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 150+ 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. OpenAI reported doubling their enrichment coverage from 40% to 80% after switching to Clay's waterfall approach.

Beyond simple contact finding, Clay operates as a complete GTM (Go-To-Market) automation platform. Think of it as a programmable data engine that connects your lead sources, enriches them in real-time, and plugs seamlessly into your outreach workflows. The platform is designed around a framework called FETE: Find, Enrich, Transform, Export.

Setting Up Your Clay Account

Start by signing up at Clay. The free plan includes 100 credits per month (1,200 credits per year) 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. Here's the current breakdown:

The cost per credit decreases significantly at higher tiers. On the Starter plan, you pay around $75 per 1,000 credits. On the Pro plan, that drops to approximately $16 per 1,000 credits-up to 7x cheaper than the Starter tier. This makes scaling more affordable as your lead volume grows.

All plans support unlimited users, which is a significant advantage over per-seat pricing models. Unused credits roll over for one month, adding flexibility to your budget.

Understanding Clay Credits

Clay credits are the currency you use to pay for data enrichment and actions. Understanding how they work helps you avoid burning through your budget unnecessarily.

Most actions cost 1-2 credits, but costs vary by data type and provider:

You only pay when data is successfully found. If Clay can't find the information in its waterfall process, you won't be charged credits. However, if a provider charges Clay for an API call even without returning data, those charges pass through to you-though most providers refund failed lookups.

Actions that clean or format data are free. External CRM connections and email tools are also free on Pro plans and above. Clay only charges for data points where they pay underlying providers.

Track your credit usage by right-clicking any column and selecting "Run Info" to see credits spent on that column. Plan your workflows on small test batches before running them at scale to avoid credit waste from poorly configured automations.

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, technology used, and funding status.

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.

The free plan caps searches at 100 results per individual people/company search. Starter plans increase this to 5,000 results, Explorer to 10,000, Pro to 25,000, and Enterprise to 50,000 results per search. This scaling matters when you're building large prospecting campaigns.

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.

The waterfall method works by searching sequentially across multiple data providers until a valid match is found. Here's the process:

  1. You select from 150+ enrichment tools in Clay's marketplace
  2. The system checks each provider in sequence until it finds the data you need
  3. Once a provider returns valid data, Clay stops and charges only for that successful find
  4. If no data is found, credits are refunded and Clay moves to the next provider

Add a new column and select "Enrich Person" or "Enrich Company." Clay shows you 150+ available data sources. Select multiple providers in priority order.

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

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

Clay tries Prospeo first. If it finds the email, it stops and charges 2 credits. If not, it tries DropContact, then Hunter, then Apollo. 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%. Teams using Clay's waterfall enrichment routinely triple their enrichment rates compared to single-provider solutions.

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.

Email Validation in Waterfalls

Clay's email waterfall doesn't just find emails-it validates them automatically. By default, Clay uses ZeroBounce, a best-in-class validation service, but you have flexibility to choose different providers if you know one validates better for your specific industry.

Clay considers catch-all emails valid by default. While these are often real emails, there's uncertainty about whether they belong to the specific individual or if they're aliases. If you want to be more conservative, enable the "Only mark 'Safe to Send' emails as valid" option to exclude catch-all emails from your valid list.

Validation columns are hidden by default, but you can unhide them from the Columns Panel to inspect detailed validation steps and understand exactly how each email was validated.

Using AI to Personalize Outreach

Clay includes powerful AI integration for writing personalized messages at scale. After enriching your leads, add a "Use AI" column or leverage Claygent, Clay's built-in AI research agent.

Claygent can scrape websites, read PDFs, summarize news, find podcast appearances, analyze company 10-Ks, check Yelp ratings, discover recent blog posts, and answer arbitrary questions about accounts or people. It's essentially an AI research assistant that gathers contextual insights traditional data providers can't capture.

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 and the AI model selected.

The platform now supports GPT-5 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet, giving you access to the latest AI models. Claude 3 Haiku became a top choice among Clay customers for cost-effective personalization, while GPT-5 delivers the best research and conversational writing for more sophisticated use cases.

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, hiring signals) 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. Use the "Test Run" function to preview AI output before running it across hundreds of rows.

