How to Get Customers Using Clay
(AI-Powered Outbound Lead Gen)

Imagine having a list of perfect-fit customer leads appear magically, complete with verified emails, social profiles, and even a personalized tidbit about each – ready for you to reach out. That’s essentially what Clay offers to go-to-market teams. Clay is an AI-powered lead generation and data automation tool that’s been trending among B2B growth hackers. It connects to 100+ data sources (from LinkedIn to public databases) and uses AI “research agents” to gather intel on prospects. For example, Clay’s GPT-4 powered agent (nicknamed Claygent) can visit a prospect’s website or social media and summarize key insights automatically. This means you instantly know what a company does, recent news, or a personal hook to mention – without hours of manual research.

Clay doesn’t stop at finding names. It performs multi-source data enrichment, pulling in emails, job titles, company info, and more. It even has an AI formula generator to help create custom data points, and AI copywriting features to draft outreach messages. Essentially, it’s an outbound sales workflow automation and personalization engine. No wonder Clay has become a go-to tool for startups and even tech giants like Anthropic and Notion to scale their pipeline. (Clay recently raised $62M at a $500M valuation, underscoring how hot this space is.)

How can you use Clay to get customers? Here’s a high-level playbook:

1. Build a Targeted List: Define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) – e.g. “VPs of Marketing at SaaS companies 50-500 employees.” Use Clay’s TAM sourcing templates to pull leads from sources like LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Google Maps, etc. You can even upload your own list of companies and have Clay find the right contacts at each. Clay will gather unique data from across the web so you’re not stuck with the same stale lists as everyone else.

   
   

2. Enrich with AI Insights: Once you have raw leads, let Clay’s AI research agent dig deeper. For each prospect, Clay can automatically grab relevant info – e.g. recent funding news, a quote from their CEO, or a snippet from their blog. These buying signals and personal details are gold for crafting messages. No more generic “I saw you downloaded our whitepaper” emails – you’ll have real conversation starters. As Clay’s team says, generic data = generic outreach (and low reply rates). Instead, Clay gives you rich context on each prospect.

   
   

3. Score and Prioritize: If you have a large list, use Clay to score leads or highlight “hot” ones. For example, filter for prospects who match certain criteria (industry, role, recent hiring spree, etc.). Clay can even track custom signals – like job changes or company news – and flag prospects with big buying indications. This ensures you focus on likely buyers first.

   
   

4. Personalize at Scale: Here’s where the magic happens – crafting outreach that doesn’t feel automated. Clay can merge all those data points into dynamic email templates. With its AI copywriter, you can generate email drafts or snippets tailored to each prospect (e.g., referencing their company’s latest milestone or a pain point gleaned from a job posting). One Clay user used web-scraped data to personalize emails and saw an 83% open rate – unheard of in cold email. The key is every email reads as one-of-a-kind. (Tip: Clay even helps ensure your emails sound human, which improves deliverability)

   
   

5. Automate Outreach & Follow-up: After personalization, you can push the leads and custom fields from Clay into your emailing tool (it integrates with platforms like Instantly, Outreach, or even directly to Gmail/SendGrid). Some teams run automated outbound campaigns straight from Clay – building the list, enriching, writing emails, and sending – all in seconds. Set up follow-up steps or tasks if needed. Essentially, Clay acts as the brain preparing everything, and your email sender of choice executes it.

   
   

6. Review and Iterate: Track responses and feed results back to refine. Because Clay makes it easy to tweak data sources or filters, you can quickly test different approaches (e.g. new data points or email angles) to see what yields the best conversion. Over time, this systematic approach can 10x your outbound pipeline without adding headcount.

   
   

By using Clay to automate the heavy lifting of research and personalization, your outbound outreach becomes faster and smarter. Instead of spending days to build a 100-contact list and write emails, you could do it in an afternoon, at a quality level that feels hand-crafted. This strategy has helped companies achieve significant growth – for instance, Coverflex used Clay to target millions of companies and add 200+ qualified demos per month through signal-based outreach. When your messages resonate, prospects respond.

Why this matters now: In 2025, AI-driven outbound is the new arms race in sales. If you’re still buying static lists and blasting generic emails, you’re falling behind. Tools like Clay give you an edge by combining data and AI in innovative ways (the founders call it a “post-data-provider approach” – using the entire internet as your prospect database). It’s like having a tireless virtual SDR that scours sources and writes first drafts for you. The result? More conversations with the right people.

Before, scaling personalized outreach was nearly impossible – reps were stuck choosing between quality (researching 10 leads deeply) or quantity (spamming 1000 with the same template). Now you can have both quality and quantity. Clay essentially turns hours of prospecting work into a few clicks, so your team can focus on actual selling and relationship-building.

In short: If customer acquisition is a priority (when is it not?), adopting an AI-boosted workflow like Clay’s could be your unfair advantage. Early adopters in the US and EU are already singing its praises as a game-changer for outbound sales. It’s practical, accessible (no coding needed, just creativity), and delivers tangible results – more leads in your funnel and more deals closed. Time to get your hands dirty with Clay and start digging up gold nuggets of opportunity!