You have signed in, you have a link, and now the question is what to do with it. An intake link only works if clients meet it at the right moment, in the right words, and if something sensible happens in the first ten minutes after a brief arrives. None of that is difficult. Most of it is deciding once, and then never having to write "could you send me a brief?" again.
Here is how to set up intake so that briefs arrive instead of being chased, written from the side of the table that receives them.
Put the link where the question gets asked
Clients ask "how do we start?" in three places: on your website, at the end of a first call, and in the proposal. The link belongs in all three, in the same words each time. On the site, it goes in the footer and on the contact page, not as a button in the hero, because a client who has not decided yet will not tap it. In the proposal, it goes on the page after the price. At the end of the call, it goes in the follow-up email, with one sentence.
“Please send over a brief when you get a chance and we will take it from there.”
“Here is our link: herebriefly.com/i/north-studio. It takes about ninety seconds and you tap through it, no account. Once you have sent it, we will come back with questions within a day.”
Make the page yours before you send it
The intake page has your name on it from the first minute, and it takes two minutes to make it read as yours. Write the heading in your voice. Write the line under it to say what happens next and how long it takes. Pick a background from the library, or on Studio, put your own photograph behind it. A client arriving at a page that sounds like you trusts it the way they trust your website.
“Brief North Studio in about ninety seconds.”
“Tell us about the project. Ten taps, ninety seconds, and we start Monday with a brief we can both point at.”
The default is fine. Your own words are better, and they are free on every plan.
Add the questions only you would ask
The built-in questions cover the brief. On Studio and Team you can add up to eight of your own per kind of work, and the ones worth adding are the ones that save you an email. "Which of our previous films is closest to this?" tells you the reference before the call. "Do you already have a printer?" tells you whether the schedule has six weeks of print in it. Add two or three, not eight. Every question is a screen your client has to get through.
“We usually ask about budget and timeline on the first call.”
“Custom question, asked at the end of Practicalities: “Who signs off the final version?” with the answers one person, a small group, a committee.”
The question that predicts revision rounds, answered before the call.
Decide what happens in the first ten minutes
A brief arrives and you get an email. What you do next is the whole difference between intake that works and intake that is a form nobody follows up. Decide it once: open the brief, read the marked gaps, and reply within one working day with either a time for a call or a short list of questions asked against the lines of the document. The gaps are already marked for you, so the reply takes ten minutes, not an hour.
“Thanks for the brief, we will review internally and revert.”
“Thanks, read it. Three things I want to check before I quote: the sign-off (marked open in the brief), whether the music is licensed, and the date. Thursday at ten for twenty minutes?”
Tell your clients what a good answer looks like
Once a month, look at the briefs that arrived and notice where clients left things open. If everyone leaves the budget band empty, say in your follow-up email that a band helps you propose the right size of job. If everyone skips references, add a line to your intake page. The intake link is a conversation you are having with all your clients at once, and it gets better if you listen to it.
“Clients never fill in the budget.”
“On the intake page: “A budget band is not a commitment. It tells us which size of job to propose, and you can change your mind.””
One line on the page, and the next ten briefs come with a band.
When you do not know
You may not know yet which questions you would add, or what to write on the page. Start with the defaults. They are written to work, and the link is live the moment you sign in. The first three briefs will tell you what to change, and everything on the page can be changed in a minute without breaking the link. What does not work is waiting until the page is perfect to send it to anyone.
Your intake link is free, and it is ready now. The next brief that comes in is one you did not have to chase.
