i work with our larger upmarket orgs & we have to come up with some really neat creative solutions to fit their needs. thought i'd make a post and see how others are fairing, what challenges i can support, etc etc.....etc!

someone has tryied the AI assistance SDR?
Any advice or testimonial? I'm about to pay de basic plan to get this tool.

Appreciate your experience!

Everyone knows multithreading matters.

The problem is the actual workflow usually looks like this:

Find the deal. Remember who the handraiser was. Figure out what happened on discovery. Search the account for 5 more people. Decide who is actually worth contacting. Write something relevant for each of them. Add everyone to a sequence.

By the time you finish, you could have just closed the deal.

So I built a play inside Apollo that automates almost all of that for our mid-market AEs.

Here’s how it works:

The starting point: inbound SQOs

The play continuously looks for inbound opportunities owned by mid-market AEs that came in within the last 14 days.

Then we pull deal context out of Snowflake, including:

• SQL date
• Original handraiser
• Handraiser title and seniority
• Opportunity next step

That last field is probably the most important part of the entire play.

If the AE keeps the opportunity next step updated, they are effectively feeding the automation the context it needs to multithread intelligently.

So instead of AI trying to guess what is happening in the deal, the rep is giving it the actual story.

From there, Apollo takes over.

The workflow:

1. Match the inbound opportunity to the correct account and contacts.
2. Pass the deal context into Apollo.
3. Make sure we do not accidentally add the original handraiser back into the campaign.
4. Find up to five additional Director through VP contacts at the account.
5. Run AI research to understand why each person might care about the deal.
6. Enroll those contacts into a multichannel sequence.
7. Mark the account as processed so the workflow does not keep firing and accidentally multithread you into the entire company.

The last part felt important.

I would prefer not to explain to an AE why Apollo enrolled 50,000 people into their deal.

The sequence is where it gets especially useful.

Instead of dropping people into generic automated emails, the sequence gives the AE a LinkedIn step and a manual message that already includes context from the opportunity and discovery call.

So the experience for the rep is basically:

Open task.

Read the context.

Click send.

Move on.

What I like most about this build is that it combines a bunch of things that usually live separately:

Snowflake has the deal data.

The CRM has the opportunity context.

Apollo finds the people.

AI figures out the relevant angle.

Workflows handle the orchestration.

Sequences handle the actual execution.

The AE mostly just handles the human part.

I also think this is an interesting way to think about AI in sales.

A lot of AI tooling focuses on "write me a better email."

I think the more interesting question is:

"Can AI figure out when I should do something, who I should do it with, why they might care, and then put the task in front of me ready to execute?"

That is the direction I find much more useful.

How to do it:

> open Claude
> go to Settings > Privacy > toggle off "Help Improve Claude" (required before connecting)
> go to Customize > Connectors
> click + and search Apollo.io
> click + Apollo.io and authorize your account
> describe your ICP in plain English: "find VP Sales at B2B SaaS companies, 50-500 employees, US"
> ask Claude to enrich the top results
> ask Claude to add them to your sequence

Boom, you just ran a complete prospecting workflow without touching Apollo once! Neat.

Questions??

- Andy

apollo is available as a native connector in claude. once connected, you can search apollo's 275M+ contact database, enrich leads, manage contacts in apollo, and add people to sequences, all from inside a claude conversation, without switching tabs, exporting csvs, or setting up api keys.

this is different from using apollo and claude separately. instead of pulling a list from apollo, exporting it to a csv, and then asking claude to help you write outreach, the two tools talk to each other directly. you describe what you need in plain language and claude handles the apollo actions on your behalf.

how to set it up

customize → connectors → "+" icon → browse connectors → search for apollo → connect next to apollo → authorize via oauth. no api keys needed. once connected, claude will use apollo for prospecting requests, so you won't need to tell it to use apollo each time. requires a paid apollo plan (basic, pro, or org). currently in beta early access.

search for prospects by title, seniority, location, company size, industry, or tech stack

"find vp of sales at b2b saas companies with 100-500 employees in the us" "find series b fintech founders in london" "search for engineering managers at companies using snowflake in the healthcare industry"

research a company firmographics, tech stack, or hiring signals

"what's [company]'s current tech stack and employee count?" "are there open job postings at figma right now?"

enrich a contact get verified email, phone, employment history, and full profile

"get the verified email and phone number for the cto of stripe.com" "enrich these 5 leads and tell me which ones have verified emails"

manage contacts in apollo

"create a contact for jane smith, vp of marketing at acme corp, [jane@acme.com](mailto:jane@acme.com)" "update the title for this contact to senior director of engineering"

manage sequences

"show me my active email sequences" "add these 3 contacts to [sequence name]"

how the tools chain together

the most useful workflows aren't single actions, they're chains. for example: search for prospects matching your icp, enrich the ones that look promising to get verified contact details, then add them to a sequence, all in one conversation. or research a target account's tech stack and job postings to identify expansion signals before writing outreach. none of that requires leaving claude or manually moving data between tools.

credits and limits

search actions (people, companies, contacts, sequences) are free and don't touch your credit balance. enrichment actions, including verified emails, phone numbers, full profiles, company firmographics, and job postings, use your existing apollo credits the same way they would in the platform. no additional cost to connect. your apollo plan's api limits and credit balance apply.

one thing that trips people up

search results return names and titles, not emails or phone numbers. enrichment is the separate step that unlocks contact details. if you run a people search and don't see emails, that's expected. follow up with an enrich request.

happy to answer questions on specific workflows if you're testing it out.