Advanced Claygent Use Cases

Claygent goes beyond simple email personalization. Here are advanced ways to leverage Clay's AI agent:

Competitive intelligence: Use Claygent to monitor what filters and keywords competitors show up for. If your company isn't appearing even with enrichments, you've got positioning work to do. You can also track if competitors are moving into certain verticals or running plays you're not seeing.

Signal detection: Set up Claygent to monitor job postings, keyword mentions, funding announcements, and other intent signals. When these triggers fire, automatically enrich the account and launch personalized outreach.

Account research: Provide Claygent with a list of companies or domains, and it will scour the web to find case studies, technology stacks, SOC-II compliance status, recent product launches, and more. The AI continuously learns and improves its research capabilities.

Finding local businesses: Most data vendors struggle with local businesses. Clay users have created workflows that scrape 50,000+ restaurant names and 30,000+ contacts by location overnight using Claygent combined with Google Maps integration.

Custom scoring: Use Claygent to build lead scoring based on multiple data points-company growth signals, hiring trends, tech stack alignment, content engagement, and recent company news. This helps prioritize outreach to high-intent accounts.

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.

Clay's filtering approach prevents wasting credits on bad data. Inside Clay, add filters to remove contacts who don't meet your criteria-companies that are too small, contacts in the wrong region, or people already in your CRM. You can set up lookup tables to catch duplicates, block known customers, or flag bad domains.

This matters because 25-30% of B2B data becomes outdated every year. Enriching blindly risks bad outreach, wasted credits, and a messy CRM. Clay helps you filter the junk first so your enrichment budget goes further.

A lot of other tools enrich the second you upload a list. With Clay, you choose exactly which contacts get enriched and when it happens. If someone doesn't match your criteria, they don't get enriched-saving both time and money.

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, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Outreach, Salesloft, Apollo, and Lemlist.

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.

CRM Integrations for Attribution

Clay's CRM integrations go beyond simple data sync. When connecting with HubSpot, for example, you can build a closed-loop system that tracks performance from first touch to closed-won.

Start by pulling filtered contact records from HubSpot using real HubSpot IDs. Clay's waterfall enrichment runs on these contacts, then updates are pushed back using ID-matching with "ignore blank values" to protect clean fields.

Tag every record with a campaign name in Clay so you can track performance in HubSpot Campaign Reports later. Associate enriched contacts to deals, then use HubSpot's reporting to connect campaigns to real revenue.

This approach saves sales teams an average of 4 hours per rep each week by avoiding manual exports and keeping CRM records synced automatically.

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.

Trigger-Based Workflows

Clay enables real-time automation based on intent signals and buying triggers:

Job change tracking: Auto-enrich contacts from LinkedIn when saved searches detect job changes at target accounts. Launch personalized outreach the moment someone moves to a new role.

Funding triggers: Monitor external signals like funding announcements from Crunchbase or news APIs. When a trigger fires, Clay finds decision-makers at newly funded companies, enriches profiles, and initiates email sequences.

Hiring signals: Track job postings and keyword mentions to detect intent. Route hot leads to Slack for immediate SDR follow-up when companies are actively hiring for roles that signal buying intent.

Website visitors: Integrate with visitor identification tools to enrich website traffic data. Create messages that address the exact pages they visited, resources they downloaded, and topics they showed interest in.

By aggregating data on hiring trends, funding rounds, LinkedIn activity, and keyword mentions across 130+ real-time sources, Clay empowers GTM teams to detect high-intent accounts automatically and engage at exactly the right moment.

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. Some users unknowingly spend 1,000+ credits on a single automation because of unchecked loops or logic blocks.

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. Single-provider approaches leave 50-60% of contacts without data.

Ignoring verification: Clay returns email addresses, but not all are valid. Add email verification in your waterfall (tools like ZeroBounce are built-in). Sending to unverified emails kills your domain reputation and tanks deliverability.

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. The learning curve can take weeks for advanced features-focus on core functionality first.

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. Use the S.P.I.C.E. framework (Situation, Problem, Insight, Call-to-action, Example) for better AI output.

Not testing first: Always test workflows on small batches (10-20 rows) before running them on thousands. Filter tables or duplicate them to isolate test batches, run updates, and verify results before applying changes to all rows.

