5 ways to automate Clay with Zapier

For go-to-market teams doing outbound, two things matter most: high-quality lead data and efficient workflows. Without both, it's difficult to run effective outreach. Clay, an outbound prospecting tool, helps GTM teams scale their efforts with enriched data, context-rich personalization, and flexible workflows.

But to get the most out of Clay, you need to connect it to the rest of your tech stack—email platforms, CRMs, forms, and ad managers—to share data and communicate with prospects. With Zapier's automated workflows (called Zaps), you can move data seamlessly between Clay and your other tools for smoother, more scalable processes without all the manual overhead.

Table of contents

• Move data from spreadsheets into Clay

• Add new leads from lead gen tools

• Update company and contact records

• Create new records from forms

• Collect data from any tool

Move data from spreadsheets into Clay

Many businesses organize lead data in spreadsheets because they're flexible and easy to customize. But while spreadsheets are perfect for storing and organizing leads, they're not ideal for enriching them. 

Running lead enrichment in a spreadsheet usually means looking up LinkedIn profiles, pulling emails and other details from multiple tools, and copying everything into cells. If you have some technical chops, you might try wrangling APIs, but it's still slow, tedious, and error-prone. 

Clay streamlines this enrichment process by pulling data from multiple sources in minutes. And that's why moving lead data from spreadsheets into Clay makes sense. It's just that manual transfers aren't feasible when you have hundreds or thousands of leads.

With Zaps, you can automatically send lead data from Google Sheets or Airtable to Clay. As soon as a new record is added or updated in your spreadsheet, these workflows create a corresponding record in your Clay table, kicking off enrichment in minutes. It's a simple way to keep work flowing without adding extra tasks to your plate.

Pro tip: Need to clean up your spreadsheet data before it reaches Clay? Add a Formatter by Zapier step. Formatter can do things like automatically standardize phone numbers, split full names from single cells into separate first and last name fields, and extract email addresses from columns with mixed contact info. Check out our guide to getting started with Formatter.

Add new leads from lead gen tools

When someone engages with your sponsored content—fills out a form or requests more details—you want to capture their info immediately and follow up while their interest is high.

But most lead gen tools (like Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads) only collect names, emails, and maybe company names. That's too basic to qualify a lead or tailor your outreach. And if you're manually moving lead data into Clay for enrichment, you're wasting valuable time, letting their interest run cold. 

Instead, connect your lead gen tool to Clay using Zapier so you can instantly capture new leads and route them into Clay for enrichment. Along with Facebook and LinkedIn, this automation also works with other tools like HubSpot. Automate this process, and you'll be able to launch faster, more personalized outreach at scale.

Update company and contact records

Lead data gets stale fast. People switch jobs. Contact details change. Companies pivot. It's important to make sure those updates are reflected across your lead management and outreach tools, so your prospecting efforts, well, work.

While you can schedule time to cross-check the data in your CRM or lead database against the records in your Clay table, that's a pretty inefficient route. Even if you're careful, it's so easy to mistype an address or overwrite records and compromise the accuracy of your entire system.

You can keep Clay in sync with your lead database using automation. For instance, if you store contact data in HubSpot or Salesforce, Zaps can automatically create or update records in Clay whenever a contact or company property changes. By delegating the work to computers, you'll spend far less time worrying about data accuracy.

Create new records from forms

Forms are one of the most effective channels for gathering prospect data. But once you've gathered that data, keeping it in your inbox or CRM delays outreach. With the workflows below, you can easily record new form responses in Clay without lifting a finger.  

Just set up these Zaps to trigger once someone submits a form of yours in Google Forms, Webflow, or Typeform. A corresponding record will instantly be created in Clay, helping you save time and stay efficient.

Pro tip: Don't waste Clay enrichment credits on spam. Use AI by Zapier to analyze form submissions for suspicious patterns—like messages that are generic or full of gibberish—then use Filter by Zapier to pass only the legitimate prospects over to Clay.

Collect data from any tool

Not all valuable data lives in your spreadsheet app or CRM. Sometimes you encounter insights when you're just browsing the web, or you find details tucked away in a call booking page. Whenever you find info that could help you work smarter and faster, it's worth capturing right away. 

With Zapier, you can automatically import information from tools you use regularly and turn it into structured, actionable data in Clay. For example, if you save a new company to your Crunchbase search, a Zap can instantly create a new record in your Clay table with all the relevant info. You can also set up Zaps to pull data from RSS feeds or scheduling tools, so you always scoop up every valuable find. By automating these imports, you can keep critical insights flowing into Clay, organized and ready when you need them.

Sculpt powerful outbound workflows with Zapier and Clay

When you connect Clay to Zapier, you cut out the busy work, reduce context switching, and scale your processes with less effort. Whether you're updating lead records, enriching them from scratch, or moving data between tools, these Zaps put repetitive workflows on autopilot so you can focus on the higher-value work you do.

And this is just the start of what you can do when you connect Clay with Zapier. What will you automate first?