Prospecting - The GTM with Clay Blog

How we built Clay’s GTM engineering function

Most companies treat GTM operations as a support function. Someone to clean up Salesforce data, set up sequences, maybe build a dashboard or two. At Clay, we took a different approach from the very beginning.

Mobile Phone Verification Methodology

Clay has partnered with The Kiln to setup a series of large-scale data test across mobile phone, work email, personal email, email verification, and more. Below, we explain the approach to these tests.

Work Email Verification Methodology

Clay has partnered with The Kiln to setup a series of large-scale data test across mobile phone, work email, personal email, email verification, and more. Below, we explain the approach to these tests.

Stop Guessing, Start Analyzing: How Sculptor Turns Your GTM Data Into Your Competitive Advantage

Analyze your GTM data with Sculptor to turn fragmented information into actionable insight.

Find and outreach local businesses with Openmart and Clay Sequencer

Get the right contacts for local businesses without stitching together multiple tools or wasting valuable time on setup instead of selling.

Announcing Web Intent

Use Website Intent in Clay to see which companies visit your site, track engagement, and trigger personalized GTM plays. Turn website traffic into real buyer intent data.

Introducing Bulk Enrichment

Clay’s Bulk Enrichment lets Enterprise teams enrich millions of Salesforce records with firmographics, tech stack data, and AI research—at scale.

How Clay Uses Clay: Conversational Data

How we use Clay to mine millions of pages of call transcripts to generate revenue, and how you can use it too.

Sculpting GTM’s future with six major launches

Today at Sculpt, we're launching six major features that will help teams turn any growth idea into reality faster.

The three laws of GTM

AI is separating winners and losers in GTM faster than before. At Clay, after watching thousands of companies’ GTM strategies, we've identified three laws that govern success as GTM enters the AI era.

No More Guesswork: GTM Precision with HG Insights Corporate Hierarchy

Say goodbye to messy account data and confusion over rep assignments. With HG Insights' corporate hierarchy mapping in Clay, clean up CRM data, uncover expansion opportunities, and improve sales multi-threading with structured parent/child data.

How to hire a GTM Engineer

What to look for, where to find them, and the skills that matter

Introducing Claygent Navigator

A new Claygent model that can use a browser to take actions and extract information from webpages.

Announcing the Clay Partner Program

The Clay Partner Program is to a partner, what a toolbox is to an artist. It keeps essential resources within reach and grows more sophisticated as your expertise develops. We've designed everything around one simple principle: helping you grow your business as Clay grows.

Introducing GPT-5 in Claygent: sharper research, stronger formulas, better outbound

GPT-5 is now a model option across Clay, bringing the best research and conversational writing we've ever shipped to your GTM workflows.

Clay Series C announcement. The GTM engineering era begins now

We raised a $100M Series C at a $3.1B valuation to power GTM engineering!

Inside Clay’s GTM engineering lab

At Clay, the problems we solve internally become solutions we ship to customers.

The rise of the GTM engineer

Learn how GTM Engineers turn ops into AI-powered revenue systems. Explore real workflows, org models, and hiring tips in Clay’s definitive guide.

Claygent surpasses 1 billion runs

The world's most loved AI research agent in GTM has passes a huge milestone at 1 billion runs.

Announcing Sculpt: Clay’s first annual user conference

Join us for Sculpt, Clay’s first annual user conference on Sept 17 in San Francisco where GTM leaders build AI workflows, share creative tactics, and get early access to new features.

Announcing custom signals at Clay

Clay's new custom signals platform helps sales teams track unique data changes that indicate buying opportunities. Turn any data point into a sales signal, enrich with context, and automate personalized outreach to find GTM alpha your competitors miss.

Clay announces employee tender offer led by Sequoia at $1.5B valuation

Clay allows employees to sell vested shares for immediate liquidity through a $20M tender offer at a $1.5B valuation. With 10x revenue growth in 2022-2023 and serving 8,000+ customers including OpenAI and Hubspot, Clay continues to change how businesses approach go-to-market strategies with their AI agent Claygent.

Create personalized presentations at scale with Clay and Google Slides

Automate personalized sales decks with Clay’s Google Slides integration. Instantly generate tailored presentations for leads, customers, QBRs, and internal updates. Use one template to create hundreds of presentations at scale.

Turn Gong conversations into automated GTM workflows

Clay now integrates with Gong—turn messy call transcripts into powerful automations in Salesforce, HubSpot, Notion, Slack, Google Sheets, and 100+ other integrations.

Finding GTM alpha

Earning a competitive edge via unique data, custom plays, and GTM engineering

How Clay uses Clay For Customer Support

Learn how Clay's support team uses Clay for enriching Intercom conversations, scaling conversation QA with AI, and turning support tickets into help center content.

