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How To Use Relay.app To Automate Your CRM And Manage Email Outreach?

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Relay.app is a modern, no code workflow automation platform designed to connect your everyday business apps and streamline repetitive work. It erves as a direct, next generation alternative to older platforms like Zapier or Make.

What makes Relay.app unique is that it deeply embeds AI agent capabilities and “Human in the Loop” checkpoints directly into standard workflows. This ensures that automations don’t just move data blindly, but can pause for human approvals, data input, or intelligent AI decision making when the stakes are high.

Core Features & Value Proposition

  • Human in the Loop Review: You can add manual checkpoints. For example, the automation can draft an email using AI but pause to let you review and edit it before sending it to a high value customer.
  • Built-in AI Agents & Actions: Access state of the art LLMs (like OpenAI and Anthropic’s Claude) directly inside your workflow. You can use natural language prompts to extract data, transcribe audio, summarize text, or create mini AI agents.
  • Stateful Data with Tables: Store and track structured data natively inside Relay.app instead of relying strictly on external spreadsheets.
  • Deep, Smart Integrations: Supports over 200+ native integrations (e.g., Notion, Slack, Gmail, HubSpot, Jira). It handles nested or linked data records automatically, meaning you don’t have to build complex lookup chains.

Pricing Model (2026 Overview)

Unlike older alternatives that charge strictly per execution task, Relay.app includes a generous official Relay.app Pricing structure:

  • Free Plan: $0/month for 1 user, 200 automated steps, and 500 AI credits (great for testing).
  • Professional Plan: ~$19/month (billed annually) for 1 user, 750 steps, and 2,000 AI credits.
  • Team Plan: ~$59/month (billed annually) for up to 10 users, 1,500 steps, and 2,000 AI credits.

Relay.app homepage hero banner showcasing text Turn natural language into reliable automations.

Step by Step Beginner’s Guide to Your First Automation

In Relay.app, an automated workflow is called a Playbook. Let’s create a beginner friendly playbook: When you receive a specific email in Gmail, AI summarizes it, and it pauses for your approval before sending a Slack alert to your team.

Step 1: Create an Account

  1. Visit the official Relay.app site.
  2. Click Sign Up and create an account using your Google login or email.
  3. Take a glance at the user dashboard, noting the Playbooks section on the left side menu.

Step 2: Set Up the Trigger

The trigger is the “doorbell” that wakes up your automation.

  1. Click New Playbook (or Create Workflow).
  2. Click Add Trigger and search for Gmail.
  3. Select the event: Email Received.
  4. Authorize Relay.app to securely connect to your Gmail account.
  5. Add a Filter (Optional but recommended): In the configuration panel, add a condition so it only triggers for specific emails, for example, where the subject contains “Urgent Report”.
  6. Use the Trigger Preview panel to look at past emails and verify your filter works.

Step 3: Add an AI Summarization Step

  1. Click the + icon below your trigger to add a new step.
  2. Select AI Actions (or Prompt any model).
  3. Write a clear instruction in plain English: “Summarize the following email body into 3 punchy bullet points.”
  4. Click on the text box and reference the dynamic data from Step 1. Select the Email Body variable from your Gmail trigger.

Step 4: Insert a Human in the Loop Approval Checkpoint

  1. Click the + icon below your AI step.
  2. Choose Human in the loop -> Review Step (or Approval Checkpoint).
  3. Configure it to pause the execution and send a notification to your email or Relay inbox.
  4. This ensures that if the AI summary looks bad or contains errors, you can edit it manually before it proceeds.

Step 5: Add the Final Action Step (Slack Notification)

  1. Click the + icon at the very bottom of the chain.
  2. Search for and select Slack.
  3. Choose the action: Send Message.
  4. Connect your Slack account and pick the channel (e.g., #team-updates).
  5. In the message box, map the approved AI text from your approval step so it posts the clean summary automatically.

Step 6: Test and Turn It On

  1. Click Start a Test Run at the top right.
  2. Relay.app will pull a real, past email from your Gmail to simulate the run.
  3. Check your inbox for the approval notification, approve it, and verify that the message hits Slack successfully.
  4. If everything looks great, toggle the playbook to Active. Your automation is now live!

You can use Relay.app to supercharge your CRM and email outreach by building automated Playbooks that seamlessly pass data between platforms like HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Notion, and Gmail or Outlook.

By utilizing Relay.app’s distinct AI features and Human in the Loop steps, you can automate lead intake, auto generate highly personalized cold emails with AI, and mandate a manual human review before any outreach is actually sent to a potential client.

