Build specification · Clay table architecture · two phase TAM project

TAM List Build Spec

The exact pipeline I use to turn a directory scale source into a clean, deduped, verified TAM list, and the reason the step order is the whole game: filter before you enrich, and every credit you spend lands on a row that survives to the export.

01Pipeline, in execution order

SOURCE          pull wide from the ICP source (directory, Apollo search, web set)
   |
NORMALIZE       casing, domains without www, phone and geo formats, title synonyms
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DEDUPE          stable keys BEFORE enrichment:
                company  = root domain + normalized name
                person   = email when present, else name + company key
                location = one firm with three branches is ONE partner record
   |
FILTER TO ICP   drop out of scope rows NOW, while they are still cheap
   |
ENRICH          waterfall only on survivors:
                Apollo first, Clearbit style fallback second,
                each field records WHICH provider filled it
   |
VERIFY          email verification pass; catch alls and role accounts flagged,
                hard bounces removed, verification status kept as a column
   |
QA GATE         sampling review against acceptance thresholds (below)
   |
DELIVER         live Clay table + CSV + Google Sheet, column dictionary included

02Table design

Column group	Fields	Source
Identity	company, root domain, person, title (normalized), seniority	source + normalization
Firmographic	employee band, industry, location (city, region, country)	enrichment waterfall
Contact	verified email, verification status, LinkedIn URL, phone where licensed	waterfall + verifier
Provenance	source of each enriched field, enrichment date, dedupe key	generated
ICP flags	match criteria results, inclusion reason, exclusion reason for near misses	filter logic

Provenance columns matter more than they look: when a field is wrong you know which provider to stop trusting, and when the list is refreshed next quarter the table re runs instead of being rebuilt.

03Acceptance thresholds I hold the list to

Zero duplicate company keys and zero duplicate person keys in the export.
Every row carries a verified or flagged email status; hard bounces do not ship.
Titles normalized to a controlled vocabulary so filters and mail merge work.
Every enriched field traceable to its provider.
A random sample check documented before handover, with the sample and results shared.

04Why this holds under volume

The same discipline is what my delivered Upwork contracts ran on: VIN data enrichment processing 15000 to 20000 records per day from OEM licensed sources where a wrong field was a compliance failure, USPS CASS address work where verified accuracy was the entire deliverable, and a TAM SAM SOM market sizing engagement. List hygiene is not a Clay feature; it is a working method Clay makes fast.

Prepared by Yinka Aderibigbe, August 2026. This spec accompanies my proposal for the two phase TAM list project; phase specific criteria plug into the FILTER and ICP flag stages without changing the architecture.