Public Records Signals

The workflow

Play 30

Public Records Signals

1Pull public records on a schedule

Government APIsFree, read-only

Disaster declarationsWeather eventsSEC filings

Daily for declarations, weekly for filing phrase searches.

Pull

Plain GET on a schedule

Portals with no APIReal browser

Court docketsPermits

Throttled, sessions recycled. Portals behind a CAPTCHA are out.

Drive

BrowserbaseFirecrawl

One row per recordDate, source URL, verbatim excerpt

2Match each record to an account

Entity resolutionThe hard part

A record names a legal entity or a place, not your CRM account.

Name

Strip Inc, Corp, LLC, The

Place

County or address to known sites

Against

HubSpotSalesforce

MatchConfidence

Name and location agree→High: routes on its own

Name only→Medium: review queue

Fuzzy or alias→Low: review queue

3Qualify in two gates

Gate1

Not suppressed

Customers, open deals and competitors come out first.

× Customer or open deal

Gate2

Actually relevant

Claude reads the excerpt and gives a one-line reason.

× Not relevant

4Tier what the record allows

Act aloneThe event is the reason

Owner alertThis week

Record link, excerpt and matched sites, straight to the owner.

Alert

Slack

Log

HubSpot

One more factPerson or site first

Find the person

The right contact, then a checked email.

Find

AI Ark

Email

ProspeoFindymail

Verify

BounceBan

Rank onlyContext, no message

Score only

Adds weight to the account score. Never opens a message.

On

HubSpot

5Reach out with the record as evidence

State the public fact plainly

Something the buyer can check for themselves, with the source link at hand.

Email

Smartlead

Call

Nooks

A dated reason to call this week

The stackSEC EDGARBrowserbaseFirecrawlClayHubSpotSalesforceClaudeSlackAI ArkProspeoFindymailBounceBanSmartleadNooks

Oriel · GTM plays library

Open full size

The diagram as text

1. 1

   Pull public records on a schedule

   Government APIs (free, read-only): Disaster declarations, Weather events and SEC filings. Daily for declarations, weekly for filing phrase searches. Pull: Plain GET on a schedule. Tool: SEC EDGAR.

   Portals with no API (real browser): Court dockets and Permits. Throttled, sessions recycled. Portals behind a CAPTCHA are out. Drive: Browserbase and Firecrawl. Tool: Browserbase.

   One row per record (date, source url, verbatim excerpt): Tool: Clay.

2. 2

   Match each record to an account

   Entity resolution (the hard part): A record names a legal entity or a place, not your CRM account. Name: Strip Inc, Corp, LLC, The. Place: County or address to known sites. Against: HubSpot and Salesforce.

   Match → Confidence

   • Name and location agree → High: routes on its own
   • Name only → Medium: review queue
   • Fuzzy or alias → Low: review queue
3. 3

   Qualify in two gates

   Gate 1: Not suppressed. Customers, open deals and competitors come out first. Rejected: Customer or open deal. Tools: HubSpot.

   Gate 2: Actually relevant. Claude reads the excerpt and gives a one-line reason. Rejected: Not relevant. Tools: Claude.

4. 4

   Tier what the record allows

   Act alone: The event is the reason

   Owner alert (this week): Record link, excerpt and matched sites, straight to the owner. Alert: Slack. Log: HubSpot. Tool: Slack.

   One more fact: Person or site first

   Find the person: The right contact, then a checked email. Find: AI Ark. Email: Prospeo and Findymail. Verify: BounceBan.

   Rank only: Context, no message

   Score only: Adds weight to the account score. Never opens a message. On: HubSpot.

5. 5

   Reach out with the record as evidence

   State the public fact plainly: Something the buyer can check for themselves, with the source link at hand. Email: Smartlead. Call: Nooks.

   Outcome: A dated reason to call this week. Tools: HubSpot.

The stack: SEC EDGAR, Browserbase, Firecrawl, Clay, HubSpot, Salesforce, Claude, Slack, AI Ark, Prospeo, Findymail, BounceBan, Smartlead and Nooks.

