Learn and master Clay with Clay university

Once you’ve connected your ad platform, you can start building your first ad audiences in Clay. Let's jump in.

Step 1: Choose Your Data Source

You can build ad audiences from multiple sources:

• New prospect lists: Use "Find People" to source contacts
• CRM data: Import from Salesforce, HubSpot, or other CRMs
• Website visitors: Use Clearbit Reveal or similar tools
• Event attendees: Import from Zoom, Hopin, or event platforms
• Existing Clay tables: Use any table you've already built

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Example use case: Let's build an audience of CFOs at Series B SaaS companies.

Step 2: Source Your Contacts

Here's how to build your initial list:

1. Create a new table in Clay
2. Use Find People → Search for People
3. Set your criteria:
   • Job Title: CFO, Chief Financial Officer, VP Finance
   • Company Stage: Series B
   • Industry: Software, SaaS, B2B
   • Employee Count: 50-500
   • Location: United States
4. Run the search to populate your table

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Pro tip: Start with 1,000-5,000 contacts for your first audience. This is large enough to get meaningful match rates but small enough to move quickly.

Step 3: Enrich for Match Rate Optimization

The key to high match rates is having personal email addresses. Here's the recommended enrichment waterfall:

Essential Enrichments

1. Personal Email Waterfall

• Add a column → Find Personal Email
• Configure waterfall:
  • Step 1: Prospeo
  • Step 2: Datagma
  • Step 3: Dropcontact
  • Step 4: Hunter.io
• Run on all rows

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2. Work Email (backup for LinkedIn)

• Add a column → Find Work Email
• Configure waterfall:
  • Step 1: Apollo
  • Step 2: RocketReach
  • Step 3: Snov.io

Recommended Additional Fields

1. Company Information

• Company LinkedIn URL (for LinkedIn matched audiences)
• Company size (for audience segmentation)
• Industry (for ad creative personalization)

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2. Location Data (improves Meta match rates)

• City
• State
• Country

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3. Phone Numbers (optional, helps Google match rates)

• Use Find Phone Number enrichment

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Why this enrichment strategy works:

• Personal emails drive 40-60% match rates vs. 10-20% with just company names
• Location data adds 5-10% to Meta match rates
• Phone numbers can add another 5-10% on Google

Step 4: Clean and Format Your Data

Before creating your audience, clean your data to maximize match rates.

Remove Invalid Records

1. Filter out empty emails

• Create a view or filter where "Personal Email is not empty"

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2. Remove role-based emails

• Exclude: info@, admin@, support@, sales@, contact@
• Use a formula column: NOT(CONTAINS(email, "info@")) AND NOT(CONTAINS(email, "admin@"))...

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3. Check for valid domains

• Exclude: gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com for B2B lists
• Or keep only corporate emails for precision

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Standardize Formatting

1. Job titles: Use Clay's "Clean Job Title" formula to standardize
2. Company names: Remove legal suffixes (Inc., LLC, Ltd.)
3. Location: Ensure consistent format (City, State, Country)

Step 5: Create Your Ad Audience

Now you're ready to create the audience:

1. In your Clay table, click Actions → Create Ad Audience
2. Name your audience (use a clear naming convention)
   • Example: CFO_SeriesB_SaaS_Q1_2026
3. Select your platform:
   • LinkedIn Ads
   • Meta Ads
   • Google Ads (CSV)
4. Map your fields:
   • Email → Personal Email column
   • First Name → First Name column
   • Last Name → Last Name column
   • Company → Company Name column
5. Choose sync frequency:
   • Real-time (updates as table changes)
   • Daily
   • Weekly
   • Manual
6. Click Create and Sync

Step 6: Verify in Ad Platform

After syncing (6 hours for LinkedIn, 2-3 hours for Meta):

1. Log into your ad platform
2. Navigate to Audiences
3. Find your Clay-synced audience
4. Check the match rate
5. Review the audience size

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What good looks like:

• LinkedIn: 35-50% match rate, 3K-10K matched users from a 10K list
• Meta: 45-60% match rate, 4.5K-6K matched users from a 10K list
• Google: 30-45% match rate (shown after 24-48 hours)

🔮 What's Next

You've built your first audience. In the next lesson, we'll dive deep into match rate optimization—how to consistently achieve 50-60%+ match rates by mastering enrichment strategy and data quality.