OutboundSync supports the new Clay native email sequencer

Clay quietly launched a native email sequencer—and it’s a bigger deal than most people realize. We’ve been testing it in beta, integrating it with OutboundSync, and now fully support it out of the box. In this video, we walk through how it works, who it’s best for, and why it could change how GTM teams and agencies build outbound campaigns.

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Transcript

0:00 So, one of the hottest tools in go-to-market right now is releasing a sequencer, and nobody’s talking about it. So we’re going to change that.
0:08 I want to show you what Clay’s sequencer looks like right now. This is in beta. I’m going to talk about how OutboundSync supports this out of the box.
0:17 I’m going to show you under the hood, in terms of how it works. And I’m going to explain the teams that I think are most likely to use this, because I don’t think it’s for everybody, but I definitely think that some teams are going to be adopting this, and I’m going to show you who I think those will
0:31 be. Before I get into all that, I just want to talk about why I’m covering this. Why are we supporting this?
0:36 Why are we spending support engineering time on this new sequencer? And the short answer is that we work with the best.
0:45 We work with the best agencies, the best teams, the best tools. We want to help get your outbound data into your system of record.
0:52 And when Clay says that they’re going to be working on this, our ears immediately perked And fortunately, we’ve been working really closely with their team.
1:00 I just want to thank Clay, thank Larry in particular over there, who’ve been super receptive to feedback. We’ve had really good back and forth with them.
1:06 And because of this, I can tell you that out of the box, OutboundSync is supporting this right now. So let’s just talk about how it works and why it’s different.
1:15 So first, the UI of the sequencer. Think of this as a client account. So if you’ve used Smartlead before as an agency, you know that you can spin up client accounts.
1:26 Your Clay table essentially will be operating within a client account inside of Smartlead. And then they’re displaying. Inputs for Smartlead inside of Clay.
1:39 So you never have to leave Clay if you don’t want to, but you can jump over and look at what that Smartlead account looks like from the inside and I’ll show you that in a second.
1:47 So think of this as a lightweight, nothing more, nothing less, exactly what you need to stand up outbound campaigns using Smartlead with Clay as the input and with Clay credits rather than spinning up and paying for a net new Smartlead account.
2:04 So if you’re an existing Smartlead power user, this feature probably isn’t going to be for you except for an agency use case that I’ll talk about at the end.
2:13 For everybody else, it’s pretty straightforward. You’ve got these inputs based on the messages in the sequence. You’ve got your connected accounts.
2:21 You’ve got some basic settings around how it’s going to work and how it’s going here’s where Outbound Sync comes in.
2:27 You can take your existing Outbound Sync account, drop that Webhook Receiver link in here, and we’re going to receive and handle the data just like we normally would from Smartlead itself.
2:38 Under the hood, this is just a Clay table. It’s a Clay table, and like Clay’s Write to Table feature, it basically just sends this table data over to the sequencer.
2:51 You can preview the sequences, you can see all the leads, you can see the data related to that lead. This is that row from the Clay table, basically broken out by property.
2:59 And if you’re an existing Outbound Sync user, what you can do, even if you’re using instantly your EmailBison, or soon if you’re a HeyReach user, and you want to branch out into email outreach, Thank you All you have to do is just make a new webhook receiver, and you can do this for a Salesforce account
3:18 with all of the various settings that we have for Salesforce, or you can do it for our HubSpot account, it doesn’t matter.
3:25 We’re talking to the team about potentially having a way of doing this through Clay itself, and without needing to sign up for OutboundSync too, if that’s interesting to you, let me know.
3:34 Right now, what we’re supporting during the beta is Existence. Existing OutboundSync customers will be able to start using this at no additional cost, regardless of which sequencer they’re using.
3:42 we send to two CRM endpoints, HubSpot or Salesforce. This is the same thing we’ve been working on for the last two years.
3:51 There’s nothing new here. It works exactly like OutboundSync for every other platform that we support. We’re logging activities as emails, as timeline events.
