Wake The Dead Play

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Clay Play?

Most follow-up emails don’t wake the dead… (the dead = prospects that never made it through your pipeline)

This play uses Clay to send automated emails (personalized w/ ChatGPT + CRM notes) to restart conversations with closed-lost prospects.

100% automated emails SO GOOD — they get results like:

All of these sequences were 100% automated using Clay + ChatGPT + CRM notes.

Here’s exactly how I did it:

TL;DR

Create list of closed-lost opportunities from past few years (export from Salesforce/HubSpot)

Pull key deal info into Clay table (prospect name/email, when the deal was lost, deal notes, etc)

Use ChatGPT to personalize email based on CRM info (see below):

How to Run the “Wake The Dead” Play:

1. Export closed-lost deals from your CRM

Find all of the deals that were were lost in the past 1-2 years and export them as a CSV.

How to export records from HubSpot

How to export records from Salesforce

(If you need more help — just ask ChatGPT)

Make sure to include the following info in the export:

Prospect/Contact Info

Full Name
Work Email
Company Name

Opportunity Owner (the AE who owned the deal)

Deal Closed Date (when the deal was lost)

Call Notes (the initial reason the prospect was interested)

Deal Lost Reason (the noted reason for losing the deal)

2. Import key info about the lost deals into Clay

Create a new table in Clay, click “Import People From CSV”, and upload the CSV from step 1:

3. Personalize variables w/ ChatGPT + CRM info

General steps to create the personalized outputs used in the email:

Check if the email is valid

Check if they’re still at the company (if not they go into other sequence)

Use ChatGPT + CRM notes to create following outputs:

Months Ago (created from the date when the deal was closed + normalized)

Context Output (created from the CRM call notes)

4. Export personalized variables for email template

After creating all of the personalized outputs — I add them to a “final output” view in Clay and export the view as a CSV.

See how the CSV outputs are used in the email template below?

“because because” was a mistake - but small mistakes make it feel more human 😉

5. Upload into Instantly and schedule sequence

After a few days if they don’t respond — I ask them if another contact in their company (found using the find contact integration) is a better point of contact.

If it wasn’t able to find another contact (who fits specific requirements) it uses “someone else” as a fallback. You’d be surprised by how effective this last little email is haha. Especially since I say “Wine or cookies are stills yours :)”

[Bonus] Email Template

1️⃣

SUBJECT: Rekindle

Hey hey {{firstName}}! You met with my colleague {{Opp Owner Full name}} here at <YOUR COMPANY> {{Months Ago Output}} because {{Context Output}}.

The timing wasn't right back then, but I'd love to get <YOUR COMPANY> back on the radar, as a ton has changed!

Open to reconnecting?

Cheers, <YOUR NAME>

PS if you're open to learning more about <YOUR COMPANY>, happy to send over some wine or cookies as a lil Tueday cheers!

2️⃣

NO SUBJECT: Tough choice!

→ SENT 2 DAYS LATER

2️⃣

NO SUBJECT:

If <COMPANY CATEGORY> isn't on your radar anymore, is {{Other Contact Name | someone else}} a better point of contact?

PS Wine or cookies are still yours ;)

→ SENT 3 DAYS LATER

(CLICK TO EXPAND)

[Bonus] Exact ChatGPT Prompts

🤖

PROMPT - SUMMARIZE CRM CALL NOTES

You are a sales rep at Sendoso (a personalized direct mail gifting platform for sales, marketing, customer success, and HR teams. Sendoso helps teams build strong relationships with prospects and customers through personalized direct-mail gifting.) You are reaching out to prospects that have met with your company at some point in the last 2 years. Before you reach out, you're reading through your CRM to figure out the context of the conversation to inform your outreach message better (so you can reference the context in your email.) You will be given the pre-call notes and the prospect's job title as inputs. Generally, the pre-call notes will discuss things like if the company has done gifting in the past, what were the company's desired outcomes with a gifting platform, are they currently using a CRM or marketing automation platform or sales engagement platform and, if so, which ones, what type of gifts they want to send, is this a one-time strategy or an ongoing strategy, what prompted their interest initially, what challenge they wanted to solve, which teams would be using the platform, etc. Consider all of these factors as you process the input text. Here is the job title input: "{Primary Contact Title}" Here is the context for meeting input: "{Pre-Call Notes}"

Your job is to summarize the pre-call notes into a summary paragraph. Include the factors you considered from above in your output. Output rules. Think step by step. First, consider all of the points outlined above. Then, do your best to summarize the primary reason why the prospect was interested in meeting with us at that time. Be as specific as possible. If a specific reason is not given, do your best to summarize why someone with their job title would be interested in Sendoso

🤖

PROMPT - COLD EMAIL OPENING LINE

You are a sales rep at Sendoso (a personalized direct mail gifting platform for sales, marketing, customer success, and HR teams. Sendoso helps teams build strong relationships with prospects and customers through personalized direct-mail gifting.) You are writing an email to a prospect that met with your company at some point in the last 2 years, but the meeting didn't move forward into a deal. Your goal is to re-book the meeting and spark a new conversation. You will be given the prospect's job title and a summary of the prospect's reason for being interested in chatting in the first place as an input. Here is the job title input: "{Primary Contact Title}" Here is the reason input: "{Pre-Call Summary Response}" Your job is to create an opening line for a cold email using the input that references the prospect's initial reason for meeting. Output rules: Always use my prefix. This is my prefix: "because {Normalized Company Name Output} was exploring" then fill in the reason why they wanted to chat. Keep the total output under 15 words. Be as specific as possible when referencing the reasons why the prospect or company met with us in the past. If a specific reason is not given, do your best to summarize why someone with their job title would be interested in Sendoso. Do not respond with quotation marks or any punctuation. Output should be all lowercase, unless you're mentioning a proper noun, like "Sendoso" and "{Normalized Company Name Output}".

🤖

AI FORMULA - MONTHS AGO OUTPUT

If {Months Ago Number} is >1, this cell = "~{Months Ago Number} months ago"

Else if {Months Ago Number} is 1, this cell = "~{Months Ago Number} month ago"

(”Months Ago Number” is calculated from the date the deal was closed)

(CLICK TO EXPAND)

…and that’s how I was able to get these kind of results with 100% automated emails:

Pretty neat, yea?

Appreciate you reading all of this!

If you got any value from it do me a quick favor and share it with someone. I don’t get paid to create this content — but the exposure helps my business. Cheers!

PS You can check out my Clay agency’s website here: https://www.sculpted.agency/