Clay integrates with Webflow, unlocking scalable website personalization for GTM teams

Clay now integrates with Webflow—build and update personalized web pages at scale using live data, no code required.

Build a sustainable growth engine with Scheduling

Automate your GTM workflows with Scheduling. Keep your CRM data fresh, run always-on outbound campaigns, and power ABM strategies—without manual updates.

Clay announces community equity offering for supporters to become co-owners

Community equity offering

Why we're pivoting our Clay agency from outbound to CRM enrichment

We believe the opportunity for CRM enrichment and Clay is a ripe market opportunity going into 2025.

Clay raises $40M at a $1.25B valuation with GTM development environment that turns growth ideas into reality

Clay has raised $40M in Series B expansion funding at a $1.25B valuation, following 6x growth in 2024.

Clay acquires Avenue to help growth teams act on intent signals

Powering the right message to the right person at The Right Time

Clay integrates with HG Insights, unlocking enterprise-grade technology intelligence for anyone

Clay integrates with HG Insights, the market’s leading company intelligence platform trusted by over 90% of the Fortune 100 Technology list. HG is the best way to find company technology stacks and parent-child relationships.

12 best work email finders by segment [SMB vs. Enterprise]

Looking for better ways to connect with your target business segment? We crunched the numbers to find the 12 best B2B email providers based on their data quality, cost, and coverage.

10 best B2B data providers for mobile phone numbers in 2024

Explore the best B2B contact databases for mobile phone data. We tested and ranked providers like Forager, ContactOut, Nimbler, and Leadmagic for accuracy, value, and coverage to help you boost your outreach and connect with qualified leads.

Why we built the first GTM engineering team—and believe that it’s the future of sales

Revamping traditional sales roles like SDRs, AEs, and sales engineers into a single, high-leverage function.

The Reverse Demo

Traditional sales demos are broken. The reverse demo flips the script. Users dive in, solve real problems, and hit that ‘a-ha’ moment fast.

Clay is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant

Clay is now SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, reinforcing our commitment to top-tier data security and reliability for all users.

The best personal email finders of 2024

Explore our in-depth analysis of personal email providers to find the perfect balance of coverage, accuracy, and cost for your needs.

Clay raises $62M at a $500M valuation to turn any growth idea into reality

Clay has raised a $46M Series B from Meritech Capital with participation from Sequoia, First Round, Box Group, Boldstart, and some of the world’s top sales and marketing leaders to power growth for tech’s biggest names like Anthropic, Intercom, Notion and 2500+ others. This is in addition to our previously unannounced $13.5M Series A, led by Sequoia, and $2.5M seed led by First Round.

How to validate cold outbound offers by finding message-market fit

Go-to-market professionals can use a systematic methodology to improve the resonance of cold outbound offers. By creating an offer validation system, you can figure out if your message will ever break through.

Turn web visitors into leads with a warm outbound marketing play for B2B sales

Learn how to turn web visitors into leads with a warm outbound marketing play designed for B2B sales companies.

Introducing Clay Pricing 3.0: The most flexible credit system on the market

Introducing credit rollover and credit top-ups

How Clay uses Clay to automate inbound lead outreach at scale

Go-to-market teams know how crucial it is to reach out to inbound leads quickly, with messaging that resonates. Learn how to automate your inbound lead outreach process at scale.

How we assessed our growth marketing bets at Clay

Learn how Clay uses a valuable Reforge framework to assess its growth bets.

How to build a complete AI outbound sales funnel

Jacob Tuwiner of Sculpted has mastered the art of outbound sales using Clay and AI. In this post, he walks through the complete process of building your outbound funnel.

How to build the most targeted account lists possible

Before Clay, building account lists was tedious and manual. Clay empowers you to build the lists of your dreams, and Jacob Tuwiner shows you how.

Worried about email provider rules changing? Just write like a human.

To make sure your cold outbound emails actually get delivered and read, do three essential things and make sure your messaging sounds like a human wrote it.

Use web scraping to uplevel your data enrichment with Clay

Improve your data enrichment with an AI-enhanced, no-code web scraper. Web scraping allows you to personalize your cold outbound emails at scale.

Clay hot takes: growth marketing and dating are basically the same

Here at Clay, we think that growth marketing is actually a whole lot like modern dating—and that Clay can be your sales matchmaker.

Why good CRM data matters

Your CRM is crucial to your GTM motion, but only if it's loaded with good, clean data—easier said than done! Read about how Clay can help.

