Prepared by Maja Voje

7 Clay Plays for ABM - horizontal.png

ABM isn't signal-based outbound with better targeting. It's building awareness, relationships, and engagement with buying committees before they're ready to buy.

The ABM Reality Check

Here's what most "ABM programs" actually are:

  1. Buy intent data
  2. Upload account list to LinkedIn
  3. Send personalized cold emails
  4. Pray someone replies

But that's just spray-and-pray with a fancier target list.

Real ABM requires:

These 7 plays show you how Clay enables real ABM, not just better outbound.

Before You Start: Clay Setup Tips Two Clay features will save you hours when building these plays:

1. Sculptor: Build Tables in Plain English Instead of manually adding columns one by one, use Clay's Sculptor to describe what you want:

"Create a table that finds companies similar to my best customers (from attached csv), enriches them with funding data, headcount growth, and recent news, then scores them based on growth signals"

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Sculptor will: → Set up the right data sources → Add appropriate enrichment columns → Configure the integrations you need

2. AI Prompt Optimization: Let Clay Write Better Prompts When adding any AI-powered column (Claygent, ChatGPT, etc.), you don't need to write perfect prompts yourself.

How it works:

  1. Describe what you want in plain language: "Research this company and find their main business challenges"
  2. Click to generate an optimized prompt
  3. Clay rewrites your description into a detailed, effective prompt with proper formatting

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After you click Generate, Clay will generate a fully-optimized prompt for better outputs.

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Now, let’s dive into the 7 Clay plays for ABM.

The Plays

The Plays (In Execution Order)

# Play ABM Function What Makes It ABM
1 Target Accounts by Challenge Type Account Selection Finds accounts by shared challenges, not just firmographics
2 1st Party Signal Infrastructure Signal Generation Captures your engagement signals, not just 3rd party intent
3 Tiered LinkedIn ABM Campaigns Demand Generation Coordinates awareness → engagement → conversion by tier
4 Personalized Account Insights Public Content Awareness Building Creates content about accounts, not cold pitches to them
5 ABM Event & Webinar Engine Relationship Building Uses events for buying committee engagement, not lead capture
6 Buying Committee Intelligence Multi-Threading Maps influence and prepares champion enablement
7 Journey-Aware ABM Landing Pages Personalization Adapts content to awareness stage, not just company name