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Oyster is a global employment platform that helps companies hire and manage distributed teams in 180+ countries. When Petra Hajal joined Oyster's marketing operations team a year ago in May 2023, she had one main problem: their intent-outbound program was manual and under-optimized, leading to fewer accounts being reached and less pipeline generated.
Petra was tasked with orchestrating data from various tools like G2, Clearbit, Madkudu, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Leandata to send highly qualified intent-based accounts to the outbound team.
Although there was initial hesitation, Petra's Clay powered initiatives quickly won over the entire Oyster team. As she noted, "Many of those who were initially hesitant about Clay have since become some of its most enthusiastic supporters.”
A few months after launching her Clay campaigns, Petra got promoted. Today, thanks to her success at Oyster, she has launched a full-time career as the founder of Revenue Hoop, a revenue operations and outbound agency, with Oyster as her client.
The challenge: managing a complex tech stack and a fragmented outbound process
Oyster's team wanted to make their intent-outbound process less manual and time-consuming. The team was using a complex tech stack, including tools like G2, Clearbit, Salesforce, and HubSpot. However, these tools were siloed, with data scattered across different platforms.
The outbound team initially wanted to ensure that any automation aligned with their strategic account selection and personalized outreach processes. BDR leaders wanted to ensure that automation would still support their key processes, such as strategic account selection and personalized ICP outreach. However, the team agreed that the account research and qualification process and account enrichment flow was manual and needed improvement to better ensure potential opportunities didn't fall through the cracks.
Petra mapped the manual prospecting and outreach process of a typical BDR in the market and showed the team how Clay can automate those processes while safeguarding strategic internal processes and rules of engagement.
Use case: Outbound to accounts showing intent data
Petra began addressing the challenge by focusing on intent-driven accounts, which the sales team historically had lower rates of success with.
“One intent channel initially showed no immediate pipeline, which led to hesitancy to prioritize those accounts due to concerns about whether the channel would deliver enough value for the team's efforts," Petra explained. "In reality, it wasn’t that intent data didn’t work—it was that we needed to scale outreach to accounts in that channel to start seeing results.
Petra began by automating the outreach process for these intent-driven accounts, allowing the BDR team to focus on other high-priority accounts. The results were immediate — within just one month, they saw $34K+ in new pipeline generated from these previously untapped accounts.
But Petra didn't stop there. She also took other lower-priority accounts and automated the outreach process for them. By adding data enrichment through Clay, the team was able to requalify these accounts, resulting in conversions.
"By automating the process in Clay and having access to new enrichment sources, we were able to convert accounts that we would usually not prioritize," Petra said.
Use case: Segment accounts to get relevant templated messages
One of Petra's most successful use cases for Clay was in the area of messaging segmentation. She created signal-based queries in Clay, allowing the platform to output tailored content that resonates with each unique intent signal, ensuring that every interaction is aligned with where the account is in its buying journey.
"We know the message we want to deliver," Petra said. "We don't need AI to come up with something super creative, but we need help gathering more information on our accounts to scale our personalization efforts and optimize the messaging at scale."
This addressed the team's concerns about data quality and the ability to craft highly personalized at scale.
Use case: Tracking signals to revive relevant dormant accounts
In addition to prioritizing outbound to intent-driven accounts and supporting customer success, Petra also leveraged Clay to revive dormant leads using signals of fit. For example, Clay's data integrations allowed the team to see which dormant leads had recently started hiring for remote roles or were experiencing rapid growth. Clay also provided insights on the ideal customer profile (ICP) fit for these accounts, taking location and company size into consideration, as well as contact info for new decision-makers and influencers at these accounts.
Armed with this enriched data, the sales team was able to re-engage the dormant leads with highly personalized outreach.
Syncing it all back to Oyster’s tech stack
Petra's Clay implementation integrated seamlessly with Oyster's existing technology stack to maintain their CRM as their single source of truth. When Clay identified and enriched new accounts or contacts, it automatically created or updated corresponding records. Then, the team was able to sync these updated records to the appropriate BDR and their email sending tool.
Clay’s impact on Oyster
Prior to Clay, the most efficient members of Oyster's outbound sales team spending significant time on research, data enrichment, and customized outreach. This limited their overall capacity for account coverage and outreach.
However, after implementing Clay and automating the data enrichment, segmentation, and outreach workflows, Petra was able to hugely scale the team's output. She estimates that each representative now saves approximately 40 hours per month, allowing them to focus on higher-value activities and dramatically increasing overall efficiency.
In addition, Clay enabled Oyster to scale and explore new channels that had previously been underutilized. Certain tactics and channels hadn’t been adopted due to the lack of larger-scale tests to assess their effectiveness. “Once we quadrupled the number of accounts we were reaching for certain channels, we were able to see opportunities come in and decide to use them,” shared Petra.
How Petra built a new career trajectory with Clay
A few months after launching her successful Clay-powered initiatives at Oyster, Petra found herself on a new career trajectory. Her use of the platform not only helped Oyster, but also transformed her own professional future. She got promoted and joined the Clay experts community and started getting inbound requests from other companies that wanted to elevate their sales processes with Clay.
"I realized that what I had been doing (and hiring people to do) manually my whole career—things like lead research, list building, and copywriting—was exactly what Clay was able to automate and enhance," Petra explained. "It was like my entire professional journey had been leading up to this moment. Oyster is now a proud client of Petra’s agency, Revenue Hoop.