3 Essential Relay.app Automation Strategies for CRM & Outreach

The “Human Reviewed” AI Lead Outreach Playbook

The Goal: Never send a generic email template or an unverified AI hallucination to a high value lead.

  • Trigger: A new contact is created or moves to a specific stage (e.g., “Qualified”) in your CRM (like HubSpot or Salesforce).
  • AI Step: Relay.app passes the lead’s company description, job title, and first name to an integrated LLM (like OpenAI GPT-4o). The prompt instructs the AI to write a highly tailored value proposition for that specific contact.
  • Human Checkpoint: Relay.app pauses the workflow and flags it for your review. You get a notification to read the drafted email, tweak the wording, or change the tone.
  • Action: Once you click “Approve,” Gmail or Outlook automatically fires off the personalized email.

Automatic CRM Syncing from Inbound Emails

The Goal: Stop copy-pasting data from raw inquiry emails into your sales pipeline.

  • Trigger: You receive a new incoming email in Gmail matching a specific filter (e.g., labeled “Inquiry” or containing the phrase “pricing request”).
  • AI Step: Use an AI extraction agent step. Instruct the AI to parse the unstructured email body and extract the contact’s First Name, Last Name, Company Name, and Budget/Need.
  • Action: Relay.app automatically updates or creates a corresponding deal card in your CRM (e.g., Pipedrive) using the exact data extracted by the AI.

Closed-Won Client Onboarding Handshake

The Goal: Transition a lead immediately to an onboarding sequence once they purchase.

  • Trigger: A deal status changes to Closed-Won in your CRM.
  • Action 1: Relay.app automatically sends a standard, immediate “Welcome to the family” email template via your email client.
  • Action 2: It simultaneously generates an onboarding dashboard in your project management CRM (like a Notion Database or Jira) pre populated with client specific information.
  • Action 3: It drops a notification in your team’s internal Slack pipeline channel to celebrate the win.

Blueprint: Setting up a Personalized Outreach Playbook

Here is how to set up the ultimate CRM to Email Outreach pipeline in Relay.app step by step.

 [Trigger: HubSpot Contact Created] 
                 │
                 ▼
 [AI Step: Draft Personalized Email] 
                 │
                 ▼
 [Human Step: Review & Approve Draft] 
                 │
                 ▼
 [Action: Send Email via Gmail/Outlook]
                 │
                 ▼
 [Action: Update HubSpot Contact Status]

Step 1: Establish Your Trigger (The CRM Data Source)

  1. In Relay.app, click New Playbook.
  2. Set the trigger application to your CRM (e.g., HubSpot).
  3. Choose the event Contact Created or Deal Stage Updated.
  4. Map your test data to ensure Relay.app pulls active CRM fields (like First Name, Email, Company Name, and Bio/Notes).

Step 2: Prompt the AI for Custom Personalization

  1. Click the + icon and select AI Actions -> Prompt any model.
  2. Construct your prompt by pulling dynamic tags from your CRM trigger:
    “Write a friendly, professional 3-sentence outreach email to {Contact: First Name} who works as a {Contact: Job Title} at {Contact: Company Name}. Reference that we help companies like theirs optimize workflow efficiency. Do not include a subject line.”

Step 3: Insert the Safety Switch (Human in the Loop)

  1. Add a new step below the AI action and choose Human in the loop -> Review Step.
  2. Name the step “Verify Outreach Text”.
  3. Map the output variable from your AI drafting step into the text area. This allows you to visually intercept the draft, fix typos, or rewrite sentences on the fly before it moves to the next stage.

Step 4: Map the Outbound Email Channel

  1. Add a final step and choose your email server (e.g., Gmail or Microsoft Outlook).
  2. Choose Send Email.
  3. In the “To:” field, map the dynamic variable {Contact: Email} from your initial CRM trigger.
  4. Set the subject line (e.g., “Quick question regarding {Contact: Company Name}”).
  5. In the Email Body field, select the output from the Human in the loop Review Step (not the raw AI step, ensuring your human edits are preserved).

Step 5: Log the Action Back in the CRM

  1. Add one more step following the sent email.
  2. Select your CRM app again (e.g., HubSpot).
  3. Choose Update Contact or Log an Activity.
  4. Find the record using the ID from Step 1, and set a custom field like Outreach Status to “First Touch Emailed”. This keeps your sales dashboard completely up to date.
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