Clearbit Prospector: The power of the prospectable Clearbit dataset in your hands ⚡

Last Updated: November 14, 2023

Introduction

Clearbit Prospector is aimed at helping customers discover new leads, more leads and better leads in their mission to build a healthy and robust pipeline.

With Prospector, customers get access to the depth and breadth of the Clearbit prospectable dataset; a dataset filled with contact information that can be exported into the systems that matter most to your business, and can turn prospects—previously unknown to you—into customers.

With an intuitive interface and search filters, Clearbit Prospector allows you to quickly search for prospects using various people and company criteria, and download them to CSV or create them as leads or contacts in your CRM. Additionally, you’re able to save prospect lists so you can revisit lists to discover new prospects as they’re continually-growing prospectable Clearbit dataset. 

In this guide, we walk you through the key features and functionalities of Prospector and how to use them.

 

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A note for Clearbit customers on contracts

Contact your Clearbit account manager or reach out to us at support@clearbit.com to set your account up with credits to export prospects.

 

Getting to Prospector

If you’re signed in to the Clearbit platform—app.clearbit.com—you’ll find Prospector in your left side navigation.

 

Searching for prospects

Finding prospects from the Clearbit dataset can be done in three simple steps.

  1. Select "New List". This creates a new prospect list that allows you to add filters for people and company attributes.
  2. Add People Filters. Apply people filters to narrow down your search. Select “add” for any of the available attributes—e.g. title, role, or seniority—and the list of prospects that match your criteria will update automatically.
  3. Add Company Filters. Further narrow your search by adding company filters. Specify a domain (if you’d like to prospect into a specific company), or add employee ranges, industries, or company tags to focus your search on companies with specific attributes.

 

Exporting prospects

For accounts on Free, Growth, and Business plans, exporting prospects is as easy as searching for them. Simply browse the list of prospects and select those that you’d like to export. Then choose either Download to CSV, or (for customers with accounts on the Business plan) select Add to Salesforce (or HubSpot, when available).

At this time, exports are limited to 2500 prospects at a time. Please contact your account manager if you’d like to export more than 2500 prospects in one export. 

Note: Credits are required to export prospects from the Clearbit platform. Read our guide to Clearbit credits to learn more about how Clearbit credits work, and refer to the Credits & Prospector section below to see how credits are used with Clearbit Prospector.

 

Downloading prospects to a CSV

To download prospects to a CSV, choose the prospects you’d like to export. Then select “Download to CSV” and your download will begin. 

It may take a few moments to generate the CSV of prospects to download. You can track the status of the CSV after you select Download to CSV from the Pending Exports in the Exports detail panel.

When your CSV is ready to download, you’ll see the number of prospects contained in the CSV, the number of prospects that are new, and “credits needed”. This—”credits needed”—is the number of credits your account will be charged in order to download the CSV, and is calculated by multiplying the number of prospects being exported (that didn’t previously exist in your dataset) by the number of credits required to export a prospect (2). For example, a CSV that contains 12 new prospects would need 24 credits to download.

Your account will not be charged credits until the CSV has been downloaded the first time, and will not be charged again to re-download a previously downloaded CSV.

If you made a mistake or don’t want the prospects that you selected after all, that’s OK: you can cancel a CSV that’s being generated or dismiss a generated CSV from Pending Exports without your account being charged any credits.

Note: We recommend connecting your CRM via Integrations. When you have a CRM integration connected (e.g. HubSpot and/or Salesforce), we will automatically check to see if you have any of the selected prospects in your dataset already. You won’t be charged credits for any contact that previously existed in your CRM. Learn more about CSV exports and credits in the Credits & Prospector section below.

 

Creating prospects in HubSpot and Salesforce

📝 Please note: This feature is only available to customers on Business plans. Contact us if you’d like to talk with our team about upgrading your plan. For existing customers on annual contracts, contact your Clearbit account manager or reach out to us at support@clearbit.com and we’ll work with you to set your account up with credits to export prospects.

(Coming Soon) Exporting prospects to HubSpot

To export prospects to HubSpot as Contacts:

  1. Select one or more prospects you’d like to export.
  2. Select “Add to…” and “HubSpot” from the menu that appears. 
  3. In the detail panel that opens, configure how you’d like these prospects created in HubSpot. Depending on the fields you have set up for Contacts within HubSpot, you’ll may see a mix of default fields, required fields (fields that need you to map the Clearbit attribute to write to it), and optional fields (fields that you can map if you would like data written to them, or leave blank).
    1. Default fields: These are pre-defined fields that Clearbit will write data to, like email, company website, first name, last name, and so on.
    2. Required fields: (If applicable) These are fields that the HubSpot Contact object requires in order to create a new Contact, that Clearbit doesn’t have clear a mapping for. Select the Clearbit attribute you would like to have written to this field.
    3. Optional fields: (If applicable) These are fields that may exist on the HubSpot Contact object—depending on how the object is configured within HubSpot—but aren’t required to create a Contact. You can optionally map a Clearbit attribute for these fields.
  4. Select “Create contacts in HubSpot” and you’ll see a confirmation that your export has started.

Exporting prospects to Salesforce

To export prospects to Salesforce as Leads or Contacts:

  1. Select one or more prospects you’d like to export.
  2. Select “Add to…” and “Salesforce” from the menu that appears. 
  3. In the detail panel that opens, configure how you’d like these prospects created in HubSpot. Depending on the fields you have set up for Contacts within HubSpot, you’ll may see a mix of default fields, required fields (fields that need you to map the Clearbit attribute to write to it), and optional fields (fields that you can map if you would like data written to them, or leave blank).
  4. Default fields: These are pre-defined fields that Clearbit will write data to, like email, company website, first name, last name, and so on.
  5. Required fields: (If applicable) These are fields that the HubSpot Contact object requires in order to create a new Contact, that Clearbit doesn’t have clear a mapping for. Select the Clearbit attribute you would like to have written to this field.
  6. Optional fields: (If applicable) These are fields that may exist on the HubSpot Contact object—depending on how the object is configured within HubSpot—but aren’t required to create a Contact. You can optionally map a Clearbit attribute for these fields.
  7. Select “Create contacts in Salesforce” or “Create leads in Salesforce” and you’ll see a confirmation that your export has started.

