Contact enrichment is where most Clay credit budgets go — and where most waste lives. The pattern that works:
Enrich for the use case, not for completeness
A rep calling enterprise accounts needs direct dials and titles; a programmatic newsletter needs validated emails only. Enriching every field "because we might need it" is the most common overspend pattern in Clay.
The economics
Clay's docs use this worked example: enriching 100 contacts with LinkedIn profiles and emails costs about 95 credits through the marketplace (0.5 credits per LinkedIn profile, 0.5 per found email, validation free with select validators) — and drops to 50 if you bring your own email-provider API key. General guidance: a fully enriched record typically costs 6–20 credits depending on data types, BYO keys, and waterfall depth.
Quality loop
- Sample 50 enriched contacts; verify titles, companies, and emails manually.
- Track bounce rate after the first send; >5% means the validation step or provider needs replacing.
- Feed bounce data back into provider choice — this is a feedback loop, not a one-time setup.
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