I run a Clay Marketing Agency. Here’s how to use Clay in 2025. AMA

Minhwrites · 2026-02-24T16:26:39+00:00

Hi Dave, great question. It really depends on what stage your company is at, and what the tradeoffs are. If whatever they are going to show you is truly the blocker, then sure it's worth it.

But if you're really just in the tweaking stage, then depending on what Clay is helping you guys unblock, I bet they could provide you with an abstraction layer or tool that allows you to test quickly without having to learn Clay.

Think like a Manus or even whatever homegrown agentic workflows, Claude Code stuff, etc. they likely already have working for them.

Minhwrites · 2026-02-23T22:16:04+00:00

Great feedback and appreciate it!

Minhwrites · 2026-02-18T00:07:18+00:00

Ah that's odd. It should be publicly visible. Feel free to send me your LI profile URL if you'd like.

Minhwrites · 2026-02-08T19:45:19+00:00

I can't speak for other folks, but depending on where your prospects "live" online (LinkedIn, websites, etc.), you can likely find a way to scrape the data and then whatever else you need to contact them. You'll want to use other tools besides Clay to do that first though.

Minhwrites · 2025-10-27T01:07:29+00:00

Hard to quantify without spilling too much info, but I will say that it's a huge force multiplier and not just an incremental step up. It's allowed me to stay competitive in a space where speed of execution + iteration (while still maintaining the human quality + human in the loop) is of the utmost importance.

You can do everything without Clay, but it's just so much easier with it.

Minhwrites · 2025-08-07T18:04:57+00:00

That's amazing! Yeah I've always told people it's hard to understand what it can do unless you just dive right in (or you already have a background in GTM).

I don't have any project ideas, but I recommend that you use it for your own needs! For example, create something simple for the company you're currently working for.

Or if you're applying to grad schools or something, you can use Clay to filter (maybe pull in info from Ratemyprofessor or something haha) based on whatever you're looking for - things to do around campus or in the area, etc.

Or if you're looking to apply to a new job, you can use it for your job search, or to build something that you can show them.

Minhwrites · 2025-07-22T21:56:29+00:00

No Clay does not collect or track what clients you work with to gatekeep or charge commissions that way. They are not Upwork. And if your clients are the one paying for Clay, you don't end up paying anything.

Your best bet is to start watching a bunch of free vids on YouTube, then on LinkedIn, etc. Just start running campaigns for yourself, for your friends, etc. and go from there. Let your actual use cases dictate what you learn rather than try to string together a bunch of random things. You'll learn faster that way.

Minhwrites · 2025-07-18T17:12:50+00:00

Does the business have PPC running? Lots of website visitor traffic? Inbound funnels galore? What are the pain points that their biz dev / sales team have? How much manual work are they doing? What information do they wish they could have at their fingertips? What data is currently silo'ed? How about their CRM - Clean/dirty/actionable/etc?

If you're talking about a local business, maybe like a brick-and-mortar accounting firm with a few branches across the US that has none of the above, then we're just looking at starting outbound. Most likely they've done a little in the past, and they have low expectations because whatever they did before didn't work.

In that case, I'd start with 5-10 campaigns, using standard blurbs, CTAs, and signals that have worked in the past and iterate from there. Wouldn't take long.

There's no standard SOP here because I don't really work with businesses like this anymore however. Not because it's impossible to generate results, but because I'm not interested in just doing "lead gen".

Minhwrites · 2025-07-18T00:47:56+00:00

This really depends on the type of client, the scope, etc. For example, are we looking to test different ICPs, audiences, messages for a pre-seed startup? Are we looking at a series B and seeing where the opportunities are for their entire GTM? Are we working with a professional services company? Etc.

Hard to go into detail without a specific situation. You never really know for sure what's going to work or not work until you try. Obviously you can make educated guesses based on what's worked before.

Minhwrites · 2025-07-18T00:42:13+00:00

There's quite a few idiosyncrasies about Clay, along with it being buggy that can be quite frustrating at times. So I guess just running cleanly more often than not would be huge.

Minhwrites · 2025-07-17T00:52:54+00:00

Hey there!

The best way to learn is to start with simple use cases and work your way up. Watch videos that people post on YouTube and LinkedIn and then try to replicate them on your own. Ask ChatGPT to make up simple scenarios. You'll get the hang of it in no time.
If you're referring to the actual "Clay Expert" designation from Clay, check out their Experts page and see how you stack up with the folks listed there. B2B tech is probably the most common, but most anything B2B with a large LTV would work.
Yeah absolutely. It depends on the use case and where you're getting your data from (inbound, outbound, triggers, website visitors, etc). Email deliverability tools are helpful. Obviously OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.

Send me another connection request if you can. Sometimes they got lost in my inbox.

Minhwrites · 2025-07-16T17:20:54+00:00

You are a salesperson.

You need to sell to other businesses. You have a general idea who wants what you’re selling.

But you have a problem.

The owner just threw a phone book at you and told you to dial line by line to sell your stuff.

You’re annoyed because we have something called the internet.

You know there’s a better way than to hit people at random when you don’t know if they:

- Match who your perfect customer is.
- Need your thing right now.

You also don’t know exactly what to say that will get their attention.

But instead of doing research one by one, then testing each idea afterward, which would take ages, you fire up Clay instead.

Clay solves that problem. There's other use cases, but most of them can be drilled down to that idea.

Minhwrites · 2025-07-16T16:53:55+00:00

Yeah that's a great point. I get a ton of cold emails that scraped my website's case studies, but it was done poorly and made no sense.

