What Clay is and how Kite works with it
Clay is a data enrichment and sales intelligence product that finds company and contact information, fills in missing fields on records you already have, and holds prospect and account data in searches and audiences. Kite uses Clay to turn partial lead data into complete, usable records. It can find a company or a named person, add the fields that make a contact reachable, such as a professional work email, current title, and LinkedIn profile, and return confidence and source information with the enriched record. Kite can also query the Clay Audiences and data available through its built-in Clay connection to pull the accounts, contacts, and deals that match a plain-language description.
Clay is built into Kite, so there is no separate Clay account to connect before your first enrichment.
Marketing jobs Kite can do with Clay
Clay's usefulness to a marketer runs from completing a list you already have to building a new one and reading the account data available in Clay. The jobs below are ordered that way.
Complete a partial prospect list with verified contact details
Kite takes the leads you already have, even when a row is only a name and a company, and fills in what is missing. Using Clay's contact enrichment, it adds the professional work email, current title, employer, and LinkedIn profile, then returns confidence and source information with the enriched record. For the companies on the list, it can add firmographic detail such as funding, headcount, and technology in use. When the person or company match is uncertain, Kite keeps that flag on the record and reports the confidence, so you can decide whether a borderline contact is worth using.
A list you can act on beats a longer list you cannot trust. Enriched, confidence-labeled records are ready to load into a CRM, a spreadsheet, or a sequencer, and the record keeps its source information so sales can see why a contact made the list.
Find new companies and the right people inside them
Beyond enriching a list you bring, Kite can build one from scratch. It can find and enrich a single company from a domain or LinkedIn URL, search a company for the people in a given role, function, or seniority, or look up specific named people at their employers. Each result comes back with the same reachable contact detail, so a search turns into a working prospect list rather than a set of names still to chase down.
Run Clay's specialized enrichments, not just a basic lookup
Clay is known for enrichments built for specific jobs, and Kite can put the right one to work. Hand it a list of company domains or LinkedIn profiles and Kite runs the matching Clay enrichment to fill in the details, or it enriches the prospects it has already gathered for you. So instead of a basic, one-field lookup, you get the deeper, purpose-built data Clay is good at finding.
Ask questions of the account data in Clay Audiences
Kite can search the Clay Audiences available through its built-in connection in plain language and get back the matching accounts, contacts, or deals with the details on each one. It can also ask a natural-language question about specific accounts, where a Clay agent reads the account's contacts, opportunities, and recorded call and email context to answer. This turns audience data already held in Clay into something Kite can consult while it prioritizes accounts or plans outreach.
What Kite reads and changes in Clay
Clay is where Kite both looks up information and adds the enrichment it gathers to the search it creates for your run, so it helps to separate the two.
Information Kite can read
- Company recordsFunding, headcount, technology in use, and other firmographic detail Kite uses to size and qualify an account.
- Contact recordsProfessional work email, current title, employer, work history, and LinkedIn profile, returned with confidence and source information, so a contact is both reachable and traceable.
- Clay Audiences accounts, contacts, and dealsThe records in the Clay Audiences available through Kite's built-in connection, returned from a plain-language query, that Kite reads to prioritize and plan.
- Account context for a questionThe contacts, opportunities, and recorded call and email context tied to an account, read to answer a specific question you ask.
Information Kite can create or change
- A Clay search of companies and contactsKite builds the search that holds the prospects it finds or the list you bring, so your run's working list lives in Clay.
- Filled-in fields on those recordsWithin the search it builds for the run, Kite adds the emails, firmographics, and any custom fields that turn a thin record into a complete one, across the whole list or just the rows you name.
How Kite connects to Clay
Clay is built into Kite and runs on Kite's own managed connection, so there is no Clay account to authorize and nothing to install before your first enrichment. Begin with a goal, such as asking Kite to complete the missing emails on a list of trade-show leads. By default, Kite proposes which records to enrich and which fields to add before the run starts, and teams can enable act-first behavior instead.
Playbooks using Clay
- How to enrich a prospect list with Clay and KiteKite takes a list you already have and returns each record with a verified work email, current role, and firmographics, with confidence and source information attached to the record.Coming soon
- How to find leads with Apollo and enrich them with Clay using KiteKite sources the accounts and people in Apollo, then passes each identity to Clay for the reachable contact detail, so discovery and enrichment finish as one list.Coming soon
- How to research target accounts and enrich contacts with Exa, Clay, and KiteKite runs a semantic web search in Exa to surface fitting accounts, confirms a real company and person for each, then uses Clay to add emails and roles with their provenance.
Show 3 more playbooks
- How to add enriched Clay leads to HubSpot with KiteAfter Clay completes the records, Kite creates or updates the matching HubSpot contacts and companies so the enriched detail lands where your sales team already works.Coming soon
- How to add Clay prospects to SalesforceKite qualifies each Clay prospect, checks Salesforce for the leads, contacts, and accounts you already have, and writes each person as the right kind of Salesforce record with the reason they were added.
- How to send enriched Clay prospects to Instantly with KiteKite maps the enriched contacts to an Instantly campaign, adds them with duplicate controls, and confirms which leads the sequencer accepted.Coming soon
Where Clay fits in Kite's marketing work
Clay is the enrichment layer for this work. Kite finds or imports the accounts and people, then uses Clay to add the reachable contact detail and firmographics that let it score each prospect against your ideal customer profile and hand sales a record it can act on. Whether the list starts from a research tool, a CRM export, or a trade-show scan, Clay is where thin rows become complete, confidence-labeled contacts.
Clay supplies the people and the contact detail this work starts from. Before Kite writes an outbound email, it uses Clay to confirm each prospect's current title and employer and to add the professional work email the message goes to, with the confidence label that tells you whether the address is worth sending to. The firmographics Clay adds, such as funding, headcount, and technology in use, give Kite real details about each company to research and write from.
Clay supplies the buying team at each target account. Once you have picked the companies you most want as customers, Kite uses Clay to search each one for the people in the roles that make the buying decision and to add the work email, title, and LinkedIn profile that make them reachable. Kite can also ask questions about specific accounts in the Clay Audiences available through its built-in connection, reading their contacts, opportunities, and recorded call and email context to decide which accounts to reach first.
Review and approval
Kite proposes work by default. A team approves it with a reply in the conversation or the Approve button on a proposed plan. Teams that want Kite to act first can turn that on. By default, for a large enrichment run, Kite shows which records and fields it plans to complete before it begins, so you approve the scope.
Common questions
What does Kite return for each enriched contact?
Kite returns the current title, employer, LinkedIn profile URL, and professional work email for each contact, along with a confidence label for the professional email and source information for the enriched record. When the person or company match is uncertain, it reports that as well, so you can judge a borderline record before you use it.
Can Kite enrich only part of a list?
Yes. Kite can add new data points across the whole prospect set or target only the records you name. That lets you fill a specific gap, such as missing work emails, without rerunning every enrichment on every contact.