From 600 accounts to a ten-day play
A signal-based ABM system for a US software company that sells video hosting to education businesses. The list lives in Clay, the emails in Instantly, the LinkedIn messages in HeyReach, the record in HubSpot, the routing in n8n. Vendor, prospects and the agency that set the brief are not named here.
The short version
Who. US companies selling video courses for licence and certificate exams: nursing, medical boards, accounting, law, IT, project management. 20 to 500 people, their own platform, videos on a competing player.
Why now. The incumbent player's new owner cut most of its video team, changed its usage rules mid-year, and a second vendor dropped its cheap plan. Exam outlines change on fixed dates, so videos get re-recorded anyway. Every one of those is a reason to write that a real person would recognise.
How. List 600 companies. Score them. Show LinkedIn ads to the top 60 to 80 for three weeks. Then a ten-day play on LinkedIn and email, and a person answering every reply within the hour. Sales gets the thread and a cost estimate before the meeting.
Clay finds, Instantly emails, HeyReach messages, HubSpot remembers, n8n connects, LinkedIn Ads warms.
How it runs
Every account goes back to scoring every week. Nothing is sent to an account that has not seen the ads.
| Step | What happens | Tool |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | List: education companies, 20 to 500 people, US, exam keywords. About 600. Customers and big publishers removed. | Clay, Sales Navigator |
| 2 | Add details: which video player they use (a script reads the page code), app, video or mobile job posts, acquisitions, new leaders, the exam calendar twelve months ahead. | Clay, job board APIs |
| 3 | Score 0 to 100. 80 and above is Tier 1. 60 to 79 is Tier 2; its top 60 to 80 get the ads. | Clay |
| 4 | People: 3 to 5 per Tier 1 account. The signer, the tester, one helper. Verified emails only. | Clay, Sales Navigator |
| 5 | Ads first: LinkedIn ads to those accounts. No message until an account has seen the ads 50 times or clicked once. Clicks push accounts over 80. | LinkedIn Ads, n8n |
| 6 | Play: n8n posts the account to Slack with score, reason and play. The rep starts the same day. LinkedIn and email together for ten days. | Instantly, HeyReach |
| 7 | Reply: desk live 9am to 1pm US Eastern. A person answers within the hour. "Not now" gets a date. | HubSpot |
| 8 | Hand off: sales gets the reason, the thread and the cost estimate in Slack before the meeting. | Slack |
| 9 | Keep in touch: Tier 2 gets 5 to 7 emails over six weeks, one set per reason. | Instantly |
| 10 | Report: one page a week, 30-minute call. | HubSpot |
The score, and what it does
Five layers add up to 100. Fit and the reason to reach out carry the most weight because they decide whether a message can be honest. Engagement is what the ads add. Try it: pick one option per layer and watch the tier change.
Ads to the account plus nurture. No outreach yet. Clicks and visits push it over 80.
Play: Self-hosted: one quality for every phone, a bill nobody owns
Under 60 monitor. 60 to 79 engage. 80 and above act. A disqualifier overrides everything.
A 20-point jump in a week pings Slack. Customers and anyone under the minimum size are out, whatever the score. Paid intent data waits until meetings prove the loop; it is a cost, not a starting point.
The plays
One reason, one angle, one proof, one tiny ask. A play fires when the reason is announced, not when it happens.
| Play | Reason | Angle | First ask |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Renewal | On the incumbent, renewal within six months | Renewing under a new owner that cut the video team. Three questions to ask the rep. | A cost estimate on their numbers. A yes is enough. |
| 2. Exam change | New outline announced 6 to 12 months out | The videos get re-recorded anyway. Cheapest time to switch. | A side-by-side test on one public video. |
| 3. Merger | Bought a company, two sites still separate | Two players, two bills. Pick one before the move. | A one-page "what moves, what doesn't". |
| 4. Self-hosted | Plain video files, new app, mobile hiring | One quality for every phone. A bandwidth bill nobody owns. | A side-by-side test. |
| 5. Cheap plan gone | On the second vendor's older account | The entry plan is gone; the next tier costs more per terabyte. | A cost estimate. |
| 6. Inbound | Seen on the pricing page in the last 14 days | Name the page they read. | A 20-minute call. |
The ten days
Email and LinkedIn together. Silence means re-score, not re-send. Any reply stops everything.
Copy rules that came out of the review rounds: 40 to 120 words, one idea per touch, start with them not the product, plain text, no links in the first email, a question before any calendar link, simple words, every number sourced. Nothing that explains itself or sounds clever.
Before the first send
| Domain | A second domain, never the main one. Three mailboxes. Warm up three to four weeks. SPF, DKIM, DMARC set. |
| Emails | Plain text. No links in email 1. No open tracking. Verified addresses only. Address and unsubscribe line. Bounces under 2%, complaints under 0.1%. |
| A real person's profile, ideally a founder's with their OK. 15 to 20 requests a day. | |
| Record | HubSpot is the truth. n8n moves each new signal to score, tier, ad audience and Slack. |
Ninety days, and what counts
The weekly page reports: accounts by tier and movement, Tier 1 accounts warmed, contacted and replied, positive replies, meetings from target accounts, pipeline attributed in the CRM, deliverability, what was cut and what was scaled.
It never reports emails sent, open rates or click rates. Activity is not a result.
Numbers the plan is held to: cold reply 1 to 3%, warmed Tier 1 reply 8 to 15%, under 5% means fix the list; 10 to 15 qualified meetings a quarter per 100 Tier 1 accounts; pipeline by day 60 to 90.
The Clay table, the Instantly sequence and the HeyReach workflow exist and can be walked through on a call. They are not linked here because the prospects in them are real companies.