Clay is a platform that lets you collect information from 130+ sources and get accurate data for your outreach efforts. Instead of shooting in the dark, you can use Clay to find your prospect’s company email, phone numbers, and other relevant data.
Whether you run a sales team, a lead generation agency, or some other type of organization, Clay helps you find relevant prospect and company data, intent signals, and more, fueling you with qualified leads for cold calls and emails. That begs the question: Can you send cold email campaigns with Clay?
The answer is no, but let’s get into more detail.
Can you send cold emails with Clay?
You cannot send cold emails with Clay. Clay gives you a qualified target audience that your sales or marketing team can contact, but not more than that.
To use Clay for sending cold emails, sales leaders need to integrate it with tools specifically built for cold email outreach. For example, you can connect Clay with Woodpecker and close deals with cold email today.
Here’s how it works:
- Use Clay to generate a list of leads with enriched data.
- Set conditions and filters inside Clay (e.g., role, company size, tech stack).
- Push the data to Woodpecker through Zapier.
- Automate the email sequence from Woodpecker.
This setup lets you send personalized cold emails at scale, as it combines Clay’s scraping and enrichment process with Woodpecker’s personalized emails and follow-ups.
Now that you know you can’t send cold emails through Clay, let’s see what you can do to find decision makers and potential leads.
What does Clay really do?
Clay is a lead enrichment and workflow automation tool that helps you build hyper-personalized outbound campaigns. Think of it as a data engine for your sales outreach, not the actual outreach tool. You no longer need to Google company data, browse recent company news, or spend hours on LinkedIn to find relevant data for closing deals.
Here’s exactly what Clay does.
Find and enrich leads
- Pulls data from sources like LinkedIn, Apollo, Crunchbase, and Clearbit.
- Lets you input a basic list (e.g. company names or domains) and enrich it with contact names, roles, emails, and more.
In other words, you can start with an existing lead list and enrich it or build a contact list from scratch using Clay’s data.
Automate research workflows
- Scrape job titles, recent posts, funding events, tech stack, etc.
- Run custom logic (e.g., “Find founders of SaaS companies using HubSpot who posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days”).
Most businesses don’t have the resources to spend hours every day scraping for relevant leads. Clay lets you create a set of rules that makes sense for your outreach efforts, increasing the chances that people respond and eventually make a purchase.
Generate personalized fields
- Use GPT-style prompts inside Clay to write custom intros, subject lines, or icebreakers for each lead.
- Dynamically create personalized data like “Why this company needs our solution.”
This process ensures that even the coldest emails feel more personalized and helps you build rapport without much manual work.
Send data to outreach tools
- Integrates with cold email tools (which we’ll talk about in a second) and CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce).
- You can automatically push enriched data to those platforms using native integrations or Zapier/Make.
So, while you cannot send cold emails through Clay, you can definitely integrate with numerous platforms that help you do the job instead.
What it doesn’t do:
- It does not send emails or manage replies.
- It does not act as a CRM.
Tools you can use to send personalized cold emails with Clay data
If you already use Clay to scrape relevant data from your ideal customer profile audience, you’ll want an excellent tool for personalized cold email outreach. Here are some of the best options that will allow you to send hundreds of thousands of personalized emails and crush your sales goals.
Woodpecker
Woodpecker is a cold email platform designed for B2B sales teams and agencies. It offers features like email warm-up, deliverability monitoring, and automated follow-ups to enhance outreach effectiveness.
Top features:
- Email warm-up and deliverability monitoring
- Automated follow-ups with condition-based logic
- A/B testing for subject lines and content
- Inbox rotation to distribute the sending load
- Integration with major email providers
Pricing:
Plans start at $20 per month for up to 500 prospects. Higher-tier plans offer increased limits and additional features.
Clay integration:
Woodpecker connects with Clay via Zapier, allowing users to transfer enriched lead data into Woodpecker campaigns. This connection supports adding new leads and updating existing contacts based on Clay’s data.
Smartlead
Smartlead is a cold email outreach platform that emphasizes deliverability and scalability. It provides tools for managing multiple email accounts, automating follow-ups, and tracking campaign performance.
Top features:
- Unlimited email warm-up
- AI-driven email personalization
- Unified inbox for managing responses
- Detailed analytics and reporting
Pricing:
Plans start at $39 per month for 2,000 active leads and 6,000 emails. Higher-tier plans offer increased limits and additional features.
Clay integration:
Smartlead integrates with Clay through Zapier. This lets you add new leads and update existing contacts based on Clay’s data.
Salesblink
SalesBlink is a sales outreach automation tool that combines prospecting, outreach, and CRM functionalities. It aims to provide an end-to-end solution for sales teams to manage their pipelines effectively.
Top features:
- Email and LinkedIn outreach automation
- Visual campaign builder
- Built-in CRM for tracking leads
- Email verification and tracking
Pricing:
Plans start at $25 per month for up to 6,000 emails. Higher-tier plans offer increased limits and additional features.
Clay integration:
SalesBlink connects with Clay via Zapier, enabling users to transfer enriched lead data into SalesBlink campaigns.
La Growth Machine
La Growth Machine is a multichannel sales automation platform that enables users to engage prospects across email, LinkedIn, and Twitter. It focuses on creating personalized sequences to improve response rates.
Top features:
- Multichannel outreach sequences
- Automated follow-ups across platforms
- Unified inbox for managing conversations
- Analytics dashboard for performance tracking
Pricing:
Plans start at €60 per month (approximately $65), with higher-tier plans offering additional features.
Clay integration:
La Growth Machine integrates with Clay, allowing users to search for leads by email, LinkedIn URL, or lead ID, and create new leads from LinkedIn URLs.
Apollo.io
Apollo.io is a sales intelligence and engagement platform combining a vast B2B contact database with outreach and CRM integration tools. It assists sales teams in finding prospects and automating engagement.
Top features:
- Extensive B2B contact database
- Email sequencing and analytics
- CRM integrations with platforms like Salesforce
- Lead scoring and intent data
Pricing:
Plans start at $49 per user per month, with higher-tier plans offering additional features.
Clay integration:
Apollo.io integrates with Clay, enabling users to enrich company and contact data within Clay using Apollo’s extensive database. For example, you can use it to find people at companies by job title and retrieve open job postings.
Reply.io
Reply.io is a sales engagement platform that automates multichannel outreach, including emails, calls, and social touches. It focuses on helping sales teams scale their outreach efforts efficiently.
Top features:
- Email, call, and LinkedIn automation
- AI-powered email writing
- Detailed analytics and reporting
- Integration with major CRMs
Pricing:
Plans start at $49 per user per month, with higher-tier plans offering additional features.
Clay integration:
Reply.io integrates with Clay, allowing users to create contacts and push them into Reply.io campaigns directly from Clay.
Conclusion
Finding email addresses and phone numbers for your total addressable market is impossible to do manually. Clay helps you save time and it does the heavy lifting on your behalf, while you focus on driving sales through dedicated cold email tools.
Speaking of which, get a tool that is easy to use, helps you land in the primary folder, integrates well with Clay and has excellent reporting features, among other things. In other words, choose Woodpecker.