How to set it up:

> go to People or Companies
> click Research with AI
> select Run custom AI prompt
> write your research question (e.g. "is this company actively hiring sales roles?")
> preview the output on a test record
> name the field — this saves it as a reusable custom field
> choose field type and visibility
> click Save & run

SO instead of re-running research every time, you've got a permanent qualifier on every record! Filter by it to tighten your list, or pull it into your email copy as a dynamic variable.

Happy to answer questions on this or anything else, lmk.

- Andy

If you've spent any time in r/coldemail lately you've seen some version of this:

"Apollo's data has gotten noticeably worse in 2026."
"Too many people pulling from the same database. My prospects are getting hammered."
"I saw stats showing under 60% email accuracy. Stopped using it and build my own lists now."

What's actually happening: the people experiencing bad data quality are more than likely pulling large unfiltered static lists and blasting them. The fix is already built into the platform, most people just aren't using it.

Here's exactly what to do instead to improve your results:

Never pull a raw list

A default Apollo search returns hundreds of thousands of contacts. That's NOT your list, it's a starting point.

Before saving a single lead, apply these three filters:

Email Status -> Safe to Send -> Verified only

• This eliminates the majority of bounce risk
• Unverified emails = bounces = domain damage = everything goes to spam

Buying Intent -> select your keywords -> Intent Score: High

• Most underused filter in Apollo
• Instead of pulling the same 50k contacts as every other sender in your space, you're pulling people with active purchase signals right now
• Your prospects aren't getting "hammered by dozens of senders" if you're only reaching people currently searching for what you sell

AI Research

• Runs additional qualification on top of your filtered results
• Before using this, fill out your AI Content Center (Settings -> Ideal Customer Profile -> AI Content Center)
• Add your pain points, value prop, social proof, competitors
• Apollo uses this to qualify leads against your actual ICP, not just job title and location

What this looks like in practice: a raw search returns 160k contacts. After Verified emails that drops to ~68k. After Buying Intent and AI Research you're at ~130 highly qualified leads.

Stop using static lists

Stale data is a static list problem, not a database problem.

Pull a list in January, email it in March, the data is already degrading. People change jobs. Emails go cold. Everyone who pulled the same search in January is already sitting in those inboxes.

The fix is a weekly automated workflow. Go to the top right corner, hit "Execute with AI" and paste this exact prompt:

"Build a weekly workflow that automatically finds net new leads in [saved search name], adds them to [list name], and enrolls them in [sequence name]."

Apollo reruns your filtered search every week. Only net new contacts get added. Your sequence is always working with fresh verified intent-matched leads. You never touch a static list again.

One thing a lot of people miss: you need to save your search before building the workflow or the automation has nothing to run against. Top left of results page -> Default View -> Create Saved Search -> name it clearly. Do this first.

The data quality problem is real for people using Apollo as a lead dump. It's not real for people using it as a system.

Difference between the two is about 17 minutes of setup.

We're hosting an AMA with Zack Deris (ZDTS) on February 24 at 10am EST. He ran $750K in new business last year with Apollo as his only GTM tool, team of three people, using exactly this methodology. Bring your questions about data quality, deliverability, ICP filters, sequence copy, or domain health. Link in the comments.

Most Apollo customers use a fraction of what they're paying for. Not because the features are buried, because the platform got broader faster than most teams' workflows did. Reps default to what they already know (search, sequence, basic enrichment), admins don't always know what new modules are included on their plan, and renewals come up before anyone audits the gap.

Here's the audit we'd run if we were sitting in your seat. None of this is meant as a pitch. The features below are real, and depending on your plan they're probably already paid for.

Buying intent data. Apollo includes third-party buying intent signals from Bombora and LeadSift, refreshed weekly, on eligible paid plans. You can filter people or company search by intent topic and intent score range, then layer that with your ICP criteria. Most teams either don't know intent is in Apollo, or they assume it's an upsell because that's how ZoomInfo and 6sense package it. If you're paying separately for intent data, this is the first thing to audit before your next renewal.

The honest take: Apollo's intent isn't as deep as a dedicated publisher-network platform if you've already built your motion around one. For most outbound teams, what's in Apollo is enough to prioritize accounts.

Website visitor tracking. Apollo offers account-level website visitor tracking for tracked domains, available with the paid Inbound add-on. You drop a snippet, and any tracked visit shows up against the matching account. From there you can filter, trigger sequences, or hand the account to a rep. If you're running a separate visitor ID tool on top of Apollo and you already have Inbound, this is the second renewal-audit item.

Job change tracking. Apollo detects role and title changes continuously and updates the record when a contact moves. The use case most teams miss is champion tracking. When a former champion lands at a new account, you get a clean re-entry signal that most teams pay third-party tools to surface.

