How to Use Clay: The Ultimate No-Code Tool for Prospecting and Sales

What’s Clay?

Using Clay for the first time feels like trying to fly a drone with 38 buttons and no manual. There’s power there: you can sense it, but figuring out how to make it work? That’s where most marketers and business owners get stuck.

So, let’s break it down.
Clay is a data enrichment and automation platform that lets you build smarter prospecting workflows without writing a single line of code. Think: spreadsheets on steroids, with built-in access to tools like Clearbit, Hunter, OpenAI, and 100+ others. You feed it a list, and it spits out a full lead profile, verified email, and even a personalized first line you could drop straight into a cold email.

It’s built for people like us: marketers, founders, growth teams, sales reps, who are tired of juggling tabs, chasing data, and pasting crap into CRMs by hand. Clay compresses the entire messy process into one clean board.

What makes it different? Two words: speed and context. You’re not just finding emails: you’re enriching them, qualifying them, writing for them, and pushing them into your sales stack, all in minutes.

This guide’s not going to drown you in every feature. Instead, we’ll walk through what Clay is, what it’s good at, how to get started, and the most useful things you can do with it (without breaking your brain). If you’re new to Clay or just haven’t “gotten it to work” yet, this is where things start to click.

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Getting Started with Clay

If you’re opening Clay for the first time and not sure where to click, you’re not alone. It’s not complicated once you get used to it, but the first ten minutes can feel like a lot. This section will walk you through the basics so you can actually start building.

Setting Up Your Workspace

Once you sign up, Clay will prompt you to create your workspace. This is your central hub: everything you build lives here. Inside the workspace, you’ll create Boards, and each board is a self-contained workflow or project.

For example, you could have:

• A board for scraping emails from LinkedIn
  
  
• Another for enriching demo sign-ups before they go into your CRM
  
  
• A third for identifying hiring signals in SaaS startups
  
  

You’re not limited to one use case. As your needs grow, you can spin up new boards for different campaigns or experiments. You can also invite team members into your workspace, assign roles, and collaborate in real time.

Interface Walkthrough: Boards, Columns, and Integrations

Clay’s interface looks like a spreadsheet at first glance, but each part does more than it seems.

• Boards: Think of these as smart tables. Every row is a record (a person, company, URL, etc.). Every column is a task, a variable, or a data point.
  
  
• Columns: This is where the fun begins. You can input static data like names or LinkedIn URLs, or you can build dynamic enrichments, like “Find Email,” “Get LinkedIn Bio,” or “Summarize Website.”
  
  
• Integrations: Clay supports over 100 data sources. Tools like Clearbit, Apollo, Hunter, People Data Labs, and OpenAI are one-click integrations. Once connected, you can use them inside columns to enrich your data automatically.
  
  

The learning curve mostly comes from understanding how columns and integrations work together. Once you get the hang of setting up enrichments, everything else falls into place.

Overview of Data Inputs: How to Feed Clay

You can’t work with Clay unless you give it some raw material. Here are the main ways to input data:

• CSV Uploads: Great for starting with a static list of leads, companies, or emails.
  
  
• Google Sheets Sync: Keeps your board updated in real time with changes from a connected Sheet. Super helpful if your team works out of Google Drive.
  
  
• LinkedIn URLs: Paste them manually or use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to export filtered lists (with a little help from tools like PhantomBuster or TexAu).
  
  
• APIs: For more technical users, Clay supports pushing and pulling data via API. If your site captures leads or form fills, you can push those directly into a Clay board for enrichment.
  
  

You don’t need a perfect data set to start. In fact, one of Clay’s strengths is taking incomplete or messy lists and turning them into fully enriched lead profiles.

Clay Templates & Community Resources

If you’re stuck on a blank board wondering, “Where do I even start?”, templates are your best friend.
Clay offers a solid collection of ready-made templates covering dozens of workflows:

• Find verified emails from LinkedIn URLs
  
  
• Enrich company profiles with funding info
  
  
• Write personalized intros using LinkedIn bios
  
  
• Identify hiring signals for outreach timing
  
  

Just hit “Explore Templates” pick one that fits your use case, and click “Duplicate.” You’ll be able to tweak it however you like: add new columns, change the logic, or swap in different data providers.

