sales-skills/sales-clearbit

Clearbit Platform Help

Help the user with Clearbit platform questions — Person and Company Enrichment, Reveal IP intelligence, Prospector contact search, Name to Domain, Form Shortening, Risk API, Breeze Intelligence (HubSpot), and API integration.

Important context: Clearbit was acquired by HubSpot in December 2023 and rebranded as Breeze Intelligence within HubSpot. The standalone API still works, but product investment has shifted to HubSpot. Non-HubSpot users can still use the API directly; HubSpot users get Breeze Intelligence as an add-on.

Step 1 — Gather context

If references/learnings.md exists, read it first for accumulated knowledge.

What area of Clearbit do you need help with?

• a) Person Enrichment — look up a person by email
• b) Company Enrichment — look up a company by domain
• c) Reveal — identify companies visiting your website by IP
• d) Prospector — find contacts at a target company
• e) Name to Domain — resolve company name to website domain
• f) Form Shortening — auto-populate form fields from email
• g) Risk API — fraud scoring for signups
• h) Breeze Intelligence — HubSpot-integrated enrichment
• i) API setup and integration
• j) Something else

What's your CRM/stack?

• a) HubSpot (Breeze Intelligence available)
• b) Salesforce
• c) Other CRM (Pipedrive, Close, etc.)
• d) Custom app / API-only
• e) Not sure

What's your goal?

• a) Enrich existing CRM records with firmographic/demographic data
• b) Identify anonymous website visitors
• c) Score and route leads in real-time
• d) Shorten forms to improve conversion
• e) Build prospect lists by role/company
• f) Integrate Clearbit data into my app via API

Step 2 — Route or answer directly

If the question is about enrichment strategy across tools (not Clearbit-specific) — hand off: "This is an enrichment strategy question — run: /sales-enrich {user's original question}" If the question is about intent signals and visitor identification strategy — hand off: "This is an intent signal strategy question — run: /sales-intent {user's original question}" If the question is about building prospect lists across tools — hand off: "This is a prospect list building question — run: /sales-prospect-list {user's original question}" If the question is about lead scoring model design — hand off: "This is a lead scoring strategy question — run: /sales-lead-score {user's original question}" If the question is about CRM data quality and dedup — hand off: "This is a CRM data hygiene question — run: /sales-data-hygiene {user's original question}" If the question is about connecting Clearbit to other tools — hand off: "This is a tool integration question — run: /sales-integration {user's original question}"

Otherwise, answer directly using the reference below.

Step 3 — Clearbit platform reference

Read references/platform-guide.md for detailed module documentation, pricing, integrations, and data model.

You no longer need the platform guide details — focus on the user's specific situation.

Step 4 — Actionable guidance

Setting up Clearbit enrichment

1. Get your API key — sign up at clearbit.com, find key in account settings
2. Choose sync vs. async — use streaming endpoints (-stream.clearbit.com) for real-time; use standard endpoints + webhooks for batch/async
3. Start with Combined endpoint — person.clearbit.com/v2/combined/find?email={email} returns both person and company in one call
4. Handle 202 responses — if not using streaming, a 202 means the lookup is queued. Set up a webhook URL to receive results when ready
5. Cache results — enrichment data is valid for 30-90 days. Cache locally to avoid burning API calls on repeated lookups
6. Map to CRM fields — create custom fields in your CRM for key attributes (employee count, revenue, industry, tech stack)

Reveal setup for website visitor identification

1. Add the Clearbit JavaScript tag to your website (or use Segment)
2. Configure IP-to-company matching — Reveal identifies the company, not the individual
3. Set up alerts — trigger Slack notifications or CRM tasks when target accounts visit
4. Filter internal traffic — exclude your own company's IP ranges
5. Combine with Prospector — once Reveal identifies a company, use Prospector to find the right contact

Breeze Intelligence setup (HubSpot users)

1. Purchase credits — go to HubSpot Settings → Account Management → Breeze Intelligence
2. Enable auto-enrichment — toggle on for new contacts and companies
3. Map fields — Breeze auto-maps to standard HubSpot properties; review custom property mapping
4. Set up form shortening — enable on HubSpot forms to auto-populate fields from email
5. Monitor credit usage — credits don't roll over; adjust volume to match monthly needs

Gotchas

Best-effort from research — review these, especially items about plan-gated features and pricing that may be outdated.

