Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
Contact management determines whether a CRM remains effective or devolves into chaos. Tools like folk CRM and Clay play a crucial role in this.
Social selling thrives at the intersection of your CRM and your network. If your CRM can't keep pace with LinkedIn activities, comments, and warm introductions, you risk not only losing visibility but also potential deals to teams that maintain closer ties with their connections.
folk and Clarify both position themselves as modern, relationship-centric CRMs. Clarify specializes in converting unstructured interactions into organized records, while folk offers teams a versatile, social-selling-friendly workspace for tracking contacts, signals, and pipelines all in one location.
This comparison will explore how each CRM supports genuine social selling workflows, enabling you to choose the one that best aligns with your team's approach to building and nurturing relationships.
Why is a social selling CRM essential in 2026?
Most B2B deals don’t originate from cold emails or demo requests; they begin with a LinkedIn comment, a repost, a direct message, or a subtle profile visit. If your CRM fails to capture these signals and link them to actual people and pipelines, your team risks operating in the dark while competitors cultivate relationships right before your eyes.
A social selling CRM consolidates those interactions into structured, actionable insights: who engaged, where they came from, their interests, and how close they are to making a purchase. Rather than viewing LinkedIn as merely a “nice-to-have,” it transforms into a measurable, repeatable process within your revenue strategy.
With a social selling CRM, your team can:
✔️ Identify buying signals through likes, comments, and profile visits, converting them into follow-ups
✔️ Monitor which prospects are aware of you through content versus outbound efforts, allowing for tailored messaging
✔️ Map relationships across accounts, champions, and influencers—not just contacts in a list
✔️ Report on deals influenced by social activity rather than attributing all success solely to last-click channels
What is folk CRM?
folk CRM is a modern, lightweight customer relationship management tool designed for teams that collaborate across email, LinkedIn, and spreadsheets, all within a single shared workspace. It seamlessly integrates with Gmail and Outlook to automatically log emails and meetings, while its Chrome extension adds a comprehensive CRM sidebar directly into your inbox for quick updates. Users can easily send personalized sequences, monitor engagement, and maintain a complete record of every interaction associated with contacts, companies, and deals.
What is Clay?
Clay is a data-centric prospecting and enrichment tool that many teams utilize alongside their CRM systems. It aggregates information from various sources to create highly targeted lead lists and workflows, although a separate CRM is often still necessary for managing ongoing relationships and pipelines.
Feature comparison of folk CRM and Clay
Profile Enrichment & Lead Insights
folk CRM offers a seamless one-click setup for both Gmail and Outlook—simply authenticate, and every incoming or outgoing email is instantly linked to the appropriate contact or deal record. Its integrated scheduler automatically adds events to Google or Microsoft calendars, syncing them back to folk’s task list, which creates a cohesive timeline of emails and meetings. You can send personalized bulk sequences, monitor opens and clicks, and utilize folk’s CRM inbox to respond without switching tabs. This streamlined experience reduces context-switching and ensures your team stays in sync with every conversation. folk CRM stands out as one of the top CRMs for email integration!
In contrast, Clay relies on manual data entry or enrichment through integrations, lacking the capability to automatically enhance profiles with social data such as titles, bios, or photos.
Social Listening & Real-Time Alerts
folk CRM utilizes a direct OAuth connection for Gmail and Outlook, ensuring seamless synchronization. Emails are logged instantly to the appropriate contact or deal as soon as they are sent or received, without any manual intervention. Meetings scheduled through folk's native scheduler are immediately reflected in both your calendar and the CRM timeline. Behind the scenes, folk employs push-notification webhooks from Google and Microsoft, which reduces latency and ensures that every interaction appears within seconds.
In contrast, Clay does not offer social listening, alerts, or any form of real-time interaction tracking; its primary strengths lie in workflow automation and task management.
Social Selling: Which channels?
folk CRM’s email sequences feature acts as an integrated mail-merge and campaign tool, allowing you to create multi-step sequences with personalized templates and scheduling rules. You can easily enroll contact lists directly from folk’s interface. Opens and replies are instantly synced back to each contact's timeline, while detailed performance reports enable you to refine subject lines and content for optimal engagement—all done natively, with no add-ons needed!
On the other hand, Clay is not tailored for social selling; its primary focus is on managing relationships through CRM-style outreach rather than social messaging or publishing.
In‑Context Messaging with Templates & Sequences
folk CRM’s email sequences feature acts as an integrated mail-merge and campaign tool. You can create multi-step sequences with personalized templates and scheduling rules, enrolling contact lists directly from folk’s interface. Opens and replies sync back instantly to each contact’s timeline, while detailed performance reports enable you to refine subject lines and content for optimal engagement—all without the need for add-ons!
Note that in-browser messaging is not available in Clay, and you cannot send templated outreach via LinkedIn or other social platforms.
Activity & Engagement Tracking
Folk CRM automatically embeds open- and click-tracking pixels in all outbound emails, providing real-time metrics on contact timelines and campaign dashboards. You can disable tracking across the workspace to enhance deliverability; however, when it's turned on, you'll receive consolidated reports, link-level CTR data, and detailed engagement histories for each contact—all without needing external add-ons.
In contrast, Clay monitors CRM events and internal activities but does not provide insights into external engagements, such as social media interactions or clicks.
Conclusion
In summary, while both folk and Clay offer valuable features, they cater to different needs. Clay excels in data-centric prospecting and enrichment but lacks seamless email integration and social selling capabilities. Conversely, folk stands out with its effortless email integration, real-time engagement tracking, and comprehensive social selling tools, providing a complete workspace for sales teams. For those prioritizing email integration, automation, and effective sequencing in their social selling strategy, folk is undoubtedly the best alternative to consider.
Start your 14-day free trial or book a demo today.
Discover folk CRM
Like the sales assistant your team never had
