Sales & CRM

How to build an outbound email sequence as Small Marketing Teams

Sales & CRMFor Small Marketing Teams3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Your three-person team is the one building the outbound sequence, writing the copy, loading the list into Customer.io or Klaviyo, and then manually checking HubSpot two weeks later to see if any of those contacts actually moved down the funnel. The problem isn't your ESP — it's that your contact data lives in HubSpot, your sends live in Klaviyo, your LinkedIn enrichment is manual, and nothing tells you which sequence variant actually sourced the SQLs. You spend more time stitching spreadsheets than iterating on copy. When the CEO asks 'how is outbound performing,' you're pulling three tabs and doing math by hand.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Sales & CRMFor Small Marketing Teams3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A connected outbound workflow that pulls enriched contact data from HubSpot and LinkedIn into a curated send list, with sequence logic described in plain English and routed to your ESP

An automated attribution view that joins sequence engagement back to HubSpot deal stages so you can actually see which email variant drove pipeline — without a BI tool

A weekly outbound performance summary that hits your inbox every Monday morning: contacts touched, reply rate, deals influenced, and any stale sequences that need a copy refresh

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Sales Agent CRM LinkedIn Automation CRM

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your HubSpot contacts, companies, deals, and owners on a schedule — this is the source of truth for list building and pipeline attribution. Connect Klaviyo from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries it live when your sequence dashboard or automation runs. LinkedIn enrichment runs through browser automation — no LinkedIn API needed. Gmail is synced on a schedule for thread context and reply tracking. Slack is available for weekly digest delivery.

Prompts to copy

Pull all HubSpot contacts with Lifecycle Stage = MQL, no email activity in the last 21 days, and company size between 50 and 500 employees. Enrich each contact's title and current company from LinkedIn. Export a clean list with first name, company, title, and last HubSpot activity date.

Build me a 4-step outbound email sequence targeting demand gen managers at B2B SaaS companies. Step 1 is a short intro referencing their company's growth stage. Steps 2 and 3 are value-add follow-ups spaced 4 and 9 days out. Step 4 is a low-pressure breakup email. Draft all four emails and flag where I should personalize.

Every Monday at 8 AM, pull last week's sequence send data from Klaviyo, match opened and replied contacts back to HubSpot deal stage, and Slack me a summary: contacts contacted, open rate, reply rate, and how many moved to SQL.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect HubSpot to Starch — Starch syncs your contacts, companies, deals, and lifecycle stages on a schedule so your list-building logic always works against current data.

2 Connect Klaviyo (or Customer.io) from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries it live when your sequence reporting or list-push automation runs.

3 Tell Starch: 'Pull all MQL-stage HubSpot contacts who haven't had email activity in 21+ days and have company size 50-500. Enrich each record with current title and employer from LinkedIn.' Starch runs the HubSpot sync query and fills gaps via LinkedIn browser automation.

4 Review the enriched list in Starch — flag any contacts with bad data, duplicates, or wrong ICP fit before anything goes out.

5 Tell Starch: 'Draft a 4-step outbound sequence for demand gen managers at B2B SaaS companies. Space steps at day 1, 5, 10, and 15. Flag personalization tokens.' Starch returns all four drafts with inline notes on where to drop in specifics.

6 Finalize copy in Starch, then tell it: 'Push this contact list and sequence into Klaviyo as a new campaign — name it Q2 Outbound Wave 1.' Starch handles the hand-off via the live integration.

7 Build a sequence attribution app: 'Show me a dashboard that joins Klaviyo open and reply data with HubSpot deal stage movement. I want to see, by sequence step, how many contacts moved from MQL to SQL within 14 days of first touch.'

8 Set a weekly automation: 'Every Monday at 8 AM, pull last week's Klaviyo sequence stats, match replied contacts to their HubSpot deal stage, and post a summary to #marketing-ops in Slack.'

9 Use the Sales Agent CRM app to track which sequence contacts have been personally followed up by a team member — so you're not doubling up with an SDR or the CEO sending their own note.

10 After two weeks, tell Starch: 'Compare open rate and SQL conversion rate for each step across Wave 1 and Wave 2. Which subject line performed better?' Starch surfaces the answer from your synced HubSpot and live-queried Klaviyo data.

11 Fork the sequence for a new ICP segment — for example, RevOps leaders at companies using Salesforce — by describing the new persona in plain English and letting Starch rewrite the copy variants.

