How to Use Clay: A Practical Guide to Lead Generation

Clay is a data enrichment and lead generation platform that lets you build automated workflows for finding and enriching prospect data. If you're paying for multiple data providers or manually copying information between tools, Clay consolidates that work into one place.

This guide walks through exactly how to use Clay, from setting up your first table to building enrichment workflows and exporting data for outreach.

What Clay Actually Does

Clay combines a spreadsheet interface with access to 75+ data providers. Instead of subscribing to Apollo, ZoomInfo, Clearbit, and others separately, you access all of them through Clay's "waterfall" enrichment system.

The core idea: you feed Clay a list of companies or people, it automatically searches across multiple data sources to find emails, phone numbers, job titles, and other information, and stops once it finds what you need. You only pay for successful finds.

This matters because no single data provider has 100% coverage. One tool might have contact info for 30% of your targets, another might have 25%. Clay checks them all and uses whichever one has the data, dramatically improving your match rates.

Setting Up Your Clay Account

Start by signing up at Clay. The free plan includes 100 search credits to test things out.

Once you're in, you'll see a workspace with tables. Clay works like a supercharged Google Sheets where each column can run automations.

Pricing scales based on credits consumed. The basic paid plan starts at $149/month for 12,000 credits, which translates to roughly 2,000-4,000 enriched leads depending on how many data sources you need per contact. Heavy users on enterprise plans can pay $800+ monthly, so track your credit usage carefully.

Building Your First Lead List

Create a new table and decide your starting point. You can import from:

Most people start with Clay's built-in search. Click "Add Rows" and select "Find Companies" to search by criteria like industry, employee count, location, and technology used.

For example, to find SaaS companies in the US with 50-200 employees, you'd set those filters and Clay pulls from its database. This costs about 1 credit per company found.

For people search, use "Find People at Company" if you already have a company list, or "Find People" to search by job title and location. Finding a VP of Sales at tech companies in California would use filters for title, industry, and geography.

Setting Up Enrichment Waterfalls

This is where Clay gets powerful. Instead of manually searching for each person's email across different tools, you build a waterfall that automates it.

Add a new column and select "Enrich Person" or "Enrich Company." Clay shows you 75+ available data sources. Select multiple providers in priority order.

For example, to find work emails, you might choose:

  1. Findymail (1 credit per find)
  2. Apollo (1 credit)
  3. Hunter (1 credit)
  4. Prospeo (1 credit)

Clay tries Findymail first. If it finds the email, it stops and charges 1 credit. If not, it tries Apollo, then Hunter, then Prospeo. You only pay for the provider that successfully returns data.

This dramatically improves match rates. A single provider might find emails for 40% of your list. A 4-provider waterfall can hit 70-80%.

Set this up for phone numbers, LinkedIn URLs, job titles, company revenue, or any other data point you need. Each enrichment type gets its own waterfall column.

Using AI to Personalize Outreach

Clay includes OpenAI integration for writing personalized messages at scale. After enriching your leads, add a "Use AI" column.

Write a prompt like: "Write a 2-sentence personalized opener for an email to {{job_title}} at {{company_name}} mentioning their recent {{news_item}}. Keep it casual and relevant."

Clay's AI reads the data from your other columns and generates unique text for each row. This costs credits based on AI usage, roughly 0.1-0.5 credits per generation depending on prompt complexity.

The quality depends entirely on your prompt and available data. Generic prompts produce generic output. Specific instructions with rich data inputs (recent funding, job changes, tech stack) produce better personalization.

Test your prompts on 10-20 rows before running them on thousands. Bad AI copy at scale wastes credits and hurts response rates.

Filtering and Cleaning Your Data

After enrichment, you'll have incomplete rows where Clay couldn't find certain data points. Use filters to segment your list.

Click the filter icon and set conditions like "Email is not empty" and "Email verification status = valid." This shows only rows with verified emails.

You can also filter by company size, location, or any enriched data point. Save these as views to quickly switch between different segments.

