13.6% Replies, 100+ Meetings, €300K+ Closed: How Clayworks Scales Outbound on Smartlead

Clayworks is an outbound agency built for founders with a great product and no outbound engine to scale it.

Most of its clients have grown to substantial revenue on referrals, partnerships and word of mouth. Then the referrals slow down, investment arrives, and the pressure to grow rises. They hire AEs and go-to-market engineers, but nobody can tell those hires exactly what to do.

That is where Clayworks comes in. For a UK sports insurance client, one campaign generated a 13.6% reply rate, more than half of replies positive, and over 100 booked meetings. It had to be paused because there were too many leads to handle.

Clayworks is just over a year old and has grown roughly tenfold in the last six months. Smartlead is the sending infrastructure underneath all of it.

Who Is Behind Clayworks?

Theo Seel Kent and his co-founder Calum have worked in sales for the last 11 years. They have managed BDR teams, worked as AEs and served as heads of sales, mostly in SaaS.

Before starting Clayworks, Theo worked at another agency and saw firsthand how often agencies let their clients down. He and Calum built Clayworks to do it differently.

“Calum, who is the co-founder, and I have worked in sales for the last 11 years. We saw a lot of good things, but also a lot of bad things. We managed BDR teams, were AEs ourselves, and were heads of sales, so we really got an understanding of how companies work. Predominantly, we were working in SaaS. The year before we started Clayworks, I was at a different agency, and we saw how agencies really let a lot of people down, to be honest, including the one I was at. No shade, I think they did their best. We worked at other agencies, we worked within the space, and we saw that a lot of people have really great products and really good ideas, but they struggle to scale them.”

Today, Clayworks has seven employees, fully remote across Spain, the US, Africa and beyond.

“We’ve been around now for over a year, and we’ve grown very, very quickly over the last six months. We’ve grown something like 1,000%. It’s insane. We’ve doubled our headcount and we’re now at seven employees. We’re fully remote, so we have people in Spain, in the US, in Africa, literally all over the world.”

How Clayworks Built on Smartlead?

Theo was running cold email long before Clayworks. He tried most of the sending platforms on the market, and Smartlead was the one that made sense.

What has kept Clayworks on Smartlead is how quickly problems get fixed.

“I’ve been doing email since before I was at agencies, and I tried literally everything: Instantly, EmailBison, and even a couple of smaller, random ones. When I tried Smartlead, it just made a lot more sense. At my last agency, we were also on Smartlead. There were some little issues and some little bugs, like there are on all platforms. And this is the biggest reason we love working with you: they just get fixed. It’s literally incredible. Your product and development teams are absolutely on fire.”

The clearest example came as Clayworks prepared to scale its own outreach to around one million emails a month. A warm-up pool setting was blocking the volume it needed. Smartlead fixed it in eight working days.

“We’re just about to start sending a really big volume of emails. I think we’re going to send around 1 million emails next month for ourselves. Smartlead has a design on the warm-up pool where you have to send five variants of warm-up email replies. I won’t bore you with all the details, but it meant that on our infrastructure, we couldn’t send the number of cold emails we wanted to. So I got onto our client manager and the product team and said, guys, we need to fix this, otherwise we can’t use Smartlead for this. Within eight working days, it was fixed. I’m not even kidding. They fixed the whole issue, came up with a solution, and now it works and we can use it. There are a lot of platforms out there, and they all have pluses and minuses. But for the customer, this is number one.”

The Market Clayworks Serves

Clayworks specialises in early-stage founders with product-market fit who have not yet scaled outbound. It also works with scaled companies across a wide range of markets, including the UK, Europe, the Nordics and the UAE.

Many clients arrive convinced email does not work for them. Usually, they have simply never seen it done properly.

