Table-based campaigns

Clay Sequencer has two kinds of campaign, and the Campaigns page labels them for you. This guide covers the Table kind, where leads sync in from a Clay table and the campaign draws its data from that table's columns. For the People kind, built from an Audiences segment, start with Getting started with Sequencer.

For a new campaign, segment-based is the better place to begin, and the hub above walks through it end to end. Table-based campaigns are fully supported, so anything you have already built keeps running and keeps sending, and this guide stays the reference for it.

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Sending accounts are workspace-level infrastructure: the accounts you connect are available to every campaign in your workspace, whichever kind it is. The walkthrough above covers connecting a Google Workspace account, and Connect your own email accounts has the full setup for all four connection methods, including the one-time admin authorization the OAuth routes need.

Create a new email campaign

1. Start in a table that contains the lead emails you want to contact.
   • If you haven't done this yet, click Actions → Import to add emails from a third party or CSV.
2. Click Tools → Exports → Create Clay email campaign
   • The Sync leads to campaign column automatically pushes 10 rows from your parent table into the campaign to draft with
   • Tip: You can customize the sync data column to only send leads with an email address using Only run if.
3. In the Sequence tab, open the Setup section of the left sidebar to set:
   • Lead email address: We automatically detect email address columns, but confirm this before proceeding.
   • Enable HTML: Campaigns default to plaintext for better deliverability. Enable HTML if you want to use formatting features like fonts, bold text, and hyperlinks. This also unlocks advanced settings such as open tracking, click tracking, and unsubscribe links.
4. Under Message sequence, draft and customize your emails (up to 4 per campaign). Sequences automatically stop when all emails are sent or when a lead replies (excluding out-of-office replies, which we detect and work around).
   • Toggle Preview mode to see real data from your source table in the message template
   • Within each message, use / to access:
     • Clean variable: Reference synced lead data with safe fallbacks and optional formatting.
     • Sender variable: Reference identifying information from the sending account
     • AI snippet: Generate copy automatically using lead data.
     • Spintax variable: Choose a random value from a list
     • Link and Image: Insert a hyperlink or an inline image. Both appear only once Enable HTML is on, alongside the fonts and rich text formatting HTML unlocks.
   • Clean variables are the safest way to reference synced data, because they let you set a fallback for leads with an empty value.
5. Go to Settings to add your email account. Four connection methods are offered:
   • Gmail (OAuth) (recommended): Connect your Google Workspace account via OAuth.
   • Outlook (OAuth) (recommended): Connect your Microsoft 365 account via OAuth.
   • Manual SMTP setup: Connect a single mailbox with SMTP and IMAP credentials directly.
   • Bulk CSV upload: Add several mailboxes at once from a CSV.
   • Each method's setup steps live in Connect your own email accounts.
   • You can also buy email accounts directly in Clay if you want to increase your sending capacity.
   • After setup, you can:
     • Enable warming: Sends and receives automated emails from the linked account to build reputation. Follow the in-app instructions to set up a label and filter to easily ignore warmup messages.
     • Make accessible to owner only: Limit the account to you and workspace admins (e.g., for a personal business address). Otherwise, accounts are available to anyone with edit access in your workspace, and Make accessible to workspace puts a restricted account back into the shared pool.
     • Update send limit: Change the daily number of emails the account can send per day
     • Update sender variables: Change the sender variable values for the account
6. Adjust your Schedule settings, starting with Schedule type:
   • Optimized for deliverability: Sends Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM, with 20 minutes minimum between emails.
   • Send immediately: Sends 24/7 as fast as your account limits allow. Best reserved for inbound or transactional sending.
   • Custom schedule: Set the days, hours, and pacing yourself.
   • Timezone: Select the timezone to send from (we recommend matching your prospects'). Available on every schedule type except Send immediately.
7. Pick Custom schedule and four more fields appear:
   • Days of the week: Choose which days emails are sent.
   • Start time and End time: Set sending windows within the chosen timezone.
   • Minimum time between emails per sender account (minutes): Adjustable from 3–30 minutes; longer delays improve deliverability.
   • Campaign start date (optional): Set a future launch date, or leave it blank to start sending as soon as you launch.
8. Explore Advanced settings if needed:
   • Webhooks: Route campaign events to a specific Webhook destination instead of the default Campaign Events Clay table. Example: Send Smartlead metrics to tools like OutboundSync or Enrichley for downstream routing.
   • Email tracking: Configure tracking for email opens and link clicks (if HTML is enabled)
9. Go to Leads to preview the messages for all people in your campaign
   • Send test email to verify your template looks right
   • Click the Pencil icon to spot-edit a message for a specific lead

Launching your campaign

Once all your settings are saved, you can launch your campaign. Launching a campaign does the following:

• Emails begin sending according to your schedule, following deliverability best practices.
• The Analytics tab displays detailed stats for your campaign. You can refresh data manually using the button in the top right.
• The Replies tab shows you any incoming replies and lets you respond to them directly in Clay
• Actions are consumed for each email sent (1 Action per lead, plus standard Action and Data Credit rates for any AI snippets used).
• Your campaign becomes live, which means:
  • Any new leads routed into the campaign will automatically be sequenced, enabling "always-on" campaigns for inbound routing.
  • All campaign settings become locked.
• If you haven't set up custom webhooks in the Advanced section, a campaign events table will be created to capture all activity as it occurs.

