Connecting to Facebook & Instagram Lead Ads

Introduction

BMexa connects to your Facebook Pages to receive leads from Facebook and Instagram Lead Ads (instant forms). A lead is created in Clients the moment someone submits the form, the assigned person is alerted, and the campaign, ad set and ad names are kept on the enquiry. You can also import leads from the last 90 days.

You need a Facebook profile that is an admin of the Page(s) running lead ads, and access to the Business Manager (business portfolio) that owns them. If your company has not yet set up the Meta app for BMexa, the Facebook card says so; that is a one-time setup described at the end of this article.

Connecting your Facebook account

1. Go to Marketing › Integrations › Facebook & Instagram Lead Ads and click Connect with Facebook.
2. Sign in and approve every permission BMexa asks for: reading your Pages, managing their webhooks and retrieving leads. Declining any of them means leads cannot be read.
3. Back in BMexa, under Pages you manage tick the Pages you want leads from, choose who new leads land with, and click Connect. Each Page becomes its own connection under Connected Pages, with its own Leads land with person and Default project, so Lead Automation Rules can target one Page.
4. Click Test lead on a Page to see what an alert and a client record look like.

Importing past leads

On a connected Page pick a range (last 24 hours, 7, 30 or 90 days) and click Import. BMexa walks every lead form on the Page and creates the leads that are not already in your account; each Meta lead is remembered by its id, so re-running an import never duplicates. Facebook does not keep leads for more than 90 days.

Leads without a phone number are counted but not created, because a client record is keyed on the mobile number. Add a phone question to your instant forms.

What arrives with a lead

• Name, phone, email and city from the standard form fields; every custom question is kept as a form field and written to the remarks.
• Ad campaign, ad set, ad and form names, and whether the lead came from Facebook or Instagram.
• When the campaign name matches one of your marketing campaigns, the lead is linked to it.
• Conversations that start from a Click-to-WhatsApp ad on a connected WhatsApp number are attributed the same way: the ad is looked up through this Facebook sign-in, and the lead gets the campaign and its project. They appear in the forms and campaigns report as “WhatsApp ad”.

What happens when a lead arrives

• The lead is created in Clients within seconds, with the source name on the record and on the alert.
• The person you chose on the connection is assigned and gets an in-app alert (and a browser push if they allowed it). If they turned on Lead alerts on WhatsApp, they also get the lead on WhatsApp from BMexa’s number, or from your own connected number when its card has the lead-alert option on; the client’s phone and email are masked in that message.
• Every field we recognise fills the client record: name, phone, email, city, project, budget, purpose, message, campaign. Any other field is kept as a form field and written to the remarks, so nothing the form captured is lost.
• A phone number that already has an open enquiry does not create a second lead: the message is added as a remark on the existing one, and if it came from a different source a lead clash is raised for the manager to settle.
• Assignment rules, duplicate settings and auto-replies apply to these leads as they ship (see Automations & WhatsApp).

Renewing permissions

Facebook access expires after roughly two months, and immediately if the connecting person changes their Facebook password or loses admin rights on a Page. BMexa shows the expiry date on the connection and marks it Expired when a call fails; the connecting person is alerted. Click Renew permissions and sign in again; your Pages and their leads are untouched.

Delayed or missing leads

• Check the Page is still listed as connected and the connection is not Expired.
• Every day BMexa confirms the Facebook sign-in still works (a changed password or a lost Page role shows up here before leads go missing), warns the connecting person a week before access expires, and re-reads the last two days of leads from every connected Page, so a missed notification only delays a lead to the next day. The Facebook card shows when the sign-in was checked and when each Page was last re-read.
• In Meta Business Suite › Settings › Integrations › Leads Access, make sure your Meta app for BMexa is assigned as a CRM for the Page. Business Manager can restrict which systems receive leads.
• Use Meta’s Lead Ads Testing Tool (developers.facebook.com/tools/lead-ads-testing) to send a test submission to a form; it should appear in Clients within seconds.
• A phone number that already has an open enquiry is added to that enquiry rather than created again (see Duplicate leads).

Instagram DMs and Messenger conversations

People who message your Facebook Page, or the Instagram professional account linked to it, appear on the Facebook card under Instagram DMs and Messenger, with the ad that opened the chat when it came from a Click-to-Messenger or Instagram ad. Click a row to read the conversation and answer from BMexa.

A phone number in the chat makes the person a client on its own: a number they type, or the summary Meta’s lead-form bot leaves after a Messenger lead ad. Until then the conversation waits as “not a client yet”; type the number they gave you under Make them a client. The lead takes the Page’s rules (owner, campaign, project) like a form lead, and the client’s remarks show the channel, the Instagram handle and the ad.

1. Click Renew permissions on the Facebook card and approve messaging for Pages and Instagram (pages_messaging, instagram_basic, instagram_manage_messages).
2. Link the Instagram professional account to the Page in Meta Business Suite › Settings › Instagram accounts if it is not already.
3. Click Check Pages on the conversations card: BMexa records the Instagram account and subscribes the Page to conversation events.

Disconnecting

Disconnect a single Page to stop its leads while keeping the rest; its connection is disabled and its leads stay. Disconnect Facebook removes BMexa’s access to every Page and clears the stored tokens. Leads already received are not affected.

For administrators: the one-time Meta app setup

1. At developers.facebook.com create an app (type Business), add the Facebook Login and Webhooks products, and complete Business Verification.
2. Facebook Login › Settings: add <your API URL>/api/v1/integrations/meta/callback to Valid OAuth Redirect URIs.
3. Webhooks: subscribe to the Page object with the callback <your API URL>/api/v1/integrations/meta/webhook and your verify token; tick the leadgen field.
4. Request Advanced Access (App Review) for pages_show_list, pages_read_engagement, pages_manage_metadata, pages_manage_ads, leads_retrieval, ads_read and business_management.
5. Put META_APP_ID, META_APP_SECRET, META_WEBHOOK_VERIFY_TOKEN and API_PUBLIC_URL in the server environment and restart the API.