How do I find leads in Apollo and enrich them in Clay?
You find leads in Apollo by building a people search, and you enrich them in Clay by importing those people into a Clay table and adding enrichment columns. In Apollo, you filter its database by job title, seniority, and location, and by company details such as headcount, industry keywords, revenue, funding, and the technology a company uses. You save the people who look right to a list, then export the list as a CSV file, which counts against your plan's export limits. Clay also lists Apollo among the data providers it can pull from, so some teams run that step inside Clay instead of exporting.
Once the people are in a Clay table, each enrichment is a column that runs on every row. A company enrichment adds the domain, industry, employee count, and funding. A work email waterfall asks a first provider for the address, moves to the next provider for every row that came back empty, and usually ends with a validation step that checks whether the address will accept mail. You can add columns for LinkedIn profiles and phone numbers, and an AI research column that answers a question about each company, such as whether it's hiring for a role you sell to. A formula or AI column can then score each row, and Clay can push the finished rows to a CRM or an email sequencer.
The pairing works because the two tools are good at different things. Apollo has a large, searchable database of people and companies, but a single source's email addresses go stale as people change jobs. Clay's waterfall covers those gaps by asking many providers in turn.
Where this route stops is judgment. Clay runs every column on every row you import, and each enrichment costs credits whether or not the person was worth contacting. Nothing in the setup checks that the head of growth Apollo listed still works there, that the company isn't already your customer, or that it isn't a competitor. Those checks happen by hand, or they don't happen.
A good result is a list you'd be glad to send from. Every person on it fits your profile and still holds the role, has a work email that has been checked, and carries the facts that explain why they're worth contacting this month.
Kite does that work for you. It finds the leads in Apollo, decides who is worth enriching, and runs the enrichment and verification itself.
How to get started
Start by telling Kite who you want to reach:
"Find 50 heads of operations at logistics companies in the US and Canada with 100 to 1,000 employees, and get me verified work emails for the best ones."
Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. By the time you ask, it already knows your ideal customer profile, your current customers, and your competitors from that research. That lets it propose the titles, seniority, company size, locations, and technologies to target without a long brief. Confirm the profile or adjust it, and Kite starts. You can work with Kite in your browser in the Kite web app or in Slack.
You don't need an Apollo account, because Kite has its own Apollo connection built in. Connect your own Apollo account when you want Kite to work from contacts you've already saved there, or to put the finished list back into Apollo.
Kite runs its enrichment with its own providers rather than inside your Clay workspace. If your team works in Clay, you can share a Clay export with Kite to work from, and Kite can hand the finished list back as a CSV file that you import into a Clay table.
How Kite finds and enriches the leads
Which companies and people fit?
Kite starts with companies, then finds the right people inside them. Through its built-in Apollo connection, it searches for companies by headcount, location, revenue, funding, keywords, and the technology they use. It then searches for people at those companies by job title, seniority, and location, and it can include similar titles so a "head of operations" search also catches a "director of operations."
Kite puts every part of your profile that Apollo can filter on into the search itself. That keeps people who were never a fit out of the list, so the later steps only spend effort on real candidates. With your own Apollo account connected, Kite can also search the contacts you've already saved by name, title, company, or email, and filter them by contact stage.
Who is worth enriching?
Kite qualifies every prospect before it pays to enrich anyone, which is the step a Clay table skips. First it confirms that each person still holds the role at that company, using their public profile or the company's own pages, and it drops anyone who has moved on. Next it removes your existing customers, your competitors, and anyone who has asked not to hear from you.
Every prospect who passes gets a fit score from one to five with a one-line reason, such as "Head of operations at a 300-person freight company that just opened two warehouse roles." When the list runs past about fifteen people, Kite splits it into primary and secondary groups so you know where to start. If fewer people qualify than you asked for, Kite tells you how many it found and why the rest fell short.
How does Kite find each work email?
Kite finds work emails with a waterfall, the same approach Clay is known for. It sends each qualified person, identified by their LinkedIn profile or by name and company domain, through several email-finding providers in turn. A provider only gets a person after the providers before it came up empty, so no one is looked up again once an address is found.
Kite verifies every address it finds and keeps the verdict on the record: verified, risky, invalid, or unverified, with catch-all domains flagged. A catch-all domain accepts mail for any address, so a send to it can still bounce later, and the flag tells you to treat it with care. Kite leaves out personal mailboxes, and when no provider finds an address, the record says not found rather than carrying a guess.
What company details and timing come with each lead?
Kite adds the company facts a salesperson needs and a reason to reach out now. Apollo's company enrichment supplies the domain, industry, employee count, revenue, funding, and technology in use. Kite also reads each company's open job postings and recent news in Apollo, which often turns up a timely reason to get in touch, such as a new hire on the team you sell to or a funding round.
That research goes into the fit reason on each record. A rep who opens the list sees why the person was chosen and what to mention, without redoing the work.
Where does the finished list go?
Kite delivers the list wherever your team works next. It can share the list as a CSV file with a column for every field, ready to import into a Clay table or any other tool. It can also save the records to a connected product such as your CRM or a Google Sheet.
With your Apollo account connected, Kite can create or update each person as an Apollo contact, linked to their company account, with the labels and contact stage you choose. It can then add the contacts to an Apollo sequence you pick. Kite can also write a personalized first email for each primary prospect, using the research on their company. It asks before it sends any outreach.
What Kite reports back
When the work is done, Kite posts a summary in the conversation where you asked. It says how many people it delivered against how many you asked for, how many have a verified work email, and how many came back risky or not found. It also lists who it skipped and why, such as a job change or an existing customer. The full list comes with it as a table you can scan without opening another tool.
If you want new leads every week, ask Kite to repeat the job on a schedule. Each run finds people who match your profile, qualifies and enriches them the same way, and posts its summary in the same place.
What the finished work contains
When Kite finishes, you have a list of qualified prospects that is ready for outreach, and a record of how it was built.
People
Each prospect has their name, current title, seniority, company, LinkedIn profile, and work email, with the email's verification verdict beside it.
Companies
Each account has its domain, industry, employee count, revenue, funding, and technology in use.
Fit scores and reasons
Each person has a score from one to five and a sentence explaining why they fit, including any recent hiring or news that makes now a good time.
Groups
Larger lists are split into primary and secondary prospects, so you know who to contact first.
The delivered list
The list arrives as a CSV file for your Clay table, as records in your CRM or Google Sheet, or as contacts in your Apollo account, depending on what you asked for.
The summary
The conversation shows how many people Kite found, how many have verified emails, and who it skipped and why.
Common questions
Is Apollo or Clay better?
Neither is better overall, because they do different jobs. Apollo is a database of people and companies with its own email sequencer, so it's the stronger place to search for prospects. Clay is a workspace for enriching lists, and it pulls from many data providers, Apollo among them, so it usually finds more working emails than one database can. Many teams use Apollo to find people and Clay to complete the records, which is the job this page covers.
Do I need a Clay account for waterfall enrichment?
No. Kite runs its own waterfall of email providers and verifies every address, so you get the benefit of the approach without setting up a Clay table. Keep using Clay if your team already has workflows there, and Kite can feed it a finished CSV file or work from a Clay export you share.
Where does Apollo get its data?
Apollo says its data comes from public sources, data partners, and a contributor network of its own users. Like any single source, its records drift as people change jobs, which is why Kite confirms each person's current role before it enriches them.