$ man how-to/how-to-use-clay-enrichment

Clay is a spreadsheet that can call APIs. That is the simplest mental model. Each row is a lead or company. Each column is a data point. The difference from Google Sheets: Clay columns can pull data from 150+ providers automatically. Type a company name, and Clay can fetch the revenue, employee count, tech stack, funding history, hiring activity, and social profiles - all without you leaving the table. The power is in the workflow, not any single data point. You chain enrichments together: source leads from Apollo, enrich company data from multiple providers, score them against your ICP, find contacts, verify emails, generate personalized opening lines, and push to outreach. One table replaces a 10-step manual process.

CODE

Start with a source. The easiest: paste a list of company domains or import from a CSV. Clay also connects directly to Apollo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and other databases. Column 1: Company domain (your input) Column 2: Company name (auto-enriched from domain) Column 3: Employee count (Clay enrichment from multiple providers) Column 4: Industry (Clay enrichment) Column 5: Revenue estimate (Clay enrichment) Column 6: Tech stack (BuiltWith integration - add your own API key to save credits) For each column, click the + button and select an enrichment action. Clay shows you which providers can fill that column and what it costs in credits. Start with the cheapest provider. If it returns empty, add a fallback provider. This is waterfall enrichment: try Provider A (cheapest or most accurate). If no result, try Provider B. If still no result, try Provider C. You define the priority order. Clay runs through them automatically for each row. Credit tip: every enrichment action costs credits. A single row with 5 enrichments might use 5-15 credits. At $349/month for 10,000 credits, that is 650-2,000 rows per month. Plan your enrichment depth based on your credit budget.

PATTERN

Finding verified email addresses is the highest-value Clay workflow. The waterfall approach yields 20-30% more valid emails than any single provider. Set up three email enrichment columns in order: 1. Apollo email lookup (cheapest, good coverage for US contacts) 2. Prospeo email finder (strong for European contacts, connect your own API key) 3. Dropcontact email enrichment (GDPR-compliant, good for contacts Apollo misses) Each column has a condition: only run if the previous column returned empty. This prevents wasting credits on leads that already have a verified email. After the waterfall, add an MX validation column. This checks whether the email domain actually accepts email. It catches defunct domains, typos, and honeypot addresses. MX validation costs almost nothing in credits and saves you from bounce-rate damage. Results: a waterfall with 3 providers and MX validation typically yields 70-85% valid email coverage on a B2B contact list. Single-provider enrichment gets you 50-60%. That 20% difference is hundreds of extra contacts per month reaching real inboxes.

PATTERN

Claygent is Clay's built-in AI agent. Give it a prompt and a URL, and it researches the target and returns structured data. This is how you generate personalization at scale without manually researching each prospect. Example prompt: "Visit this company's website and find: 1) Their most recent product launch or major announcement 2) Whether they are hiring for sales or marketing roles 3) One specific data point that shows they are growing." Claygent visits the website, reads the content, and returns the findings in your specified format. This runs on every row automatically. Use cases beyond personalization: Competitor analysis: "Visit this company's pricing page and extract their pricing tiers and feature lists." Tech stack detection: "Visit this website and identify which analytics, CRM, and marketing tools they use based on page source and visible integrations." Content research: "Find this company's most recent blog post and summarize its main topic." Credit cost: Claygent uses more credits than standard enrichments (typically 5-10 credits per row). Use it selectively - run Claygent only on Tier 1 accounts that passed your scoring threshold, not on every lead.

PRO TIP

Clay credits are the main cost driver. Here is how to get maximum value: Bring your own API keys. For providers like BuiltWith, Prospeo, Dropcontact, and Hunter - connect your own API keys in Clay settings. These enrichments use your provider subscription instead of Clay credits. If you already pay for Prospeo ($39/month for 5,000 lookups), route those lookups through your key instead of burning Clay credits. Filter before enriching. Do not enrich every row in your table. Add filter conditions: only enrich companies with 50+ employees, only find contacts with VP or Director in the title, only run Claygent on accounts scoring 40+. Every filter saves credits on low-value leads. Batch processing. Upload your full lead list, run the cheap enrichments first (company name, industry, size), filter to qualified accounts, then run the expensive enrichments (email waterfall, Claygent research) only on the filtered set. Template tables. Build your enrichment workflow once, save it as a template. New campaigns start from the template instead of rebuilding from scratch. This prevents mistakes that waste credits on misconfigured enrichments. Monitor credit usage. Clay shows credit consumption per column. If one enrichment is burning credits without adding value (low fill rate, data you do not use), remove it from the waterfall.