Verify emails in Clay
Clay workflows live or die on data quality — an enriched lead with a bad email is wasted spend on every downstream step. Adding SendSure as an HTTP enrichment column verifies every address as your table fills, so you only push deliverable contacts to your CRM and sequencer.
What you need
- A SendSure account with credits — each verification costs 1 credit
- An API key from Dashboard → API Keys (starts with
si_live_)
Add the enrichment column
In your Clay table, add an HTTP API enrichment column and configure it:
- Method:
POST - URL:
https://api.sendsure.ai/api/verify/single - Headers:
X-API-Key: your API key (store it as a Clay secret, not inline)Content-Type:application/json
- Body:
{
"email": "{{Email}}"
}
Replace {{Email}} with the column that holds the address you want verified.
Map the response
The response is a JSON object; the fields you'll typically map into columns are:
status—valid,invalid,catch-all,unknown, ordo_not_mailsub_status— the specific reason (for examplemailbox_not_found,role_based)score— 0–100 deliverability confidenceaction_status— SendSure's send/suppress/review recommendation
A common pattern: keep status and score as columns, then filter or branch the rest of the workflow on status = valid (or valid plus high-scoring catch-all, if your sending infrastructure tolerates more risk).
Handle the deferred case
Hard-to-prove addresses can outlast the API's synchronous deadline. When that happens you get a 200 with deferred: true and status: "unknown" — the verification is still running on our side. Re-running the enrichment for that row a few seconds later returns the finished verdict (re-requests join the in-flight verification; you are not double-charged, and deferred placeholders are never billed).
In Clay, the simple approach is to re-run the column for rows where deferred is true — one re-run resolves the vast majority.
Rate limits and batching
Clay parallelizes enrichment runs, so large tables can hit your plan's per-minute verification limit; a 429 response includes a Retry-After header, and Clay's built-in retry handles it. For very large one-off cleans (tens of thousands of rows), the bulk jobs API is cheaper on wall-clock time — upload once, poll or use a webhook, then import the results CSV back into Clay.