Open the diagram full size (1180 px wide)

The play in five steps

1. 01

   Step 1: Pick the records tied to your buyer's decision

   Public records hold dated, defensible events that no data vendor packages, so very few competitors are working them.

   • Court filings and dockets from county portals.
   • Building, renovation and business permits.
   • Government disaster declarations and severe weather events, by county.
   • SEC filings, searched for phrases that describe the problem you solve.
   • Choose the one or two record types that force an unplanned decision on your buyer. A deterministic source beats asking a model to guess.
2. 02

   Step 2: Pull on a schedule

   Each source needs its own cadence and method, and every row has to keep the evidence it came from.

   • Read free government APIs with plain GET requests: daily for declarations and alerts, weekly for filings.
   • Drive portals without an API in a real browser through Browserbase. Some portals refuse to load in a local headless browser. Firecrawl handles the simpler static pages.
   • Throttle requests and recycle sessions. Anything behind a CAPTCHA is out of scope.
   • Land every row in Clay with the record date, the source URL and a verbatim excerpt.
3. 03

   Step 3: Match each record to an account

   A record names a legal entity or a street address, never your CRM account. Matching is where this play is won or lost.

   • Normalize names: lowercase, strip Inc, Corp, LLC, Holdings, The and punctuation.
   • Match on legal name, known aliases and domain against HubSpot or Salesforce.
   • For place-based records, join the county or address to each account's known site locations.
   • Give every match a confidence level:
     • High: name and location agree, routes automatically
     • Medium or low: a review queue, before anyone acts
4. 04

   Step 4: Qualify the record

   A real record on the wrong account, or on an existing customer, does more damage than having no signal at all.

   • Suppress first: customers, open deals and competitors come out.
   • Claude reads the excerpt and confirms it really touches the problem you solve, with a one-line reason.
   • Tier what the record allows you to do:
     • Act alone: the event itself is the reason to call this week
     • One more fact: find the right person or the affected sites first
     • Rank only: adds to the account score, never opens a message
5. 05

   Step 5: Route to the owner with the record attached

   The rep gets the record, not a summary of it, so every message can cite something the buyer can verify.

   • Write the signal onto the CRM account with its date, excerpt and source URL.
   • Find the right contact with AI Ark and a work email from Prospeo or Findymail, re-verified with BounceBan on the send day.
   • Alert the account owner in Slack with the record link and the matched sites.
   • Outreach states the public fact plainly, by email through Smartlead or a call through Nooks. No dramatizing the event.
   • A record type with no owner and no agreed response time does not go live.

Tools used

The fourteen tools this play names. Each links to the other plays that use it.

SEC EDGARBrowserbaseFirecrawlClayHubSpotSalesforceClaudeSlackAI ArkProspeoFindymailBounceBanSmartleadNooks

Related plays

Play 31

Qualifying from Public Filings

1Name the fact that qualifies

The qualifying question

FootprintOwned vs leasedWho maintains it

The fact that decides fit, which firmographic databases do not carry. Every field allows unknown.

2Route public and private

Target accounts, pulled into a Clay tableName, domain, country, CRM id

Public filerThe filing is the answer

10-K Item 220-FFiscal year

Pin the run to one named filing.

Source

SEC EDGAR

Read

Claude

Private companyNo filing

Published totalsStore countFormat sizes

Published totals first, then a build-up per format, flagged as an estimate.

Search

ExaFirecrawl

Read

Claude

3Record only what is disclosed

The source disclosesThe record gets

Square footage split by tenure→Owned and leased records

Split counts, one total→One record, counts as fields

Store count, no size→Build-up per format, estimate

Nothing usable→Unknown, with the reason

Never apportion a total by a site-count ratio

4Guard in code, not in the prompt

Gate1

No blanks

Every field returns a value, or unknown with a reason.

× Blank fieldRe-run

Gate2

No hidden estimates

Arithmetic in the method forces the estimate flag on.

× Unflagged mathFlagged as estimate

Gate3

Source attached

Each field carries its filing, fiscal year and URL.

× No sourceHeld back

5Audit, then load

Check against the filing

Open a sample of rows and match each value to the page it cites. Report coverage per field.

