How to Automate Outreach and Find Business Owner Emails Using Clay for WordPress Sites

Scott C. · 2026-03-13T14:33:41.003Z

Hello, all. I'm trying to do some outreach automation and finding it very difficult to get started in Clay. I want to build a list of websites running WordPress, crawl those sites, find the business owners' contact information, and then draft emails to be sent to the owners. Ideally, Clay would give me a list of emails to review, and I would approve them before they are sent. Is this possible? I know Built With has the website data, and I set up a test table by importing some websites in from that, but everything I try to get through the next steps just crumbles.

Honourable A.
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What steps is crumbling or you having issue's with
Sai K.
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Yes this is 100% possible in Clay, you're just missing a few connecting pieces! Here's roughly how the flow works:
Import your BuiltWith list into Clay (sounds like you've already done this)
Use the Clearbit or Apollo enrichment in Clay to find the business owner / decision maker tied to each domain
Pull their email using Hunter, Apollo, or Clay's native waterfall enrichment
Use Clay's AI column to draft a personalised email for each contact
Push it to a tool like Smartlead or Instantly for sending - but you can set it to "draft mode" so every email sits for your review before anything goes out
The part where most people get stuck is step 2 - going from a website to finding the actual person. Clay can do this but you need to map it correctly using the domain column. What step specifically is crumbling for you? Happy to help you get unstuck.
Scott C.
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Step 2 is indeed causing the issue. I've tried a few things, but the results have been unusable. Let's say I wanted to try the Apollo enrichment to find the company owners by scraping their sites for that info. If I go into the table and add a new enrichment, then type Apollo, I get around 20 options. I'm not sure which would be the right one to use. Also, it looks like I need to sign up for a paid Apollo.io account to use it?
Sai K.
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you don't need a paid Apollo account for this. Clay has its own Apollo integration built in that runs on Clay credits, so you can use it without signing up for Apollo directly.
Sai K.
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For step 2, the specific enrichment you want is "Apollo - Search People" or "Apollo - Enrich Person by Domain". Out of those 20 options, ignore others - they're for specific use cases. The one you want is the one that takes a domain/website and returns people at that company. Here's exactly what to do: 1. Make sure your website/domain column is clean (just the domain, no https:// or slashes) 2. Add a new enrichment > search Apollo > pick "Apollo - Search People" 3. Map your domain column as the input 4. Set the title filter to something like Owner, Founder, or CEO mostly whatever is your ICP so you're not getting random employees That should start returning actual people with names and emails.
Sai K.
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Also onee thing to note - Apollo's data isn't perfect for small business owners. If you're getting blanks, it usually means the person isn't in Apollo's database. In that case you'd want to waterfall into Hunter.io or Clay's native email finder as a backup. Hope that help clarify it?
Scott C.
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I don't see the Apollo - Search People option:
Honourable A.
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It the first one - find people from Apollo
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Scott C.
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Here's what happens when I click that:
Scott C.
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Those little key icons in the first screenshot mean the account requires its own login.
Honourable A.
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yea
Honourable A.
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connect your account to clay
Scott C.
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I don't have one. Sai said I didn't need one...
Honourable A.
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oh you need since you using their data source what you don't need an account for is using clay find people
Scott C.
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Does the Clay version of this work better/worse than Apollo? Does it just use Apollo, but deduct credits from my Clay account to pay for it?

How to Automate Outreach and Find Business Owner Emails Using Clay for WordPress Sites

22 comments

How to Automate Outreach and Find Business Owner Emails Using Clay for WordPress Sites

22 comments