How to Convert AVIF to JPG in Clay Workflows for Asset Pipelines

According to the May 2026 Litmus Email Client Market Share study, Microsoft Outlook desktop clients account for 6% of all global email opens, yet they still fail to render modern AVIF files. This six percent compatibility gap is where this guide lives. Modern outbound campaigns frequently use automated web scraping to pull screenshot assets, product logos, or profile images from target prospect websites. While web scrapers capture these assets in the highly compressed AVIF format, directly embedding these files in emails results in broken image icons for prospects using legacy environments.

AVIF provides up to 50% smaller file sizes compared to legacy JPEG images at visually identical quality levels, according to benchmark data from MDN Web Docs. This compression efficiency is ideal for standard website performance, but the email ecosystem runs on legacy rendering engines. Microsoft Outlook desktop applications on Windows, for instance, use Microsoft Word as their layout engine, which has no native capability to parse AV1 compression codecs. When an outreach sequence triggers with an inline AVIF image, a significant portion of recipients see empty boxes with red cross indicators. This rendering failure directly hurts campaign engagement rates.

To address this issue, programmatic outreach pipelines must automate format conversion. Manual drag-and-drop web converters work for one-off tasks, but they do not scale for cold outreach campaigns. Go-to-market teams must implement database-level and customer relationship manager automation to convert files on ingestion. Converting scraped AVIF files into standard JPG format before sending outbound emails ensures that visual assets render correctly for all recipients, preserving click-through rates and campaign analytics.

Outbound campaigns that send files to prospects can review the Litmus study for detailed rendering benchmarks, and optimize their media formats using tools like CloudConvert before initiating email sends.

Below is a compatibility matrix showing image support across major email clients:

Clay operates as a data enrichment spreadsheet, enabling sales development teams to enrich lead data, pull company profiles, and automate outbound steps. Because Clay does not provide a native image conversion function, developers must connect external image conversion engines. Using the built-in HTTP API enrichment column, developers can trigger third-party application programming interfaces directly for each row of the table.

CloudConvert offers an API specifically designed for programmatic file conversions. The workflow starts by calling the CloudConvert API to set up a job. A conversion job consists of three distinct tasks: fetching the source AVIF file from a public URL, performing the conversion to JPG format, and creating a temporary download URL for the resulting file.

To configure this automation within your Clay spreadsheet, create a new column and select the HTTP API enrichment type. Securely store your CloudConvert API key as a header account to prevent exposing secrets in the column configuration. The API request configuration requires the following details:

HTTP Method: POST Target Endpoint: https://sync.api.cloudconvert.com/v2/jobs

You must use the synchronous domain prefix to force the endpoint to wait and block the request until the conversion finishes. This sync behavior ensures that Clay receives the final converted image URL in the immediate response payload, rather than requiring webhooks or polling routines.

JSON API Payload Format

Configure the JSON request payload inside the Clay enrichment panel using replacement tokens to map the input URL dynamically from your table columns:

{
  "tasks": {
    "import-avif": {
      "operation": "import/url",
      "url": "/Row/Scraped Image Url"
    },
    "convert-avif": {
      "operation": "convert",
      "input": "import-avif",
      "output_format": "jpg",
      "quality": 85
    },
    "export-jpg": {
      "operation": "export/url",
      "input": "convert-avif"
    }
  }
}

Replace the static URL in the import-avif task with your database column token, such as "/Row/Scraped AVIF Url". When the run triggers, the engine replaces the token with the row-specific image link and submits the job. The synchronous response returns a JSON structure containing the tasks array. To extract the converted file URL, create a mapped column in Clay pointing to the nested result file path:

response.data.tasks[2].result.files[0].url

This extracted value displays as a new column in your Clay table, representing the converted JPG asset ready for outbound use.

Once Clay parses the converted JPG URL from the API response, the go-to-market pipeline must sync this asset with CRM systems like HubSpot or Salesforce. Keeping assets updated in CRMs ensures that outbound representatives can use personalized screenshots or company logos during email templates and sales calls.

