Introduction

SourceReady is an AI sourcing platform based in San Francisco. Brands, retailers and importers use it to research products, find verified suppliers through global customs and trade data, and run supplier outreach and quote comparison in one place. Customers range from small D2C brands to Ralph Lauren, Kohl’s, Lidl, Carrefour and sourcing giants like Li & Fung. The product is self-serve: users sign up free, spend credits on searches and upgrade when they need more. Co-founder and CEO Ricky Ho came to us in August 2025.

The Challenge

SourceReady had a product people signed up for on their own. What it didn’t have was a way to go and get the right ones.

No outbound → growth was organic and product-led; nobody was proactively reaching the sourcing teams who buy.
Unused data → SourceReady holds customs data on who sources from whom, but had never used it to open a conversation with a prospect.
Too complex to build in-house → the workflow needed custom API calls, AI enrichment and routing in Clay. Ricky, watching the build: “I literally don’t think someone that just plays around can figure this out.”
Thousands of sign-ups, no follow-up → 5,000+ workspaces sat in Mixpanel with no way to spot who had run out of credits, who looked like an enterprise buyer, and who had gone quiet.

What We Built

Two phases: cold email built on SourceReady’s own data, then a system that turns every sign-up into a signal.

1. Cold email powered by their own data. For every prospect, a Clay workflow called SourceReady’s API and pulled their product category, the suppliers they import from, and the well-known brands those suppliers also serve. Two angles: “your suppliers are also used by your competitors” and “here are vetted suppliers in your category”, with examples under the signature so the email stayed short. 18 dedicated sending domains; SourceReady’s 152 existing customers excluded in both Clay and Smartlead.

2. A fast pivot when the first campaign flopped. The first 1,100 emails got a 0.4% reply rate. The copy teased supplier data but never said what SourceReady does. Version two pitched the platform (“think Alibaba, but with verified trade data, automated outreach and instant quote comparison”), moved to US D2C brands via Storeleads, split work addresses from generic inboxes and double-validated every email. The product-category angle went on to drive most of the sign-ups.

3. Mixpanel to Clay. We synced every user and workspace into Clay: plan, credits used against the limit, last seen, website. Most sign-ups use a personal email, so we traced them to a company via LinkedIn, enriched it and scored ICP fit from 0 to 100 with a written rationale, flagging enterprise logos hiding behind a gmail address.

4. Usage-triggered plays. Three tiers, each with its own trigger and sequence. Logo customers go to SourceReady’s CRM for personal outreach. Users who burned 80% of their credits without upgrading get an incentive or a demo. Users who signed up but never started get a nudge. Emails are 35 to 65 words, signed by Ricky, written as customer success rather than sales. The moment a workspace pays, it drops onto the do-not-contact list automatically.

5. Lookalikes, ads and a sales desk. Every qualified user seeds lookalike companies for cold email. Clay Audiences push non-converted users into Meta retargeting, where personal emails match far better than work emails. Clay tables by vertical (retail, e-commerce, importers) find personas and phone numbers for SourceReady’s new three-person sales team.

“

Just watching you do this is crazy. I can't believe what I would do if I don't have a Clay agency … This can be your case study in the future.

Ricky Ho

Co-founder & CEO, SourceReady

The Outcome

On the campaign dashboard the cold email didn’t look fantastic. In the back end, where sign-ups land, it was a different story.

• Up to 6 sign-ups a day from cold email → Ricky, reading Mixpanel’s “where did you hear about us”: 12 self-reported sign-ups from email in the best week, 20 to 30 a week by his estimate, with no other email marketing running.

• From 0.4% to a channel that converts → the first 1,100 emails barely got a reply; the rewritten product-category angle became the one that drove most of the sign-ups.

• 5,000+ workspaces scored and routed → every user carries plan, credit usage, last-seen and ICP score in Clay, refreshed daily.

• Replies within three weeks of going live → the re-engagement sequences launched 16 Feb 2026; by 6 Mar Ricky was “getting good replies”, around 2% positive and noticeably higher on the out-of-credits tier.

• Referrals → Ricky recommended us to his accelerator batch, to UNIFI3D and to Alpine, who both went on to work with us.

Why It Worked

1. Their data was the hook. Nobody else could tell a brand who its competitors source from. Opening with that earned the read; adding a real pitch turned it into a sign-up.

2. We measured where it mattered. Reply rates undersell a free, self-serve product. Tracking sign-ups in Mixpanel showed the channel working while the campaign dashboard said otherwise.

3. Sign-ups became signals. Credits, usage and last-seen beat any external buying signal. Routing on them meant each user got one relevant email, and paying customers got none.

Ready To Own Your Pipeline?

If your product sells itself once people sign up, but nobody is going out to get the right people, or your sign-ups pile up with no one reading the signals in them, this is the exact gap we close. We build outbound on your own data, then turn usage into triggers so every user gets one relevant email and your customers get none.

Book an outbound strategy call and we’ll map what an owned outbound channel would look like for you.