The Deal Lab was initially relying entirely on Clay’s built-in email enrichment system.

While convenient for getting started, this approach quickly became costly. Each enrichment consumed Clay platform credits, and as The Deal Lab's operations grew, so did their credit usage—drastically. The rising cost of Clay credits began to hinder their ability to scale outreach campaigns profitably.

To regain control over their costs, The Deal Lab decided to shift strategy. Rather than depending on Clay’s default enrichment engine, they subscribed directly to a few hand-picked email finder services. They then leveraged Clay’s "Bring Your Own API Key" feature—an option that allows users to connect their own enrichment providers.

With this setup, email searches no longer consumed Clay credits, but instead used the credits of the chosen data providers.

In optimizing this new system, The Deal Lab configured Icypeas as the first step in their enrichment waterfall. Icypeas proved to be around 15 times more cost-effective than Clay’s native credit system, while still delivering reliable, verified results. By putting Icypeas first, they maximized efficiency and significantly reduced enrichment expenses.

This tailored setup gave The Deal Lab a major advantage: they can now scale outreach operations without being constrained by rising platform costs.

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