Oyster is a global employment platform that helps companies hire and manage distributed teams in 180+ countries. When Petra Hajal joined Oyster's marketing operations team a year ago in May 2023, she had one main problem: their intent-outbound program was manual and under-optimized, leading to fewer accounts being reached and less pipeline generated.
Petra was tasked with orchestrating data from various tools like G2, Clearbit, Madkudu, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Leandata to send highly qualified intent-based accounts to the outbound team.
Although there was initial hesitation, Petra's Clay powered initiatives quickly won over the entire Oyster team. As she noted, "Many of those who were initially hesitant about Clay have since become some of its most enthusiastic supporters.”
A few months after launching her Clay campaigns, Petra got promoted. Today, thanks to her success at Oyster, she has launched a full-time career as the founder of Revenue Hoop, a revenue operations and outbound agency, with Oyster as her client.
The challenge: managing a complex tech stack and a fragmented outbound process
Oyster's team wanted to make their intent-outbound process less manual and time-consuming. The team was using a complex tech stack, including tools like G2, Clearbit, Salesforce, and HubSpot. However, these tools were siloed, with data scattered across different platforms.
The outbound team initially wanted to ensure that any automation aligned with their strategic account selection and personalized outreach processes. BDR leaders wanted to ensure that automation would still support their key processes, such as strategic account selection and personalized ICP outreach. However, the team agreed that the account research and qualification process and account enrichment flow was manual and needed improvement to better ensure potential opportunities didn't fall through the cracks.
Petra mapped the manual prospecting and outreach process of a typical BDR in the market and showed the team how Clay can automate those processes while safeguarding strategic internal processes and rules of engagement.
Use case: Outbound to accounts showing intent data
Petra began addressing the challenge by focusing on intent-driven accounts, which the sales team historically had lower rates of success with.
“One intent channel initially showed no immediate pipeline, which led to hesitancy to prioritize those accounts due to concerns about whether the channel would deliver enough value for the team's efforts," Petra explained. "In reality, it wasn’t that intent data didn’t work—it was that we needed to scale outreach to accounts in that channel to start seeing results.
Petra began by automating the outreach process for these intent-driven accounts, allowing the BDR team to focus on other high-priority accounts. The results were immediate — within just one month, they saw $34K+ in new pipeline generated from these previously untapped accounts.
But Petra didn't stop there. She also took other lower-priority accounts and automated the outreach process for them. By adding data enrichment through Clay, the team was able to requalify these accounts, resulting in conversions.
"By automating the process in Clay and having access to new enrichment sources, we were able to convert accounts that we would usually not prioritize," Petra said.
Use case: Segment accounts to get relevant templated messages
One of Petra's most successful use cases for Clay was in the area of messaging segmentation. She created signal-based queries in Clay, allowing the platform to output tailored content that resonates with each unique intent signal, ensuring that every interaction is aligned with where the account is in its buying journey.
"We know the message we want to deliver," Petra said. "We don't need AI to come up with something super creative, but we need help gathering more information on our accounts to scale our personalization efforts and optimize the messaging at scale."
This addressed the team's concerns about data quality and the ability to craft highly personalized at scale.
Use case: Tracking signals to revive relevant dormant accounts
In addition to prioritizing outbound to intent-driven accounts and supporting customer success, Petra also leveraged Clay to revive dormant leads using signals of fit. For example, Clay's data integrations allowed the team to see which dormant leads had recently started hiring for remote roles or were experiencing rapid growth. Clay also provided insights on the ideal customer profile (ICP) fit for these accounts, taking location and company size into consideration, as well as contact info for new decision-makers and influencers at these accounts.
Armed with this enriched data, the sales team was able to re-engage the dormant leads with highly personalized outreach.
Syncing it all back to Oyster’s tech stack
Petra's Clay implementation integrated seamlessly with Oyster's existing technology stack to maintain their CRM as their single source of truth. When Clay identified and enriched new accounts or contacts, it automatically created or updated corresponding records. Then, the team was able to sync these updated records to the appropriate BDR and their email sending tool.
Clay’s impact on Oyster
Prior to Clay, the most efficient members of Oyster's outbound sales team spending significant time on research, data enrichment, and customized outreach. This limited their overall capacity for account coverage and outreach.
However, after implementing Clay and automating the data enrichment, segmentation, and outreach workflows, Petra was able to hugely scale the team's output. She estimates that each representative now saves approximately 40 hours per month, allowing them to focus on higher-value activities and dramatically increasing overall efficiency.
In addition, Clay enabled Oyster to scale and explore new channels that had previously been underutilized. Certain tactics and channels hadn’t been adopted due to the lack of larger-scale tests to assess their effectiveness. “Once we quadrupled the number of accounts we were reaching for certain channels, we were able to see opportunities come in and decide to use them,” shared Petra.
How Petra built a new career trajectory with Clay
A few months after launching her successful Clay-powered initiatives at Oyster, Petra found herself on a new career trajectory. Her use of the platform not only helped Oyster, but also transformed her own professional future. She got promoted and joined the Clay experts community and started getting inbound requests from other companies that wanted to elevate their sales processes with Clay.
"I realized that what I had been doing (and hiring people to do) manually my whole career—things like lead research, list building, and copywriting—was exactly what Clay was able to automate and enhance," Petra explained. "It was like my entire professional journey had been leading up to this moment. Oyster is now a proud client of Petra’s agency, Revenue Hoop.
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