“In terms of our ICP, we work a lot with early-stage founders. We do have clients across the whole spectrum, including scaled companies, but our speciality is people who have a great product and product-market fit, but haven’t scaled their outbound and don’t know where to start. Most of the businesses we see have grown to a substantial amount of revenue, but just on referrals, partnerships and word of mouth. Eventually that pool dries up. The referrals start to slow down, then they get investment, and suddenly there are much higher KPIs and pressure to grow. They might hire AEs, they might hire go-to-market engineers, but the problem is they don’t know how to tell these people what to do, because they don’t know what to do themselves. That’s really where Clayworks was born.”

“Some of our clients have massive TAMs, but a lot of our clients are quite niche. One of our specialties is that everyone who comes to us says email doesn’t work for them. They tried it. When they say that, it normally means they had two domains with 20 mailboxes, sent out thousands of emails, and it all went to spam.”

Key Challenges Clayworks Solved With Smartlead

Scaling to Very High Volumes

Clayworks is preparing to send around one million emails a month for its own outreach. At that scale, every platform limit matters, and the sending tool has to keep up.

Running a Fully AI-Driven Stack

Clayworks runs its business on AI, with a GitHub repository connecting its CRM, AI tools and data providers. The sending platform had to plug into that stack and run without manual work.

Never Missing a Reply

When campaigns generate hundreds of replies, any reply that goes missing is a lost meeting. Clayworks needed reply handling it could connect to its own systems.

Managing Mailboxes and Infrastructure Across Providers

Clayworks buys mailboxes from several providers and manages separate infrastructure for each client. Keeping all of it synced and visible is a job in itself.

Finding Data Where the Usual Databases Run Dry

The standard data providers cover the US and UK well, but coverage thins out across Europe and the UAE, where Clayworks runs a lot of outreach.

Campaign Results: Over 100 Meetings and €300,000+ in Closed Deals

UK Sports Insurance: 13.6% Reply Rate and 100+ Meetings

One of Clayworks’ top campaigns was for a UK sports insurance company. It performed so well that it had to be paused to give the team time to book everyone in.

• 3,108 contacts reached across 9,187 sends
• 425 replies, a 13.6% reply rate
• 237 positive replies, 55.76% of all replies
• Over 100 meetings booked, with more still being scheduled

“One of our clients is a sports insurance company in the UK. This has got to be one of our top campaigns. We actually had to pause it because we had so many leads and meetings. As of today, while it’s paused, we’ve contacted 3,108 people across 9,187 sends, with a reply rate of 13.6%. That’s 425 replies, and of those, 237, or 55.76%, were positive. So over half of the replies. We’ve booked them over 100 meetings now, and we still have so many people to try to book in. The thing with insurance is that it’s a timing thing. You only buy it once a year. So a lot of people are saying, yes, sure, follow up next year. So we have a massive book of people we’re trying to book in. That was honestly amazing. We overachieved on that.”

The Event Play: 57 Meetings From 2,284 Contacts

Clayworks’ own campaign uses what it calls the event play. It now runs it for all of its clients.

The idea is simple. Event attendee lists are often gated inside the event app, but the event’s followers can be scraped. Each person gets a short message: we saw you were at this event, here is what we do, we’d love to talk.

• 2,284 contacts
• 70 positive replies
• 59% of replies positive
• 57 meetings booked

“The second one I think we should shout out is one we did for ourselves. We actually went on a podcast with you to tell everyone how to do this, because it is just insane. We call it the event play, and we run it for all of our clients now. If you go to an event, they often gate the attendee list in the app, but you can scrape the followers and just say, hey, saw you were at this event, we do this, we’d really love to speak to you. It’s so simple, it’s unbelievable. On this one, we booked 57 meetings and got 70 positive replies, a 59% positive reply rate, across 2,284 contacts. That is just unbelievable. Obviously not all campaigns go that well, but we were super, super pleased with that.”

Finnish Gaming Studio: €300,000+ Closed in Month One

For a new client, a gaming studio based in Finland, the total addressable market was around 1,000 people. Clayworks found 558 of them through what it calls dark data: top-grossing apps on a niche gaming app store, with the buyers identified, enriched and contacted directly.

