How Northbeam 5x'd MQLs on Meta by using Clay Ads to reach their ICP

With an ICP of primarily companies with 7 figure+ marketing budgets, targeting leads on consumer platforms like Meta and Google is especially important. However, before Clay, low match rates made Meta unusable for Northbeam. ICP audiences became too small after matching, preventing the team from driving enough volume from the audiences they wanted to use. A 15,000-person list could narrow to as low as 3,000 usable records. "We were getting such a low match rate that our seed audience of target ICPs for Meta wasn't proving effective," says Jean-Paul. 

Broad lookalikes filled the volume gap but decreased quality: “Before Clay, I would say like 1 out of every 10 leads was actually qualified,” says Jean-Paul. While Northbeam sourced 25 leads a week from the channel, only 2-3 were qualified. 

Clay fixed two things at once. First, it gave Northbeam a high-quality seed from their third party data. The team built a Clay audience that identifies e-commerce companies actively advertising on Meta, using Adyntel enrichment to count live ads per brand and filter to those running more than 25. That set is cross-referenced against a revenue threshold enriched inside Clay using Store Leads, then distilled to qualified accounts at the contact level. The result is a seed built from companies that match the profile of who actually succeeds with Northbeam, rather than resemblance to a handful of past customers.

Second, Clay made that seed reachable. Match rates climbed above 50% across nearly every platform, so the same 15,000-person list that used to match 3,000 records now matches 8,000-10,000. On Meta, the higher volume of matched records gives Meta's algorithm a large, accurate seed to learn from and extend, so the lookalikes it generates now surface more of the right companies. That finished audience syncs from Clay Audiences straight into Meta.

"Once Clay released Ads, we loaded our Clay Audience and saw an immediate difference," says Jean-Paul. From the same 25-30 weekly leads, roughly 15 are now qualified (up from 2-3) without a change in spend. "That was all strictly from an audience upload," emphasizes Jean-Paul. MQLs across paid media have tripled, with CPLs remaining flat, meaning the cost per qualified conversation fell. 

Northbeam’s partner agency noticed immediately, commenting: "We are loving this list. We don't know what you did or how you did it, but it’s working." Thanks to Clay, Meta is now Northbeam's fastest-growing channel. LinkedIn still generates the most leads but remains most expensive. "That's where I think Meta is going to take over very soon," he predicts.

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Consolidating audience building in Clay let Northbeam run tiered ABM across channels. Northbeam targeted their ICP across channels before Clay, but the team assembled the audience layer by hand from a previous data provider, the CRM, and other sources that could be stitched together for a given campaign. Similarly, suppression lists lived in a spreadsheet that had to be manually reconciled against a market that changes weekly, meaning it was often out-of-date. 

With Clay, the team can now run more precise multi-channel ABM, with different audiences and messaging by tier. Starting from the full ICP, Northbeam uses Clay to build enrichments that narrow on the attributes that indicate a strategic account. These filters define tiers, and tiers drive both audience segmentation and ad copy. Tier 1 targets enterprise with full-suite messaging and a higher CPL tolerance. Tier 2 and 3 cover smaller e-commerce shops for the starter product, positioned accordingly. "We can shrink and grow our audience based off of exactly who we're trying to target," says Jean-Paul. 

Clay also made exclusions automatic. Suppression lists including employees, competitors, current customers, and open opportunities are now built into the audience logic rather than managed manually. "Exclusions in Clay are not even a thought," he adds.

Northbeam is starting to extend the same audience approach to connected TV through Vibe, treating it as ABM reach against a tightly defined list.

Marketing leadership turns over fast, and Northbeam’s finite total addressable market of around 40,000 companies includes brands that appear and scale inside a quarter and marketers that change jobs. The team needed a way to track:

1. Who belongs in the market
2. Who is newly at a target account, and 
3. What changed in the account or contact base

Without a system of record, it is harder to keep TAM coverage current across ads and outbound.

Clay became that system of record, closing gaps across both outbound and ads. "Clay is our main source of truth, at least for contact information," says Jean-Paul. Northbeam’s TAM refreshes continuously inside Clay, surfacing new contacts and roles as they change via Clay’s third party data, with updates flowing straight into the live audiences. 

Northbeam built a TAM reach dashboard on top of Clay that monitors whether target accounts are being reached, and on which channels. "We're able to look at that same TAM, understand who we can target, and identify who is new that we can immediately target in our audiences and ads," says Jean-Paul.