How Rippling added human SDRs on top of its automated outbound
Outbound teardowns by
October 2026
- Company
- Rippling sells HR, IT and finance software, from payroll and devices to spend management, to businesses. Visit Rippling ↗
- Sales team
- About 150 outbound SDRs by September 2024, on top of automated email
TL;DR
Rippling’s automated email still worked, but the accounts it reached couldn’t produce enough demos for the next growth plan. It put people on those same accounts and kept the automation running. Its CRO put the SDRs at 30 to 70 demos per 1,000 accounts, against 5 to 10 for email, from different periods.
The lesson
When you can’t reach more accounts, get more out of the ones you already reach. Rippling kept its automated email running and put people on the same accounts, where its leaders report more demos per account.
For your team
Work out how many demos your current accounts produce per 1,000. If people on those same accounts would book enough more to pay for themselves, add them there before buying new lists.
What Rippling did
The starting point
Rippling’s outbound started as an email machine run by marketing.
For its first years, most of Rippling’s outbound was email sent by software. From late 2019 marketing sent automated emails to the accounts in Rippling’s database, and SDRs booked demos from the replies.1 CRO Matt Plank has called it a highly transactional, very cost-efficient model, and Brandon Camhi, who later ran marketing, has said intent signals went from about 10% of those automated demos in late 2019 to 60% to 70% a year later.1,2
The problem
Email still worked, but it couldn’t carry the next plan.
Around 2022, Plank has said, planning showed Rippling’s account database could not support that plan at the yield programmatic email was getting, and marketing could not grow inbound form fills fast enough to close the gap.1,4a
The decision
September 2022 to early 2023
Rippling put people on the accounts its email already reached.
The automated email kept running.
Plank hired Ashley Kelly to build outbound sales development in 2022.4 Weeks after joining, on a SaaStr panel in September 2022, she described Rippling as essentially all inbound, with marketing running the email machine. In her first weeks, she said, she had split SDRs who worked inbound and outbound at once into three teams: one for inbound leads, one answering marketing’s large email campaigns and booking demos, and a separate outbound team working target accounts identified from Rippling’s existing customer base, with marketing.5
She recruited Bert Brokaw, now a senior SDR director, who has recalled starting with about nine SDRs, most of them likely former inbound reps who had to learn cold prospecting, and reaching about 70 by the end of the first year.4,6 Camhi has described the idea as layering more tactics on the same accounts to convert more of them.2
The redesign
SDRs worked four to seven people per account, mostly by phone.
Plank has said outbound is limited by contacts more than accounts and that bought contact data goes stale within months, so SDRs check and add contacts, aiming at four to seven people per account.1 They reach those people by email, LinkedIn, calls and voicemail, and about half of outbound demos are booked on the phone.1,4
Marketing kept gathering intent, such as website and review-site visits and job changes, and by Plank’s December 2024 account it told SDRs whom to contact and when, wrote the sequences and call scripts, and was judged on pipeline.4 A signal could now put an SDR on the phone.1
In Rippling’s job post for an SMB outbound SDR in Bangalore, the rep owns a book of accounts, researches companies and contacts, makes calls the main activity with email and LinkedIn in support, qualifies on budget, authority, need and timing (BANT) and books discovery meetings for an account executive.7
What a prospect received
In June 2024 the investor Jason Calacanis posted four Rippling emails he had received, sent under a Rippling SDR’s name.8,9 The same bodies reached another recipient by September, so this was a shared sequence.10
Four emails a Rippling SDR sent Jason Calacanis
Rippling is really good at sales…
Credit for an accepted opportunity
In June 2024 Kelly described SDR credit as a demo the account executive held and accepted into stage two, with the right buyer and next steps.11 She has said monthly opportunity credit suits Rippling better than paying on revenue, because its deals take longer and account executives need a steady supply.11
The result
By September 2024, about 150 SDRs and about 1,300 outbound demos expected a month.
Demos per 1,000 accounts, as Rippling’s CRO reported them
On stage in September 2024 Plank put programmatic email at 5 to 10 demos per 1,000 accounts and outbound SDRs at 30 to 70 on the same accounts, depending on the segment.1b
What it took
It needed managers, ops support and deals big enough to pay for a rep.
Brokaw has described dedicated help from revenue operations, enablement, territory operations and growth marketing on sequences, copy and talk tracks, and Kelly has credited Jason Bay’s Outbound Squad for strategy and tactics.6,12 Plank has said the team needed managers, directors and VPs too, and that outbound is a big investment.1
In December 2024 Plank said the smallest companies got no outbound at all, and human outbound began in the mid-market at about 50 employees, where an average deal of about $45,000 could pay for it.4 Camhi has said Rippling could chase yield because cross-sell made its unit economics strong.2
What to borrow
- Do the yield math on the accounts you already reach. Rippling’s planning showed its database could not carry the plan at the demos per 1,000 accounts automated email produced. That sum tells you whether you need more accounts, fresher contacts or people on the same list.
- Route a buying signal to a rep. Rippling’s marketing team kept collecting website, review-site and job-change intent, then told SDRs whom to contact and when.
- Credit SDRs for accepted opportunities. Rippling counts a demo once the account executive accepts it into stage two. Price the extra rep effort against that count on one segment first.
How to build a version of this in Unify
Build it in Unify
Give accounts with a buying signal a rep-led next step.
This section is our suggestion for a smaller test in Unify.
Rippling’s marketing team gathered intent itself and wrote the SDRs’ sequences. Unify combines your CRM, warehouse and product usage data with enrichment from 40+ sources, with warehouse data synced in through a sync tool or the API.
Start with one segment and one signal. A Play checks fit, keeps the owner and gives the rep call tasks and manual emails where another automatic send would go.
One account, from signal to next step
- Account
- Northpine LogisticsIn your pilot segment; last reached by automated email in March.
- Signal
- A new VP People, and company traffic on pricing twice this weekFrom Signals. The visits are company-level.
- Why it matters
- A second warehouse and 14 open roles mean onboarding at two sitesAI Research puts this on the rep’s task.
- Next step
- Maya Chen, the account owner, calls the VP People today. A manual email follows if she doesn’t pick up.From the Play: owner kept, people found, rep-led Sequence started.
does thisThen compare accepted opportunities and rep time against comparable accounts in your CRM, with everyone at one company in the same treatment.