At any point, you can pause or complete a campaign:

• Pause: Stops emails from sending and allows edits to message copy and campaign settings (but not change the number of messages in the sequence). You can relaunch later without being charged additional credits for previously sequenced leads.
• Complete: Permanently ends the campaign and freezes analytics. Use this option only when you're certain you won't need to sequence leads in the campaign again.

Campaign events table

When a campaign launches, a dedicated campaign events table is created. It records key actions such as sends, bounces, and replies. Because this is a Clay table, you can build automations around these events. Reply events may appear with a 15–30 minute delay.

The events table can also be created before launching the campaign if you'd like to set up any automations in Clay.

Special sequencer enrichments available in the table include:

• Reply to lead email: Automate responses to any email reply event using a pre-built HTML template, AI-generated snippet, or booking link.
• Add email to blocklist: Automatically prevent unsubscribed or removed leads from being added to future campaigns.
• Get rep email: Looks up the rep who owns the sending account a reply came in on.
• Forward email: Forwards the lead's reply on to that rep.
• Pause lead in campaign: This action can be added to any Clay table to pause a lead on an incoming event (e.g. event signup, or if the recipient filled in a form).

Managing leads in campaigns

The Leads tab in your campaign lists every lead synced into it, along with a Lead status column showing where each lead sits in the sequence. What you can do to an individual lead depends on whether the campaign has launched yet.

Removing a lead before launch

While a campaign is still a draft, you can take leads out of it completely:

1. Go to the Leads tab in your campaign.
2. Hover over the lead's row and click the three-dot (⋮) menu on the right.
3. Select Remove from campaign.

To remove several leads at once, select them and click Remove [n] leads from campaign.

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Pausing a lead in a launched campaign

After a campaign launches, Remove from campaign is no longer offered. Pause the lead instead:

1. Go to the Leads tab in your campaign.
2. Hover over the lead's row and click the three-dot (⋮) menu on the right.
3. Select Pause lead.

Pausing stops further emails to that lead while the rest of the campaign keeps running, and the same menu shows Resume lead once a lead is paused. To act on several leads at once, select them and click Pause [n] leads or Resume [n] leads — that button is disabled when your selection mixes active, paused, and completed leads.

The same menu also offers Show in leads table, which opens the lead's row in the table it was synced from, and Send test email.

Lead statuses

The Lead status column is populated by the sequencing provider behind the campaign, so leads don't carry a status until the campaign launches and they're handed off — there's no separate "pending launch" state to look for. Once sequencing begins, the values you'll see are STARTED, INPROGRESS, PAUSED, COMPLETED, STOPPED, and BLOCKED.

Managing campaigns

You can view and manage all campaigns from the Campaigns tab on your home screen. This view summarizes every campaign in your workspace and shows you the workbook it belongs to.

Two buttons in the header open workspace-wide views: Inbox centralizes replies across all campaigns, giving you one place to review and manage every response, and Analytics shows you how all of your campaigns are performing together.

The tabs underneath cover the rest of your sending setup:

• Sequences: The campaign list itself.
• Email accounts: Manage your fleet of sender accounts.
• Sender variables: Manage the values that resolve differently per sending account.
• Account orders: Track sending accounts purchased through Clay.
• Blocklist: Add or remove entries.

Sender variables and Account orders depend on your workspace setup, so you may not see all five.

Update sender signatures

You can add or update email signatures for any connected sender account.

From a specific campaign:

1. Go to Campaigns from your home screen.
2. Click on the name of your campaign under Sequences.
3. Navigate to the Settings tab.
4. Scroll to the Sender setup section.
5. Under Email accounts, locate the sender you want to edit.
6. Click the three-dot (⋯) menu on the right side of that sender's row.
7. Select Update sender variables.
   • You can also access this via the Email accounts tab.

Best practices

The golden rule of outreach: send emails the way you'd want to receive them. Your ultimate goal is to land in the prospect's main inbox—if your message goes to Spam or Promotions, it's unlikely to be read. Deliverability (your ability to reach that primary inbox) depends on both the quality of your messaging and the way you send it.

📖 For a deeper dive, check out Za-zu's Cold Email Handbook.

Key practices to follow:

• Don't spam. Spam is high-volume, low-quality, and generic. Instead, use Clay to research leads at scale and send hyper-targeted, personalized offers.
• Don't deceive. Tricks may get you a click once, but they damage trust. Instead, be upfront about your value and what you're offering.
• Send plaintext for cold outreach. Bold text, fonts, inline images, and hyperlinks rely on HTML, which ESPs often block to fight phishing. Unless you already have an email history with the recipient, stick to plaintext.
• Warm up your inbox. ESPs flag sudden spikes in email volume as suspicious. Gradual inbox warmup builds trust and reputation before you scale.
• Vary your copy. Avoid sending the same message repeatedly. Use AI, Spintax, and lead-specific variables to keep your outreach fresh and personal.
• Mimic human sending patterns. Pace emails as if each were written individually—spread them throughout the day (e.g., one every 10 minutes) with some randomness, rather than blasting them all at once.

