Grok Bot and Clay: 5 Cold Email Campaigns You Can Copy

Open a lead database, filter by job title, industry and headcount, export, hit send. Sound familiar? That’s how most cold email lists get built. Your prospects get the same kind of email from plenty of other senders using the exact same filters, so yours blends right in and the replies stay flat.

The fix has always been obvious: get personal. Give people a real reason to care that it’s you emailing them. The catch? Truly personal lists were basically impossible to build at scale. There’s no “skateboards on weekends” filter, so you needed a stack of tools, hours of manual research, or a virtual assistant.

Not anymore. Connect Clay to Grok Bot and you can build those lists with a handful of chat messages, without ever opening the Clay website.

Our CEO Michael has been testing Grok Bot for about a month and the Clay integration for a couple of weeks, and it has produced some of the most personalized campaigns our team has ever run at scale. Think founders who skateboard, execs who volunteer with Special Olympics, and people who share your exact name. (Yes, really. And yes, it works.)

In this post, we’ll show you how to connect Grok Bot and Clay, then break down all five campaigns from the video, complete with the exact prompts and cold email scripts. Let’s dive in.

Why Grok Bot and Clay Are Such a Powerful Combo

Here’s the short version: Clay pulls data from dozens of providers and does a lot more than just find emails. Grok Bot is an AI agent that can do just about everything else, from researching people on the web to building and updating your spreadsheets.

Put them together and, outside of your sequencing tool (think Smartlead or Instantly), these two are all you need to run every campaign below.

That’s a big deal. Campaigns this creative used to need a whole stack of tools, plus some manual research. Now it’s one chat window and a few plain-English messages.

Don’t have Clay yet? Sign up for Clay with our link to get a free 2-week trial and 2,000 credits.

👇 Here are the five campaigns we’ll cover:

How to Connect Grok Bot and Clay (Takes 2 Minutes)

Connecting Grok Bot and Clay takes less than 2 minutes. Here’s the drill:

Step 1: Add the Clay plugin

1. Open Plugins in Grok Bot.
2. Add Clay. Search for it in the plugin list and click add.
3. Authorize your Clay account.
4. Check it’s installed. Just ask in the chat. Grok Bot will tell you.

Step 2: Add Google Drive too

You’ll want a home for all those shiny new spreadsheets. Repeat the same steps for Google Drive: open Plugins, add Google Drive, authenticate, then ask in the chat to confirm it’s installed.

That’s literally it. Setting up both takes 2 to 4 minutes.

Pro tip: Create one Google Drive folder per campaign and paste its link into your first prompt. Grok Bot drops the finished sheet right there, so your lists never get mixed up.

Logical vs. Personal Segmentation: Why These Campaigns Work

Before we get into the campaigns, a quick word on strategy. At DFY Meetings, we split our campaigns into two buckets:

• Logical segmentation: you reach out for a business reason, like a job post that’s relevant to the work you do.
• Personal segmentation: you reach out to connect on a human level, like a shared hobby.

A personal angle might seem silly. But if you mountain bike and you can work with mountain biking companies, or you love dogs and you can work with dog brands, that connection point earns your email a little more consideration. Especially when it’s relevant to what you do. Bonus: it hands you a ready-made icebreaker for the call.

5 Grok Bot and Clay Campaigns You Can Copy

Each campaign below follows the same pattern: a short prompt (or three), a spreadsheet in your Drive folder, and a cold email script with merge fields that Clay and Grok Bot fill in for you. If you want more ideas for personal angles, check out our cold email personalization tactics.

Campaign 1: Active Job Posts

The idea: find companies with an open job post for a role you can cover, then email whoever posted the job.

Michael picked accounting firms (a category he has quite a few clients in) and told Grok Bot:

“Use Clay to find 10 accounting firms that are hiring a Chief Growth Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, Head of Sales, or any specific outbound title. Add them to this Google Drive folder.”

A few minutes later, the list was back. Then came three short follow-ups:

1. Use Clay to scrape contact info from whoever posted the job (or is in charge of it), and if that’s unavailable, get the owner, CEO or founder.
2. Add a “matched job title” column and an ICP column explaining who each firm works with.
3. Clean up the matched job titles, because a lot of them were long and messy.

Four messages. One chat. A perfect list. Normally that would take a pile of tools and maybe some manual scraping.

The finished sheet had the company name, domain, website, LinkedIn, size, location, the cleaned matched job title, ICP notes and, of course, the contact’s email from Clay.

The script. Michael uses this exact one for his own campaign landing fractional CMO and CRO clients:

The second half of the email goes something like this: “I work with [type of company] fractionally, [5] at a time, giving them access to the same [your specialty] experience without having to add another senior full-time hire. I’d love to help you connect with more [their target audience, from the ICP research]. And with you actively hiring for this role, the timing might actually make sense. Would it be okay to send over a full resume and a custom video introduction?”

Simple? Yes. But it’s only simple because of the integration. Doing that research by hand would eat your week. And the campaign is going very well for Michael right now. (Notice the low-friction ask at the end, too. More on that in our guide to crafting the perfect CTA.)

Pro tip: Not selling fractional work? Position your service as a replacement for the full-time hire instead. We run that angle for a couple of the clients we manage campaigns for.

Campaign 2: Shared Interests

This is a campaign our team has run for a long time: find people who share a personal interest with you.

Michael grew up skateboarding, so he went looking for founders and relevant titles (head of growth, head of sales, C-level operations) at B2B companies who skate or used to skate. Without Grok Bot and Clay, that list is almost impossible to build unless you hire a virtual assistant.

