How to Export a Clay Table to a Clean Email List for Your Sequencer

To turn a Clay table into a clean send list, export it with Actions > Export > Download CSV, keep the work email column as the send address, set aside rows with no email, read the validation column (valid kept, catch-all marked, invalid removed), merge repeats, and check what's left before it goes into your sequencer. The Clay table to email list tool does the column work in your browser; this post walks through it and the decisions around it.

Clay tables are built by whoever made them, so no two exports look alike. One has Work Email, Personal Email and three provider columns; another has Email and a validation column from a run two months ago. That's why the export step goes wrong more often than the enrichment.

Step 1: export only what you need

From Clay University's export lesson: open the Actions menu, open Export, click Download CSV. A notification appears while it processes, and the file lands in your downloads; earlier files are under Available Exports. The lesson suggests duplicating the view and hiding columns you don't need to make a cleaner export.

Keep: work email, first name, last name, company, website or domain, job title, and any validation or status column. Hide the raw provider JSON columns.

Step 2: pick the send address

Decide which column is the email you'll send to:

• Work email first. The column your waterfall writes the final result to.
• Personal email only on purpose. Enrichment providers often return Gmail or Outlook addresses too. They're usually the wrong address for B2B outreach.
• Provider columns as backup only. If one provider found a different address from the waterfall result, that's worth checking, not sending twice.

The tool looks for a work email column by name first and only uses a personal email column if you tick the option, and its source_column field shows which column each address came from.

Step 3: count the empty rows

When every provider in the waterfall found nothing, the email cell comes out blank. Don't import blanks into the sequencer; most tools reject them or create half-empty leads. Count them, because a high share of empty rows says something about the list source or the provider order. Our post on enrich-then-verify order covers how to arrange the waterfall.

Step 4: read the validation column

If the table has a validation, verification or status column:

Value	What to do
Valid / deliverable	Keep
Catch-all / accept-all / risky	Keep in a separate file for a smaller, slower campaign. See catch-all leads in sequences
Invalid / undeliverable	Remove and add to your suppression list
Blank / unknown	Treat as unchecked

Then flag role addresses (info@, sales@), personal webmail, and emails whose domain doesn't match the company website in the same row. A mismatch is often a parent company, an old domain or a pattern guess.

Step 5: check the file before the sequencer

A validation result is as old as the run that made it. If the table was built weeks ago, or the results came from different providers, upload the clean file at /verify and import only the valid file. Mixing a stale "valid" with a live check is how verified leads still bounce; see why verified emails still bounce.

For tables you run every week, verify inside Clay instead with an HTTP API column. Our Clay verification guide covers the setup and rate limits.

Limits

• Clay's export columns are whatever the table has; the tool finds columns by name, so check the notes above the result.
• No file-based tool can tell which addresses have a working inbox today or which domains accept every address; that needs a live check.
• A cold list isn't consent. Follow the rules where your recipients are.

Where SimpleVerifier fits

The Clay table tool runs free in your browser and nothing is uploaded. The live check is on the verify page: the first 100 checks are free with a Google sign-in. Pro is $39 a month with the first 100,000 checks a month at full speed, then slower, never cut off, and one-time packs of 10,000 checks for $15 never expire. See pricing.