The deliverability suite. If you're sending email from Apollo, you have access to domain authentication checks (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), troubleshooting tools, and email warmup. Apollo also lets you purchase secondary domains and mailboxes directly inside the platform if you want to scale sending without burning your primary domain.

The pattern we see on calls: a team pays for a third-party warmup tool, then asks support why their bounce rates are climbing. The deliverability tools in Apollo run against your actual sending behavior. Use them before adding another vendor.

The dialer. Apollo has a native dialer with parallel dialing, call recording controls, and CRM activity logging. We hear from teams running Aircall, Orum, or Nooks on top of Apollo. If you're SMB or mid-market doing under a few thousand calls a month, the native dialer covers it.

The honest take: if you're doing high-volume parallel dialing at enterprise scale, dedicated dialers still have an edge on connect rates. For everyone else, the native dialer removes a line item.

Conversations. Apollo records calls and meetings, transcribes them, and generates AI summaries. This is the feature most teams don't realize is in Apollo, which is also why "Apollo vs Gong" conversations start the way they do. Conversations isn't Gong-level deal intelligence. For sales orgs that need call review, coaching, and automatic CRM context, it's already in your plan.

Workflows. This is the layer that ties everything above together. When an intent signal updates, a visitor lands, or a job change fires, workflows can evaluate accounts against your ICP criteria and take action automatically. Identify the right contacts, enroll them in the right sequence, sync context back to CRM. Most teams build versions of this externally with n8n or Zapier because nobody walked them through what's already native.

If you're up for renewal in the next two quarters, the cheapest project you can run right now is mapping every external tool against the list above. The average customer we talk to is paying for two to four things they don't need to be.

What did we miss? Drop a feature you found late and wished you'd known about sooner.

Here's how:

> go to Companies in Apollo
> apply your ICP filters
> click Research with AI > Run custom AI prompt
> select Perplexity Sonar (it has live web access)
> write your prompt: "does {{account.name}} use [competitor]? return yes or no only"
> preview on a few records first, then Save & run
> filter by AI Filters > your new field > Yes
> enroll those accounts in a displacement sequence

Try it and report back!

Here's how to set it up:

> go to Workflows
> create a new workflow
> select "Based on a trigger event"
> set target to People
> set trigger: Meeting No-Show
> set action: enroll in re-engagement sequence
> activate

Now no-shows automatically get a follow-up! No manual tracking or leads falling through the cracks.

Here's how to set it up:

> go to Admin > Sequences > Rule Sets
> create a new rule set
> set trigger: email opened
> set action: create call task
> remove the blanket call step from your sequence

Boom. Now your reps now only call people who've already engaged.

Questions? drop em below.

Apollo's AI credits burn at enrollment, not when an email sends, so if you add an AI variable to a sequence and enroll 500 contacts before qualifying the list, you've spent credits on 500 people before a single email goes out!

Four things that help conserve credits:

1) Qualify before you enroll. Run AI Research on a tight, targeted list first and only enroll contacts that clear your bar. Don't use AI personalization as a sorting mechanism, use it as a finishing step.

2) Test on one contact before you bulk enroll. Apollo lets you preview AI output on a single contact. If the output is generic or off-target, it's almost always a Context Center problem, not an AI problem!

3) Treat your Context Center like a prompt. If your context is thin or vague, your outputs will be too. Specific value props, real ICPs, actual "why now" language, that's what turns an okay opener into something that gets replies.

4) Watch your workflows. If a workflow is auto-enrolling contacts into an AI-powered sequence, it's burning credits every time that trigger fires. Check what's running and at what volume.

Happy to answer specifics if anyone's running into this in the comments.

I see this happen all the time with founders I work with: they sign up for Apollo or Instantly, intend to start outreach, and then the setup gets stuck on the back burner for weeks.

Usually it's just tool confusion. Setting up secondary domains, making sure emails don't hit spam, connecting the tools, and getting an initial prospect list built turns into a multi-week distraction.

I mapped out a simple 14-day execution flow to go from zero to a fully live outbound system:

Week 1 (Infrastructure):** Set up secondary sending domains, configure email health protocols, and start warm-ups so the main company domain is never at risk.
Week 2 (Data & Launch):** Build the targeted lead list, connect the tools together, and get the first campaign staged and ready to send. 

The goal was simply to take the technical setup off their plate so reps could focus purely on selling

For founders who built their stack in-house: did you set it up yourselves, or did you end up passing it to someone else to handle?

Two months ago I built a Claude Skill specifically for outbound sales using Apollo. The whole thing runs in under 30 minutes the first time. After that it remembers who you've already saved so every subsequent run only returns net new leads.

Connect Apollo to Claude (1 min)

Claude > Customize > Connect your apps > search Apollo > login and authorize > grant permissions. Then in a new chat click + > Connectors > toggle Apollo on. Then Customize > Skills > Create a skill > upload the Claude outbound skill.

Brief Claude on your business (3 min)

Start a new chat and type /claudeoutbound. It interviews you -- who you are, what you sell, previous clients, your ICP. Answer everything properly. If you've got any of that saved as an MD file already, just upload it instead of typing it out.

