How Exit Five scales sponsorship revenue by enriching newsletter subscribers

Limited data creating roadblocks

Before using Clay, Exit Five’s sponsorship outreach was limited by incomplete audience data and manual processes:

• Sparse audience insights: Most audience members provided only an email address, making it hard to understand job roles, industries, and geographic locations.‍
• Missed targeting opportunities: Without enriched data, Exit Five couldn’t effectively segment its audience or tailor its sponsorship pitch to align with sponsor priorities.‍
• Time-intensive list building: Attempting to gather insights manually or through one-off enrichment efforts was inefficient and quickly outdated.

“Our database was essentially a black box. We had no way of knowing who was behind the email addresses or demonstrating the value of our audience to sponsors,” explained Murphy.

The solution: enriching audience details with Clay

Exit Five integrated Clay with HubSpot to enrich their contact database with critical fields like job titles, company names, employee counts, revenue tiers, and geographic data.

This transformed their approach to sponsorship sales and event targeting:

• Enriching audience profiles: Clay added depth to Exit Five’s database, enriching 50% of their 27,000 contacts with actionable insights.
• Data-powered sponsorship pitches: With enriched profiles, Exit Five could showcase audience segments by revenue tier, job level, and location, demonstrating value to sponsors with hard data.
• Streamlined list segmentation: Integrated directly into HubSpot, Clay’s data allowed Exit Five to easily segment their audience for targeted sponsorship pitches and event marketing.

“Before Clay, we could only guess at our audience composition. Now, we can confidently show sponsors the segments that matter most to them, like marketing leaders at companies doing $10M+ in revenue,” Murphy said.

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Empowering targeted sponsorship sales

Clay enabled Exit Five to tailor its sponsorship sales process by unlocking key data points like revenue tiers and leadership roles.

For example, using Clay-enriched data, Exit Five identified that over half of its audience represented companies with $10M+ in revenue with senior job titles like director and above—key demographics that resonated with potential sponsors.

“This level of insight gives sponsors confidence in the value of our audience. It’s a game-changer for closing deals faster,” said Murphy.

Optimizing event targeting with geographic data

As Exit Five expands its event strategy, geographic insights from Clay have become invaluable. With enriched data, Exit Five can identify audience clusters in specific regions to guide event location decisions and drive ticket sales.

For example, before their Texas meetup, Clay’s geographic enrichment enabled Exit Five to focus outreach efforts on users in Texas, driving local attendance without wasting resources on untargeted campaigns.

“Clay’s geographic data helps us figure out where our audience is and who to invite. It’s a huge help as we scale our in-person events,” Murphy said.