Cold Email Workflow Perfection: Automate 'Wrong Person' Replies with Instantly and Clay
Table of contents:
1. Introduction2. Creating a Clay table3. Adding a webhook4. Enriching webhook data in Clay5. Connecting Instantly.ai
1. Introduction
Even at best data providers data can’t be 100% accurate. That’s why for each cold email campaign we receive our share of “Wrong person” replies.
People change jobs, and founders go on sabbaticals or maternity leave.
In this article, I’ll show you how I deal with such replies automatically.
In fact, an “Out of office” reply can often be treated as a “Wrong person” response because, in our campaigns, we rarely secure significant opportunities from OOO follow-ups.
The total reply rate from OOO follow-ups is approximately 0.2%.
That’s why we’re testing new ways to leverage OOO replies, such as using LinkedIn connections or implementing this workflow.
This workflow is included as part of the scope for my clients, but you can use it as inspiration to set up something similar in your own campaigns.
(I’m always happy to chat for 10 minutes to help you with the details.)
2. Creating a Clay table
Now, let’s set the mood with some great music.
My pick is Infected Mushroom’s album “Head of NASA and the 2 Amish Boys.”
In Clay, we need to create a separate table to receive all webhooks from Instantly. You can use my template or create the table from scratch.
When selecting a table type, choose “Monitor webhook”.
Create a blank table.
On the right side, you’ll see the URL where you will send your webhook.
3. Adding a webhook
Next, let’s set up a webhook in Instantly to send all “Wrong person” replies to Clay.
Go to Instantly’s integrations page.
Navigate to the Webhook section and click Add Webhook.
Paste your webhook URL, select the Wrong Person event, and pick the campaign where you want to collect these responses. (I usually set it to “All campaigns.”)
Click Add Webhook.
Now, Instantly and Clay are connected!
By default, Instantly’s AI detects and marks “Wrong Person” replies automatically. During inbox management, we also manually mark some replies when needed.
4. Enriching Webhook Data in Clay
When a contact is marked as a "Wrong Person," the information is sent to Clay. When you review the data, you’ll see the following details:
You can create as many columns as you need, but I recommend including first name, last name, company name, and email (which I label as "Wrong email").
The issue is that we don’t see the reply text here.
Instantly.ai webhooks only send the lead’s email, campaign ID, and other metadata, but no reply text.
To solve this, I create an API call to retrieve the last email received by the recipient and extract the relevant contact information from it.
Details are in the Instantly API documentation.
As the next step, we use ChatGPT to analyze the reply.
This helps us check if there’s a new email provided and ensure that it’s not a generic address.
Then I receive the response like this:
Sometimes, the New_Company_Name differs from the original due to acquisitions or a name change. To ensure accuracy, I use the company name provided in the response.
It’s also a good idea to run Normalize Company Name enrichment to avoid any inconsistencies or unusual names:
5. Connecting Instantly.ai
Now, I prepare the campaign in Instantly, name it “Wrong Person,” and build my sequence with the reference in mind.
Like “Hi {{firstName}}, I was referred to you by {{Reference}}'s inbox :)”
The final step is to add contacts to the Instantly campaign using Clay’s native integration.
To ensure accuracy, you can also enable Run Options to verify whether the email is a business address and not a generic one.
This way, rows with generic emails won’t be processed.
Now, I turn on the Instantly campaign and achieve a 7% reply rate with a 30% positive reply rate - on autopilot.
Have questions? Drop me a line, connect with me on LinkedIn, or book a call.
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