Announcing Clay's outbound Templates

Learn about the evolution of templates to automate manual sales prospecting work...all the way up to today's solution, Clay Templates.

Do more with your data with Clay’s post-data-provider approach

Clay is ushering in a world beyond giant data providers, in which GTM teams are empowered to be flexible, creative, and hyper-specific with all the data the internet has to offer.

How Clay uses Clay: Converting trial users into customers with automated outreach

You know that effectively converting trial users into paying customers is critical for growth, but takes strategic outreach. Clay uses our own product to automate the process of tracking trial sign-ups and crafting personalized messaging for effective conversion!

How to find warm intros automatically with Clay

In this post, Eric Nowoslawski shows you how you can use Clay to harness your social network for real warm intros, not empty connections.

Sendoso's outbound automation journey with CEO Kris Rudeegraap

In this video, we interview Kris Rudeegraap, Co-Founder & CEO of Sendoso, on his outbound automation journey (and why he loves Clay!)

Wake the dead: turn stalled opportunities into won deals

You have tons of stalled opps in your CRM. Deals that didn't reach the finish line, meetings that didn't show, etc. The timing was off back then, but it could be better now. Clay can turn your raw CRM export into a fully personalized email campaign to get those dead deals back on the books.

Triple your coverage rates with waterfall data enrichment

Traditional data providers like ZoomInfo make you purchase an obscene annual contract to access their platform. You're left with tons of data you don't need, and not much data you do need... Instead, Clay gives you maximum data coverage for the cheapest price, without paying for data you don't need or signing annual contracts.

The best B2B email list providers of 2024 [with test results]

Learn about the best B2B email list provider for finding and enriching work emails based on our comprehensive test. Contenders include Prospeo, Dropcontact, Findymail, Datagma, Hunter, and more.

How to launch personalized direct mail campaigns at scale w/ Sendoso + Clay

Jacob Tuwiner walks us through the killer email campaign he automated with Clay for Sendoso...check out those analytics, and then build it for yourself.

How to send personalized demos at scale w/ Clay

See how Jacob Tuwiner achieved an 83% email open rate and saved reps time with automated event mockups, built with Clay.

Outbound sales automation: How to 10x your pipeline with AI

Your sales engine is broken, and we can fix it. In this piece, we'll teach you how to use outbound sales automation and SDR automation to grow your pipeline *without* increasing your team size. Learn how to use AI, web scraping, and a smart tech stack to remove all of your team's manual prospecting work—forever.

Google Maps lead generation in 5 easy steps

Are you prospecting to niche, local businesses, like salons, HVAC companies, or small businesses? In this guide, we'll show you how to scrape Google maps and use AI to find, enrich, and personalize emails to niche and local businesses!

11 easy ways AI sales assistants can accelerate your business

AI sales assistants are transforming sales and marketing workflows already. In this blog, we share 11 ways AI sales assistants can already help you find, research, and reach out to leaders, faster and better than ever.

AI recruiting strategies

Learn our top AI recruiting workflows to help you identify, research, and reach out to qualified candidates for open roles. AI can eliminate manual work and help you reach out to—and land—better employees for your clients.

Half the sales team, double the replies, 40% more meetings booked: lessons from Qrew

How Qrew, a recruiting company, was able to use Clay to streamline their sales process, cut manual hours by 50%, and double meetings booked.

How First Round Capital uses Clay to enrich and update 220k+ CRM contacts

Clay completely transformed First Round Capital's CRM database. Check out the workflow First Round built in Clay to enrich and auto-update their CRM contacts, so much faster and cheaper than ever before.

21 cold email deliverability best practices for 2024

Read the 21 best practices for cold email deliverability you need to know in 2024. From buying and configuring inboxes and domains to troubleshooting email deliverability issues, we cover it all.

The ultimate guide to B2B cold email copywriting

Everything you need to know about B2B cold email copywriting, including frameworks, examples, and cold email templates to help your sales outreach flourish. Read annotated examples of bad vs. great cold emails, and learn about key principles that will make your prospects more likely to open them and convert!.

AI lead generation

This is the most comprehensive guide on the Internet about how to use AI for your B2B lead generation efforts. With our AI lead generation workflows—including finding leads, enriching them, and sending personalized emails—you can skyrocket your cold outreach success.

AI for sales prospecting

Learn about how to use AI for sales prospecting in this comprehensive guide, including framework for creating AI prompts and examples of cold email templates using AI that real sales teams have used successfully to land clients. AI sales prospecting can save your team thousands of hours—and double or triple your positive response rates.

How ServiceBell used Clay to book 30 meetings with 1 hour of work

Once ServiceBell starting using Clay to find qualified leads, solving their biggest problem, they booked 10 meetings in one day. Check out how they did it, and replicate the workflow for yourself!