📝 Please note: In order to avoid duplicate records from being created, Clearbit Prospector does the work to prevent records that already exist in your CRM from being created again. Your team is only charged the 2 credits per prospect for new records created in your CRM that didn’t exist before.

 

Checking the status and history of exported prospects

It may take several minutes to generate a CSV of prospects to download, or to create records in HubSpot or Salesforce. You can check the status of your exports—as well as the history of previous exports—by selecting “Exports” from the Clearbit Prospector UI.

If there are any pending exports, or CSVs ready to download, you’ll see them in Exports. 

To see a history of exports, including the ability to download previously exported CSVs of prospects, select “Export History” from the tabbed navigation in the detail panel. To download a CSV of prospects that’s been previously exported, simply select “Download”.

 

What data comes with a prospect?

Prospector provides contact and company data for prospects. This data exported from Prospector on the Clearbit platform is typically what you’d expect to find on a business card.

First & Last Name

Title

Email Address

Phone Number (if available)

LinkedIn Profile (if available)

Company Name

Company Website

Company City, State, Country

 

📝 Please note: Once you’ve exported a prospect, you can use Clearbit Enrichment to fully enrich the record with comprehensive firmographic data and over 100+ attributes across contacts and companies. To learn more about Enrichment, visit our enrichment help center article.

 

Credits & Prospector

Credits are required to export prospects from Prospector on the Clearbit platform.

Every new prospect requires 2 credits to export from Prospector and the Clearbit platform. A “new prospect” is defined as a person/contact that was not already in your integrations connected to Clearbit (e.g. Salesforce or HubSpot).

Clearbit automatically checks whether a prospect exists in your dataset when you choose to export prospects, whether you’re downloading them to CSV or exporting them to your CRM.

We recommend connecting your CRM to Clearbit as you are not charged credits for exported prospects that already exist in your dataset. If your CRM is not connected, we’ll be unable to detect whether a prospect is in your dataset already, and you’ll be charged 2 credits for each prospect exported from the platform.

 

Saving Prospect Lists

While you can create lists ad hoc and download prospects to CSV or add them to your CRM, if you’ve added filters and found a set of prospects that you want to reference again later, you can save that search as a Prospect List. 

A Prospect List allows you to come back and find prospects—including new ones added to the prospectable Clearbit dataset—using the saved filters.

To save a prospect list, follow these steps:

  1. Click on the "Save List…" button located at the bottom of the filters list.
  2. You’ll be prompted to give your list a name. Give it a descriptive name to easily identify it later.
  3. Click "Save".

Once you’ve saved a Prospect List, you can come back to it at any time. Saved Prospect Lists are displayed alphabetically.

 

Editing, Renaming, or Deleting Prospect Lists

If you’d like to manage a saved prospect list—either updating the criteria, or renaming a saved prospect list, or deleting a saved prospect list altogether—you can do so.

To edit a list or view its filters:

  1. Select the list from your saved prospect lists. 
  2. Select “Edit”. 
  3. After you’ve made changes, select “Save List…” to save them. You’ll see a confirmation message in the top right of your screen confirming that the changes were saved. (You can also select “Discard” to ignore any changes you made and return to your saved prospect lists.)

 

To rename a saved prospect list:

  1. Select the list from your saved prospect lists. 
  2. Select the “...” button to open periphery actions for your list. 
  3. Select “Rename list” from the menu.
  4. Enter a new name for the list when prompted and select “Save”. You’ll see a confirmation message in the top right of your screen confirming that the list was renamed.

 

To delete a saved prospect list:

  1. Select the list from your saved prospect lists. 
  2. Select the “...” button to open periphery actions for your list. 
  3. Select “Delete list” from the menu.
  4. Confirm that you’d like to delete your list. You’ll see a confirmation message in the top right of your screen confirming that the list was successfully deleted.

 

 

What permissions do you need for Prospector on platform?

At this time, any platform user can use Prospector to find prospects, save and manage Prospect Lists, or download prospects to CSV.

However, to be able to create records in HubSpot or Salesforce, two things are required.

  1. You must be on a Business plan, allowing your team to export data from Clearbit to connected integrations.
  2. The HubSpot or Salesforce integration connected to Clearbit will need to have read and write permissions, similar to the permissions required for Clearbit Enrichment. Without read and write permissions, Clearbit is unable to create (write) records to your CRM and unable to read the schema of the Contact (or Lead) object required to map data to the right fields.

Prospector API

For teams on Free, Growth, or Business plans that want Clearbit Prospector API access, the same credits you use for the platform can be used for API calls. Every prospect returned by the API (regardless of whether they exist in your dataset) is 5 credits. For more information on using the Clearbit Prospector V2 API, refer to the Clearbit Prospector API (V2) documentation.

 

Conclusion

Clearbit Prospector offers a comprehensive prospecting solution that allows you to find prospects efficiently and get them into the systems that matter most to you. 

By creating prospect lists and adding people and company filters, you get access to the vast prospectable Clearbit dataset, and can put you in touch with the right individuals at the right companies in your target markets.

With Prospector, you can enhance lead generation, focus on connecting with more potential customers, and build a robust pipeline for your business.