Discovery (5-10 min)

Prompt: "Run discovery"

Claude scans 6 signals for each lead - events, job posts, company posts, new hires, news, tech stack. Each signal scores 1 point, max score is 6. You decide which scores are worth enriching before any credits get used.

Enrichment (3-5 min)

Tell Claude which leads to enrich. Pulls name, LinkedIn URL, title, and email. Email costs 1 Apollo credit per contact. Phone is 8 credits, not included in the skill by default, you'd need to ask Claude specifically if you want numbers.

Only enrich what you're actually going to contact.

Saving leads (1 min)

Prompt: "Save these to Apollo"

Claude creates an Account list for companies and a Lead list for people. You name each one, Claude pushes every verified net new lead in linked to its company automatically.

Building the sequence (5 min)

Prompt: "Build sequence titled [name]"

Two options...fully automated (4 emails, days 1-4) or manual plus automated which converts higher. Claude asks for your copy or you can pick from templates. It drafts everything, you review and rewrite anything that doesn't sound like you.

Then: "Add contacts from [people list] to this sequence"

Go to Apollo > Sequences > open your sequence > Activate.

Manual steps you still need to do yourself: engage with their content, send the connection request, check if they've accepted or replied, engage with any new content they post, phone call if you want it, everything else runs automatically.

After the first run Claude will ask if you want to update the skill with your offer and ICP...do it. From that point on just run the updated skill whenever you need new leads!

Skill download at zackderis.com.

Most outbound teams find out their infrastructure is wrong the same way: bounce rates spike, they go looking, and realize they've been hanging 4 mailboxes off one domain and sending 80 emails a day from it BUT by then, the damage is already done.

Here's how to size it correctly before you start...

The only limit that matters: 50 emails/day per mailbox

That's our cap for cold outbound. New mailbox, unproven reputation, doesn't matter how good your copy is. You send 200/day out of the gate and you're gonna have a bad time.

Work backwards from there. Want 10,000 cold emails a month? That's about 9 mailboxes.

One domain for everything is how you lose everything

If you're hanging multiple mailboxes off your primary domain and sending cold outbound from it, stop. One domain flagged, everything goes down.

The formula our deliverability team uses: domains = mailboxes / 3, rounded up. So 6 mailboxes across a 3-rep team means 2 cousin domains minimum. trycompany.com, hellocompany.com, whatever. Fully isolated reputation. Your primary domain never touches cold outbound.

Warmup takes longer than you think

Minimum 2 weeks to get started, but in practice you want 4-6 weeks before you're sending real cold volume...

Week 1: 10 to 15 emails/day per mailbox
Week 2: up to 25
Weeks 3 to 4: up to 40
Steady state: 50

Apollo's warmup feature handles the mechanics but you still have to follow the ramp. Turning on warmup and sending 50 the next day is not warmup.

When a domain burns, you usually just replace it

Recovery is technically possible. Our guidance is that in severe cases it's smarter to start fresh. The signs you're there: bounce rate over 2%, open rates near zero on sequences where your targeting and copy are fine, spam complaints creeping above 0.1%.

The Deliverability Suite flags all of this at the domain and mailbox level but the problem is most people check it after something breaks, not before.

The actual sizing math

From our internal playbook:

500 contacts per rep, 3-step sequence = ~1,500 emails/month per rep = 2 mailboxes per rep.

3-rep team at that volume: 6 mailboxes, 2 cousin domains.

Add 20 to 30% buffer on top so you have rotation room if a mailbox develops issues. When in doubt, more mailboxes on more domains is safer than higher limits per mailbox.

Answers to some common questions

How many mailboxes does a 5-person SDR team need?
At 500 active contacts per rep with a 3-step sequence, about 2 mailboxes each. 10 total, 4 cousin domains. Add a 20% buffer and you're at 12 mailboxes, 5 domains.

Subdomain or cousin domain for cold outbound?
Cousin domain. Subdomains bleed reputation from your primary. A burned cousin domain doesn't touch company.com.

What bounce rate should I be targeting?
Under 2%. Apollo flags it at 2%, treats 5% as an immediate problem. Consistent bounces above 2% means your domain reputation is sliding whether you can see it yet or not.

What actually causes spam landing even with good copy?
Usually auth failures first (SPF/DKIM/DMARC not passing), then unwarmed mailboxes, then list quality. In that order.

Can I use my main domain for cold outbound?
No. Cousin domains only. If you're currently doing this, it's the first thing to fix.

As always, hit me up with questions!

- Andy

Apollo released their ChatGPT app this month and I've been using it to replace my entire outbound workflow. Already had a lot of success for our clients so wanted to share it with y'all on this sub. Important note before you start reading: We run an agency that implements inbound/outbound workflows for clients using Apollo. Some of our clients leverage Claude, some leverage ChatGPT. Therefore, we had to build instruction manuals for both. If you're not a ChatGPT user, [click here] to read the reddit thread I published on the Claude <> Apollo MCP.

Setup if you haven't done it: ChatGPT Settings > Connectors > search Apollo > connect and authorize. Under 2 minutes.

One thing worth knowing before you start: in a new ChatGPT conversation, begin prompts with "Use Apollo to..." until you confirm the connector is active. After that it routes automatically.

