The bad news: right now, you probably have 15 tabs open, five tools half-working, and a pile of leads that still aren’t enriched.
The good news: Clay can make your life easier. Instead of juggling a bunch of tools for data, research, messaging, and workflows, you can do it all in one place with smart automations, quality data, and tools that actually connect.
(And you’re not betting on some no-name startup...Clay recently raised $100M in Series C funding, doubling its valuation to $3.1B.)
But before you spin up your first Clay table, let’s walk through what Clay automation actually is and how to use it for RevOps without wasting credits, time, or sanity.
First up: getting your setup right from the start, because a sloppy first build is the fastest way to burn credits before you’ve even launched.
If you’re building your first Clay automation, there’s one golden rule: keep your table turned OFF while you build. That way, you won’t accidentally spend credits while you're still figuring things out.
Start small and test everything on just 10 rows. It’s way easier (and cheaper) to spot and fix mistakes when you're working with a tiny batch.
Here’s what else to watch out for:
Don’t forget to check the Cell details for your enrichment steps. Just because something looks like it worked doesn’t mean the data underneath is useful.
Set up your enrichment like a waterfall. Meaning, start with cheaper data sources and only move to more expensive ones when needed. Every paid step should have an “Only run if” condition attached to keep things efficient.
And finally, use Table lookup to filter out any current customers, partners, or open deals. No reason to waste money enriching leads you already know.
The more structure and guardrails you put in now, the smoother, and less expensive, your future automations will be.
Once your foundations are in place, you can start pointing Clay at real opportunities, like the visitors hitting your site right now without filling out a single form.
Most of your website traffic leaves without ever filling out a form. But that doesn’t mean they’re gone forever, or that they’re not interested.
With Clay sales automation, you can connect tools like RB2B or Vector to your site to detect anonymous visitors and push that data into Clay using a webhook. These tools reverse-engineer visitor info based on IP, behavior, or other signals, giving you a starting point, even if the visitor never self-identified.
Once that data hits Clay, your first move is to clean it up. Merge any duplicate domains so you don’t waste time chasing the same company twice. You want clean records before doing anything else.
From there, let Octave score those visitors based on their fit (Strong, Moderate, or Low) so you can prioritize who’s worth enriching. No need to burn through credits on low-fit visitors just because they landed on your site.
Now that you’ve got quality data on high-fit visitors, you can actually do something with it:
Clay lets your team follow up with high-intent visitors in minutes, not days, and do it without wasting budget on bad leads.
And once you’ve turned anonymous traffic into qualified leads, you can use that intel to go find more companies just like them.
Once you've identified a solid group of qualified leads, like the ones who clicked around your site or replied to outbound, the next question is: Where can we find more people like this?
Clay automation gives you a clear answer.
Start by pulling the domains of your best-fit customers into a table. These are the companies you want more of (same industry, size, needs, etc.) Then send that list into Ocean.io, a tool that generates lookalike companies based on the filters you care about most.
Once you've got those lookalike accounts, use Find People in Clay to identify relevant contacts at those companies, like job titles that typically convert or decision-makers for your product.
But before pushing anyone into a sequence, run another qualification layer through Octave. That way, you’re reaching out to the right people at the right companies, based on how they actually match your ICP.
Once they’re qualified, drop them into Smartlead or another sequence designed for cold outbound to net-new companies.
This whole setup turns your pipeline into a feedback loop: Find a great customer, clone them, qualify those clones, test and scale the segment.
But customer lookalikes aren’t the only signal worth chasing….hiring activity can be an even stronger indicator that it’s time to reach out.
If you're selling something that helps teams grow, like tools for sales, RevOps, or marketing, then hiring signals are some of the best intent data you can get. When a company’s expanding, they’re also likely investing in new tools and processes to support that growth.
With Clay automation, you can surface those signals automatically.
Start by using the Find Jobs step to search for recent job postings in roles that overlap with your target buyer, like sales enablement, revenue operations, or demand generation. You can refine the search even further by layering in filters like headcount, revenue, or tech stack to make sure you're focused on companies that actually fit your ICP.
Once you find companies that are actively hiring, validate them with Claygent, Clay’s built-in AI assistant. It can scan company websites, press releases, or job descriptions to make sure the signals are legit.
From there, enrich your list with verified contacts. Use Clay to find decision-makers, validate email addresses, and push qualified leads into your outbound sequence.
Instead of cold prospecting, you’re reaching out to companies that are already raising their hand in a different way: by hiring the exact roles your solution supports. It’s faster, more relevant, and way more likely to get a response.
Another high-value play is spotting when a company’s about to make a big tech shift, like moving from Salesforce to HubSpot, and getting in front of them before the migration even starts.
If you’re trying to sell to companies switching from Salesforce to HubSpot, Clay can help you spot them before they even start looking for help.
Here’s how: first, pull a list of companies that are using Salesforce right now. Tools like BuiltWith or SimilarTech can help with that. Then, drop that list into Clay.
Now you’re looking for signals that a switch might be coming up. Maybe they’re hiring for RevOps or Marketing Ops roles and mentioning HubSpot experience in the job descriptions. Maybe they just raised a round of funding and are rethinking their stack.
