How To Push Data from Clay to Your Email Sequencing Tool

Once you’ve enriched and refined your prospect list in Clay, the next step is pushing those contacts to an email sequencing tool for outreach. Clay integrates with popular sequencers like Instantly, SmartLead, Outreach.io, SalesLoft, and Lemlist, ensuring a seamless transition from data collection to outbound engagement.

In this lesson, we’ll cover:

1. Setting up your email sequencer for integration
2. Adding leads to a campaign in Clay
3. Mapping and pushing contact data correctly
4. Verifying successful data transfer

How It Works: Pushing Data to a Sequencer in Clay 

Let's set the stage. 

You've pulled a list of contacts from HubSpot into Clay, updated their email addresses to ensure accuracy, and pushed this information back to HubSpot. Now, you're ready to reach out to these contacts with some carefully crafted copy. 

While we always advocate for high-quality, personalized messaging, for demonstration purposes, we'll use a simplified approach that mirrors a common strategy: using AI-generated snippets to create email bodies and custom variables for subject lines.

In this demo, we’re using Instantly as our email sequencer, but you can use any sequencer you want. Here’s how it works: 

• Set up your email sequencing tool: Create a new campaign in Instantly (or your tool of choice) to prepare for data import.
• Connect Clay to your sequencer: Retrieve and input your API key to link Clay with your email sequencing platform.
• Add leads to a campaign: Use Clay’s “Add Lead to Campaign” feature to push contacts automatically.
• Map essential contact data: Ensure email, name, job title, and other key fields are properly assigned.
• Verify and refine your data: Check that leads appear correctly in your sequencing tool and adjust for personalization. Setting up your email sequencer for integration.

⚠️Troubleshooting Tip: If you encounter a "missing input" error, double-check that you're using the correct column names from your Clay table. In our case, we needed to use the "validated work email" column instead of a generic "email" column.

Fine-tuning Your Sequence

For those looking to take their personalization to the next level, consider adding more custom variables to your API call. For example, you could include separate fields for each step of your sequence: "email body one," "subject line one," "email body two," "subject line two," and so on. This approach allows you to craft a highly personalized, multi-step sequence for each lead.

By mastering this integration between Clay and your email sequencing tool, you're setting yourself up for more efficient, personalized, and effective outreach campaigns. 

Remember, the key to success lies not just in the technology, but in the quality and relevance of your messaging. Use these tools to enhance your human touch, not replace it.

Happy sequencing!

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