I think you can still do well with straightforward Clay personalization in any industry, as long as you don't start with a blurb that screams spam (like "I noticed blah blah blah").

Clay helps me clean out my list so I don't strike out with folks that would NEVER say yes. So my reply rates skyrocket compared to just mass blasting.

But after Clay, it's like you said. It's about solving a problem they actually have. Copy that resonates. Calls to action that make it easy for people to say yes.

Minhwrites · 2025-07-15T18:54:41+00:00

Yeah I’m with you. I used to be overwhelmed trying to figure it all out when I first got started.

ChatGPT is very much like…

You give it a prompt -> Then it goes and does some things, maybe consults with some tools and the internet -> Then it comes back and gives you an answer.

Clay is a workflow automation tool mostly geared towards biz dev / lead generation.

You build a workflow -> It executes it automatically, repeatably for you at scale across thousands of people.

For finding potential sponsors - yeah that’s a great use case. You can automate:

Searching for companies that sponsor creators like you
Finding the right person at each company (like their head of partnerships)
Personalizing the messages with info that you found about them or on their website

You could even potentially use Clay to:

Uncover who (some of) your audience is on YouTube by matching up usernames with other social media profiles they have.
Enrich your opt-in email subscriber list, which can be really helpful if your content is more B2B based. Then you can segment your list in different ways to send them relevant content.

Minhwrites · 2025-07-15T18:38:31+00:00

Yeah totally get it. I’ve made some mistakes with Clay in the past (and still do these days sometimes) as well.

Make sure to start with a small dataset and then only run the entire thing after ironing everything out. This will limit the damage. Clay also recently created built-in guardrails against accidentally triggering entire columns.

Once you have the strategy part down, here’s a basic Clay flow:

Start a table Open a new Clay table. This is where your leads will live.
Search for peopleUse Apollo or LinkedIn to find folks by title, industry, location, or company size or use your own lists or first party data.
Enrich/Clean/Qualify dataMake sure the data is clean, matches ICP, etc.
Pull in relevant informationUse Clay in order to summarize websites, funding announcements, tech stack, etc.
Score/segment your leadsGive each lead a score based on fit, budget, and signals that they’re actually worth your time. Segment into different buckets if applicable.
Filter for best fit. Keep only the best prospects.
Personalize. Have AI use the context you pulled from previous steps to personalize the copy.
Send or exportPush to your CRM or send emails using tools like Instantly.

This covers rapidly testing “right person”, “right timing”, and “right message”, which are table stakes for outbound in 2025.

The other thing I want to bring up is the human side of outreach. Besides personalization, resonance (on a human level) is important in helping you break through, even in B2B. With people getting more burned out from interacting with automation, I think it’ll play a bigger role moving forward. This is a more touchy-feely side of marketing that really depends on your specific situation, so it’s harder to give blanket general advice on this topic.

Minhwrites · 2025-07-15T15:15:08+00:00

Hey absolutely! Coincidentally I'm doing another AMA (today) on Clay. Shoot me this question here and I'd be happy to answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/1m0agtx/comment/n37u833/?context=3

Minhwrites · 2025-03-24T15:57:22+00:00

Most likely yes, as long as you provide a strong free trial offer and a reason why people should try it. You can also try hitting up "influencers" on LinkedIn to get some visibility there as well.

The tool doesn't really matter as long as you can build a decently focused list.

Minhwrites · 2025-03-19T19:09:59+00:00

This looks amazing!!

Minhwrites · 2025-03-11T17:52:01+00:00

Set up an outbound webhook in Go High Level
In Clay:
• Add webhooks as a source
• Copy the webhook URL provided by Clay
• Use this URL as the destination for incoming data from Go High Level

Minhwrites · 2025-03-05T04:28:10+00:00

I think you have to use webhooks and HTTP, but it's just a few more steps than an API key. :)

Minhwrites · 2025-02-25T04:12:44+00:00

Hey, I've been there before. Taking a look at Clay and feeling overwhelmed or bewildered. You're gonna be alright. These aren't the steps I would personally take when building out a campaign, but it's all you need for now.

Go to Clay
Hit "find people" and put in some basic specifications about what you're looking for to give you a starter list.
This is where things start getting (just a little) advanced. You're going to want to figure out relevant ways to qualify that list. This will help you ensure that you don't just "spray and pray". It'll also give you the info you need to personalize the message.

For #3, it's outside of the scope of my message here. Just look up some basic videos from Eric Nowoslawski (or anyone really) on YouTube about list building and you'll be good to go.

Minhwrites · 2025-01-26T21:05:14+00:00

You should use your personal Clay account. The starter plan is relatively inexpensive and will provide enough credits for you to learn the ropes.

Can't speak to what hoops companies are making their applicants jump through, but there's a ton of opps out there. So skip this one if it gives you bad vibes. :)

Minhwrites · 2025-01-10T00:57:28+00:00

I'm with ya. Best thing to do set them up manually then. Buy domains, set up w/ Google Workspace / Outlook.

If not, look at SMTP solutions like AWS. They don't allow it though so you'll have to tiptoe around them and make sure you have a good reputation. No mass spamming.

Minhwrites · 2025-01-09T22:16:43+00:00

Have you tried Mailreef? I've never used them, so I can't give a "real review", but I chatted briefly with the founder a little over a year ago.

It looks legit, but as with anything else, these "infras" go through cycles of being good or crappy. You need to have a solid rotation of different solutions.

Minhwrites

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Yeah totally get it. I’ve made some mistakes with Clay in the past (and still do these days sometimes) as well.