Clay is a workspace where you bring lists of companies and people, enrich them with data from 150+ providers and AI research, and push the results to the tools where you work — CRMs, sequencers, ads platforms, warehouses, or your own systems through webhooks and APIs.
The three things Clay does
- Sourcing and enrichment. Start from a CSV, CRM segment, or Clay's own database, then add firmographics, contacts, emails, signals, and custom research columns.
- Orchestration. Waterfalls run multiple providers in order until one returns a result; formulas and AI columns transform and qualify the data.
- Activation. Export validated records to your CRM, sequencer, warehouse, or trigger automations via webhooks.
What Clay does not do
- It is not a system of record. Your CRM remains the source of truth for accounts and contacts; Clay writes into it by your design.
- It is not a sequencing tool by default. Clay has a sequencer, but most teams activate through their existing one.
- It does not fix upstream data problems. If your dedupe keys are wrong, enrichment will be too.
Why this matters for planning
Clay bills Actions (platform usage: every enrichment call, AI run, CRM export) and Data Credits (marketplace data purchases) separately. Workflow design — how many columns, in what order, guarded by which conditions — is the main driver of cost and reliability. Treat workflows as production systems: design, test, monitor.
Need help applying this?
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