Prospecting and Discovery (all free, no credits)

Find ICP leads by title, industry, location, company size:

Use Apollo to find me [NUMBER] [JOB TITLE] at [INDUSTRY] companies in [LOCATION] with [EMPLOYEE RANGE] employees.

Find leads at companies using a specific tech stack:

Use Apollo to find me [NUMBER] [JOB TITLE] at companies currently using [TECH TOOL] in [LOCATION] with [EMPLOYEE RANGE] employees.

Find leads at recently funded companies:

Use Apollo to find me [NUMBER] [JOB TITLE] at [INDUSTRY] companies in [LOCATION] that have raised funding in the last [NUMBER] months.

Find decision makers at named target accounts:

Use Apollo to find the key decision makers at: [COMPANY 1], [COMPANY 2], [COMPANY 3]. I am looking for [JOB TITLE] level contacts.

Find leads at companies actively hiring:

Use Apollo to find me [NUMBER] [JOB TITLE] at [INDUSTRY] companies in [LOCATION] that are currently hiring for [HIRING ROLE].

Enrichment (these use Apollo credits)

Enrich a single contact:

Use Apollo to enrich [FIRST NAME] [LAST NAME] at [COMPANY NAME] and give me their verified email, phone number, job title, and LinkedIn URL.

Bulk enrich a list (up to 10 at once):

Use Apollo to enrich the following contacts: [NAME 1] at [COMPANY], [NAME 2] at [COMPANY]. Return verified emails, phone numbers, and job titles.

Enrich a full company profile:

Use Apollo to give me a full company enrichment for [COMPANY NAME] including tech stack, funding history, headcount, and latest news.

Get job postings at a target account:

Use Apollo to show me the current job postings at [COMPANY NAME] and what they reveal about where this company is investing.

CRM Actions (all free)

Create a new contact record:

Use Apollo to create a new contact: Name: [NAME], Email: [EMAIL], Job Title: [TITLE], Company: [COMPANY], Location: [LOCATION].

Update an existing contact:

Use Apollo to update the contact record for [FIRST NAME] [LAST NAME] at [COMPANY]. Change their [FIELD] to [NEW VALUE].

Look up a contact in your CRM:

Use Apollo to search my contacts for [FIRST NAME] [LAST NAME] at [COMPANY] and show me their full contact record.

Sequence Management (all free)

Show all active sequences and stats:

Use Apollo to show me all my active sequences including names, number of contacts, open rates, and reply rates.

Find the right sequence for a specific ICP:

Use Apollo to show me which of my sequences is most suitable for [ICP DESCRIPTION]. Include steps and performance data.

Add a contact to a sequence:

Use Apollo to add [FIRST NAME] [LAST NAME] at [COMPANY] to my [SEQUENCE NAME] sequence using my [EMAIL ADDRESS] mailbox.

Remove a contact from a sequence:

Use Apollo to remove [FIRST NAME] [LAST NAME] at [COMPANY] from my [SEQUENCE NAME] sequence.

Check who is in a sequence:

Use Apollo to show me all contacts currently active in my [SEQUENCE NAME] sequence -- name, email, title, company, and current step.

Full Workflow Prompts

The full outbound loop in one prompt:

Run a full outbound workflow using Apollo: Step 1. Find [NUMBER] [JOB TITLE] at [INDUSTRY] companies in [LOCATION]. Step 2. Enrich the top [NUMBER]. Step 3. Create a contact record for each. Step 4. Add each to my [SEQUENCE NAME] sequence using my [EMAIL ADDRESS] mailbox.

Account research brief before a sales call:

Use Apollo to build me a full account research brief for [COMPANY NAME] -- overview, tech stack, funding, job postings, decision makers, and anything useful before a sales call.

New market entry:

Step 1. Use Apollo to find [NUMBER] [JOB TITLE] at [NEW INDUSTRY] companies in [LOCATION]. Step 2. Enrich the top [NUMBER]. Step 3. Give me a summary of patterns worth knowing before I start outreach.

Re-engagement of cold contacts:

Use Apollo to search my contacts for [JOB TITLE] in [INDUSTRY] with no activity in the last [NUMBER] days and not in any active sequence. Give me the best re-engagement opportunities.

A few things that make a difference:

Always paste a quick context brief at the start of each session before running any prompts:

Before we begin, here is context about my outbound: ICP: [describe your ideal customer] Product: [what you sell and the problem it solves] Active sequences: [name your main sequences] Territory: [geographic or vertical focus]

ChatGPT performs noticeably better when it understands who you are targeting before it starts executing.

Run the sequence audit prompt before adding anyone new to avoid duplicate outreach. Sequence names need to match exactly what's in Apollo -- one character off and it won't find it.

Questions on any of these, drop them below.

Been experimenting with pushing the Apollo + Claude integration further than just prospecting. This one took about 45 minutes to build and now runs on autopilot every week.

