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UnifyOutbound teardownsVerkada

How Verkada automated the outbound first touch in 2023 and started its reps at the reply

Outbound teardowns by October 2026

Company
Verkada sells cloud-managed physical security, including video cameras, door access control and alarms, to businesses, schools and public agencies.
Visit Verkada ↗
Development reps
Two in-house rep roles: SDRs on the sales team, MDRs on the marketing team
Founded
2016, San Mateo, California
CEO
Filip Kaliszan

TL;DR

In its original 2023 design, Verkada’s Growth team automated the first email and handed every reply to a new kind of rep, the MDR. By Verkada’s count, each MDR handled about 6 qualified leads or meetings a day, against 1.5 for an SDR. By 2025 some MDR roles also cold called.

The lesson

Once software can send the first touch, a rep’s hours count most after the buyer answers.

For your team

Automate the first touch for one narrow signal, stop the sequence on any reply, and give each reply to a named person with a deadline.

What Verkada did

The starting point

From 2018 to 2022, Verkada sold on volume, and the hook was the product itself.

By August 2018 its website offered a free trial of “Brand-new Verkada cameras” with “No payment required.”1 In 2021 the same offer headed its homepage: a 30-day trial that “includes camera.”2

Try Verkada for free

Try Verkada’s all-in-one system in your environment. No payment required.

Trial includes:

  • Brand-new Verkada cameras (no NVR/DVR required)
  • Command cloud service license (unlimited users)
  • Unlimited cloud storage for archived video clips
  • Free accessories
  • Free setup and support
  • Free return shipping
  • No commitment
Source: verkada.com/try, archived Aug 18, 2018What it shows: Verkada’s free trial offer in its own words, from the archived page.

Verkada’s January 2021 promotion terms offer “one free promotional item (Maglite Flashlight or 10oz. YETI tumbler)” for attending a webinar or event in full.3 By 2022 they add an item “in exchange for booking, and attending, a meeting with a Verkada representative.”4

Account executives (AEs) owned their own pipeline. A 2020 post on Verkada’s blog says the AE is “responsible for building their pipeline, knowing their partners, demoing the product, and supporting existing customers.”5 Nate Lipps, then head of sales enablement, called prospecting “a simple numbers game” and wrote: “I’ve seen reps hand out over 25 trial cameras at conferences and weeks later they have brought on new customers.”6

In January 2020 CEO Filip Kaliszan said, “We’ve built an efficient sales and marketing engine,” with over 2,500 organizations as customers.7 By September 2022 Verkada reported more than 13,000.8

The problem

By early 2023, Verkada’s SDRs spent most of their day trying to reach people.

Verkada’s sales development reps (SDRs), in-house employees on the sales team who book first meetings for AEs, each worked a fixed set of leads in one territory and time zone. Chief Marketing Officer Idan Koren’s team studied SDR programs, Verkada’s included, and found that “The average SDR spends 70% of their time trying to get a hold of a prospect” and “only about 10% is spent interfacing with potential customers.”9

In March 2023 Koren warned that a campaign “may have generated many leads but ultimately resulted in low revenue,” so Growth should check past revenue before repeating one.10

The decision

Verkada blog, April 10, 2023

“The growth team automates the initial outreach and MDRs only begin their work when they receive a response from the prospect.”

Idan Koren, Chief Marketing Officer, describing the program.

Verkada’s marketing careers page described the design ten weeks earlier, in a snapshot from January 30, 2023.11

How We Deliver Four Times the ROI of Traditional SDR Orgs

We develop automated lead generation programs to scale growth–our MDR team hack is one example. Instead of MDRs spending their day reaching prospects, we automate their outreach to save time. ~120 qualified meetings are booked per month per MDR vs. 20 secured by a typical SDR.

Source: verkada.com/careers/marketing, archived Jan 30, 2023What it shows: the MDR design on Verkada’s careers page, ten weeks before the April 2023 post.

The redesign

The rep moved into marketing and started at the reply.

Marketing Development Reps (MDRs) were hired into Growth Marketing on a ten-month program. The growth team sent the opening outreach, and an MDR picked up a lead only when the prospect wrote back. MDRs could follow up on “the lowest-hanging fruit of outbound leads without the constraints of having a specific territory or timezone.”9a

Where the day goes

Average time spent per day. Redrawn from Verkada’s blog, April 10, 2023

Source: Verkada blog, Apr 10, 2023What it shows: Verkada’s April 2023 comparison; the image gives no percentages, so read none into the bar widths.

