How Lead Generation Works

3 min readUpdated 2026-02-16

Key Takeaway

Your agent finds leads by searching publicly available business directories and websites matching your campaign's industry and location criteria — it never scrapes behind login walls, buys email lists, or contacts anyone on your unsubscribe list.

Autonomous Lead Generation

Your AI agent finds leads by searching publicly available business directories, websites, and listings that match your campaign's target audience. It looks for:

  • Businesses in your specified industry and location
  • Contact information that's publicly listed (websites, directories)
  • Businesses that appear to be a good fit for your services

What Your Agent Won't Do

For compliance and ethical reasons, your agent will never:

  • Scrape emails from behind login walls
  • Buy or use purchased email lists
  • Contact businesses on your unsubscribe list
  • Send to unverified email addresses

Lead Pipeline

Once found, each lead moves through stages:

  1. Generated — Just discovered, not yet contacted
  2. Contacted — Initial outreach email sent
  3. Responded — The lead has replied
  4. Interested — High-interest response detected (you'll be notified)
  5. Engaged — You've taken over the conversation

Viewing Your Leads

Navigate to Leads in the sidebar to see all leads across campaigns. You can filter by status, campaign, or search by name/email.

Ready to automate your outreach?

LeadClaw's AI agent handles lead generation, personalized emails, and follow-ups — so you can focus on closing deals.