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ResearchSkill

Clay Lead Gen Machine

Build a fresh lead list with verified emails and cold copy

Lets you ask Claude Code in plain English to find businesses in a target vertical, enrich each with a verified email, and write a personalized cold email, then hands back a CSV ready to import into a Clay campaign.

Nate Herk
Nate Herk

Founder & CEO at Uppit AI

About this Skill

When to use it

Use this Skill when you want Claude Code to source and enrich a fresh list of businesses in a target vertical, score them against your ideal customer profile, and draft a personalized cold email for each one. It hands you a CSV ready to import into a Clay campaign instead of a blank outreach list. Avoid using it for scoring an existing account book, filling only missing firmographics, or sending email directly, since sending always happens inside Clay.

What it delivers

You get a lead CSV with verified emails, personalization hooks, and a written subject line and body for every row, plus a chat summary that tallies how many leads it delivered, verified, or dropped as out of fit. You still import, map, and launch the campaign inside Clay to send.

SKILL.md preview

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Illustrative preview. Sign in for the actual file.

How someone would prompt this

Find me 50 fully enriched roofing leads in Denver, targeting owners and GMs, each with a verified email and a personalized subject line and body ready for a Clay campaign.

Inputs & outputs

What someone provides before the Skill runs, and the reviewable artifacts it returns.

Inputs

  • 01Clay account & credits
    • Connect a Clay workspace to Claude Code through the public connector or the Clay plugin
    • keep enough credit balance since every enrichment action bills per matched row.
  • 02Business context files
    • Write five markdown files: who you are and your ideal customer and buyer
    • your offer, proof, and risk reversal
    • past wins labeled real or representative
    • your public voice
    • and common objections.
  • 03Target run parametersFill in the goal prompt's brackets: target vertical, city, buyer seniority, and how many leads you want found.
  • 04Sending setup
    • Buy or connect sender accounts inside Clay
    • warm them 2 to 3 weeks with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set before launching a campaign.

Outputs

  • 01Lead CSV with copyA spreadsheet of enriched leads, each with a verified email, personalization hook, subject line, and email body ready to import into a Clay campaign.
  • 02Run summary in chatA short chat recap that shows how many leads it delivered, verified, or dropped as out of fit, so you can sanity check the run before importing.

Representative output

Lead CSV with copy

The full file carries these columns: Business, Decision Maker, Title, Email, Email Status, Phone, Website, City, Google Rating, Review Count, Business Pain Points, Recent Signal, Notable Achievement, Personalization Hook, Hook Source, Email Subject, Email Body, Needs Review. A few of them for two rows:

BusinessDecision MakerEmailEmail StatusGoogle RatingPersonalization HookEmail SubjectNeeds Review
Northwind Heating & AirDana Okafor, Ownerdana@northwindhvac.examplevalid4.6 (212 reviews)three reviews this month mention waiting two days for a callbackyour two-day callback waitno
Contoso PlumbingRay Contoso, Presidentoffice@contosoplumb.examplecatch-all4.1 (38 reviews)a review praises the tech but says the quote came three days latethose late quotes are costing you jobsyes — catch-all, not verified

The Northwind body, as written for that row: "Saw a few of your recent reviews mention waiting a couple days for a callback. I'm still getting this off the ground, no case study yet, so I'd run it free for 30 days and if it doesn't add at least 5 booked jobs you owe nothing. Can I send over a 90-second video showing how it'd work for you?"

Run summary in chat

50 leads requested · 50 delivered with an email, subject and body (49 verified, 1 catch-all flagged for review) · 7 sourced businesses dropped as out of fit (2 national franchises, 5 with no owner found, among them Fabrikam Mechanical, where only a dispatcher came back) · Nate's measured run: about 172 credits, roughly $12, for 50 leads with heavy verification.

How the Skill runs

Follow the steps in order. Each row includes the full instruction.

01
Source and enrich (Clay)

Claude Code asks Clay to find businesses that match your ICP, then enriches each one: resolves the company domain, finds the decision-maker, gets a verified email, pulls the phone number, and grabs review text for personalization. Coverage comes from Clay's waterfall: it tries providers in order and you only pay when one returns a match. A single vendor typically covers about 30% of a list; the waterfall pushes that toward 80 to 90%.

Agent
02
Score against your ICP

Claude Code reads your business-profile.md and keeps the leads that actually fit. Out-of-ICP businesses (national franchises, wrong size, wrong buyer) get dropped, not counted. For each kept lead it finds a real personalization hook from the live data: a specific review, a low rating on one thing, review recency, team size.

Output
03
Write the outreach

Grounded in that lead's real data plus your offer and proof, Claude Code writes a personalized subject and body for every lead. This is the step Clay cannot do alone, because it needs the context only the brain holds.

Action
04
Push back to Clay and launch

Claude Code delivers a clean CSV. You import it into Clay, map the fields, buy and warm sending domains, and launch the campaign from inside Clay.

Step

Connections required

No connections listed.

Install Clay and run it

Sign in once, install the Skill, then run the prompt.

  1. 1Install ClayUse the connector or official plugin in your coding-agent environment.
  2. 2Sign up or log inAuthorize Clay access and return when the connection is ready.
  3. 3Install the SkillRun the one-line install command from the Add this Skill card.
  4. 4Run the SkillPaste the example prompt and review the result.

Version history

Version 2From submitted SKILL.mdCurrent

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