• HubSpot lock-in: Breeze Intelligence requires a paid HubSpot subscription. If you use Salesforce, Pipedrive, or any other CRM, you must use the standalone Clearbit API (not Breeze Intelligence). The standalone API's future is uncertain post-acquisition.

• Credits don't roll over: Breeze Intelligence credits reset monthly. If you buy 1,000 credits and use 200, you lose 800. Right-size your plan carefully.

• Reveal identifies companies, not people: The Reveal API returns company data from IP addresses, not individual visitors. You still need Prospector or another tool to find the specific contact at that company.

• SDK deprecation: The official Ruby, Node.js, Python, and Go SDKs are all deprecated. Clearbit recommends direct HTTP requests. If your code uses these SDKs, plan migration to direct API calls.

• 202 responses require webhooks: Standard (non-streaming) enrichment endpoints return 202 if the person/company isn't in Clearbit's cache. You must configure a webhook URL to receive async results, or use the streaming endpoints which hold the connection open.

• Self-improving: If you discover something not covered here, append it to references/learnings.md with today's date.

Step 5 — Related skills

• /sales-enrich — Enrichment strategy across tools (Clearbit, ZoomInfo, Apollo, Clay, etc.)
• /sales-intent — Buying signals and visitor identification strategy (Reveal feeds intent models)
• /sales-prospect-list — Build prospect lists across tools (Prospector is one option)
• /sales-lead-score — Design lead scoring models using enrichment data
• /sales-data-hygiene — CRM data quality, dedup, enrichment automation
• /sales-audience-growth — Form optimization and conversion (form shortening)
• /sales-integration — Connect Clearbit to CRM, marketing automation, and other tools
• /sales-zoominfo — ZoomInfo platform (primary competitor for enterprise enrichment)
• /sales-do — Not sure which skill to use? The router matches any sales objective to the right skill. Install: npx skills add sales-skills/sales --skill sales-do

Examples

Example 1: Real-time lead enrichment via API

User says: "I want to enrich new leads in real-time as they submit our website form — how do I set up Clearbit for this?" Skill does: Recommends the Combined streaming endpoint (person-stream.clearbit.com/v2/combined/find), explains authentication, walks through the response structure, shows how to map key fields (company size, revenue, industry, title) to CRM properties, and suggests caching results to avoid redundant API calls Result: Working real-time enrichment pipeline that enriches leads on form submission

Example 2: Identify target accounts visiting the website

User says: "We want to know when our target accounts are browsing our pricing page so sales can follow up" Skill does: Sets up Reveal API integration, explains IP-to-company matching, configures Slack alerts for target account visits filtered by page URL, recommends combining with Prospector to find the right contact, and suggests adding visit data to CRM account records Result: Sales team gets real-time alerts when target accounts show buying intent on the website

Example 3: Breeze Intelligence setup in HubSpot

User says: "We just got HubSpot Professional and want to use Clearbit enrichment — how do I set up Breeze Intelligence?" Skill does: Walks through purchasing credits, enabling auto-enrichment for new contacts/companies, configuring form shortening on HubSpot forms, mapping enrichment fields to HubSpot properties, and monitoring credit usage to avoid waste Result: HubSpot CRM automatically enriches every new contact with firmographic and demographic data

Troubleshooting

Enrichment returns 202 with no data

Symptom: API call returns HTTP 202 instead of enrichment data Cause: The person or company isn't in Clearbit's cache and needs to be looked up asynchronously Solution: Either switch to the streaming endpoint (person-stream.clearbit.com) which holds the connection open for up to 60 seconds, or configure a webhook URL in your Clearbit account settings to receive results when the async lookup completes.

Reveal returns null for most visitors

Symptom: The Reveal API returns no company match for a large percentage of website visitors Cause: Reveal can only match IP addresses that belong to known business ISPs. Residential IPs, VPNs, and mobile networks can't be matched to companies. Match rates are typically 20-30% of total traffic. Solution: This is expected behavior — focus on the matched visits rather than the miss rate. Combine with UTM tracking, form fills, and other signals to identify the remaining visitors.

Breeze Intelligence credits depleting too fast

Symptom: Monthly credits run out before the billing cycle resets Cause: Auto-enrichment is enriching every new contact, including low-value leads from form spam, imported lists, or internal test records Solution: Set up enrichment rules to only enrich contacts that meet minimum criteria (e.g., business email domain, specific form source, lead score threshold). Disable auto-enrichment for imported lists and use manual bulk enrichment instead.