• 558 contacts in a market of roughly 1,000
• 4% reply rate
• 77% of replies positive
• 12+ meetings booked in month one
• 3 deals already closed, worth €300,000+

“Another recent campaign that went incredibly well was for a new client. They’re based in Finland. We have quite a few clients in the Nordics. They’re a gaming studio, so again super, super niche. There are probably about a thousand people they could sell to, and that’s being generous, honestly. We found 558 of them. They’ve only been live with us for one month. We got a 4% reply rate in total, and of that, 77% positive. We booked them over 12 meetings in month one, and three of them have already converted into closed deals worth €300,000 plus. So it worked amazingly well. Again, that was a scrape of what we call dark data. A lot of people are using Apollo, Blitz and the rest, but the issue we find is that so is everyone else. They’re all pulling the same data, and everyone’s getting the same email. You probably get them as well. I must get 25 cold outreaches a day that look identical. For this one, we went to a niche video gaming app store, not the Apple App Store, found the top-grossing apps on there, scraped all of them, found the buyers, and then enriched them and even guessed emails. We would rather reach the person who’s not on the database, even if it means a higher bounce rate. Does that affect our domains and mean they cost a bit more money? Yes, it does. But it works incredibly well.”

The common thread across all three is Clayworks’ core belief: timing and the right data matter more than sheer volume.

“I think the key thing I’m trying to get at is that you don’t necessarily need to send hundreds of thousands of emails. You can do both. We don’t think there’s anything bad about doing mass emails, but if you’re in an industry that only has 10,000 global contacts, you don’t want to burn all of them by emailing them straight away. It’s all about timing, and it’s all about finding the right data.”

How Smartlead Solved Clayworks’ Challenges

A Headless Setup That Runs Entirely From AI

Theo’s top feature is how seamlessly Smartlead connects to the Clayworks stack. Lists, campaigns and everything in between are built directly from AI tools like Claude, with no manual work inside the platform.

“I think the most important thing is that we use AI in every aspect of our business now. We just have a repo on GitHub, and everything works automatically. Smartlead was one of the first tools we were using that could link into that seamlessly. We have our CRM, all types of different AIs, all sorts of data providers, and it all just syncs. We don’t have to do anything. We build our lists, we build our email campaigns, we build everything just from Claude or whatever AI we might be using. For me, that’s the best thing. It’s completely headless and so simple to understand. I think you’ve made it so simple that you’re almost taking us out of the job on email. Before, there was arbitrage in how difficult it was. Now it’s becoming very easy. So I think that’s the top feature.”

Analytics for a Data-Driven Team

Clayworks runs on data. Smartlead’s analytics, including the recently improved bounce reporting, show exactly what is being sent and how it is landing.

“I also love the analytics. We’re very, very data driven, and you’ve even improved those recently. There are now email bounce rates and things like that. So that’s my second feature. We can see exactly what we’re sending, what our spam rate is, and any information we need to see.”

Reply Handling That Never Misses a Lead

Clayworks connects its own systems to replies through Smartlead, so nothing slips through.

“My third one has to be about actual replies. We know a lot of companies struggle with replies. I won’t name other providers, but things go missing, or emails don’t get replied to or get missed. The fact that we can hook our system up to replies through Smartlead means we don’t miss anything. It’s super customisable. We can do what we want.”

Mailboxes That Sync From Anywhere

Clayworks started by buying all of its mailboxes and domains directly through Smartlead. Now, wherever it buys them, they sync straight in.

“As everyone knows, mailboxes and domains are a bit of a nightmare. When we first started, we literally bought everything through Smartlead. It’s a one-stop shop, and if you’re doing it yourself, it makes it so much easier. It also syncs now, so whether we buy our mailboxes from InboxKit, from Mailin, or from wherever we buy them, everything just syncs. You can tell I like the syncs. Everything leads back to syncing.”

SmartInfra Dedicated Servers That Lift Reply Rates

Theo’s fifth feature is Smartlead’s dedicated sending servers. Each Clayworks client sends through its own server, so no one else’s spam affects their deliverability. Once Clayworks moved over, reply rates improved noticeably.