Write to the CRM

Value, source and estimate flag land together. Unknown becomes the rep's first question.

Write

HubSpot

Accounts qualified on cited facts

The stackHubSpotSEC EDGARClaudeExaFirecrawl

Oriel · GTM plays library

Play 31Outbound · ABM

Qualifying from Public Filings

6 steps · CRM

Play 22

Signals in the CRM, with Decay

1Catch signals, each with a date

Signals on your target accountsDated or dropped

Job postsFundingTech stackExec movesSite visitsPost engagement

Every signal carries a date, a one-line summary and the source URL.

Detect

ClayClaude CodeTrigify

2One CRM record per signal

Signals custom objectLinked to the company

TypeDateSummarySource URLWeight

In

HubSpotSalesforce

Rollup

Count, last signal date, priority score

3Score it, then let it fade

Priority score

Each signal adds its weight, then decays on its own curve. A new signal lifts the score again.

Config

Weight and decay rate per type, kept in a table

Each signal hasIt controls

Decay window→Ranking and queue order

Copy window, shorter→Whether copy may name it

Hard hide, about 6 months→Whether it shows at all

Intent topics→The subject chosen, never stated

4Thresholds move accounts both ways

Warm

Watched, no outreach yet.

HotNow

The owner works it today.

Cold

Decayed out on its own.

5Hot account: committee, brief, alert

Buying committee

Every buyer at the account, checked and pushed to the CRM.

Source

AI Ark

Email

ProspeoFindymail

Job change

LinkedIn

Verify

BounceBan

Brief and alert

Why it is hot, written only from copy-safe signals, plus a task for the owner.

Brief

Claude

Task

HubSpot

Alert

Slack

A target list that re-ranks itself every morning

The stackClayClaude CodeTrigifyHubSpotSalesforceAI ArkProspeoFindymailLinkedInBounceBanSlackClaude

Oriel · GTM plays library

Play 22ABM · Outbound

Signals in the CRM, with Decay

6 steps · CRM, Email, LinkedIn

+6 more

Play 32

Local Business TAM from Directories

1Size the market before paying for it

Directory totalsFree and exact

One search per region and category. Read the result count, scrape nothing.

Fetch

Browserbase

Maps pilot30 per term

Shows coverage, which categories are noise, and whether a term runs dry early.

Run

ApifyGoogle Maps

Hard dollar cap agreed before the full run. The cap is per search term.

2Scrape two kinds of source

Google MapsWidest coverage

PhoneWebsiteAddressRating

Search the whole region, exclude cities afterwards. Maps lists locations, not companies.

With

ApifyGoogle Maps

Industry directoriesCategory detail

CategoryAddressPaid listings

Confirm page 1 and page 2 differ before crawling. Resumable on region, category and offset.

With

Browserbase

3De-duplicate across sources

Match onThen

Same website domain→Merged, richest copy kept

Same name and street address→Merged across sources

Directory or link-in-bio domain→Domain blanked, never matched

One business, several cities→One row, every city kept

4Enrich, then check it is still true

Website and owner

Find a site for address-only rows, then read the team page for the owner.

Match

Clay

Read

Claude

Email waterfall

Only the misses move to the next provider. Nothing goes out unverified.

Find

ProspeoFindymail

Verify

BounceBan

Then

Freshness checkListings go stale

Before anyone calls: the listing is not marked closed, the phone still connects, and the email is re-verified on the day it is sent.

Status

Google Maps

Verify

ZeroBounce

5Tier, then load

Tier 1Several sites, strong reviews

Call, then emailNow

The phone came with the listing. A rep calls first, then the sequence starts.

Call

Nooks

Log

HubSpot

Send

Smartlead

Tier 2 and 3Single site or thin data

Email onlyAuto

The copy names the category and the city the business was found under.

Send

Smartlead

A deduped local TAM, tiered and reachable

The stackBrowserbaseApifyGoogle MapsClayClaudeProspeoFindymailBounceBanZeroBounceNooksHubSpotSmartlead

Oriel · GTM plays library

Play 32Outbound

Local Business TAM from Directories

6 steps · Email, Call, CRM

+6 more

All GTM plays