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Also worth bookmarking: the Clay community Slack. It’s full of smart marketers, growth folks, and SDRs sharing advice, debugging issues, and posting cool board setups. Don’t waste hours stuck, ask around, and someone’s probably built what you need already.

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Clay’s Core Superpowers

At a glance, Clay is a data tool, but in practice, it’s a prospecting engine, a mini-automation builder, and a GPT-powered personalization machine, all rolled into one. Here’s a breakdown of its core strengths, minus the fluff.

Data Enrichment

This is probably what you came for. You upload a list of companies, people, or just LinkedIn URLs, and Clay goes out and fills in the blanks for you.

Through direct integrations with enrichment tools like Clearbit, Apollo, Hunter, People Data Labs, Zerobounce (for email validation), and tons more, you can pull things like:

• Verified work emails
  
  
• Job titles and bios
  
  
• Company size, funding info, tech stack
  
  
• LinkedIn and Twitter profiles
  
  

Clay auto-enriches new rows as they’re added, in bulk or one by one. That alone cuts hours of research off your plate.

Workflow Automation

Most platforms just dump you data. Clay lets you build logic on top of it. Let’s say you only want companies with more than 50 employees, using HubSpot, and hiring for “Growth.” You can create filters, conditions, and branching logic to only surface what matches your exact criteria.

Some things you can do:

• Set up if/then conditions (for example if no email found with Apollo, try Hunter)
  
  
• Add formulas and regex to clean or reformat data
  
  
• Automatically enrich new leads as they’re added to the board
  
  

You’re not just collecting leads, you’re building repeatable processes that qualify them too.

AI + Personalization (ClayGPT)

Clay lets you use OpenAI directly inside your workflow. You can:

• Write custom first lines based on someone’s LinkedIn bio or company website
  
  
• Summarize a company’s homepage into a cold pitch angle
  
  
• Generate personalized emails at scale using templates and dynamic inputs
  
  

This isn’t just for copywriters. Marketers, founders, even SDRs can use this to create messages that sound like you actually looked someone up (without, you know, actually doing it for every lead). A tip: GPT tokens aren’t free. Be intentional with your prompts and only use AI where it actually adds value.

Integrations & Outputs

Once you’ve enriched and filtered your list, you’ll want to push it somewhere useful. You can export data to:

• CRMs like HubSpot and Salesforce
  
  
• Email tools like Instantly, Lemlist, or Smartlead
  
  
• Automation platforms like Zapier and Make
  
  
• Or just export as CSV if you’re keeping it old school
  
  

You can also trigger webhooks for more custom flows (for example sending an enriched lead to a Slack channel or triggering a webhook in your own app). Basically, if your current tools can accept data, Clay can feed them.

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Popular Clay Use Cases

Clay isn’t just a fancy spreadsheet, it’s a sandbox for building real, repeatable workflows that actually save you time. Whether you’re in sales, growth, or marketing, there’s a high chance you’re doing at least one of these things manually. Clay helps automate the grunt work so you can focus on strategy, not spreadsheets.

Find Verified Emails from LinkedIn Profiles

Got a list of LinkedIn URLs? Drop them into a board, connect enrichment tools like Apollo or Hunter, and Clay will fetch verified work emails. You can stack on email verification tools like Zerobounce or NeverBounce to make sure what you’re getting is legit. What’s cool is you don’t need to run multiple tools across multiple tabs. Clay chains the whole process for you in one flow. You can even set it up so that if Apollo doesn’t return an email, it tries Hunter next. No more guessing.

Build Outbound Lead Lists Using Firmographic Filters

Start with a basic list of companies from Crunchbase, BuiltWith, a startup directory, whatever. Then, use Clay to enrich them with:

• Company size
  
  
• Industry
  
  
• Tech stack
  
  
• Location
  
  
• Funding stage
  
  
• Website traffic (via Similarweb or Semrush)
  
  

From there, you can filter the board to only include companies that match your ideal customer profile. Want only US-based B2B SaaS companies with over 100 employees using HubSpot and hiring for growth roles? You can do that in minutes.

