Capture leads with an email gate

Ask for an email at the door of a reel or presentation. Every address lands in Contacts with its viewing attributed to it.

An email gate asks the viewer for their address before the content plays. It is the classic lead-capture trade: a little friction at the door in exchange for knowing who walked in. HoldFast puts the same gate on both outbound surfaces, reels and presentations, and routes every captured address into Contacts.

Gate a reel

In the reel editor sidebar, open Access Control and tick Require email to view. An optional message field appears for the line shown on the gate; leave it empty and viewers see "Enter your email to continue". Click Save, and the section's summary reads Email gate whenever it is on.

Screenshot: email-gate-1
One tick in Access Control; the message under it shows on the gate.

Gate a presentation

Open the presentation from Presentations and, in its settings panel, tick Require email to view (lead gate). The optional message is shown above the email field on the gate. Same feature, same Contacts destination.

What the viewer sees

The gate is branded: your logo, the title, your message. On a reel it asks for an Email address, with optional Name and Company fields, and a Continue button; the answer is remembered on that device so nobody is asked twice for the same reel. On a presentation the gate asks for the email alone and holds for 30 days per device.

Where the addresses go

Every submission creates or updates a contact in Contacts, and the viewing attaches to that address: plays, completions, return visits, an engagement score. This is one of the honest paths from anonymous traffic to a named person; the others are a personalized link and a CRM match. Without one of those, HoldFast shows company-level detail where the signal is strong rather than guessing at names. See how the names surface in How to see who watched your video.

One quiet assist: on an ungated reel with several clips, a viewer who has watched three quarters of them gets a single, dismissible "Want to save this reel?" prompt, and an address typed there identifies them the same way.

Gate, or personalized link?

A gate asks a stranger to pay with their email, and some will bounce at the door. When you already know who you are sending to, a personalized link attributes every view to that person with no gate at all. Rule of thumb: gates for an audience you cannot enumerate, personalized links for outreach.