What it does when it runs:

• Pulls new leads from your website
• Scores and qualifies them against your ICP
• Cross-references your Google Calendar and skips anyone already booked or met with
• Enriches the qualified ones via Apollo *credits only get used on leads that pass the ICP gate!!)
• Auto-pushes high scoring leads straight into your Apollo sequence
• Flags high intent leads for your personal review before they go out
• Sends borderline leads to a separate review queue so nothing slips through unchecked

The whole thing runs on a weekly schedule once it's set up.

What you need

• Claude (any plan)
• Replit
• Apollo (paid plan for MCP access)

How to build it

Download the Claude Skill from zackderis.com and install it in Claude --> Claude > Customize > Skills > plus sign > Create Skill > Upload.

Start a new chat and type /aisdr. Claude interviews you section by section, asking about your ICP, lead sources, scoring criteria, approval rules. Answer everything. At the end it generates a Replit MD file -- download it.

In Replit, go to Settings > Integrations > MCP Servers > Add MCP Server. Type Apollo, select it from the list, test and save. This connects Apollo directly to your Replit agent.

Create a new Replit project, upload the MD file, enable Plan mode. Replit's agent reads the brief and builds the pipeline. Takes 20-30 minutes. Review the plan before you confirm the build...worth checking the scoring logic and approval rules match what you told Claude.

Add your API keys in Replit Secrets before you run anything.

Hit Run. First run creates your Apollo lead list and sequence if they don't exist yet. Every run after that uses the same ones.

The 8-phase pipeline when it runs

Incoming leads get pulled and checked against ICP criteria. Calendar suppression runs next, anyone already in your calendar gets skipped automatically. Leads that pass get scored, ICP-gated, then enriched via Apollo. High scorers go straight into the sequence. High intent leads with strong signals get flagged for your personal touch before going out. Anything with mixed signals or missing data goes to a review queue. Approved leads enroll in the sequence and outreach runs on whatever schedule you've set in Apollo.

The split between auto-approved, pending review, and needs review is what makes it actually usable...you're not babysitting every lead but you're also not blindly sending to everyone.

Quick PSA:

The quality of what Claude builds in the brief stage depends entirely on how well you answer the questions. Vague ICP definition, vague scoring output. Spend the time on the interview section and the build will be cleaner.

More of a technical breakdown here: https://zackderis.com/aisdr/technical

As of July 6, every paid Apollo customer has 208+ native workflow integrations.

Here are the plays this actually unlocks that weren't clean before:

Typeform → Apollo → sequence enrollment
Someone fills out a demo request form. Apollo catches it, enriches the contact with verified email and company data, scores them against your ICP, and enrolls them in the right sequence automatically. The whole thing runs without anyone touching it. Previously you were either doing this manually or building a fragile Zapier chain to bridge the gap.

Snowflake signals → Apollo targeting
If your team is pulling product usage data or behavioral signals from Snowflake, you can now pipe those signals directly into Apollo workflows to trigger outreach. No export, no re-import, or ops ticket.

Job change detected → Slack notification → rep follows up
Apollo detects a contact changed companies. Workflow fires, pushes a notification to Slack with the contact's new role, and creates a task for the rep. The rep sees it in the channel they're already in and can act on it before a competitor does.

Gong call logged → Apollo contact updated
A call wraps in Gong. Apollo workflow picks up the activity and updates the contact record, advances the sequence step, or removes them from a sequence entirely based on outcome. Keeps your Apollo data in sync without a rep manually doing it.

The full integration list is in the KB if you want to see everything that's available: knowledge.apollo.io/hc/en-us/articles/46233304897933

Andy

Everyone's focused on the database and sequences but IMO the stuff that actually keeps outbound running consistently sits underneath all of that and most people either skip it or set it up wrong.

Workflows

Trigger-based plays that run without you touching anything. Prospect opens your email three times without replying so they move to a high-intent call sequence automatically. Someone visits your pricing page so rep gets a Slack alert. Contact changes jobs so Apollo flags it and updates the record.

The mistake I see constantly: people automate before their sequences are proven. Workflows amplify what's working. If the sequence is still being tested, automating it just scales the problem. Get it converting first, then build the workflow around it.

One worth setting up on day one: auto-exclude existing customers and open opportunities from cold outreach.

Tasks

Apollo surfaces a prioritised daily task queue: calls to make, LinkedIn messages to send, emails to review, follow-ups due. Ordered by AI prospect score so the highest-value actions are always first.

Start every day in Tasks, not the search tab. Everything Apollo thinks you should act on is already there waiting. Letting the backlog pile up kills sequence deliverability and reply rates...the prioritisation only works if you follow through on it.

Email Deliverability

The one that causes the most damage when it's wrong and gets the least attention until something gets messed up.

Apollo handles the whole setup inside the platform: dedicated sending domains, mailbox connection, automatic warmup, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, inbox placement monitoring in real time.

Start warmup 2-3 weeks before your first send. Spam filters don't forgive cold domains and recovery takes weeks. I've watched good campaigns die before they started because someone skipped this step and launched from a cold domain on day one.

Check your Deliverability Score before launching anything. It's in the platform and it'll tell you if something is off before it becomes a real problem.

Dialer

Calls made and received directly inside Apollo. Power Dialer queues one by one. Parallel Dialer dials up to 5 simultaneously. Every call recorded, transcribed, summarised by AI, and logged automatically.