Once you've got a list that looks promising, enrich it in Clay to find the right stakeholders such people in operations, marketing, or sales leadership. And don’t forget to filter out current customers or partners so you’re not wasting effort.
When it comes to the messaging part, don’t pitch generic services. Speak directly to CRM migration headaches such as messy data, broken workflows, and low adoption. If you’ve got solutions for that, this is your moment to shine.
Of course, not all signals come from job boards or funding rounds, sometimes they’re hiding in plain sight on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is full of buying signals….likes, comments, mentions. But unless you have a system in place, those signals just sit there.
Clay helps you actually do something with them.
Let’s say someone likes your company post or comments on a thought leadership piece from your CEO. That’s a signal. With Clay, you can pull that list of people into a table, apply your ICP filters, and clean it up.
From there, you can track mentions of your brand or key phrases in comments and posts. If it fits your targeting, route it into Slack immediately. That way, your sales team or founder can reply while the conversation is still fresh.
You're making sure the right people know when to show up, and that’s the difference between robotic and real engagement.
And LinkedIn isn’t the only place buyers are dropping signals, some of the most unfiltered, high-intent chatter is happening on Reddit.
Reddit might not be the first place you think of for sales research, but it should be. It’s where honest, niche conversations happen, and a goldmine for unfiltered buyer intent.
With Clay, you can track posts across specific subreddits and watch for keywords that relate to your product, industry, or pain points you solve.
Claygent can scan those threads and sort them based on whether someone’s just chatting or actually sounding like a buyer.
When a thread looks promising, Clay sends it straight to Slack with a direct link so your team can jump in with something thoughtful and helpful.
But even the smartest play will fall flat if your starting data is messy.
Because nothing kills a good automation faster than messy data.
Before you hit “Run” on anything in Clay, you need to make sure your inputs aren’t garbage. That starts with filtering for your ideal customer profile. If something feels obviously out of scope, just toss it.
Next, check that the domains are healthy. No sense enriching a record if the company’s website doesn’t even exist. Use formulas (or Claygent) to clean up weird formats, inconsistent capitalization, or missing pieces. And always merge duplicates, especially when you’ve got multiple versions of the same domain floating around. You don’t want to burn credits enriching five versions of the same company.
Clean inputs mean smarter outputs. You’ll get better enrichment, more accurate routing, and way less debugging later on, especially with Clay pulling from over 150 data sources for research, enrichment, and intent monitoring.
Once your data’s clean, you can start layering in higher-value triggers, like funding events, without torching your credit balance.
Funding signals are great for timing outreach, but not so great for your credit balance if you're pulling detailed data on every company.
Start by asking Claygent. It’s a low-cost way to find out if a company raised recently and whether it hits your basic criteria. If the answer’s yes and it looks promising, then you can go deeper.
That’s where your waterfall kicks in: stack your more expensive tools in order of value. If Claygent doesn’t have what you need, move to your next-best data source. But only for the companies that matter.
Now that you know who to target, the next step is figuring out what to say, and testing it at scale without drowning in manual work.
If you’re not testing your messaging, you’re relying on gut instinct…but manually managing A/B tests across platforms is a total time suck.
With Clay, you can run clean, automated experiments without the mess.
Set up a Round Robin column to split your contact list between two Octave agents, each with a different voice, structure, or CTA. One could focus on pain points, the other on ROI. Or try short vs long-form. Whatever’s worth testing.
Push each group into its own Smartlead sequence. Then track real engagement metrics such as open rates, reply rates, and booked meetings to see what actually works.
But Clay’s value doesn’t stop at prospecting as it can also arm your reps with deep insights before they ever hop on a discovery call.
Clay is one of the easiest ways to walk into a sales call already knowing what matters.
The next challenge is making sure those insights are front and center when it’s time to take action, not buried in a CRM field no one checks.
You’ve got your discovery notes. Great. But if no one sees them, what’s the point?
The trick is making that info easy to find and hard to miss. Set up a rich text field in HubSpot, then have Clay automatically fill it with everything you’ve gathered, contact details, LinkedIn links, company size, AI-generated notes, whatever helps your reps walk into calls prepared.
From there, fire off a HubSpot workflow. As soon as that field gets updated, have it pin a note to the deal and ping the rep in Slack.
Now everyone’s on the same page and your team actually uses the data you worked so hard to collect.
From there, it’s all about tracking what’s working and making sure your automations aren’t quietly burning through credits without delivering results.
There are two sides to measuring Clay automation: one lives in Clay, the other in your CRM.
In Clay, keep an eye on your workspace credit usage by date or folder. Use filters to see which automations are actually doing their job and which ones are just burning credits with no payoff.
Then check what’s happening in HubSpot. Are those discovery notes being created? Are sequences going out? Are leads moving anywhere….or just sitting there?
And yeah, check the dashboards. But also talk to your reps. Are they saving time? Are they qualifying faster? Are they seeing better replies?
Because what really counts isn’t what’s automated, but what’s actually closing deals.
Clay can do a lot (some teams report saving up to 80% of their reps’ time) but if your outreach feels like a robot wrote it, you're doing it wrong.
Here are a few tips:
High-fit buyers are already on your website. The question is: can you see them?
We’ll help you reveal anonymous traffic, enrich the right contacts, and trigger outreach in HubSpot without adding a single rep to your team.
Here’s what you’ll get: