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Chris Blaine
Chief Customer Officer, Planday
Professional Background
Chris Blaine is a dynamic and results-oriented leader with over 20 years of extensive global experience in the realms of launching new businesses, building high-performing teams, and meeting aggressive growth targets. He has cultivated a well-rounded skill set as a go-to-market specialist, particularly excelling in sales, marketing, and customer care within entrepreneurial organizations across various global markets. His capabilities as a change leader are evident in his proven track record of transforming organizations, leading to improved employee engagement, enhanced customer experience, and notable business results.
As a valuable partner on the leadership team, Chris has consistently showcased a strong drive for achieving results, alongside creative thinking and empathy for customers. These traits have allowed him to support the creation of effective and winning business strategies that resonate with both employees and customers alike.
Throughout his illustrious career, Chris has held prominent positions in leading organizations. His roles have included Chief Customer Officer at Planday, where he focused on enhancing customer engagement and satisfaction. He served as Vice President and Managing Director for both the EMEA and APAC regions at Sojern, demonstrating his prowess in international sales and marketing strategy. His experience at Sojern also encompassed the role of VP of Global Sales and Customer Success for Hotel Solutions, reflecting his deep understanding of the hospitality industry.
Additionally, Chris held senior leadership roles at Phunware, Inc., where he served as the Vice President of Sales and Marketing. His ability to effectively drive customer acquisition and retention strategies further solidified his expertise in direct and online marketing.
Prior to his extensive tenure in sales and marketing leadership, Chris gained significant experience at Intuit, where he served in various director-level roles, overseeing marketing and customer care initiatives for the company’s Australia region and the global business division. His time at Intuit allowed him to hone his skills in analytics, pricing strategy, demand generation, and pipeline management.
As a part of his foundational career, Chris held leadership positions at Dell, where he advanced through the ranks, taking on roles such as Executive Director of Marketing Operations for EMEA and Sales Site Director for U.S. Consumers. His experience there fortified his capabilities in marketing management and customer engagement, proving pivotal in delivering successful business strategies.
Chris’s career also includes a rich history in creative performance arts, having worked as a professional actor, singer, and dancer, showcasing his versatile talent beyond the corporate world.
Education and Achievements
Chris Blaine possesses a strong educational background that supports his impressive professional achievements. He earned his MBA in Marketing and Marketing Management at the prestigious William & Mary – Raymond A. Mason School of Business, where he developed a robust understanding of business principles and marketing strategies that have propelled him throughout his career.
Further enhancing his diverse skill set, Chris studied Musical Theater at Syracuse University, an experience that enriches his creativity and interpersonal skills—qualities that have helped him thrive in leadership roles within business contexts. This unique combination of education allows Chris to approach business challenges with a creative flair, essential for problem-solving in today's competitive marketplaces.
Achievements
Chris’s achievements span across various domains, showcasing his versatility as a leader. His ability to launch new businesses effectively is highlighted through his instrumental role in enhancing customer success frameworks in his positions. As a Chief Customer Officer, Chris implemented processes and strategies leading to increased customer satisfaction rates and retention, thereby contributing significantly to the company’s revenue growth.
His strategic positioning and leadership in global sales have resulted in successful market expansion initiatives, particularly during his time with Sojern, where he catered to multiple geographical markets including Europe and Asia-Pacific. This adeptness not only showcases his understanding of diverse markets but also emphasizes his capability to adapt strategies that resonate with various target audiences.
Moreover, Chris has a proven record of building high-performing teams. His leadership style focuses on empowering individuals, fostering collaboration, and promoting innovative thinking, which in turn contributes to team success and robust business outcomes. His commitment to creating an inclusive and engaging workplace has been a hallmark of his various leadership roles.
In the field of marketing, Chris has steadily built a reputation for driving effective demand generation campaigns. His work has often been characterized by an analytical approach—to gather insights and data that inform decision-making, enabling him to refine marketing strategies that yield tangible results. His expertise in omni-channel marketing ensures that organizations achieve maximum reach and engagement with their audiences—key in today’s digital-first world.
In conclusion, Chris Blaine’s extensive career reflects a rich blend of leadership, innovation, and customer-centric approaches. His vast experience and commitment to excellence position him as a valuable business partner on any leadership team. His dedication to transforming organizations and enhancing customer experiences continues to drive him toward ongoing success, making him a sought-after specialist in sales and marketing leadership.
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Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
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Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Clay isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.