What is Clay (clay.com) and how it can help you

Wondering how to find information for each of the 1,000 records in your database with just one click? Clay can do that.

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Clay.com is a tool that allows for automatic searching, updating, and filtering of data, helping sales teams focus on the right contacts. With integrations with other sales tools and the use of AI, Clay.com optimizes the prospecting process, significantly increases response rates in outbound and inbound campaigns, and helps maintain order in our CRM system.

In this article, you'll find answers to questions:

• What is Clay.com and how does it work?
• What are Clay's key features?
• What tools can Clay replace?
• What are the main advantages and limitations of using Clay.com?
• How to implement Clay in your team and what to pay attention to?
• What are some example automations that Clay can cover?

What is Clay?

Clay is an all-in-one tool for searching, enriching, and qualifying data. Imagine it as a powerful integrator for all sales and marketing tools. All departments within a company's structure will find their application here, especially sales and marketing teams whose main goal is to deliver the perfect message exactly when a specific client's purchasing need arises.

What are Clay's key features?

Data Searching in Clay

Clay allows for searching data about companies, people, job offers, collecting data from Google search or Google maps also in tabular form. Clay provides access to data from 10+ sources such as LinkedIn, Google, GitHub, and many others. The search engine in Clay for companies or people is similar to what some may know from LinkedIn extensions, like Sales Navigator.

Companies can be searched by selecting appropriate:

• industry categories,
• keywords,
• size,
• location,
• number of followers on LinkedIn.

People can be searched using filters such as:

• selected companies from company search or use similar filters described above,
• job title,
  
  • seniority in the organization hierarchy,
  • job function e.g., administration, marketing,
  • specific position,
• experience,
• keyword search in the BIO section of the LinkedIn profile,
• location,
• number of contacts and/or followers associated with the profile,
• certification,
• language,
• education,

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These are two basic functions allowing for prospect searching, but not the only ones. If you're wondering what else can be found using the Clay tool, write to us at:

contact@vanderbuil.co

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Data Enrichment in Clay

Clay operates based on a table that offers the possibilities of:

• Searching for additional data based on already collected information,
• Managing and modeling data using the Function module,
• Analyzing data in "Waterfall" form, i.e., checking all available sources sequentially, for example, in the context of searching for email addresses for the right people,
• Scraping data in real-time from websites.

A table with sample data such as domain and company LinkedIn profile is provided below. By adding a new column to the data range, you can choose the next action from 5 basic options:

• Collecting additional data from an external source — through Clay.com's native integration with other tools.

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• Choosing AI for analyzing and manipulating already collected data or scraping data online using the Claygent tool, which checks data in real-time on the web based on a specific query for each selected record in the table that has information in selected cells.

• Creating messages for a specific prospect using AI and collected data.

• Using the "Waterfall" functionality to check all possible sources in the context of desired data
  
  • e.g., when searching for an email address, we can use FindyMail, Prospeo, LeadMagic, Lemlist, Apollo, etc. The result from the waterfall actions will appear in the last column if any tool provides a satisfactory result.

What tools can Clay replace?

Clay can completely cover the process of:

• data research from LinkedIn, such as Sales Navigator, Premium, Recruiter,
• data enrichment e.g., Apollo, LeadMagic, Snov.io, Hunter
• searching for email addresses or phone numbers e.g., Prospeo, FindyMail,

Practically all tools listed within integrations can be replaced, although it may not always be cost-effective:

• The cost of finding an email address through Clay and Prospeo integration will use 2 credits, which in the Starter plan costs: 149 USD / 2000 credits = 0.0745 USD / credit
  
  • the cost of the action is: 2 credits * 0.0745 = 0.149 USD
• Similarly, the cost of finding email addresses directly in Prospeo is 39 USD / 1000 credits = 0.039 USD per found email address

The difference is more than fourfold, and in the case of needing to find 2000 email addresses, this is a significant difference in data acquisition cost. Fortunately, within paid packages, you can use your API, having purchased access to specific tools, reducing the overall cost of data acquisition.

If the cost of data acquisition seems complicated, write to us — we are happy to help.

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How much does Clay cost?

You can find Clay's pricing on their website.

The difference between the annual plan and the monthly plan is 10% of the price.

The pricing is as follows:

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There is also the possibility of implementing a custom version of Clay that covers additional functionalities such as: unlimited rows in the table, 40 column actions per table, AI prompting support, data engineering (Snowflake), dedicated support on Slack, credit usage reporting, SSO.

Each plan also allows for increasing the number of credits available for use.

How to start using the Clay tool?

1. Logging in is standard:

• by adding an email address and creating a password,
• using a Google account.

2. Then you need to go through a short survey.

3. A board screen will appear, which will be your space for managing tables.

4. To add a new table, click +New and select the "Workbook" option. This interface will appear before you:

5. Define what you need in the context of your research and choose the appropriate option from the panel on the left:

• find people,
• find companies,
• find job offers,
• find local businesses,
• import your data,
• play with a clean table.

6. When purchasing the Clay tool, you can add any number of users to a given account at no additional cost.

• Click the icon in the upper right corner.
• Select settings.
• In the left panel, select "Team" and add the email addresses of the people to be added to your workspace.

7. If you already have tools for searching email addresses, automation, or data enrichment, you can connect them via API to your workspace and use their functionalities directly in Clay

• Click the icon in the upper right corner.
• Select settings.
• In the left panel, select the "Connections" tab.
• Click the "+ Add connection" button
• Enter the tool name in the search engine or find it manually and add the connection.

8. If you need help with implementation and team training — write to us.

Main advantages and 5 things you need to watch out for when using Clay.

Certainly, the main advantage of using Clay is its simplicity of use. A simple interface, based on a table, should be understandable to anyone who has ever worked on Excel or Google Sheets. However, the functionalities are much greater.

The biggest advantages of Clay — time savings:

• no need to manually export and import data to use the functionalities of other tools,
• the tool is a canvas where you can do literally anything related to data searching and processing while maintaining data order,
• the tool makes great use of AI, providing analysis capabilities per each record at the level of available variables,
• the tool's filtering function also allows limiting the amount of data exported to csv. based on specific variables,
• the operation of subsequent columns can be programmed based on specific criteria to be met,
• data flow visualization and enrichment function operation conditions can be seen as an automation canvas in the form of a workflow diagram. This is a separate view available in addition to the tabular view.
• Clay has an auto deduplication function - it does this automatically based on LinkedIn profile URLs

5 things you need to watch out for when using Clay:

1. Credit consumption - it's very easy to burn credits on an accidental "play" click.
2. Before you start using integrations for data enrichment, try to limit the number of records analyzed based on qualification criteria e.g., target group.
3. Test your processes on smaller data ranges e.g., 10 records.
4. Turn off the "auto update" option when using the "enrichment" function - any data change will trigger automation - you don't want this when you're still working on your initial database and testing the system.
5. Check which tools are more cost-effective to connect to Clay via API than using the available integration through Clay. If you're searching for a lot of email addresses, consider purchasing an additional tool that will relieve credit consumption and save money.

Example templates to implement in Clay

• Searching for prospects and automatically finding a personal email address and detailed company information.
• Automatic analysis of target customers and the company's USP based on information available online.
• Searching for websites on the web based on keywords and analyzing the keywords of a given website.
• Automatic search for key decision-makers in the company.
• Enriching information about people who sign up through a form.
• Automatically scraping publicly available contact data on the website.
• Automatic verification of the company's technology stack based on the website.
• Identification of tools and platforms used by companies in their internet domains.

If you want to create similar scenarios for your company but need help, write to us at contact@vanderbuild.co