Write Personalized Cold Emails at Scale

Pull someone’s LinkedIn bio, summarize their company website, and generate a custom first line using Clay’s OpenAI integration. You can even build full cold emails with merge tags, using real data from your board. Because everything’s stored in one place, you can QA it before pushing to your email platform. No more embarrassing “Hey {FirstName}” mistakes. Pro tip: use the “Test Run” function to preview AI output before running it across hundreds of rows.

Scrape Product Launchers or Startup Directories

If you’re targeting founders, early-stage startups, or indie makers, Clay is perfect for automating the process. Here’s a workflow:

• Pull company names or URLs from Product Hunt, Indie Hackers, or YC’s latest batch
  
  
• Enrich with founder names, LinkedIn profiles, and email addresses
  
  
• Add a GPT-powered column to summarize what their product does
  
  
• Use another GPT block to generate a personalized pitch based on that info
  
  

Suddenly, you’re not just cold emailing, you’re reaching out with real context.

Enrich Demo Signups Before They Hit Your CRM

You shouldn’t be pushing raw form fills straight into your CRM. Clay can act as a middle layer to enrich leads before they hit your pipeline. Use a webhook or API to pipe new sign-ups into a Clay board. From there:

• Add job titles
  
  
• Pull LinkedIn URLs
  
  
• Get company size, funding round, location
  
  
• Score or tag them based on custom logic
  
  

Then sync to HubSpot or Salesforce using integrations or Zapier. Your sales team gets leads that are already qualified, and you avoid the “who is this person?” confusion on first calls.

Track Hiring Signals and Tech Stack Changes

Timing matters in outbound. If you reach out when a company’s hiring or just changed tools, your chances go way up. Using Clay, you can:

• Detect if a company is hiring for roles like “Growth Manager” or “RevOps”
  
  
• Monitor changes in their tech stack using tools like Wappalyzer
  
  
• Identify if they added something new (for example Segment, Mixpanel, or Salesforce) in the last 30 days
  
  
• Trigger alerts or move them into a hot-leads board when that happens
  
  

It’s not magic, it’s just automation you didn’t have time to build before.

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Tips for Getting the Most Out of Clay

Clay gives you more control than most tools on the market, but that control comes with responsibility. If you treat it like a plug-and-play email finder, you’ll miss its real potential. If you try to automate everything too soon, you’ll end up with broken workflows and wasted credits.

1. Start with a Simple Workflow Before Scaling
   Resist the urge to build a 15-step sequence on your first board. Start with a basic goal:
   
   
   
   • Upload five to ten rows
     
     
   • Add a single enrichment column (for example Apollo email)
     
     
   • Run a test to confirm the output looks right
     
     
2. Once that works, then build on it: add fallback enrichments, filters, GPT blocks, and automations. Think of it as layering, not launching everything at once. Scaling too fast is how people waste tokens, hit API limits, or accidentally flood CRMs with bad data.
   
   
3. Use GPT Blocks Strategically
   GPT inside Clay is powerful, but not always necessary. Each AI call costs tokens (and money), so treat it like a premium ingredient, not the main dish.
   When to use GPT:
   
   
   
   • Writing first lines from LinkedIn bios or company websites
     
     
   • Summarizing job titles or extracting intent
     
     
   • Creating short email openers based on specific traits
     
     
4. When to avoid it:
   
   
   
   • Rewriting static values (use formulas instead)
     
     
   • Generating full cold emails without QA
     
     
   • Running GPT blocks across all 1,000 leads without previewing
     
     
5. Start with test rows, adjust your prompts, and only scale once you’re sure the output sounds like a human wrote it.
   
   
6. Chain Multiple Data Sources for Better Coverage
   One tool won’t get you all the data. Apollo might return emails for 30 percent of your leads, Hunter might catch another 20 percent, Dropcontact might fill in ten percent more. Clay lets you chain these tools together:
   
   
   
   • Run Apollo first
     
     
   • If no result, run Hunter
     
     
   • If still no result, run Dropcontact
     
     
   • Validate email with Zerobounce
     
     
7. This cascading logic boosts your match rate and avoids dead leads. Bonus, you can mark which tool sourced each email so your outbound team knows what to expect in terms of quality.
   
