Introduction
Clay's new Notion integration allows you to bring the power of your Clay contacts directly into your Notion workspace. This integration addresses the challenges of setting up and maintaining a CRM or people-focused database in Notion. Clay is the missing people block in Notion, providing many benefits:
- Easy Setup: The integration creates a pre-configured template in your Notion workspace with minimal effort.
- Real-time Syncing: Your Clay contacts are automatically synced to Notion and kept up-to-date.
- Rich Contact Information: Each contact includes detailed information such as profile photos, social media links, recent posts, news articles, and more.
- Customizable Views: Pre-set filters and views help you quickly access information like upcoming birthdays or contacts by city.
- Notion AI Compatibility: Leverage Notion AI to ask questions about your network and gain insights into the people you know.
Getting Started
- Sign up for Clay at clay.earth if you haven't already.
- Connect your accounts to Clay to import your contacts.
- Navigate to the Notion connect screen in Clay, available in Settings > Integrations or directly here.
- Allow Clay to access your Notion workspace.
- Clay will create a new page in your Notion workspace called "Welcome to Clay" with a "Clay Contacts" database and contacts will begin syncing to it.
Using the Integration
Once set up, you'll find a new "Welcome to Clay" page in your Notion workspace. This page includes:
- Contacts database: A database called "Clay Contacts" that serves as a comprehensive list of all your Clay contacts.
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Curated views: We've populated the database with a few curated views of your contacts:
- Gallery View: Displays contacts with avatar photos
- Upcoming Birthdays View: Shows contacts with upcoming birthdays
- Cities View: Organizes contacts by location
- Closest Relationships View: Highlights frequent contacts based on communication patterns
- Recent View: Displays recently contacted individuals
What Clay Does
Clay will create new entries in your "Clay Contacts" database as new contacts are created in connected accounts in Clay. For example, if you have your email connected to your Clay account and email someone new, they'll be added into the "Clay Contacts" database, usually within a few seconds.
Clay will also keep all of the following fields up to date:
- Name
- First Name
- Last Name
- Job Title
- Company
- Primary and Secondary Email
- Primary and Secondary Phone
- Groups
- City
- State
- Country
- Location
- Linkedin URL
- Facebook URL
- Twitter URL
- Website
- Upcoming Birthday
- First Contacted
- Last Contacted
- Bio
- Contact Strength
For example, if someone you know gets a new job or changes locations, those properties will be updated on the appropriate person in Notion.
⚠️ We recommend you do not delete, rename, or customize those properties. Use formulas or rollups to customize the fields as needed.
Customization and Use Cases
The Clay-Notion integration is highly versatile. Some potential use cases include:
- Creating party guest lists
- Organizing holiday card mailing lists
- Building a birthday tracker with gift ideas
- Developing a team CRM for sales and marketing
- Managing job candidates and resumes
- Organizing investors and mentors for fundraising
Prebuilt Templates
The integration comes with several pre-built templates to get you started:
- Team CRM
- Address Book
- Birthday and Gift Dashboard
Limitations
As of today, there are a few things our Notion integration doesn't do:
- Two-way sync: Notion's API doesn't currently support webhooks, so it would be incredibly slow to implement two-way sync such that changes in Notion reflect back in Clay. We're chatting with the Notion team about it!
- Updating existing databases: You'll have to use our Clay Contacts database as a starting point and customize from there — you can't map our "Last Contacted" field to a date field in a random Notion database, for example. We'll consider allowing that in the future!
FAQs
How soon will the changes I make in Clay be reflected in Notion?
Any change you make in Clay (e.g. contact profile edits, merges, archived contacts, etc.) should reflect in Notion almost instantly, if not within an hour. If it's taking longer than usual, you may try refreshing (⌘ + R) your Notion database.
How do I disconnect/trigger a force update of my Notion integration in Clay?
Navigate to Settings > Integrations and select the three-dot menu on the right to reveal your options.
What happens when I resync my Notion integration in Clay?
Selecting "Sync Again" in Clay will do a full reimport of all records into Notion. Keep in mind that this is a destructive action since we will remove any existing pages in your Clay contacts database and re-add everything.
What happens when I disconnect my Notion integration in Clay?
Clay will stop syncing new information to your Notion database. Unlike resyncing, disconnecting your Notion integration won't delete your database so any existing pages you may have connected to your Clay database will remain intact, they'll just stop updating.
What happens when contacts are merged in Clay?
Merging a contact in Clay, either manually or automatically, will delete one or more of the records in Notion and retain a main record. Because Notion doesn't have the concept of merging pages together, we can't quite replicate the behavior fully in Notion.
What happens when contacts are archived from Clay?
Archiving a contact from your Clay is as good as deleting them. Doing so will also delete the record in Notion. If you change your mind, you can always restore the contact from your Archive. When you do this, Clay will automatically bring back the record in Notion too.
Conclusion
Clay's Notion integration brings the power of Clay's relationship management capabilities directly into your Notion workspace. It offers a flexible, customizable solution for managing your personal and professional network, all while keeping your data up-to-date and easily accessible.
If you have thoughts, let us know at care@clay.earth or say hi on Twitter and Linkedin!