FAQs

What if I already have a Smartlead account? Can I use my API key?

Our sequencer is powered by Smartlead, but everything runs on Clay credits. You don't need a Smartlead account, and you can't use an existing Smartlead API key with the sequencer. If you have a key, you can still use it with our in-table enrichments.

I updated my campaign, but the changes didn't save.

Be sure to click Save campaign after making edits. The button reads Saved once there's nothing outstanding, so that's the quickest way to confirm your changes went through.

How much does the sequencer cost?

The Clay email sequencer is available on all plans. Each lead sequenced consumes 1 Action (platform orchestration work). If you use AI snippets in your messages, those consume 1 Action per run and Data Credits based on the model you select (fixed or variable pricing depending on the model) in addition to the Action for sending the email.

Can I send multiple sequences to the same email address?

Each lead can only be sequenced once per campaign. To send multiple sequences to the same email address (like bob@example.com), create a separate campaign for each sequence. Best practice: wait at least a couple of months between sequences to the same person unless you have a completely different offer.

Can I delete a lead that's already being sequenced?

No — deleting leads is only possible while the campaign is still a draft. After launch, each lead exists in the sequencing provider that powers the campaign, so the row menu offers Pause lead in place of Remove from campaign. Pausing is reversible, so treat it as the way to stop a specific person mid-sequence. Emails that have already gone out can't be recalled.

My sender account got disconnected. What happened?

Email providers like Google and Microsoft occasionally revoke access due to inactivity, security checks, or suspicious activity detection. To fix this, delete the disconnected account from your sequencer settings and re-authenticate it.

What is email account warmup?

Warmup is the process of automatically sending and receiving emails from other inboxes in Smartlead's warmup pool so your actual campaign traffic looks similar to the emails you're already sending. We recommend you keep warmup on at all times for email accounts in the sequencer to maximize deliverability.

When you add accounts via OAuth, we will automatically set up labels and filters to make it clear what emails are warmups and reduce clutter in your inbox. Your workspace has a unique two-word Filter key: (e.g., clever-rocket) that marks all warmup emails so you can apply these labels and filters.

Why did warmup turn itself off?

Warmup automatically disables when your emails are being throttled by your email provider. This protects your sender reputation. You can manually turn warmup back on from the Email accounts tab once the throttling issue is resolved.

I'm getting an error that my email account is already in use. What does this mean?

Your email account is already connected to another Smartlead account. Smartlead only allows each email address to be connected to one account at a time. If you have access to the other Smartlead account, delete the email account there to free it up. Otherwise, contact support for help.

Are personal email accounts supported (e.g., Gmail, Hotmail)?

No, only business accounts (Google Workspace, Microsoft Outlook) are supported for OAuth. Personal Gmail accounts can be connected through a legacy SMTP method (see these docs), but this workaround may stop working if Google discontinues it.

I saw an error toast pop up. What should I do?

Often errors in the app are transient. We're calling Smartlead APIs under the hood, and sometimes the request has an issue—usually you can retry the operation and it will succeed (especially if it says a 502 error code). If you keep running into an error, contact support.

How do I sync campaign data to HubSpot?

You can use our existing table integration in the campaign events table to push updates into HubSpot.

How do unsubscribes work in the sequencer?

If HTML is enabled, you can add an unsubscribe link to the email that's appended at the bottom of the message. You can also use the Add email to blocklist action in the campaign events table to block them from being sequenced in the future.

What is a cold lead? What is a warm lead?

A cold lead is someone who doesn't already know about your business and you. A warm lead is someone who has already responded to your email or expressed interest in some other way. The kinds of emails you send to each type are completely different—you can send a lot more emails from your main domain to warm leads than you can to cold leads.

What exact Gmail permissions does sequencer require?

These are disclosed when you add your account via OAuth. We request: full Gmail email access, basic Gmail settings access, OpenID, user email address and profile picture. Additionally, you will need to have a Google Workspace admin authorize our app to request these permissions for the domain(s) you want to add to the sequencer.

How do I authorize Clay's app in the Google Admin panel?

Follow the instructions in the modal and have your Google Workspace admin set our Clay sequencer app to Trusted. It can take up to 24 hours for Google to recognize the update; once it's taken hold, all accounts in your domain (e.g., example.com) can now add themselves to the Clay sequencer.

What exact Microsoft permissions does sequencer require?

These are disclosed when you add your account via OAuth. We request: offline_access, openid, email, profile, Mail.Send, Mail.Send.Shared, Mail.ReadWrite, Mail.ReadWrite.Shared, User.Read, MailboxSettings.ReadWrite.

How are replies categorized in the Campaign Events table?

Smartlead assigns leads into one of the following categories:

1. Interested
2. Meeting Request
3. Not Interested
4. Do Not Contact
5. Information Request
6. Out Of Office
7. Wrong Person
8. Uncategorizable by Ai
9. Sender Originated Bounce

What is the maximum message size for sequencer?

Each message in a sequencer campaign supports a maximum of 8 KB of text.