12 Archive the attribution dashboard as a shared view your team and CEO can check any time — no more rebuilding it before the Monday standup.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

Try it on Starch →

Worked example

Q2 Outbound Wave 1 — April 2026

Sample numbers from a real run

HubSpot MQL contacts pulled (21-day no-touch filter)	214
LinkedIn-enriched records (title/employer updated via browser automation)	187
Contacts pushed to Klaviyo sequence	164
Unique opens across 4-step sequence (Week 1)	91
Replies received	19
HubSpot deal stage moves to SQL within 14 days	11
Estimated pipeline influenced ($18K avg deal size)	198,000

In early April, your team ran a 4-step outbound sequence targeting demand gen managers at B2B SaaS companies with 50-500 employees. Starch pulled 214 MQL-stage contacts from HubSpot who hadn't been touched in 21 days, then enriched 187 of them with current title and employer via LinkedIn browser automation — catching 34 contacts who had changed jobs since the record was created. After a quick list review, 164 went into Klaviyo. By the end of week one, Starch's Monday Slack digest showed a 55% unique open rate on Step 1, a 12% reply rate overall, and 11 contacts who moved to SQL in HubSpot within 14 days. At an $18K average deal size, that's roughly $198K in influenced pipeline from a sequence your team built and shipped in an afternoon — without a BI tool, without a data analyst, and without manually joining a single spreadsheet.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Sequence reply rate by step and by copy variant

MQL-to-SQL conversion rate within 14 days of first sequence touch

Pipeline influenced per outbound wave (contacts × deal stage movement × avg deal size)

LinkedIn enrichment hit rate (% of contacts with current title/employer after automation runs)

Time from list pull to sequence live in ESP (a proxy for how much manual work the process still requires)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Outreach or Salesloft

Purpose-built sequence tools with deep sales engagement features, but they cost $100-150/seat, require an admin to configure, and still don't give you the HubSpot attribution join without a separate BI tool or RevOps hire.

HubSpot Sequences (Sales Hub)

Native to HubSpot which makes attribution easier, but sequences are locked behind Sales Hub Pro at $90+/seat, and you lose the ability to push contacts enriched from LinkedIn or build a custom attribution view without the HubSpot reporting add-on.

Manual: Klaviyo + HubSpot + Google Sheets

What most small marketing teams actually do today — free but the attribution join is a weekly manual task, enrichment is ad hoc, and nothing stops a contact from getting both an automated email and a personal CEO note in the same week.

Apollo.io sequences

Good for cold outbound from Apollo's database, but if your list starts in HubSpot and your sends need to land in Klaviyo or Customer.io, Apollo becomes a parallel system that creates more contact deduplication work, not less.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — sales agent crm, linkedin automation, crm all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does Starch replace Klaviyo or Customer.io?

No. Starch connects to Klaviyo from its integration catalog and queries it live — your sends, suppression lists, and deliverability settings stay exactly where they are. Starch handles the list building, enrichment, attribution reporting, and the Monday digest. Your ESP does the sending.

How fresh is the HubSpot contact data Starch uses for list building?

Starch syncs your HubSpot contacts, companies, and deals on a schedule, so list pulls reflect recent data. For most outbound workflows — where you're pulling a segment, enriching it, and sending over a week or two — scheduled sync is plenty. If you need real-time HubSpot triggers (e.g., 'fire the moment a contact hits MQL'), that's a good question for the Starch team.

Will LinkedIn automation get my account flagged?

LinkedIn Automation runs through browser automation on your behalf, meaning LinkedIn sees normal human-paced activity rather than API calls. That said, no automation tool can guarantee LinkedIn won't change its rate limits — Starch's approach is materially lower-risk than tools that call undocumented APIs directly, but you should still set conservative daily outreach caps and review the activity log weekly.

We use Customer.io, not Klaviyo. Does that work?

Yes — connect Customer.io from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries it live when your automation or dashboard runs. The same list-push and reporting logic applies.

We don't have a BI tool. Can Starch actually do the attribution join between Klaviyo sends and HubSpot deal stages?

That's exactly the use case. Starch syncs HubSpot deal stage data on a schedule and queries Klaviyo live. You describe the attribution logic you want — 'show me contacts who replied to Step 2 and moved to SQL within 14 days' — and Starch builds the view. You're not writing SQL or waiting for a data analyst.

Is Starch SOC 2 Type II certified?

Not yet. Starch is not currently SOC 2 Type II certified. If your company has a vendor security review process that requires it, that's worth flagging upfront.

What if a contact appears in both our Klaviyo sequence and a personal outreach from the CEO?

Starch doesn't have a global suppression list that spans your ESP and your CEO's Gmail by default — that's a real coordination problem for small teams. The practical fix is to build a Starch app that surfaces 'contacts in an active sequence' so anyone doing personal outreach can check before sending. You'd describe it as: 'Show me all contacts currently enrolled in a Klaviyo sequence, their current step, and the last email sent date.'