The problem

• Prospects don’t reply to generic emails.
• But they do reply when you reference timely events.
• Manually tracking news is impossible at scale.

Step 1: Capture News Feeds

• Pull industry-specific RSS feeds into Clay.
• Examples:
  • TechCrunch for startups
  • PRNewswire for finance
  • Local business journals for geo-targeted plays

Step 2: Map Feeds to Accounts

• Run keyword matching: company names, exec names, product terms.
• Clay auto-links article → account row.
• Store headline + article link in columns.

Step 3: Summarize with AI

• Prompt Claygent: “Summarize in 2 bullets why this article matters to [ICP role].”
• Output goes into “Trigger Summary” column.
• Keeps it short and contextual.

Step 4: Generate Outreach Copy

• AI drafts an email:
  • Line 1: “Saw the news about X…”
  • Line 2: Tie to value prop
  • CTA: Clear, low-friction ask
• Always under 80 words.

Step 5: Build Sequenced Plays

• Push into Outreach/Salesloft/HubSpot sequences.
• Step 1: Personalized trigger email.
• Step 2: Generic but relevant nurture follow-up.
• Step 3: Call task with script referencing the article.

Why this matters

• “Trigger-based” outreach = 2–3x reply rates.
• Reps don’t waste time scanning the web.
• News = instant relevance, instant credibility.

Pro tips

• Filter by recency (<7 days) to keep it fresh.
• Exclude junk PR fluff with AI classifier.
• Add Slack alerts when target accounts hit the news.

Outcome

• Outreach tied to real-world signals.
• Faster pipeline acceleration.
• Clay + Agentic AI runs the monitoring so SDRs can just execute.

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