Delete or hide rows where critical information is missing. Don't export contacts without verified emails to your outreach tool—it tanks deliverability.

Exporting to Your Outreach Tools

Clay integrates directly with cold email platforms and CRMs. Connect your tools under the Integrations tab.

Popular integrations include Smartlead, Instantly, HubSpot, and Salesforce.

For email outreach, map your Clay columns to fields in your outreach tool: First Name, Last Name, Email, Company, Custom Variable 1 (your AI-generated opener), etc.

Set up the integration to push leads automatically when new rows are added and pass your filters. This creates a continuous pipeline from prospecting to outreach.

If your tool isn't integrated, export as CSV and upload manually. Select your filtered view, click Export, and choose which columns to include.

Building Advanced Workflows

Once you're comfortable with basic enrichment, Clay supports complex multi-step workflows.

Example: Find companies using Salesforce with 100-500 employees, enrich with recent funding data, find VPs of Sales at those companies, verify their emails, check if they're actively hiring, generate personalized openers mentioning their growth, and push to Smartlead only if all conditions are met.

This uses conditional logic, multiple enrichment steps, and filtering. Each step is a column, and you chain them together.

Clay's formula system (similar to Excel) lets you combine data, format text, or calculate values. Use it to build full names from first/last, create custom tracking parameters, or score leads based on multiple criteria.

The HTTP API column lets you connect to any external service. Pull data from your own database, trigger webhooks, or integrate tools that don't have native Clay connections.

Avoiding Common Clay Mistakes

Burning credits unnecessarily: Running enrichment on bad data wastes money. Clean your input list first. If you're searching for people at companies, verify the companies exist before finding employees.

Not using waterfalls: Paying for multiple data subscriptions defeats the purpose. Build waterfalls with 3-5 providers per data type to maximize coverage while minimizing cost.

Ignoring verification: Clay returns email addresses, but not all are valid. Add email verification in your waterfall (tools like Findymail include verification). Sending to unverified emails kills your domain reputation.

Over-complicating workflows: Start simple. A table with company search + person search + email waterfall covers 80% of use cases. Add complexity only when you need it.

Poor AI prompts: "Write an email" produces garbage. "Write a 2-sentence opener mentioning {{specific_detail}} and relating it to {{our_value_prop}}" produces usable copy. Be specific.

Clay vs Building Your Own Stack

Before Clay, you'd subscribe to Apollo for $99/month, ZoomInfo for $15,000/year, Hunter for $49/month, and manually check each for every lead. That's expensive and time-consuming.

Clay's credit system means you pay per successful find across all providers. For teams enriching 5,000-10,000 leads monthly, this typically costs $300-600 vs $2,000+ for separate subscriptions.

The tradeoff: Clay adds a learning curve and another tool to your stack. For small lists (under 500 leads/month), individual tools like Findymail or Apollo might be simpler.

For sales teams doing serious prospecting, Clay becomes essential infrastructure. The time saved and improved match rates justify the cost and complexity.

Getting Started Checklist

Here's how to get your first 100 leads in Clay:

  1. Sign up for a Clay account and complete the onboarding
  2. Create a new table and use "Find Companies" to build a list of 100 target companies
  3. Add a "Find People at Company" column to identify decision-makers
  4. Build an email waterfall with 3-4 providers (start with Apollo, Hunter, and Findymail)
  5. Add email verification to your waterfall
  6. Filter for rows with verified emails
  7. Export to CSV or push to your cold email tool
  8. Track your credit usage to estimate monthly costs

Run this process on a small list first. Once you're confident in the workflow and credit economics, scale up.

Next Steps

Clay works best when integrated into a complete outreach system. After enriching leads, you need email infrastructure that won't land in spam. Check out our guides on best cold email tools and email warmup services.

If you're building a more comprehensive lead generation stack, our B2B lead generation tools comparison covers how Clay fits with CRM, sales engagement, and data providers.

Ready to start? Try Clay free and build your first enrichment workflow.