Welcome to the third tutorial of the Boosting sales with AI course.

Cold outreach is a way to email ideal prospects without any prior communication. 

However, executing cold outreach while maintaining personalization at scale can be complex. Many CRM and email services (free or paid) impose restrictions on sending emails without prior consent, making the process even more challenging. However, dedicated cold outreach tools such as Reply.io provide an effective alternative. 

This tutorial will demonstrate how to set up and launch a personalized cold email campaign using the enriched lead data Clay prepared in the previous tutorial.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll be able to:

• Integrate Clay with Reply.io
• Set custom fields for personalized content
• Build and customize cold reach email sequences
• Launch and monitor your personalized campaign
  

Tools you’ll need:

• Reply.io account (14-day free trial available)
• Clay.com account with enriched leads
• Your business email domain
  

Let’s get right into it!

Step 1 - Integrate Clay with Reply.io

Integrating Clay with Reply.io allows us to send the data we enriched in Clay to Reply.io. So, we must establish a connection between Clay and Reply.io to export the enriched leads. 

Quick tip: We chose Reply.io because it offered a free trial. You can also use Lemlist and Outreach.io with Clay. Both tools are intuitive and reasonable. Pick whichever tool best suits your workflow and cost requirements.

Create an account in Reply.io if you do not have one already. 

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Go to ‘Settings’ by clicking your account name in the top right corner of the screen. 

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Navigate to the API section, where you'll find your API key. This key is essential for establishing the connection between Clay and Reply.io. Simply copy the API key displayed in this section.

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Return to Clay and locate the Reply.io integration action step in ‘Add enrichment.’ Click ‘Add enrichment’ and search for Reply.io. Click the first result. 

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Quick tip: Reply.io integration requires an upgrade. You’ll have to get a paid Clay account for a Reply.io integration. 

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Insert your API key into the designated field to establish the connection between Clay and Reply.io.

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Step 2 - Set custom fields for personalized content

In Reply.io, custom fields are important for incorporating the personalized content we generated in Clay. Go to Settings > Contacts in Reply.io and click "Add custom field" to create text fields for your personalized email subjects and content.

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Go back to Clay and map the enriched data to these custom fields.

Include the following information:

First Name

Job title

LinkedIn URL

Email Subject

Email body

LinkedIn bio, etc.

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Once you’re done with populating the fields, click ‘Save’ and run on all fields to export all the cold outreach leads to Reply.io.

‍Quick Tip: Reply.io only updates custom fields already set up in the system. Plan your field structure before mapping anything to ensure a smooth data transfer.

Step 3 - Build and customize cold reach email sequences.

Once our data is correctly mapped, we'll set up the campaign structure in Reply.io. To start a new campaign, go to the Sequences tab and choose "Outbound Cold Outreach."

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To import your contacts, click "Add from Existing" and select the leads previously exported from Clay.

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Next, set up your email sequence by configuring the following:

• The initial outreach email
• Timing for follow-ups
• How will responses be managed
• A/B testing variants, if applicable

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Swap out the default email template with your personalized content, making sure to map the custom fields we set up for both subject lines and email bodies.

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Quick tip: Although Reply.io provides AI-powered email personalization, it’s better to use Clay’s personalization tools for larger campaigns, as Reply.io has limited AI credits.

Step 4 - Launch and monitor your personalized campaign

Before getting started, connect your business email account to Reply.io. Keep in mind that only business domain emails are appropriate—free email services aren't ideal for cold outreach campaigns.

Review your campaign setup by:

• Previewing emails for various contacts
• Ensuring custom fields are mapped accurately
• Double-checking the email sending schedules

Once everything looks good, turn on your campaign using the toggle in the top right corner. And that’s it! Your personalized cold email campaign will start reaching out to prospects on the schedule you set.

There you have it! The next tutorial will explore tracking engagement metrics and syncing the data with your CRM for comprehensive lead management.

Click here to go to the next tutorial of the course