How to Find and Import Companies Using Clay

Clay is a tool that enables users to find, research, and import companies and contacts for various use cases like sales, marketing, and recruitment. If you're looking to import companies using Clay, here's a general step-by-step guide:

1. Set Up Your Clay Account

  • Sign up for an account on Clay.io.
  • After signing up, you'll need to connect your data sources (e.g., your CRM, spreadsheets, or LinkedIn) to Clay.

2. Define Your Target Criteria

  • Target Market/Industry: Before importing companies, you'll want to define your search criteria, such as the industry, size, location, and any other factors that are important to you.
  • Custom Fields: If you're importing companies for a specific purpose, you can define custom fields (e.g., employee size, revenue, or location) that are relevant for your project.

3. Use the Search Feature to Find Companies

  • Search through Clay’s Databases: Use Clay’s search feature to find companies based on your defined criteria. You can search by:
    • Industry (e.g., tech, healthcare, etc.)
    • Location (e.g., companies in New York, US)
    • Company Size (e.g., startups, enterprise-level, etc.)
  • Third-Party Data Integration: Clay integrates with a variety of third-party services and databases (e.g., LinkedIn, Crunchbase, etc.), which you can use to find companies that fit your criteria.

4. Filter the Results

  • Use Clay's built-in filters to narrow down your search results.
  • Filters might include:
    • Company size (e.g., number of employees)
    • Revenue estimates
    • Funding stage (for startups)
    • Technology stack (if using for tech stack targeting)

5. Import Companies into Clay

  • After finding a list of companies that meet your search criteria, you can import them directly into your workspace in Clay.
  • Typically, you'll either:
    • Bulk Import: Upload a CSV file or integrate your existing CRM to directly import companies.
    • Direct Import: Use Clay's tools to automatically add companies based on your search criteria.

6. Enrich Data (Optional)

  • Enrich Data with Contact Information: If you're looking to import companies and also gather decision-maker contact details, Clay allows you to enrich company profiles with email addresses, LinkedIn profiles, and other contact information.
  • You can use integrations with tools like Clearbit or Hunter.io for enriching data.

7. Organize and Manage the Imported Companies

  • Once you've imported the companies, you can organize them in Clay by creating custom lists, tags, and filtering options.
  • You can also automate tasks, such as reaching out to these companies via email or syncing data with your CRM.

8. Integration with Other Tools

  • If you're using Clay for sales or marketing outreach, you can integrate your lists with email tools like Mailchimp or outreach platforms like Apollo.
  • Clay supports exporting the data as well, so if you prefer to work with the imported company data outside of Clay, you can export it to a CSV, a CRM, or a database.

Example Use Case

Suppose you're looking for tech startups in San Francisco with less than 50 employees. You would:

  1. Set up filters for location and company size.
  2. Use Clay’s database (or third-party integrations) to find companies that match your criteria.
  3. Import them into Clay.
  4. Organize them into a list for targeted outreach.


Here's how you can do it -

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