Clay → Smartlead → Lindy outbound stack (L3)
A modern outbound stack with zero SDRs: Clay sources + enriches accounts on intent triggers, Smartlead/Instantly handles deliverability + sending, and a Lindy agent handles every positive reply (book meeting, route to AE, log to CRM). Cost ~$2k/mo, output of 2\,3 SDRs.
The steps
- 01
Source + enrich in Clay
Tool: Clay
In Clay, build a table seeded from an intent source (Common Room community signal, RB2B website visitor, Apollo job-change, or 6sense surge). Enrich with: LinkedIn last 2 posts, company funding date, team size growth, exec changes. Use Clay's built-in Claude/GPT cells to draft a 1-line personalized opener per row referencing the strongest signal. Owner: RevOps. Time: 1 day to build, ongoing maintenance. Pitfall: enrichment-bloat, 30 columns per row burns credits, 6 well-chosen ones outperform. DoD: every row in the Clay table has a personalized opener that mentions a specific, recent fact about the prospect.
- 02
Send through Smartlead with proper domain hygiene
Tool: Smartlead
NEVER send from your main domain. Buy 5,10 sister domains (yourcompany-team.com, get-yourcompany.com), warm each for 4 weeks with Smartlead's warmup pool before sending. Cap each mailbox at 30 sends/day. Track domain health weekly with Smartlead's dashboard. Owner: RevOps + domain admin. Pitfall: sending from your primary domain to a cold list, you will be blacklisted in 2 weeks. DoD: 10+ warmed mailboxes; spam-rate <0.3%; primary domain untouched.
- 03
Route positive replies to Lindy
Tool: Lindy
In Lindy, build an agent triggered by inbound Gmail (or Smartlead webhook on positive-reply classification). The agent: classifies reply intent (interested / objection / referral / out-of-office), checks AE round-robin in HubSpot, drafts a meeting-booking message with 3 Calendly slots, logs the conversation in CRM, and DMs the assigned AE in Slack with the context. Owner: RevOps. Pitfall: letting Lindy auto-send book-meeting replies on day 1. Draft mode for 2 weeks, then graduate to auto-send only for high-confidence "Interested" intent. DoD: positive replies are handed to an AE with a booked meeting in <2 hours, with no human SDR in the loop.
- 04
Weekly reply review + prompt iteration
Tool: Manual
Every Monday, RevOps + 1 AE review the worst 10 replies of the week (negative, unsubscribe, "this is spam"). Categorize: bad list, bad opener, bad value prop. Adjust the Clay opener prompt OR the Smartlead segment. Run for 6 weeks before declaring the stack stable. Owner: RevOps. DoD: documented prompt-version-history in the Clay table + a downward trend in negative-reply rate.
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Unfamiliar terms are defined in the AI and Revenue Dictionary. Related frameworks live in the framework library.