“The fifth one I really like is the sending servers, SmartInfra. We know we could probably stand this up ourselves at a similar cost. But what we found once we set it up is that our reply rates were just so much better. It means you’re not sending everything through someone else’s infrastructure and domains. We control the variables. If someone is putting spam through a shared server, you’re going to hit the same problems. All of our clients go through our own specific server, which I think is super nice.”

Infrastructure Visibility When It Counts

When a number of Clayworks mailboxes were suddenly flagged as spam, it was Smartlead’s infrastructure view that let the team spot it and act.

“A lot of our mailboxes were suddenly marked as spam. But the only reason we were able to realise that is because of Smartlead. We can see all of our infrastructure, how it’s doing, and whether we need to change it. It turned out not to be such a big issue, to be honest, but it was still a bit of a scare. Obviously, email is becoming more and more difficult with spam filters, but really, Smartlead does everything we want it to. Hence why we love you guys.”

SmartProspect for Hard-to-Reach Regions

Clayworks had not needed SmartProspect until recently, because it already has access to plenty of data. That changed while building a 250,000-contact list for its high-volume campaign, when its usual providers came up short in Europe and the UAE.

“It’s actually funny, we never used SmartProspect until yesterday. We have deals with data providers because we use so much data, so data is basically free for us. But yesterday I was trying to build a list of 250,000 contacts for this volume campaign. We used Blitz, then Pronto, then Apollo, and we were still short on contacts in certain regions. They covered the US and UK really, really well, but we also do a lot of outreach into Europe, and also the UAE where we are, and there was just no data. So I had our AI start to build the list in SmartProspect. If I look now, it’s still in progress. And the data is good. I also like that there’s email validation. When I was speaking to the product team, they said they’re going to start showing who is best to reach out to and why. I’m really looking forward to that.”

Support That Gets Things Done

“We’ve spoken to the team a lot on the chat on the website. Sometimes it got heated, but they’ve always been super helpful.”

Notable Achievements

• 13.6% reply rate and over 100 meetings booked for a UK sports insurance client, with 55.76% of replies positive and the campaign paused because demand outpaced booking capacity
• 57 meetings booked from 2,284 contacts through the event play, with a 59% positive reply rate
• €300,000+ in closed deals within the first month for a Finnish gaming studio, from a total market of roughly 1,000 people
• Around 1,000% growth in six months, with headcount doubled to seven people across multiple continents
• A fully headless outbound operation, with lists and campaigns built directly from AI tools connected to Smartlead
• Scaling toward around one million emails a month, after Smartlead resolved a warm-up pool limitation in eight working days

Top Smartlead Features Driving Results

1. API and AI Integrations. Smartlead connects seamlessly to Clayworks’ GitHub-based AI stack, CRM and data providers, so campaigns are built and run without manual work. Explore Smartlead’s API and automation capabilities.

2. Analytics. Detailed reporting on sends, bounce rates and spam rates for a team that makes every decision on data.

3. Reply Handling. Replies connect straight into Clayworks’ own systems, so no lead is missed. Learn more about the Unified Master Inbox.

4. Mailbox Purchasing and Sync. A one-stop shop for mailboxes and domains, with mailboxes bought elsewhere syncing straight in. Learn more about SmartSenders.

5. SmartInfra Dedicated Servers. Each client sends from its own server, which lifted Clayworks’ reply rates. Learn more about SmartInfra.

6. SmartProspect. Data coverage in regions where other providers fall short, with built-in email validation. Learn more about SmartProspect.

Vision for the Future

Clayworks is scaling fast and plans to send around one million emails a month. It has also started testing SmartProspect and SmartDialer, and has already given feedback to Smartlead’s product team on the dialer.

“On calls, we also just started using SmartDialer yesterday. We had a feedback call with your product team about what should be in there and what shouldn’t. We’ve used a lot of dialers, and we were looking for an alternative when we saw you had the Power Dialer. I think there’s still a way to go for it to be fully where we need it, but it sounds like you’re building that already.”

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