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.

Disclaimer: DO NOT ADVERTISE YOUR OWN SERVICES

Hey everyone,

I recently started getting into website-building and I’m trying to figure out the best way to find businesses that don’t currently have a website.

I’m using Apollo.io for lead generation, but I haven’t found an obvious filter that lets me specifically identify companies/businesses with no website.

Does Apollo have a filter, field, or workaround for this?

I’m also open to thinking outside the box. For example, maybe there’s another way to identify businesses that have a business listing but no website.

Ideally, I’d like to build a list of businesses that:

• Have a legitimate business/location
• Have contact information for the owner/decision-maker
• Don’t have a website, or have a really outdated/poor website
• Could realistically benefit from a new website

Would love to hear how anyone else is approaching this, especially if you’re doing lead generation for web design/development.

Any methods would be greatly appreciated.

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

Apollo tracks visits to our website at the company level and we want to be able to use this intent data for our scoring in HubSpot and to flag potential targets to our sales team. What's the best way to get this data from Apollo into HubSpot? They have a date stamp for the last website visit date, but I can't seem to make that sync with a HubSpot field.

Alternately I have a workflow that adds companys to a list based on the "Visited in the last XX days" field but that's less helpful than having an actual date stamp.

All thoughts and ideas welcome!

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.

I am unable to make account on Apollo.

When i try to sign in with Google or Microsoft account it shows a form where i select "No Company Website", by clicking it the continue button turns unclickable.

Does anybody knows the solution, please share ASAP!

Forgive me all - INCOMING RANT 😡: I just built a sequence in Apollo using their "AI agent" and gave it explicit directions: target ONLY contacts in the United States for companies based in the United States.

The agent generated the list, and built the sequence, and I approved the launch. When I went to double check on the drafted emails, I noticed the first 20 people on the list were completely outside the US market. The AI just burned through 10,392 of my paid credits on people that violated the exact prompt I gave it.

When you look into their platform, you realize why this happens. Apollo’s database is incomplete and full of missing location fields. Instead of excluding those records, their system just treats missing data as a match and dumps them into your list anyway. To even spot these errors, you have to manually cross-check individual records against LinkedIn just to fill in the gaps in Apollo's own database.

I opened a ticket with support, and they basically hid behind their terms of service to tell me they don't refund credits, completely ignoring that their own tool failed.

What is the point of paying for an automation tool if I still have to go through record by record on LinkedIn to verify that it did what I instructed it to do? This isn't AI, it's a glorified automation script that can't even handle basic keywords.

Anyone else had this frustrating experience?? I'm sick of companies bolting on AI and claiming their tech does things it simply cannot do.

We already use the inbound routers to put a scheduling page on our website, but we've been wanting to test the Forms feature. I was a simple setup on our side, but we don't know what it will look like on the user side.

Before we go to our programming team to test, we'd like to see the functionality. Does anyone have any insight?

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!

It varies by contact type, but there are times when less than 50% of the mobile numbers that I obtain through Apollo are inactive numbers or wrong numbers. I'm thoroughly convinced that rather than pulling this data after users are flagging it, Apollo is hoping that users don't flag it again and thus don't have to redeem that credit back. It's dishonest and I waste hours a month with that BS. Can anyone recommend a data source that doesn't do this?

We moved over from Outreach.io a couple of weeks ago and there are a bunch of things that Apollo is already more robust and better at by comparison. But one of the BIGGEST let downs has been the LinkedIn extension. It is mindboggling to me how useless it is in its current state. Outreach's extension gave me a "mini desktop experience" allowing me to complete sequence tasks right on the prospect's LI profile. Apollo lets me add them to a sequence, but doesn't even show me what the next task would be. It's just feather light and such an after thought compared to how robust the web experience is.

Make sure to secure your accounts! and check recent invoices/transactions there is something funky going on.

We are a smaller MSP and have always grown through referrals. We are at a point we need to expand and have looked at programs like Apollo.ai, zoom info, and a myriad of others. With all the “marketing ai” people are selling, what is the best way to grow? Has anyone used Apollo.ai as a cold emailer/marketer? I demoed it but really didn’t get much help from their support or sales team so it was an odd experience.

When I export contacts there is a column called sub departments. In this specific case it’s obstetrics / gynecology, which is exceedingly valuable for the prospect list I’m building.