In HubSpot, you can configure custom company or contact properties to store image URLs. Using Clay's native CRM push actions, you map the converted JPG column to the custom image URL property. When the enrichment pipeline runs, Clay updates the target CRM record with the validated JPG link. The outbound platform then references this property to render the personalized visual block.

For teams managing large volume databases, storing converted images directly in public staging buckets poses operational challenges. URLs generated by conversion services are temporary, often expiring within twenty-four hours. If an outreach sequence is delayed or if a representative opens a record weeks later, the links will return HTTP not found errors.

To prevent broken links, teams require a persistent file storage and shared workspace layer. While developers often look at raw storage backends like Amazon S3 or Google Drive for file hosting, these platforms require custom code to handle permissions and lack collaborative workspaces for hybrid human-agent teams.

Fast.io provides shared workspaces where agents and humans collaborate on the same files. Outbound agents can upload converted JPG files directly to Fast.io using URL Import, preserving version history and avoiding local device storage issues. When a file lands in the workspace, it is auto-indexed by Intelligence Mode for semantic retrieval, allowing teammates to search by metadata values.

Automate AVIF to JPG conversion in shared workspaces

Create structured database spreadsheets from your campaign assets using Metadata Views, maintain version history, and host visual collateral persistently. Every organization gets a fourteen-day free trial with credit card required.

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When running automated image conversion workflows inside Clay, developers frequently run into api limit errors or payload issues. Since Clay tables run row-by-row, single errors can halt subsequent enrichments.

One common issue is handling invalid source URLs. Web scrapers sometimes output broken image links or URLs that require bot verification. If the CloudConvert API attempts to fetch a protected AVIF URL, the import task returns an HTTP forbidden or not found error. To handle this, configure your Clay table run settings to execute the HTTP API enrichment conditionally. Use the 'Only run if' option to verify that the scraped URL contains a valid protocol and is not empty before running the call.

Another issue is hitting API rate limits. High-volume tables with thousands of contacts can trigger too many API requests in a short time. CloudConvert imposes rate limits on API keys based on the current plan. To mitigate this, developers should configure rate limits on the Clay column, setting a delay between calls or processing rows in batches rather than all at once.

If the synchronous endpoint times out due to a slow conversion, you should handle the failure gracefully. The synchronous endpoint blocks the connection for up to sixty seconds. If a conversion takes longer, the connection closes, and Clay displays a timeout error. In such cases, switching to an asynchronous job structure where Clay sends the request and a webhook receives the final URL when complete is the recommended design pattern.

Go-to-market teams operating at scale face two common challenges: converting image assets in bulk and handling complex image transformations. Clay is built to handle table-based rows, but processing thousands of individual HTTP API calls sequentially can be slow and trigger rate limits.

Bulk Asset Processing Workflows

For bulk conversions, developers should batch the source AVIF URLs into a JSONL file. In this workflow, a scraping agent uploads the JSONL file to a secure bucket, executes a batch conversion job via an external service, and deposits the results back into a shared workspace.

To build this pipeline programmatically, developers can run a Node.js script that fetches a presigned PUT upload URL from the conversion API, uploads the JSONL file, and triggers the conversion batch. When the job completes, a webhook notifies the system, and the database updates.

Handling Image Transformations

Outbound templates often require specific dimensions, crop ratios, or watermarks. While Clay does not support native image transformations, you can pass parameters inside the conversion payload to adjust the output file. For example, adding width and height limits to the conversion task forces the API to resize the file:

{
  "operation": "convert",
  "input": "import-avif",
  "output_format": "jpg",
  "width": 800,
  "height": 600,
  "fit": "max"
}

By organizing these assets in an intelligent workspace, teams can handle both bulk storage and real-time review. In Fast.io, you can create Metadata Views to extract structured data from these image assets, such as matching specific filenames to prospect domains. This structured extraction layer acts as a live, queryable database of your campaign assets, enabling humans and agents to collaborate on the same file structure.

Every file in the workspace maintains a version history, ensuring that if a company changes its branding or logo, the new asset updates while preserving the history of prior outreach assets. If a campaign finishes, agents can transfer ownership of the organization or workspace to humans, keeping campaign assets organized and auditable.