Making stuff with Clay

Automating your prospecting at scale

Author

Momin Kaleem
August 08, 2025

Hey everyone,

Welcome back to the Markfive newsletter, where we talk about AI and automation strategies that I’m seeing from the frontlines.

Last week I mentioned I was building an automated cold email system, partially powered by Clay. With their recent $100M raise at a $3B valuation making headlines, I figured now's a good time to dive deeper into what they actually do.

The most common thing I’ve encountered when talking about Clay is that people have heard of it, but it’s hard to grasp what it actually does without getting your hands dirty.

It’s a very horizontal tool, meaning it can do a lot of things, so here is how I would summarize it:

Clay is a spreadsheet that automates building the assets you need to reach out to prospects at scale, without sacrificing the quality of your outreach.

These assets include:

  • A list of verified email addresses so your emails don’t bounce and hurt your deliverability

  • Qualifying criteria based on your ICP - for example company headcount, is the person a decision maker, and only reaching out to people who check those boxes.

  • Personalized lines to include in your outreach script based on research you’ve done on them via Clay’s built-in AI agent (called Claygent) like a role they are hiring for or a piece of content they posted on LinkedIn.

It does this by consolidating dozens of cold email prospecting tools that you'd normally have to pay for separately and duct tape together yourself. Instead of juggling multiple subscriptions and hoping your integrations don't break, Clay gives you one clean interface to work out of.

One of the benefits of the consolidated tooling is Clay works on a monthly credit system with 1-month credit rollover, and you can bring your own API key from existing software you’re already signed up for like Apollo or Seamless to save on costs.

If you'd like to get started with Clay yourself, they have some excellent online training guides on their site. I'd recommend going through at least the Clay 101 course just to wrap your head around the product before deciding whether it's right for you - even if you don't end up using it, you'll walk away with a better understanding of what modern prospecting workflows look like.

Intro to Clay 101: FETE Framework - Clay University

Learn frameworks for how to think about the various parts of Clay, and most common use cases.

www.clay.com/university/lesson/intro-to-clay-101-clay-101

That’s all I got for today - talk soon,

Momin

PS - If you want my help building an automated cold email system that actually drives qualified leads to your business, you can book a call here. We'll craft a highly compelling version of your offer for cold traffic, identify your best target segments, and map out the tech stack you need to keep your sales pipeline full.

*everything after this is sponsored material

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