How to Use Clay to Automate and Boost Your Lead Generation

If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking, “There’s gotta be a faster way to do this”, while juggling tools to scrape leads, verify emails, and manage campaigns… you’re definitely not alone. B2B lead generation can be a grind, and we’ve all been there—stuck in the loop of copy-pasting data, cleaning up spreadsheets, and jumping between platforms.

But what if you could cut all that out? What if there was one magical tool to automate the whole process for you?

Good news: there is.

Say hello to Clay, a tool that can save you countless hours, streamline your workflows, and help you improve your lead generation campaigns.

What Exactly Is Clay?

At its core, Clay is a tool that brings all your lead generation processes into one easy-to-manage automated platform. For example, if you’ve been using Apollo for lead finding, Findymail for email verification, and Instantly for outreach, Clay will merge the processes of all three tools into one place so you won’t have to jump from tool to tool anymore.

Sounds like magic? Well, that’s because it sort of is.

Clay connects with your existing tools through APIs and HTTP requests. Don’t worry if this sounds complicated—it’s not. Think of an API as a digital handshake between tools. If your lead gen tools support APIs, Clay can interact with them and use them automatically like a human would.

Here’s where it gets even better: Most of Clay’s automations are no-code—meaning you can get everything up and running without writing a single line of code. But if you’re a coding whiz, Clay offers low-code capabilities too, giving you more control to customize the automations exactly how you want them.

Here are some tools you may be already leveraging that work well with Clay:

Key Use Cases of Clay in Cold Email

Web Scraping for Lead Discovery

Imagine being able to pull a list of every top law firm in Georgia or all the SaaS companies hiring in California—without spending hours searching manually. With Clay, you can scrape data from the web in minutes.

*Pro tip: Use Pre-Made Recipes

Clay offers pre-built automation templates called “recipes” for automating tasks like scraping websites. These templates are beginner-friendly and save you the time and effort of building automations from scratch.

Data Enrichment

We’ve all wasted hours hunting down a CEO’s email or verifying a company’s phone number. Clay puts an end to that.

By connecting with tools like Apollo, Findymail, and NeverBounce, Clay can enrich your data automatically. For example, it can pull information like:

Key decision-makers at a company
The technologies they’re using (e.g., Google Ads, Facebook Pixel)
LinkedIn profiles and other contact details

So let’s say you’re targeting recruitment agencies. Clay will automatically:

Scrape data from Google, LinkedIn, or job boards.
Enrich the company data using connected tools like Findymail and Apollo(e.g., who the key decision-makers are, what tech they’re using).
Validate the emails using connected tools like NeverBounce or Scrubby.
Clean up the data so it’s ready for your cold email outreach.

And it’s not just fast—it’s accurate. Clay uses a waterfall enrichment system, which means if one of your connected tools can’t find a prospect’s email, it moves on to the next one and if that tool can’t find a LinkedIn profile, it checks another. So, instead of hitting a dead end, you’re constantly pulling in the most complete, validated data possible.

Pretty cool, right?

Running Campaigns Automatically

Here’s where things get really exciting: You can run your entire outreach campaign inside Clay.

For example, let’s say you’re targeting tech startups. Clay can:

Find and enrich your leads (as mentioned above).
Add the data to your outreach tool, like Instantly or Quickmail.
Launch personalized cold emails—all without you lifting a finger.

You just create your campaign once, and Clay does the rest. It’s like having an assistant that never takes a coffee break.

*Pro Tip: Combine AI with Clay for Personalized Outreach

You can combine Clay with AI tools like OpenAI to generate hyper-personalized emails.

For example, AI can analyze a prospect’s LinkedIn profile or company website and write a highly personalized first line, increasing the chances of a positive response.

When Does Using Clay Make Sense?

Clay isn’t for everyone, but if any of these scenarios sound familiar, it might be a good option for you:

1. You’re juggling too many tools.

Clay is ideal for businesses that rely on multiple tools for lead generation, cold email outreach, and data enrichment. If you’re finding that your team spends too much time jumping between tools or manually inputting data, Clay might be the perfect fit for you. You’ll save hours, maybe even days, of manual work.

2. You’re ready to scale.

Whether you’re running lead generation for your business or for clients, Clay will help you handle more volume by automating the repetitive tasks. It’ll automate everything from scraping leads to validating emails and launching outreach sequences.

The Catch: What’s the Downside?

Sure, Clay isn’t perfect (though it’s pretty close). The biggest drawback? Pricing.

Clay uses a credit-based system, so each action (like an email validation or API call) consumes credits. The more tools you connect and the more tasks you automate, the more credits you burn through. And those credits can add up quickly.

That said, when you compare the price of Clay to the time (and money) you’d spend doing these tasks manually, it’s usually worth every penny.

Final Thoughts: Should You Try Clay?

If you’re serious about scaling your B2B lead generation and tired of juggling 10 different tools, Clay will be perfect for you. It integrates with everything, automates the boring stuff, and helps you focus on what really matters—closing deals!

Need help setting up Clay for your business? Book a consulting call here.

And for more cold email tips, templates, and strategies, check out growb2b.io.

Author:

Michael Gardiner

Michael is a cold email expert with 9 years of experience, having worked with over 250 B2B companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500s. Outside of work, you will find him traveling around the world with a goal to set foot in every country.