Seating MDRs in Growth Marketing was deliberate. Koren wrote that it let the team “run experiments quickly without inherent variables, such as other sales tasks getting in the way.”9b

  1. Growth’s automated campaign sends the first email. No rep has spent time on the account yet.

    An automated first email

    To: Maya Lin, Cedarline FreightAutomated

    Six depots, one trial camera?

    Hi Maya, most depots we talk to still pull footage from a recorder on site. Want a free 30-day trial camera at one of yours?

  2. The prospect writes back. In the 2023 design, this is where an MDR’s work begins.

    The reply

    From: Maya LinDay 2

    re: Six depots, one trial camera?

    “We’re replacing the recorders at two depots this spring. Who can walk me through pricing for both?”

  3. By 2026, Growth sorted each reply by intent: ready to go, one a person should break in on, or one to circle back on.

    Three kinds of reply

    Maya’s reply, sorted

    • High intent, ready to goMaya’s reply
    • A person should break in
    • Circle back later
  4. An MDR picks it up, or the system schedules an automated circle-back about three months out.

    A person, or a date

    Who acts next

    • JJordan, an MDR, answers with pricingToday
    • ↻Automated circle-back emailNot needed

    Had Maya written “not this year,” the system would have sent an email on Jordan’s behalf about three months later.

Source: Verkada blog, Apr 10, 2023; Future of Marketing podcast, Apr 28, 2026What it shows: the steps of Verkada’s reply-first design, from the April 2023 post and Koren’s April 2026 description.

The result

Verkada says its MDR program delivers four times the ROI of a traditional SDR team.

The 2023 post says MDRs “can qualify an average of 6 Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) or meetings booked per day compared to 1.5 SQLs by SDRs,” and book close to 120 meetings a month against 20 for a typical SDR.9c

In 2026 Koren said MDRs still hit numbers well above a normal SDR function, without giving a figure.12

The reply-only rule has loosened since. A Sydney MDR job record, first published in June 2025, lists “Daily outbound cold calling to engage potential customers.”13

What it took

A Growth team that kept building on both sides of the reply.

In March 2023 Koren wrote that Verkada meant to double its Growth team that year, while many other companies were cutting.14 By 2026 Growth was also sorting the MDRs’ replies into the three kinds shown above, he said on a podcast.12

Data and engineering teams built a measure called significant follow-up. Leads passed to MDRs or sales should get it 90% of the time, meaning six touches, three of them calls, or an inbound reply, Koren said.12

Job records show Growth still owns the machinery. A January 2026 record asks a hire to “Design and manage a scalable, repeatable framework for automated campaigns” with MDRs as partners, and a May 2026 JAPAC record adds “expanding our AI-SDR program.”15,16d

Give every reply to a person.

Classify replies to your automated Sequences and turn them into tasks for the right rep.

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What to borrow

  1. Spend people where the buyer adds information. A reply carries the timing, the objection or the name of the real decision-maker. The emails before it can run on their own.
  2. Seat the reply team with whoever owns the campaign, so the people answering replies report to the people who chose the audience and wrote the message.
  3. Turn “try me in January” into a dated step with an owner, so the date doesn’t depend on one rep’s memory.

How to build a version of this in Unify

Build it in Unify

Let the Sequence send first, and give each reply to a person.

Verkada built its audiences, campaigns and reply sorting inside its own Growth team. Unify combines your CRM, warehouse and product usage data with enrichment from 40+ sources. The first touch runs on Unify’s Sequencing, with managed deliverability on the sending mailboxes.