3:59 You can use these for a whole host of things like routing replies. You can also use them for revenue attribution.
4:05 And the same thing in Salesforce. Writing to leads or accounts and contacts. Writing as tasks or email messages. which is building a report and flows inside of Salesforce.
4:16 So let’s talk about the teams that are going to be using this because I do think that there are three specific types of teams that are going to find this the most interesting.
4:23 And I’m curious what you think because this is new. And you know, who knows? First one is going to be teams that are just new to programmatic outbound.
4:32 They’ve probably seen content about Clay and how it works, seen all the signals and custom tracking and enrichments and things that you can do all in one place.
4:39 And they’re just starting with that. And then rather than going out and setting up for a new sequencer, they’re just going to use this sequencer out of the box.
4:46 I think these teams are going to be sending the lowest amount of volume, but I do think that you could have reps within larger orgs that are maybe more experimental or even a revops or GTM function within a larger org.
4:59 And that could be a way that Clay gets a foot in and they even, and therefore smartly would get a foothold into some of these larger orgs.
5:06 But that’s going to bring me to the next one, which is teams that have an established outbound motion. They’re using maybe a conventional sequencer, like an Outreach or a Salesloft, and they have a traditional data provider, like a ZoomInfo, let’s just say, and they start playing around with Clay and
5:21 they realize the power of Clay and they start getting more into programmatic outbound. And they’re not ready to sign up for a sequencer yet, but they want to start using a different sequencing option that has maybe more features around inbox rotation and warmup and things like that.
5:33 So I think that will be a really interesting opportunity. Um, and I think in terms of like revenue, probably the biggest usage opportunity, um, for teams that are going to be wanting to try this out.
5:45 And there’s a whole lot of reasons why I think Clay’s going to be able to execute. That really, really well for folks.
5:50 But the third one that’s really interesting to me is for agencies. Agencies that have clients and that have teams, internal teams.
6:00 We have customers who have anywhere from five to ten to dozens, over a hundred, even one of our customers has a couple hundred sales reps.
6:08 they may want to be able to run their own tests. Plays, develop their own signals inside of an agency’s clay account and use that existing, those existing clay credits, but then get help from the agency in terms of how to run it.
6:22 Maybe reviewing the tables or just checking things before they go live. But I think that there’s going to be an interesting kind of symbiotic way that people may be using this where the client doesn’t want to spin up their own smart lead account.
6:36 they want some guardrails for that. From an agency. And then I think where the really rubber hits the road is going to be that they’re going to want that data in smart lead, excuse me, in Salesforce or HubSpot, just like the rest of the agency’s campaigns.
6:50 So I can say, listen, agency’s running campaigns for us. We want that data in Salesforce and HubSpot, but if we’re going to run our own campaigns, we also want that data in Salesforce or HubSpot.
6:58 And so I think from an OutboundSync perspective, we’ll be able to solve both of those use cases, right? And that data will be flowing regardless of which sequencer they’re using, inclusive of the external campaigns and the internal campaigns that are being managed and executed.
7:12 So really curious to see where this goes. I’ve been super impressed by the Clay team as we’ve been rolling this out and just their responsiveness and willingness to work with us and take some feedback as, uh, as a team that has spent a lot of time thinking about this over the last couple of years.
7:29 And, um, yeah, I don’t think it’s going to take over the market by storm, but I also think this is going to be maybe more successful than people think because this friction of choosing a sequencer and setting up a sequencer, it comes up a lot.
7:44 It comes up a lot in conversations that we have, and I think that if the idea, The idea is to, you know, develop new plays, to test faster, and to drive pipeline.
7:56 If Clay can reduce friction for people, which they’re doing here, I think that’s a win for So, really curious what people think about this.
8:04 Like I said, I’ve seen very little discussion about this, so curious if anybody else has tried it out in beta, what you think.
8:10 I think it’s a little under the radar, but maybe it won’t be for long. Thanks for watching. And, uh, tell me what you think in the comments.
8:15 Thanks.