Forgetting to set credit limits: On the Starter plan at $149/month, credits can run out mid-campaign if you underestimate usage. When this happens, reps pause prospecting, managers buy emergency top-ups, or you upgrade early. Use Clay's credit calculator to estimate monthly needs accurately.

Missing data governance: Without clear rules about who can run what workflows, credit costs balloon quickly. Set up workspace permissions, establish approval processes for large enrichment runs, and monitor credit spending with Clay's reporting analytics (available on Enterprise plans).

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.

Clay vs Apollo

Apollo offers an all-in-one workflow with database plus engagement features (sequences, calling, email tracking). It's more affordable at $49-99/user/month and works well for high-volume SMB outbound with 100+ dials per day.

Clay focuses on data orchestration and enrichment quality, not outreach execution. You'll need separate tools like Smartlead or Instantly for sending campaigns. However, Clay's waterfall approach provides better data coverage, especially for niche markets and international contacts.

Choose Apollo if you want simplicity and an integrated solution. Choose Clay if data accuracy and enrichment flexibility matter more than having everything in one platform.

Clay vs ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo maintains one of the largest proprietary databases with 400M+ contacts and robust intent data. It's built for enterprise scale with comprehensive North American coverage and 95% phone accuracy for regulated industries.

Clay keeps data fresher by design, pulling from 150+ real-time sources instead of relying on one static database. This matters most for SMBs and niche segments where roles change fast. Clay's spreadsheet-first approach also allows unlimited custom fields, far exceeding ZoomInfo's rigid structure.

ZoomInfo is the traditional choice for enterprises needing massive scale ($15,000-$18,000+ annually). Clay fits most mid-market teams that value flexibility and accuracy over volume ($3,500-10,000/month for platform access).

User feedback consistently notes that while ZoomInfo has volume, Clay has better data accuracy-especially for company data, where Clay scores 9.1 vs ZoomInfo's 8.2 on G2 reviews.

Clay Integration Ecosystem

Clay connects with 150+ data providers and business tools, making it a central hub for GTM operations:

Data providers: Apollo, ZoomInfo, Clearbit, People Data Labs, Hunter, Prospeo, DropContact, Datagma, Lusha, Snov, RocketReach, ContactOut, and 100+ more

CRMs: HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, Microsoft Dynamics 365

Email sequencers: Smartlead, Instantly, Lemlist, Outreach, Salesloft, Mailshake

Productivity tools: Slack, Notion, Google Sheets, Airtable, Zapier, Make

Intent data: Gong, Semrush, PitchBook, HG Insights, Mixrank

Social platforms: LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Twitter/X, Modash

Verification tools: ZeroBounce, NeverBounce, Findymail

Each integration has different credit costs. For example, using your own API keys (OpenAI for AI, your own data provider subscriptions) means you can use those actions in Clay free of charge. Clay's native integrations typically cost 0-2 credits per action, while premium data providers cost 2-25 credits depending on the data point.

Real-World Clay Workflows

Account-Based Marketing (ABM): Start with a list of target accounts. Enrich with firmographics, technographics, recent funding, and hiring trends. Find multiple decision-makers per account. Score accounts based on fit and intent. Push high-priority accounts to sales with personalized talking points generated by AI.

Competitor customer targeting: Use BuiltWith or HG Insights to find companies using competitor technologies. Enrich with decision-maker contacts. Use Claygent to research pain points with their current solution. Generate personalized messaging highlighting your differentiation.

Website visitor conversion: Pull anonymous visitor data from identification tools. Enrich with contact information and company details. Segment by behavior (pages visited, time on site, resources downloaded). Trigger personalized follow-up based on specific interests shown.

Job change tracking: Monitor saved LinkedIn searches for role changes at target accounts. When someone moves to a new company, enrich their new contact info. Generate a personalized message congratulating them and introducing your solution to their new organization.

Event-based outreach: Track funding announcements, product launches, executive hires, and other triggers. Automatically enrich affected companies with decision-maker contacts. Generate timely, relevant outreach that references the specific event.

International prospecting: Use Clay's multi-source approach to find contacts in regions where single providers have poor coverage. Combine European data from Cognism with North American data from ZoomInfo and global data from Apollo for comprehensive international coverage.