One account, from signal to the rep’s reply

Account
Harbor Point Clinics, 14 outpatient clinics in PortlandIn the Audience: US healthcare groups with five or more sites and a new leader or pricing page visits.
Signal
Dana Whitfield started as Director of Facilities on September 8, and the pricing page had two visits this weekFrom a new-hire Signal and website visits.
First touch
Three automatic emails from Sam Ortiz’s mailbox to Dana, Marcus Lee in IT and Owen Park in operationsA Play with an automated Sequence. Sam has no task until someone replies.
Replies
Marcus asks for pricing for two clinics. Dana writes that budget opens in January.Each reply ends that person’s enrollment and is classified by AI.
Next step
Sam answers Marcus today. Dana goes into a Sequence that waits until January 6.Reply Tasks go to the owner of the sending mailbox. Sam approves the January email before it sends.
Example data: the company and people are fictional. Features are Unify’s as documented, October 2026.
outbound motion
Do it in
Growth owns the audienceSegments and intent signals
Audiences and SignalsOne Audience per reason to reach out, such as pricing page visits or a new facilities or IT leader
The first touch is automatedSent by the growth team at scale
A Play with an automated SequenceThe Play qualifies each account with an AI Agent question, finds people across up to 5 personas, and enrolls them in automatic email steps
Sending at volumeThe model depends on reach
Managed DeliverabilityUnify creates and warms the sending mailboxes, checks for bounces before sending and routes volume across mailboxes
MDRs start at the responseNothing human before the reply
Reply detectionA reply ends that person’s enrollment, so no further automatic steps go out
Replies sorted by intentReady, break in, circle back
Reply classificationAI classifies each reply as Positive, Objection, Neutral, Negative or Automated, with tags such as Needs more info or Bad timing, which line up with ready, break in and circle back
A person takes the replyNo fixed territory
Reply TasksRules turn a classified reply into a task for the owner of the sending mailbox, a set user, or whoever enrolled the person by hand, with one open task per enrollment. Rebalancing by workload stays with a manager or your CRM
Significant follow-up90%, six touches, three calls
Manual Sequence stepsWrite your own standard as calls and emails the rep approves, with delays in days. Unify has no built-in follow-up score
Circle back in monthsAn automated email later
A delayed SequenceThe rep enrolls the person in a Sequence that waits until the date they gave, then a manual email to approve
Meetings go to salesThe AE runs the deal
Two-way CRM syncReplies, tasks and activity sync to Salesforce or HubSpot. The AE creates the opportunity there, and Unify reads it
Left: Verkada’s outbound motion as its 2023 post, job postings and CMO describe it. Right: our suggested implementation using documented Unify building blocks (October 2026), with your CRM and your team doing the parts noted. Verkada isn’t documented as a Unify user.

Unify product demo, October 2026: a signal Audience, a Play, an automated Sequence, classified replies, Reply Tasks, the rep’s own answer and the sync to Salesforce, in one conversation. A version of Verkada’s design, built from Unify’s documented features.

Start your reps at the reply in Unify.

Signal Audiences, automated first touches, classified replies and Reply Tasks for the people who answer.

Build your versionBook a demo

Frequently asked questions

How did Verkada sell before the MDR program?

From 2018 its main offer was a free trial camera with no payment required, and webinars and events came with a promotional item for attending; by 2022 an item could also be offered for booking and attending a meeting. Account executives built their own pipeline. In 2020 its head of sales enablement called prospecting “a simple numbers game.”

How does Verkada’s MDR program work?

In Verkada’s 2023 design, the Growth team automated the initial outreach, and Marketing Development Reps (MDRs), who sit on the marketing team, started work only once a prospect responded. SDRs sit on the sales team. MDRs had no fixed territory or time zone. By 2026, Growth also sorted replies by intent, sent automated circle-back emails when the timing was wrong, and measured follow-up on leads passed to MDRs and sales.

Do Verkada MDRs still only work replies?

Not everywhere. A 2025 MDR posting for Sydney lists daily outbound cold calling. Starting at the reply is the program’s original 2023 design. Growth postings in 2026 still name MDRs as a partner team.

Did the MDR program deliver 4x ROI?

That is Verkada’s own claim, from its April 2023 post and its careers page. Its MDRs qualified about 6 SQLs or meetings a day against 1.5 for SDRs, and booked close to 120 meetings a month against 20. The post leaves out the costs and close rates behind the ROI figure.

How do I run a version of this in Unify?

Build an Audience around one signal and give it a Play that qualifies accounts, finds people and enrolls them in automatic email steps. A reply ends the enrollment and is classified by AI, and Reply Task rules give it to the owner of the sending mailbox, a set user or whoever enrolled the person by hand. The rep answers; replies and activity sync to Salesforce or HubSpot, where the AE creates any opportunity.