offer and an onboarding welcome) — edit them to the team’s voice.
Follow-up sequences (managers) — Set up the emails and SMS that go out on their own after a first contact — day 0, day 3, day 10 — and stop the moment the business replies. A sequence has a Name, a Description and up to 12 Steps, each a Template, a delay in days after the previous step and an At hour (team time zone). Stop when they reply is on by default (Nobody wants a follow-up after they already answered.). Active off pauses new enrollments. A Standard 3-touch introduction sequence ships as a starter.
Enrolling a prospect (Start a follow-up sequence on its page) schedules step 1; a step with delay 0 goes out immediately. The runner sends due steps every five minutes, skips weekends, respects the daily cap and Do not contact, and writes Sequence started / Sequence stopped on the timeline. An enrollment is Active, Completed, Stopped (a reply, a manual stop, a stage change to Converted / Lost / Do not contact) or Failed (a step could not be sent). The Follow-up sequences run switch in settings pauses every step everywhere at once.
Sales team and roles
Section titled “Sales team and roles”Sales team — The people who work the pipeline. Add a person picks one of your profile’s members
(the people under Account › Profiles › team; add them there first if they are missing), gives them a Role,
a Display name, a Colour for the board and a Daily contact target; Add myself adds you as a
manager. Each row shows Open prospects, Follow-ups due and Reached out today against the target.
Deactivate keeps history but removes the person from assignment and sending. Follow-up sequences they started
stop too, because each step goes out as the person who started it: every prospect they had enrolled shows Stopped
”…”:
At the top of the page, Emails I send go out from is your own sender preference: Team default, United Pet Club, or one of the mailboxes you connected under Email. Managers can set the same preference for any member from Edit (Sends emails from).
| Role | Can | Cannot |
|---|---|---|
| Viewer | read every page and report | change anything |
| Sales agent | everything a viewer can, plus add and edit prospects and contacts, log activities, send messages, assign, move stages, mark lost, enrol in sequences | manage templates, sequences, the team or settings; archive |
| Manager | everything | — |
Platform admins and platform staff bypass the team check entirely. A user who is not on the team (and not staff) gets Not allowed on every write.
Prospecting report
Section titled “Prospecting report”Prospecting report — How the pipeline is moving. Pick the period, and optionally a Team member and a Type of business:
- Tiles: New this period, In the pipeline, Converted, Lost, Follow-ups overdue, Unread replies, Email open rate, Email reply rate, Calls that reached someone, Median time to reply.
- Funnel — prospects per stage.
- Activity per day — emails, SMS, calls, meetings and in-person visits per day.
- Outreach effectiveness — per channel: sent, reached (delivered / connected), replies and the rate.
- By team member — per person: prospects, contacted, reached, converted.
- Where they come from (source: Google Maps, added by hand, website form, import, referral, inbound) with the Conversion by source rate, By type of business, and Why we lost them.
Outreach settings
Section titled “Outreach settings”Outreach settings (managers) — How our emails and SMS present themselves, where replies come back, and the daily safety cap.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| From name, From email | the sender on every email (defaults: United Pet Club, sales@unitedpetclub.com). From email lists only the addresses United Pet Club has verified with the email provider. To send from your own address, connect a mailbox and pick Connected mailbox as the Default sender for emails |
| Reply host | the domain of the per-message reply addresses (reply.upcrelay.com); Replies are routed back to the right prospect through it. Only the hosts United Pet Club offers |
| SMS from number | the number SMS go out from: Picked by United Pet Club, or one of the numbers it offers |
| Email signature | Appended to every email |
| Team time zone | for follow-up dates, sequence hours and the daily cap reset (America/Toronto) |
| Daily send cap (emails + SMS) | the safety cap per team per day (default 100). Your plan sets how high it can go: up to 500 a day once you’ve paid the Prospecting setup. The line under the field says Your plan allows up to … a day, and a higher number is saved as that |
| Track opens and clicks | asks the provider to track each email — Needs open / click tracking enabled on the email provider |
| Default sender for emails | United Pet Club or Connected mailbox for the whole team; each member can override it for themselves on the Sales team page, and a message can override it again when written. Connected mailbox is only offered where the Email service is available |
| Follow-up sequences run | Turn off to pause every automated step at once |
An address you saved before these rules that isn’t on the list stays selected, marked (not verified, messages use
the default): your emails go out from sales@unitedpetclub.com until you pick a listed one. Picking anything else
answers That sender isn’t verified.
A Prospecting disabled by the platform notice means Sales & Marketing is not switched on for the profile you are acting as — see Who sees it at the top of this page.
Audit log
Section titled “Audit log”Audit log — Every change in the prospecting system, by whom and when. Kept for ten years. Filter by What (the action), Who, and a Prospect id (Paste a prospect id to see its history). Each row is When, What, Prospect and a Note with the before / after values where they apply. Reads are not audited; every write is — including sends, replies received and the automatic stage moves.
Your data is yours
Section titled “Your data is yours”Every prospect, message, activity, template, sequence, team member and setting carries your profile as its owner: nothing you do is visible to any other business, and United Pet Club’s operators only see usage counts (how many prospects, how many messages) on their oversight page. Switching the section off keeps everything; switching it back on restores it.
Reference
Section titled “Reference”- Business types: Groomer, Veterinarian, Trainer, Breeder, Shelter / rescue, Pet store, Boarding kennel, Daycare, Dog walker, Pet sitter, Pet photographer, Association / club, Other.
- Sources: Google Maps, Added by hand, Website form, Import, Referral, Inbound.
- Channels: Email, SMS (sendable); Call, In person, Video call, Social media, Other (logged only).
- Retention: prospects, messages, activities — indefinitely; inbox view — 30 days; audit log — 10 years (a nightly sweep enforces the two windows).
- Billing messages: Add a card for platform fees, Paid services are paused, Add prepaid balance, Billing check unavailable (see above).
- Response codes the pages surface, from the
Prospectcategory: Already a prospect (409), Stage change not allowed (409), Do not contact (409), No address for this channel (422), That sender isn’t verified (422), That address isn’t on file (422), Daily send limit reached (429), Messaging unavailable (503), Message rejected (422), Template in use (409), Already enrolled (409), Not allowed (403), Prospecting not enabled (403).