Enterprise Features

Clay's Enterprise plan offers advanced capabilities for large organizations:

Unlimited rows: Build tables with unlimited rows using Passthrough Tables, removing the row limits of lower tiers

Increased column actions: Run up to 40 action columns per table instead of the standard limits

Snowflake integration: Connect Clay directly to your data warehouse for advanced data engineering

AI prompting support: Dedicated support for optimizing your AI prompts and Claygent workflows

Dedicated Slack support: Direct access to Clay's support team via a dedicated Slack channel

Credit reporting analytics: Detailed dashboards showing exactly where credits are being spent across your organization

SSO (Single Sign-On): Manage employee access with enterprise authentication

Custom credit amounts: Tailored credit packages to match your exact usage patterns

These features matter when you're running Clay at scale across multiple teams, with complex data needs and strict security requirements.

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 Prospeo, DropContact, Hunter, and Apollo)
  5. Add email verification to your waterfall (ZeroBounce is included)
  6. Filter for rows with verified emails
  7. Test an AI personalization prompt on 10 rows
  8. Export to CSV or push to your cold email tool
  9. Track your credit usage to estimate monthly costs
  10. Scale up once you're confident in the workflow

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

Clay Learning Resources

Clay provides extensive resources to help you master the platform:

Clay University: Free courses covering everything from basic table setup to advanced AI workflows. Start with Clay 101 for core lessons on data enrichment and prospecting.

Templates library: Pre-built workflows for common use cases like competitor tracking, job change monitoring, and ABM campaigns. Browse templates to kick-start your outbound journey.

GTM blog: Best practices, case studies, and thought leadership on outbound sales automation and AI lead generation.

Community Slack: Active community of Clay users sharing workflows, troubleshooting issues, and discussing best practices.

Documentation: Comprehensive docs covering every feature, integration, and API capability.

Support: Clay is known for responsive customer support. The Pro plan offers AI chatbot support with human backup within an hour. Enterprise customers get dedicated Slack channels.

Most users report it takes weeks to fully understand Clay's capabilities. Invest the time upfront to avoid costly mistakes with credit usage and workflow design.

Who Should Use Clay

Clay is ideal for:

RevOps teams at mid-market companies (1,000-5,000 leads per month) who want flexible enrichment workflows that match their specific playbooks

Growth agencies managing prospecting for multiple clients who need to customize data sourcing and personalization for each account

Sales development teams at tech companies who prioritize data quality and personalization over volume

GTM Engineers-a new role focused on building and maintaining automated go-to-market systems

Account-based marketing teams who need deep enrichment and multi-threading across multiple stakeholders

Clay may not be right for:

Solo sales reps with very small lists (under 500 contacts/month) who might find individual tools simpler

Enterprise teams needing 10,000+ new leads weekly who prioritize scale over enrichment quality (ZoomInfo is better for pure volume)

Teams without technical resources who can't invest time learning the platform

Organizations requiring a full CRM and sales engagement platform in one tool (Apollo combines these better)

ROI Considerations

When evaluating Clay, consider the total cost of ownership beyond the subscription:

Credit costs: Your actual spend depends on credit consumption. Use Clay's credit calculator to estimate needs based on your prospecting volume and enrichment depth.

Time savings: Clay users report saving 4+ hours per week per rep on manual research and data entry. At $50/hour labor cost, that's $10,400/year in savings per rep.

Response rate improvement: Better data quality and AI personalization typically improve cold email response rates by 1-3%. For a team sending 10,000 emails/month, that's 100-300 additional conversations.

Tool consolidation: Replacing Apollo ($99/month), ZoomInfo ($15,000/year), Hunter ($49/month), and a personalization tool saves $16,776/year before Clay costs.

Integration maintenance: While Clay offers flexibility, it also requires managing integrations between Clay and your outreach tools. Factor in technical maintenance time.

The typical breakeven point is around 2,000-3,000 enriched leads per month. Below that, simpler tools may be more cost-effective. Above that, Clay's efficiency gains compound.

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.

For teams using Clay at scale, consider pairing it with Smartlead for deliverability-focused email campaigns or Instantly for unlimited sending capacity across multiple mailboxes.

Ready to start? Try Clay free with 100 monthly credits and build your first enrichment workflow today.