Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
Contact management is the critical juncture where a CRM can either remain functional or devolve into chaos. Streak and Clay
Social selling thrives at the intersection of your CRM and your network. If your tool fails to keep pace with LinkedIn activity, comments, and warm introductions, you risk not just losing visibility but also losing deals to teams that maintain closer connections with their relationships.
folk and Clarify both present themselves as modern, relationship-driven CRMs. Clarify specializes in transforming unstructured interactions into organized records, while folk offers teams a flexible, social-selling-friendly workspace to manage contacts, signals, and pipelines all in one location.
In this comparison, we will explore how each CRM facilitates genuine social selling workflows, helping you determine which one aligns best with your team's approach to building and nurturing relationships.
Why is a social selling CRM essential in 2026?
Most B2B deals do not originate from a cold email or a demo request; they begin with a LinkedIn comment, a repost, a DM, or a subtle profile visit. If your CRM cannot capture those signals and associate them with real individuals and pipelines, your team is operating in the dark while competitors cultivate relationships openly.
A social selling CRM provides a centralized hub to convert those interactions into structured, actionable context: who engaged, where they came from, what interests them, and how close they are to making a purchase. Rather than viewing LinkedIn as merely “nice-to-have awareness,” it transforms into a quantifiable, repeatable process within your revenue engine.
With a social selling CRM, your team can:
✔️ Identify buying signals from likes, comments, and profile views and convert them into follow-ups
✔️ Monitor which prospects engage with 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, instead of attributing all credit to last-click channels
What is Streak?
Streak is a lightweight CRM seamlessly integrated within Gmail, transforming your inbox into a collaborative pipeline for sales, support, and account management. This eliminates the need to switch tabs, allowing users to manage deals, monitor stages, and engage in discussions directly from the familiar Gmail interface. At its core, Streak leverages email, providing real-time tracking and pipeline views on top of your existing Gmail conversations.
What is Clay?
Clay is a data-driven prospecting and enrichment tool that many teams integrate with their CRM systems. It aggregates information from various sources to create highly targeted lead lists and workflows. However, you will typically require a separate CRM to effectively manage ongoing relationships and pipelines.
Feature comparison of Streak and Clay
Profile Enrichment & Lead Insights
Streak seamlessly integrates within Gmail, transforming your inbox into a comprehensive CRM without the need for additional windows or applications. Every email sent or received is automatically recorded in the appropriate pipeline and shared within your team's workspace, providing you with a real-time timeline of each deal, eliminating the hassle of manual bcc'ing.
In contrast, Clay requires manual data entry or enrichment through integrations, lacking the ability to automatically enhance profiles with social information such as titles, bios, or photos.
Social Listening & Real-Time Alerts
Streak provides real-time email sync by operating within Gmail’s infrastructure. As soon as you send or receive a message, Streak instantly logs it to the relevant pipeline, ensuring your team is always updated with the latest activity without any delays. There’s virtually no lag—messages and thread updates show up immediately in both your inbox and Streak’s interface. By integrating directly with Gmail, you enjoy the benefits of Google’s exceptional uptime and reliability.
In contrast, Clay does not offer social listening, alerts, or any real-time interaction tracking. Its primary focus is on workflow automation and task management.
Social Selling: Which channels?
Streak’s Mail Merge tool integrates directly with Gmail, allowing you to send personalized mass emails to hundreds of recipients in under two minutes—no need for CSV imports or third-party applications. You can easily insert custom variables (such as first name, company, and deal data) from your pipelines, schedule automated follow-up sequences on the same thread, and even A/B test subject lines to enhance reply rates. Every sent message and follow-up is seamlessly logged in your Streak timeline, ensuring you never lose track of who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, it's worth noting that Streak’s campaign features lack advanced analytics dashboards, meaning you won't receive detailed reports on unsubscribes or bounce handling without incorporating an additional tool.
On the other hand, Clay is not tailored for social selling; it is designed for managing relationships through CRM-style outreach rather than social messaging or publishing.
In‑Context Messaging with Templates & Sequences
Streak’s Mail Merge tool is integrated directly into Gmail, allowing you to send personalized mass emails to hundreds of recipients in less than two minutes—no need for CSV imports or third-party applications. You can easily insert custom variables (such as first name, company, and deal data) straight from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-up sequences within the same thread, and even A/B test subject lines to enhance reply rates. Every message and follow-up is automatically logged in your Streak timeline, ensuring you maintain visibility on who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, it’s worth noting that Streak’s campaign features do not include advanced analytics dashboards—meaning you won’t receive detailed reports on unsubscribes or bounce handling without integrating another tool.
Unlike Streak, in-browser messaging is not supported in Clay, and you cannot send templated outreach via LinkedIn or other social media platforms.
Activity & Engagement Tracking
Streak integrates a small tracking pixel and link tracker directly within Gmail, providing real-time “eye” icons that indicate when an email is opened or a link is clicked in any thread. By hovering over the green eye, you can view timestamps, locations, and per-link click data without leaving your inbox. Since it's built entirely on Gmail's API, setup is nearly effortless, and feedback is instantaneous; however, you won't find aggregated campaign dashboards or multi-link heat mapping beyond individual message insights.
Meanwhile, Clay monitors CRM events and internal activities but falls short in tracking external engagements, such as social media interactions or clicks.
folk CRM: The Ultimate CRM for Social Selling!
folk CRM is a cutting-edge social selling platform that transforms social selling into a streamlined, repeatable process. It quickly captures contacts, maintains conversation context, and minimizes manual tasks with smart fields and enrichment features, ensuring timely follow-ups.
Designed for LinkedIn-driven outreach, folk enables teams to centralize leads from various sources, organize them into customized pipelines, and monitor every interaction in one convenient location. Automatic contact enrichment fills in the blanks, deduplication keeps your database pristine, and shared notes and tags facilitate warm introductions and easy access to relationship histories across the team.
For daily social selling efforts, folk promotes consistent execution by allowing you to segment leads, personalize outreach, set reminders, log interactions, and advance opportunities through the pipeline—all while preserving the human touch that secures deals.
Conclusion
In summary, Streak excels with its seamless Gmail integration and real-time email tracking, making it ideal for those who prioritize email-driven workflows. Clay offers robust data enrichment for prospecting but lacks the necessary CRM functions for ongoing relationship management. However, for teams focused on effective email integration, automation, and social selling, folk stands out as the superior choice. Its comprehensive features streamline the entire sales process, enabling teams to build and nurture relationships effortlessly.
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