can't scrape relevant contacts please help!

Hey I hope you are doing well. I am looking for help with a specific issue in Clay. My team is struggling to consistently pull the correct contacts inside digital marketing departments. We are prospecting companies that invest in SEO and SEM, and we want decision makers such as the Head of Digital, the Director of Digital Acquisition, or the Marketing Director who manages paid channels. As you know each company size the decision maker will be a different person. For up to 50 employees the CEO and even the Marketing Coordinator is relevant. But larger than that not anymore. Clay often returns irrelevant contacts such as general marketing managers, events marketing specialists, content roles, social media coordinators, PPC specialists who are too junior, or people who do not handle digital acquisition or are simply not an influencer or decision maker. We need a system in Clay that can look at each company and decide which job titles we should enrich, and which ones we should ignore, based on the size and structure of the marketing team. We want to avoid enriching the wrong people and we want to reduce manual work. We already use several outside data vendors by API such as Hunter, Apollo, Prospeo, FindEmail, and ZeroBounce, so the ideal setup would rely mainly on GPT logic plus our existing vendor credits rather than Clay credits. Can you explain how you would solve this inside Clay? I want to understand the exact steps you would take, how you would structure the logic, and how you would make Clay return only the relevant contacts who own digital performance budgets.

For contact scraping issues, first check your targeting filters aren't too narrow. [1] When using Find People, preview your results before importing - iterate and refine filters until you get relevant contacts. [2]

If you're using our Chrome extension for scraping, try creating custom recipes by selecting "Select Data" and mapping the specific attributes you need. [3]

Before we dig deeper, try using Sculptor (top-right corner) to help build your contact search workflow - it's free and can quickly set up the right filters for you. Let me know if that helps or if you're still having issues!

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Here's how to build a smart contact filtering system in Clay:

Step 1: Set up conditional logic based on company size

Use conditional runs to create different search criteria based on employee count. [1] For companies under 50 employees, include broader titles like CEO and Marketing Coordinator. For larger companies, focus on senior roles only.

Step 2: Configure precise job title filters

In Find People, use the job title parameters to include specific titles like "Head of Digital," "Director of Digital Acquisition," and "Marketing Director." Use the exclude function to filter out irrelevant roles like events marketing, content, and social media coordinators.

Step 3: Add AI-powered title analysis

Create an AI formula column that analyzes job titles to identify decision-makers vs. individual contributors. [2] This helps filter out junior PPC specialists while keeping senior digital marketing roles.

Step 4: Use seniority and function filters

Leverage the organizational level filters (C-suite, Director, Manager) and job function parameters to target the right seniority levels based on company size. [3]

Step 5: Clean and normalize titles

Use AI formulas to extract seniority indicators like "Head," "VP," "Director" from job titles for better scoring logic. [4]

Before building this workflow, try using Sculptor (top-right corner) to help set up the automation quickly. Let me know if Sculptor helps or if you need more specific guidance!

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If you still need help refining your contact scraping setup or using Sculptor, I’m here to assist. Would you like to provide more details about the specific challenges you’re facing so we can continue troubleshooting?