   
8. Clean, Consistent Naming Saves You Later
   Your first few boards might get messy, and that’s fine. But once you’re building real flows, consistent naming becomes essential.
   Bad naming creates confusion: Column 3 vs email1 vs email2, which one’s verified?
   Better approach: Apollo Email (Primary), Hunter Email (Backup), Email Verification Status, GPT First Line – LinkedIn Bio
   
   Clear names help when you’re debugging issues, sharing boards with teammates, or building on top of old workflows.
   
   
9. Preview and QA Before You Run at Scale
   This is where people slip up most: they build an amazing looking board and hit “Run All Rows” without previewing anything. Don’t do that. Always:
   
   
   
   • Use the Test Run feature
     
     
   • Preview GPT output on three to five rows
     
     
   • Spot-check enrichment results for accuracy
     
     
   • Check how fallbacks behave (for example if Apollo fails, does Hunter actually fire?)
     
     
10. A quick QA loop up front can prevent hundreds of broken rows, inconsistent emails, or poorly personalized outputs later. You’re not just saving time, you’re protecting your outreach quality.
    
    
11. Reuse Logic with Templates or Duplicates
    Once you’ve built a working board that does what you want, duplicate it and use it as a base for future projects. You can swap in different inputs, tweak one or two enrichments, and save yourself hours of setup time. Even better, create internal templates for your team. If you’ve got a process for sourcing B2B SaaS leads using LinkedIn plus Apollo plus GPT, turn it into a repeatable flow. Now you’ve got a system, not a one-off.
    
    
12. Join the Community and Learn from Others
    You don’t need to figure everything out on your own. Clay’s Slack community is one of the more helpful ones out there, people share board screenshots, logic flows, even fixes for broken integrations. If you’re stuck, post your use case. Odds are someone’s already built a version of it, and they’ll probably share it with you. Also worth checking: Clay’s Help Docs, their YouTube tutorials, and the growing template library.
    
    

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What Clay Can’t Do (Yet)

It’s easy to look at Clay and assume it can do everything. Truth is, it can do a lot, but it’s not a magic button. And understanding its current limits will save you time, frustration, and unmet expectations.

It Doesn’t Send Emails

Clay helps you build lead lists, personalize messages, and prep campaigns, but it doesn’t send emails. It’s not an outreach tool like Instantly, Lemlist, or Smartlead. You’ll still need to push your enriched leads into a sending platform to actually launch your campaigns. Thankfully, Clay integrates well with those tools. But don’t expect it to track opens, manage inboxes, or handle reply detection.

It’s Not a Full CRM (and Doesn’t Want to Be)

Clay isn’t trying to replace HubSpot or Salesforce. You won’t find deal stages, activity logs, or pipeline views here. You can build lightweight CRM-style boards if you want to, but Clay’s real strength is in enrichment, research, and automation. Once the lead is ready to go into your funnel, push it into your CRM where sales can do their thing. Trying to manage a full pipeline inside Clay will get messy fast.

It Can’t Fully Replace Scraping Tools

Yes, you can pull in LinkedIn URLs, monitor hiring signals, and even extract data from public sources. But Clay isn’t a scraper like PhantomBuster or TexAu. If you’re looking to scrape LinkedIn search results or gather data at scale from dynamic sites, you’ll likely need to use Clay with a scraping tool, not instead of one. Clay is where you enrich, filter, and personalize that scraped data, not where you gather it.

It Has a Learning Curve

Even though it’s no-code, Clay still requires time to learn. The logic blocks, enrichment setups, GPT tuning, it all takes a few boards to get comfortable. If you’re expecting to build something advanced in your first 30 minutes, you’ll probably get frustrated. But if you treat it like a tool worth learning (because it is), you’ll be surprised how quickly things start clicking.

It Can Get Expensive If You’re Not Careful

Clay charges based on usage, credits for enrichments, tokens for GPT calls, and limits based on your plan. If you:

• Forget to test before scaling
  
  
• Stack multiple enrichment providers on thousands of rows
  
  
• Use GPT blocks on columns you don’t actually need
  
  

…you could burn through credits fast. It’s not “expensive,” but it can be if you’re careless. Just preview your workflows, monitor your usage, and build with intention.

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