A Beginner’s Guide to Pulling Data from PhantomBuster Using Clay

Ever felt overwhelmed juggling between multiple apps for different tasks?

I feel you.

In the real world, it’s all too common to bounce between apps to manage different projects, reach out to our peers, or even do some simple research.

But Clay is about to change that.

Clay is a platform you can use to integrate and streamline everything you need. It even supports third-party apps like PhantomBuster. How amazing is that!

Perhaps, you’re trying to consolidate scattered data to refine your campaign insights. Or, you want to boost your client outreach. With Clay, all of these can be done with a few clicks.

I’ve written this guide to walk you through pulling data from PhantomBuster to Clay. No jargon or technical skills are needed. 

Hopefully, by the end, you can simplify your workflow using Clay. Let’s get started!

Creating an Automated Task in PhantomBuster

In this tutorial, we’re going to assume that you already have an active account in PhantomBuster. 

Before we can integrate PhantomBuster on Clay, we’ll need to set up a few things. 

First, you’ll need to have an existing output file. This is carried out by a simple automated action called a Phantom. 

A Phantom allows you to perform automated tasks for several networks or social media platforms. This includes scraping profile data, following people, liking posts on social media, posting comments, and exporting search results. 

Later on, we’re going to pull this data and enrich them on Clay.

Now, let’s try to add a Phantom.

For the sake of this tutorial, we're aiming to gather a list of US-based digital marketing companies. Here's how to get there:

1) Choose a Phantom

Go to your PhantomBuster dashboard and navigate to the Phantom store. Here, you choose any action you want. In

For this guide, we'll use the LinkedIn search export.

2) Connect Your Phantom via Session Cookies

Next, you’ll need to connect your Phantom to your LinkedIn account via a session cookie. If you need help, please refer to this tutorial for more information.

3) Add Search Details

There are many ways to add search details in PhantomBuster.

Within the ‘Your searches’ field, you have the option to:

• enter keywords
• enter a LinkedIn search URL
• enter a Google sheet URL containing the keywords or LinkedIn search URLs
• enter a URL of a CSV file containing the keywords or LinkedIn search URLs

For simplicity, we’ll enter the keywords ‘Digital Marketing United States as shown below.

In the Search Category, let’s choose Companies since we are searching for digital marketing companies in the US.

Click save to continue.

4) Configure Phantom Behavior

Let’s set the number of results to scrape per search and launch. 

But before we do that, make sure to follow the rate limits allowed on social media platforms to avoid any issues!

Rate limits are the maximum number of automation you can do in a specific time frame per platform. This measure is implemented by social networks to prevent abuse and ensure fair usage among users. 

If you failed to follow the recommended rate limits, your Phantoms might glitch out, or worse, you could get banned from the platform.

For now, let's limit the results per search and per launch to 10. Then, continue to the next step.

5) Tweak the Settings and Launch

PhantomBuster provides options to set up manual or automated launches for your Phantoms. For now, we’re going to set everything to manual.

Click 'save', then 'launch'.

Once done, you should see a list of data under the ‘results’ tab. Next, let's enrich this using Clay!

Pull Data from PhantomBuster Using Clay

1) Create a New Table

On Clay, start with a blank table. Add the data you want to enrich, as shown below.

2) Add Data Enrichment

Click 'add enrichment' and select 'Pull data' by PhantomBuster.

3) Enter PhantomBuster API Key

On the next window, you’ll be prompted to enter a PhantomBuster API key.

To locate your API key, head over to your PhantomBuster dashboard. Under ‘My workspace settings’, click ‘Add API key’ and copy. 

Back in Clay, paste the API under the ‘Choose an account’ field to authenticate.

4) Choose Your Agent ID

Next, we’re going to choose an Agent ID. This is the name of the automated task (or Phantom) that you create on our PhantomBuster account.

Recall the task we made: 'Digital Marketing LinkedIn Search Export'. Select this from the dropdown.

5) Save and Run

Review your settings. Then, click save and run. 

Your table will now display a new column, 'Pull Data', with gathered info.

6) Organize Your Data

The next step is to organize the data we’ve just pulled from PhantomBuster. 

Notice that each row contains multiple results. Each row is an object containing lists of information, such as a company name, Linkedin profile, company description, logo URL, and many others.

Let’s organize the data in rows and columns so we can easily enrich them later on. In this tutorial, we’re going to create a new table and write the collected data here.

So, create a new Clay table named 'Affiliate Marketing Test'. Define columns like Niche, Company Name, LinkedIn Profile, and Description.

Back to your original table, add an enrichment, and choose ‘Write to Other Table’.

Map your data to flow into the appropriate columns of the new table.

Once everything is set, click save and run.

Your original table should now look similar to the one below. Notice that the ‘Write to Other Table’ column contains 10 values for each row. 

Check your new table. This should now be populated with the organized data, as shown below.

That’s a Wrap!

Great job! You’ve just learned how to pull data from PhantomBuster to Clay. 

Now you have the information, the next step is to explore Clay’s features to meet your goals.

For instance, you can further enrich your company list to get the latest news about them. This can be easily done in Clay with a few clicks. Check our tutorial on “How to Find Recent News About Companies Using Clay” to learn more.

And, if you've any questions, just drop a comment. We’ll try our best to help!