- Who this is for
- Teams with a known B2B field-coverage gap and someone responsible for enrichment logic.
- What you will leave with
- A tested provider sequence and cost per accepted enrichment result.
- Scope of this guide
- Official-documentation review with an editorial pilot design. No live product benchmark or measured customer outcome is claimed. Check current plan access and settings before implementation.
On this page · 7 sections
A B2B research team able to maintain input fields, provider order, quality checks, and usage controls.
A simple lookup already covered by one source, or a team without capacity to inspect conflicting results.
Where Clay fits in a research workflow
Clay documents waterfall enrichment: trying configured providers in a chosen order to obtain a data point. For this evaluation, treat it as a way to orchestrate research sources. It is not evidence that every provider covers your market or returns interchangeable fields.
Specify the missing value and input
Choose the exact field and the identifier used to find it. Test known company domains and permitted research inputs before uploading a larger list. If the source identity is ambiguous, sending it to more providers can multiply uncertainty rather than resolve it.
Write the sequence and stopping rule
Record which provider is tried first, what counts as a useful answer, and when further research should stop. Keep conflicting or uncertain values visible. Where the available configuration exposes provenance, retain it with the proposed update; otherwise establish a review record outside the automated write.
Keep run settings deliberate
The documented waterfall setup includes run conditions and automatic update settings. Inspect these before a trial. Use a small permitted batch and a review queue so a corrected input or changed table does not unexpectedly trigger more enrichment or destination writes.
Compare quality with a single-source baseline
Run the same research question through the current manual or single-source method. Count usable results, wrong-person matches, unresolved conflicts, and correction time. The extra source is useful only if the additional accepted information is worth the added operation.
Inspect usage and total cost
Measure usage from the actual provider sequence, including unsuccessful attempts and reruns. Check current Clay and external-provider entitlements. Agree a budget limit and a responsible operator before expanding; a longer sequence is not automatically better value.
Know when a narrower tool wins
Compare Apollo or Lusha for a focused contact-data workflow and Hunter when domain-based email research is the specific gap. Keep the existing process if coverage is adequate. Stop the trial if the team cannot trace accepted values or prevent unreviewed overwrites.
Add a research source only when it produces useful evidence at an acceptable total cost.
Independent editorial guide based on official documentation. We may earn a commission if you sign up or purchase through an affiliate link. Read our affiliate disclosure.
Visit ClayOfficial sources
Clay: Waterfall enrichment configurationSource material supports product descriptions; workflow criteria and pilot suggestions are our editorial analysis. Check the current documentation and your account settings before implementation.