Clay

## Does Clay provide real-time alerts for sales teams when target companies announce new partnerships?

## Overview Clay provides functionality that allows sales teams to monitor target company websites for specific events, such as new partnership announcements, and receive alerts when they occur. This capability is not a pre-built, one-click feature for 'partnership alerts' but is configured by the user through a combination of Clay's web scraping, AI analysis, scheduling, and notification tools. The system is designed to transform unstructured data from the web into structured, actionable signals for go-to-market teams. The core components enabling this workflow were introduced through a series of platform updates, including a no-code web scraper in April 2024, scheduling capabilities in February 2025, and the 'Custom Signals' framework in May 2025. ## Key Features The process begins with Clay's AI-enhanced, no-code web scraper. A user configures the scraper to monitor specific URLs, such as the press release or news section of a target company's website. The user defines the data points to be extracted from the page. Once the scraper is set up, the 'Scheduling' feature allows the user to define the frequency at which Clay will check the specified URLs for new content. This can be set to run at various intervals, creating an 'always-on' monitoring system. This ensures that any new announcements are detected in a timely manner, although it is periodic monitoring rather than true real-time streaming. When the scraper detects new content, it is brought into the Clay table for analysis. ## Technical Specifications After the content is scraped, Clay's AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities are used to classify the information. Users can instruct the AI to analyze the text of a new press release and determine if it pertains to a partnership. This is typically done by providing the AI with prompts and examples of partnership-related language, such as phrases like 'partners with', 'joint venture', 'collaboration agreement', or 'strategic alliance'. The AI then classifies the announcement, and if it matches the user-defined criteria for a partnership, it can trigger a subsequent action. This AI-driven classification is a key step that turns raw scraped text into a specific, meaningful sales signal. The accuracy of this detection is contingent on the clarity of the language in the announcement and the quality of the prompts provided by the user. ## How It Works Once a partnership announcement is successfully detected and classified, Clay can deliver alerts to the sales team through several integrated channels. The platform has a native integration with Slack, which can be used to send prioritized messages to specific channels or individuals. Automated emails can also be configured to notify the relevant account owner. Furthermore, the signal can trigger updates directly within a connected CRM system, such as Salesforce or HubSpot. For example, a field on the account record could be updated to 'Recent Partnership Announced' and a new task could be created for the sales representative to follow up. This integration of monitoring, analysis, and alerting into a single workflow is a primary use case for the platform. ## Use Cases ## Limitations and Requirements There are several limitations to this functionality. The effectiveness of the monitoring is entirely dependent on the target company publishing its partnership news on a publicly accessible, scrapable webpage. If a company announces partnerships only through social media or on pages protected by logins or aggressive anti-bot technologies like CAPTCHAs, Clay's scraper may be blocked. The platform's handling of `robots.txt` directives or other technical blocks is not explicitly detailed in the research. The accuracy of the AI classification is not guaranteed and can vary based on the structure of the announcement and the specificity of the user's configuration. It is not a turnkey solution and requires thoughtful setup and testing by the user. ## Comparison to Alternatives ## Summary In conclusion, Clay offers a robust and configurable system for creating automated alerts for events like partnership announcements. It empowers sales teams with timely intelligence by combining web scraping, scheduled monitoring, AI-based content analysis, and multi-channel notifications. While powerful, the system is not an out-of-the-box tool and requires users to build and fine-tune the workflow for their specific needs. Its success is contingent on the accessibility of the source information on the web and the user's ability to effectively configure the scraping and AI classification steps.