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How to generate leads with intent data
Describe your market and target contact
Tell Sculptor your target market and the contact title you want to reach. Sculptor scans Clay's company database for accounts showing active buying signals.
Sculptor surfaces intent signals, then enriches contacts
Sculptor identifies companies in your target market that match buying signals such as hiring activity, funding news, and tech stack changes, then waterfalls through 150+ providers to find a verified email for the title you specified. Only matched rows get an email.
Get a table of signal-matched companies and verified emails
The finished table has company name and, for rows the waterfall enriched, a verified contact email. Push to Smartlead or Instantly to trigger outbound the moment a signal fires.
Why Clay for generating leads with intent data
Real-time multi-signal detection in one table
Monitor funding rounds, hiring activity, job changes, pricing-page visits, and tech-stack changes as standing signals, not one-off list pulls. When multiple signals converge on the same account inside a short window, Clay flags the row as hot.
Claygent reads any source as a custom signal
Get sourced, rep-ready evidence for any signal you care about. Claygent browses careers pages, news feeds, and company sites on a set schedule, returning a signal verdict, the strongest evidence quote, and a one-line "why this matters" for each row.
Waterfall enrichment on every signal-matched row
Turn a signal hit into a verified contact without manual research. Clay waterfalls through 150+ providers to find a verified work email for your target title, charging credits only when a provider returns a match.
Automated scoring routes hot accounts to Slack or Salesforce
High-urgency accounts get a same-day Slack alert to the AE with the contact, signal reason, and a drafted opener. Medium-urgency rows land as enriched records in Salesforce or HubSpot, queued for a sequence automatically.
Every lead is pre-qualified, scored on unique signals, and routed automatically through Clay. We're now generating pipeline from segments we weren't even touching before.
Frequently asked questions
How does Sculptor generate leads using intent data?
Sculptor scans multiple intent data sources, including Clay's Web Intent waterfall (Snitcher, Demandbase, Dealfront, Warmly) and third-party topic signals, to surface B2B companies actively researching your target industry or keyword. Once it identifies an in-market company, it runs a waterfall enrichment across providers like Prospeo, Hunter, and Datagma to locate a verified VP of Sales email for each match.
How accurate are the intent signals and contact data?
Intent data coverage typically lands between 40% and 70% of a target market, varying by provider and industry (per Demandbase and Bombora benchmarks). Clay's waterfall approach stacks multiple intent sources to push that coverage higher than any single provider. On the contact side, Clay's own data tests show top work-email providers hitting 94% to 97% accuracy, and the waterfall has doubled enrichment coverage for customers like OpenAI (40% to 80%).
Can I generate intent-based leads in bulk at once?
Yes. Sculptor builds your full list in one run, returning every matched company and VP of Sales email in a Clay table. You can also paste a list, upload a CSV of target accounts, or pipe data from an existing Clay table to enrich at scale. From there, push the entire table to your CRM or Outreach sequence so reps start working the highest-intent accounts immediately.
Is it legal to use intent data for B2B outbound email?
In the US, CAN-SPAM allows B2B commercial email without prior consent as long as you include a physical address, honor opt-outs within 10 business days, and avoid deceptive subject lines. Penalties can reach $50,000+ per non-compliant message. In the EU, GDPR Recital 47 recognizes direct marketing as a potential legitimate interest, but you must document a three-part balancing test and honor Article 21 opt-out requests immediately.
California's CCPA/CPRA B2B exemption expired in January 2023, so business contacts there now have full consumer privacy rights. Always check the rules for your jurisdiction before launching outbound campaigns.