Pylon saves 30 minutes a day with this simple Clay automation

Marty Kausas from Pylon says he "can't live without [Clay] anymore." Learn how Clay completely automated Pylon's customer onboarding to save Marty at least 30 minutes a day.

How to type the table flipping emoji in 3 seconds: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Learn how to write out the table flipping emoji in text on your own.

Set up your full inbound sales process on Clay

Discover how to streamline your inbound sales process using Clay. This article outlines easy-to-follow methods for better lead handling and improved sales efficiency.

Behind-the-scenes with Clay’s new pricing plan

Clay's pricing gets a makeover! Discover our new, dynamic pricing tiers, from cost-effective entry-level plans to comprehensive solutions for advanced users. Learn how our revised pricing offers better value and flexibility, tailored to your business needs. Read more in our latest blog post.

How to ace your follow-ups

Explore our expert tips for acing follow-ups and maintaining visibility with your prospects. Discover how to make a lasting impression and nurture your professional relationships.

24 easy AI email personalization examples for cold outreach (with prompts)

Everyone knows that personalized emails perform better than generic ones, but writing a personalized email can be a lot of work. Fortunately, with the right AI writing tools, creating thousands of personalized emails in minutes is possible. In this article, we will show you 24 AI email personalization examples you can quickly implement to grow your sales pipeline rapidly.

How Candid used Clay to massively cut SDR research time and boost accuracy

Candid Wholesale's SDR team used to spend hours and hours every week just to find customers that fit their ICP. Once they started using Clay, the entire process was completely transformed: streamlined, simplified, and so much faster.

How IntroCRM cut its prospecting data budget by 65% and built better lead lists lists with Clay

Learn how IntroCRM revolutionized their data management with Clay, slashing their budget by 65% and building better lead lists with their creative prospecting.

How to prioritize your waitlist

Struggling with how to manage your waitlist as an early stage startup? Check out our guide for using Clay to learn more about and prioritize your waitlist.

Automate 6 cold email campaigns in a single Clay workflow

In this post, we’ll go over how we automated six different outbound cold email campaigns using a single Clay table.

Troubleshooting outbound sales and prospecting

Nailing your outbound sales and prospecting process can help you generate leads, acquire customers, and drive revenue growth. In this guide, we’ll share a step-by-step approach to troubleshooting each stage of your outbound sales campaign—whether you’re a new sales professional or a seasoned team leader.

B2B sales prospecting

In this ultimate guide to B2B sales prospecting, we'll explore 15 powerful strategies to help you generate more quality leads, build a strong sales pipeline, and drive more conversions. Whether you're a sales professional or a marketing team looking to boost your new business efforts, this guide has everything you need to succeed in the world of B2B sales. Check it out now!

How to create your own sales prospect list in minutes

Revolutionize your sales process with Clay, the sales prospecting tool that enables you to import prospects from multiple sources, enrich data, and export it to your preferred platform. Start building your sales prospecting list in minutes, not hours.

How to get more customers using outbound sales

Learn the latest tips and techniques for successful outbound sales, including lead generation, cold calling, and follow-up tactics. Boost your results and close more deals with these proven strategies.

11 AI prompts for sales prospecting and research

Learn how to write effective AI prompts for sales prospecting. This guide shares 13 real prompt examples for common sales tasks like finding company missions, summarizing news, and more. See how proper prompting framework helps improve campaign relevance and response rates.

How to use OpenAI to write the perfect cold email from scratch

Streamline your cold emailing process with OpenAI and Clay. Write personalized emails quickly and easily using company bio, company information, and more. Discover how to save time and improve the effectiveness of your outreach in this informative post.

Cold email templates for crafting effective messages

Unlock the secrets of effective B2B cold emailing with our expertly crafted templates. Learn from real-world examples and proven strategies to write cold emails that get responses and drive results. Perfect for sales and marketing professionals looking to enhance their outreach.

How to use formulas in Clay

When building a Clay table, the sources, integrations, and CRM plugins can accomplish the goals of most users. Sometimes, there is a need for some data merging, splitting, or otherwise clean up that is needed in your table. This is where you can use Formulas to accomplish your goals!In this blog, we are going to first go over how to think about formulas using the AI formula generator and then we will go over common formulas that you can write yourself in your Clay table.

Optimize your credit usage in Clay

In this blog, we will go over a couple of functions in Clay that can will help you optimize your credit usage in Clay. There are many ways to optimize credit usage in Clay that the team has built into the product that we will go over in this blog. We will cover formulas that optimize your workflows and some features that are often overlooked that can help keep your credit usage down.