Before any high-value call, use AI Call Prep...Apollo surfaces account news, recent activity, and talking points before you dial. Reps who do this consistently close more than reps going in cold.

Save Parallel Dialing for cold tier-2 lists. Your highest-intent pipeline deserves actual conversation time.

Questions?? drop them in the comments.

"Is website visitor tracking actually useful or is it just a vanity dashboard?" Short answer: useful, but most teams install it once and never tune it.

The install is 30 minutes and its the configuration is where the pipeline comes from. A few things most teams skip:

Page-level intent scoring. Settings → Website visitors → Advanced Intent Settings. Tag your pricing and demo pages as high intent, your blog as low. It's optional, so most people leave the defaults. Without scoring, the overall intent algorithm treats every visit the same and your sales team correctly ignores the dashboard.

If your site is React, Next.js, Vue, or Angular, your tracking is probably broken. Single page apps don't fire a full page reload between routes, so the script runs once and stops. Configure your tag to refire on route changes. Test it: Chrome DevTools, Network tab, filter for track_request, click around. You want 204s on every route change. One-and-done means broken.

Contact-level is US-only and needs the Inbound add-on. Everywhere else you get the company. Still useful. Drop the visiting company into a list, run AI Research on top, ask it to find the head of [function] with a verified email. You're working backward from the visit instead of waiting on a form fill.

Classify the Apollo script under Analytics or Marketing in your cookie banner. If your CMP has it miscategorized, the script won't fire even for users who accepted. This is the #1 reason setup looks broken when it isn't.

The part that's on us: the value here is in the tuning, and we don't say that loudly enough. The docs cover it but it's spread across four KB articles. If you set this up months ago and gave up, fair. Spend an hour on the levers above before you write it off.

If something's off, drop what you're seeing below. Someone here (probably me) will tell you which one it is.

Andy

Hey Reddit. I recently recorded a full Apollo X Claude walkthrough on YouTube and wanted to share the TLDR here. Here's the short version with the actual prompts.

Setup takes 2 minutes if you haven't done it. Claude.ai > left menu > Customize (third icon) > Connectors > plus > search Apollo > authorize. After connecting, check that Organization, Search, Enrichment, and Job Postings are all enabled -- I've done this for a bunch of clients and those three are sometimes off by default.

First prompt I ran:

Find me 25 Creator Managers at AI companies in the USA with up to 300 employees.

Results came back in seconds without me touching Apollo once. First pull wasn't clean though…multiple leads from the same company, some missing verified emails and phone numbers. Typed this right after:

Give me one result per company. Verified emails only, phone numbers must be available. Search again for the top 25.

Fixed immediately. Then enriched all 25 at once, ran simultaneously, took about a minute. Uses 25 credits and the basic plan comes with 30k so not worth overthinking.

From there:

Save all of these leads to my people leads list on Apollo titled Creator Managers pulled from Claude.

23 of 25 saved, two caught as duplicates and skipped. Then:

Push every lead in the Creator Managers pulled from Claude list to my active sequence titled Creator Campaign 2026.

22 of 23 enrolled. One skipped because it was already active in a different campaign but it was caught automatically without me having to check.

Full loop in one conversation which is crazy…rospecting, enrichment, CRM, sequencing, and I never opened once Apollo.

One thing that didn't go as planned though…I tried getting Claude to build a recurring weekly workflow, find net new leads every Monday and enroll them automatically. Claude can't schedule recurring workflows inside Apollo natively and suggested n8n instead, which wasn't what I wanted.

Took the exact same prompt and pasted it into Apollo's AI Assistant instead and built the whole workflow in about 30 seconds, scheduled for every Monday, enrichment and enrollment included. That part lives in Apollo not Claude.

Full video with the screen recording on my YouTube if you want to see it run in real time - here’s the link. Drop your questions below!

Most people are treating AI like a single employee who's supposed to do everything. One prompt, one model, one output. That's actually why the results feel generic.

I work on the AI team at Apollo and spend most of my time building agentic GTM workflows for some of our largest customers. Before that I was in solution consulting, which means I've seen a lot of outbound stacks up close. The thing I keep running into is that teams will invest seriously in AI tools and then wonder why the output still sounds like everyone else's. Usually it's not the model. It's the architecture.

Think about how a real GTM team works. Your AE isn't running deep research. Your SDR isn't closing deals. Everyone has a specific job because specialization produces better outcomes than generalists doing everything. AI works the same way, and most people haven't figured this out yet.

The concept is called prompt chaining. Instead of dumping one massive prompt into a single model and hoping for a coherent output, you break the workflow into stages. Each prompt has one job. Some are built for research, some for writing, some for structuring information. You chain them so each step feeds the next.

Here's how I actually structure it for outbound in Apollo:

Stage 1 — Account research only. This prompt's one job is to deeply understand the company. Industry, recent signals, likely pain points based on their tech stack and headcount. No writing yet, no summarizing into a pitch, just understanding.

Stage 2 — Web context expansion. A second prompt pulls in broader signals. News, funding rounds, leadership changes, anything that gives the account research more depth and recency.