Here’s the email:

And here’s the prompt. Michael never left Grok Bot and never visited the Clay website once:

“Find 10 CEOs, founders, or owners of B2B businesses that either skateboard or used to skateboard. Build a spreadsheet with their name, their company name, their company website, and a link to where you confirmed they like skateboarding. Once done, get their email, LinkedIn when available with Clay. Put the spreadsheet here.”

Next, he pasted in the cold email and asked Grok Bot to add a column with the context on how we found out they skate, so it could work as a merge field. The result reads like “your Pro Riders profile as a pro skater since 1995” or “the NYU piece about you riding every day and your BoardUp folding skateboard.”

Are these the most perfect personalized lines ever written? No. But that came from a super basic prompt, and you can tighten it from there.

Pro tip: Always ask for the source link in its own column. It lets you quality-check every line in seconds before anything goes out.

Campaign 3: Shared Volunteering

Same idea as shared interests, but built on a shared experience. Michael used to volunteer at the Special Olympics, so he looked for people in his ICP who currently volunteer or used to volunteer there too.

The opener writes itself: “Hey {{first_name}} – Saw we both volunteered with Special Olympics. Genuinely the happiest group of people.” Then you find a smooth transition into your pitch.

The prompt was literally one message to a brand-new bot with no training:

“Find 10 CEOs, founders, owners, or C-level/management-level sales individuals that work for/own B2B companies and either currently or used to volunteer for Special Olympics. Use Clay to get their email and LinkedIn, and then put that data in a spreadsheet in this folder.”

The sheet came back with the source showing where each person’s volunteering was mentioned, their contact info and their role in relation to the Special Olympics.

Campaign 4: Same Name

This is probably the silliest campaign you’ve ever heard of. It also works. Michael has run it for himself, and we’ve run it for a few clients.

You find people with the same name as you. The email:

The prompt asked Grok Bot to find up to 10 people named Michael Gardiner who are owners, upper management or in sales at B2B companies. Then, on a second tab of the same spreadsheet, up to 10 people with the last name Gardiner (spelled the same way) in similar roles.

That’s a tough search. Michael’s spelling isn’t common, and there are far more Gardners without the “i”. Grok Bot and Clay still pulled it off.

Campaign 5: Podcast Guests

Michael has run this one for about five years. It started with virtual assistants, then some AI, and now the whole thing happens without leaving Grok Bot.

The play: find a podcast that interviews your ICP, then email its guests. Michael chose The B2B Playbook to pitch a partnership. Our team also does direct mail, and a lot of our clients are cold email agencies that want to add it as a service without figuring out the logistics.

The script: “Hi {{first_name}}, Actually found out about {{company_name}} through your interview with {{podcast_host}}. Btw – {{compliment_on_a_tip_they_gave}}.”

Michael found the podcast on Google himself (Grok Bot could probably do that bit too) and then prompted:

“Make a list of 20 people who were on this podcast as a guest [podcast page link]. Add their name + episode link to a spreadsheet in this folder. Use Clay to find: guest first name, last name, email, LinkedIn, X.”

Then he pasted the cold email and asked for two custom columns: a one-sentence compliment on a tip each guest gave, and the podcast host’s name.

Could the lines be more refined? Sure. But a couple of messages got data that used to need multiple tools and manual work.

Before You Hit Send

Grok Bot and Clay build the list. Your sending setup still decides whether anyone sees the email. A few quick checks from our playbook:

• Load the sheet into your sequencing tool and map each custom column as a merge field.
• Spot-check the personalized lines against the source links. A wrong “fact” about someone’s hobby is worse than no fact at all.
• Make sure your sending accounts are properly warmed up and your subject lines are short and human (Michael’s are things like “Skateboarding + {{company_name}}”).
• Want to go further with Clay on its own? Our Clay lead generation guide walks through it.

Answers To Questions You Might Have

How long does it take to connect Grok Bot and Clay?

Less than 2 minutes. Open Plugins in Grok Bot, add Clay, authorize it, and ask in the chat to confirm it’s installed. Adding Google Drive the same way brings the total to 2 to 4 minutes.

Do I need to open Clay to build these lists?

No. In every campaign here, Michael never left the Grok Bot chat. Grok Bot used Clay in the background for contact data like emails and LinkedIn profiles, then saved the sheet to Google Drive.

What do I need besides Grok Bot and Clay?

A Google Drive folder for the spreadsheets and your sequencing tool to send the emails. For these five campaigns, that’s the whole stack.

Do silly campaigns like “same name” really work?

Yes. Michael has run the same name campaign for himself and it’s been pretty successful, and our team has run it for a few clients too.

How many leads should I ask for in one prompt?

Michael asked for 10 to 20 per prompt in these tests (10 firms, 10 founders, up to 10 namesakes, 20 podcast guests). Starting small makes it easy to quality-check the results before you scale up.

Wrapping Up

Grok Bot and Clay turn campaigns that used to need a VA, a scraper and five tabs into a few chat messages. Connect the plugins, pick an angle (job posts, shared interests, volunteering, same name or podcast guests), and let them build the list and the personalization for you.

We’ve been doing cold email since 2014, and the gap between then and now is honestly wild.

Hungry for more tips on conquering the B2B world? Keep your eyes glued to our CEO’s YouTube channel!

Need help running campaigns like these for your business? Book a consulting call here.

P.S. If you’re interested in growing your business with outreach, you can join multiple agency owners, coaches, and freelancers in our outreach community to get expert tips, templates, and much more!

Cheers to never building a boring list again! 🛹