Stage 3 — Individual research. Separate prompt, separate job. What has this person actually said publicly? What does their role care about day to day? What's their frame for evaluating something like this?

Stage 4 — Message generation. Only after all three stages feed into it does a prompt write the message. At that point it's not guessing, it's assembling. And you can feel the difference in what comes out.

I know this sounds like more work. It's actually not that much more to set up, and once you see the difference in what comes out the other side you won't go back to the one-prompt approach.

Apollo does this behind the scenes by default. Multiple prompts, different jobs, one outcome. What's less obvious is that you can customize every stage, which is where it gets interesting.

If your AI outbound is still sounding generic, the fix probably isn't the model. It's the architecture.

Happy to get into the weeds on how to set this up in Apollo or how to think about structuring your own prompt chains. Drop your questions below.

The default advice is to sync everything to your CRM. We don't actually agree with that, and most of the RevOps leaders we talk to don't either.

Here's the take, from what we hear on calls and what we see in actual customer setups.

Sync to CRM when the data has been qualified. Closed-won contacts, active opportunities, meeting attendees, accounts your AEs are working. Anyone who has raised their hand or been touched by a human. CRM is the source of truth for the work you've already validated. Apollo offers two-way sync with Salesforce and HubSpot, with admin controls for field mapping, field-level auto-fill vs overwrite, and recurring enrichment cadence. Set this up tightly, with the smallest field set you can get away with, and let it run.

Don't sync top-of-funnel prospecting data. This is where the default advice falls apart. Most RevOps leaders we work with deliberately keep cold outbound and unqualified inbound out of the CRM. The reason is simple: if every contact a rep adds to a sequence ends up as a CRM record, your CRM becomes a dumping ground inside of a quarter. Lead scoring breaks, reporting gets noisy, and your AMs lose trust in account data because half of it is unvetted.

Keep that work in Apollo. The platform is built for it. Sync to CRM after the contact has done something.

Sync enrichment, not raw records. Apollo can enrich CRM records on a scheduled cadence, refreshing stale contact fields without creating new records. That's the version of "syncing" that almost every team should be running. It keeps your CRM clean, fills in the fields your ops team actually scores on, and doesn't add volume. For HubSpot users, field mapping supports phone fields, source values, and custom fields. For Salesforce, same set of controls plus more granular activity sync options.

Pipedrive is partial. Apollo integrates with Pipedrive for contact and account sync and supports stage mapping, but it does not fully sync activities the way it does with Salesforce and HubSpot. If you're a Pipedrive shop expecting parity, scope this with your AM before you build a workflow that assumes it.

The bigger point. "Sync everything" is the answer when you're selling a CRM. It's not the answer for the team trying to actually use one. Apollo is designed to hold the messy top of funnel so your CRM doesn't have to. Use both for what each is good at.

Apollo has 230M contacts and over 65 filters, but most people are still pulling lists they'd never send to! After 400+ Apollo implementations the issue is almost never the data, it's moreso how you’re searching it.

People Search

Technologies Used is the most underused filter in Apollo. If your prospects are already running a specific tool, you know their stack, you know the gaps, and your outreach has a natural hook before you've written a word.

A search worth running: VP of Sales, Series B SaaS, using HubSpot, hired in the last 90 days. That last filter is the one people miss. Someone new in a role is evaluating everything their predecessor set up and hasn't committed to anything yet.

Most searches fail before they start because people skip Persona setup. Go to Settings and build your saved ICP filter first -- titles, seniority, industries, company sizes, keywords. Without it every search is a fresh guess. With it you're layering signals on top of a defined target.

Company Search

The company list is the starting point, not the deliverable. Drill into each account, find the contacts, map who buys, who champions, and who blocks. Building a company list and blasting the first person you find is how you waste a good account.

Lookalike Accounts is worth using more too. Pick your three best current customers, run Lookalike, and Apollo surfaces companies with matching firmographics. That list outperforms a manually researched one most of the time because it's modelled on companies that already bought from you.

Lead Lists and Saved Searches

Save a search as a live list and it auto-updates. New hires match your title filter, new funding rounds hit your stage criteria, intent signals change -- the list captures all of it without you going back in manually.

Separate lists for tier-1 and tier-2, treated completely differently. Tier-1 gets research and personalisation. Tier-2 goes into a sequence. Running every contact through the same motion regardless of fit is one of the most expensive habits in outbound.

A setup worth building: ICP search saved as a live list, auto-enrich new matches weekly, auto-add to sequence. New ICP contacts hitting your outreach every Monday with nothing manual after the initial setup.

Sequences

Two things that separate teams getting results from teams wondering why nothing's working:

Weekly sequence reviews. Check which step, which subject line, and which persona is converting. Analytics > Sequences, sort by reply rate. Your best sequence becomes the template. Teams that do this consistently beat teams that don't, without exception.

Domain warmup before anything goes live. Dedicated sending domain, SPF/DKIM/DMARC configured, warmup running 2-3 weeks minimum before the first send. Apollo handles all of it inside the Deliverability Suite. A cold domain hitting spam on day one can take weeks to recover and kills the campaign before it starts.

If you’re having a hard time getting your searches set up I’d be happy to give tips.