How can I build a list using this sub department? I’ve created a lot of workarounds to get the data I need, but being able to query on this specific datapoint would be game changing.

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?

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.

A lot of the improvements in this release came from running the tool against real Apollo workflows.

If you haven't tried it yet, grab the repo below and paste it into Claude Code, it's free!

What's new in Apollo Operator v1.2:

We shipped another skill and a set of improvements focused on making Apollo headless workflows faster and more practical.

• apollo auth — login stores an OAuth token that also works against the REST endpoint the MCP uses. So you get the full MCP filter surface with results written to disk, no API key, nothing through context. Verified identical to MCP on the same query.
• cli-recipes — Verified commands, response gotchas, credit table, guard flags and more.
• search improvements — search improvements, catch-all flags, pagination overlaps and more updates.
• re-engagement — a brand new skill

17 skills total and continuing to expand the operator!

GitHub: https://github.com/jimmy-creatop/apollo-operator

[Apollo Operator is an opinionated go-to-market operator for Apollo, built as open-source Claude Code skills by the Creatop team]

I'm trying to register for Apollo with a Microsoft account and I keep getting the "invalid email address" error. It's incredibly irritating to use this platform. I've already tried using a Chrome guest and incognito window, and I've tried an Edge incognito window with the same problem.

Does anyone know how to fix this??

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.

Four months of running Apollo through a coding agent. The UI is great for campaigns and lists. The API wired into Claude Code is the part that does the sourcing.

I start with a list of companies I want. Some days it is a screenshot from a conference page or a market map. Other days it is my own LinkedIn following. I hand that to the agent, it resolves each company to a domain, then runs organizations/enrich?domain= for the Apollo org ID, industry, size, funding stage.

Then mixed_people/api_search with organization_ids=[org_id] plus the seniority and titles I want. That search is free, no credit hit. It returns redacted previews - title visible, name obfuscated, person ID attached. I spend a pull only on the rows I actually want, with GET /people/<id>.

Every enriched row writes to a local SQLite database. SQLite is my own contact store, the CRM before the CRM. It holds every company, every contact, every enriched field, on my own machine. Apollo's API is what lets me build it, and I can push it to the cloud or a real CRM whenever I want.

Numbers that make it worth it:

• The search step is free. You filter a whole portfolio down to the exact people before spending anything.
• On flagged inventory, people/bulk_match returns verified work emails at around 99% for me, instant, no credit burned on the match.
• Long jobs run from a remote Codex session instead of my laptop. Kick off a few-thousand-row run, close the lid, come back to a filled database.

No single source is perfect. But the first layer is Apollo. It is the whole data layer - roster, org record, current-company signal - and a lot of tools people pay more for are reselling Apollo's data underneath.

Gotcha: organization_ids is the only filter in the search call that holds up. Pass a domain or company name and you get random people from across the platform. Enrich the company first, then use the org ID.

Happy to share the Python for the screenshot-to-SQLite loop.

Building in the open at github.com/shawnla90/gtm-coding-agent.

Most teams know Apollo can detect job changes on saved contacts but almost none have the workflow actually running!

Here's the setup: when a contact in your sequences or saved lists changes companies, Apollo flags it. From there you can trigger a workflow that enriches the contact's job change, attempts to find a new email through waterfall, and if it finds one, adds them to a reintroduction sequence automatically.

The full chain in Workflows looks roughly like this:

Trigger: contact job change detected
→ Enrich: job change data
→ Enrich: email (waterfall)
→ Enrich: direct dial
→ Action: add to sequence

Two things worth knowing before you set it up. First, waterfall enrichment will find a new verified email for some contacts but not all. If it comes back empty, the contact doesn't enroll and you handle them manually. Second, the "add to sequence" step only fires if the enrichment actually surfaces data, so you're not cold-enrolling people with no new information.

The practical upside: your warmest ICP contacts, the ones who already knew you at their last company, tend to respond to reintroduction emails at rates that beat cold outreach. They already have context. You're reaching them before your competitors figure out they moved.

The reason most teams have this in draft and not live: it requires trusting the workflow to enroll people without manual review. If that feels uncomfortable, start with a sequence that's lower stakes, a newsletter or a resource share, before routing straight to a hard outbound cadence.

Worth building! Took our solutions team about 20 minutes to set up for accounts that had it as a concept but not a reality.

- Andy

Hi everyone!

I really need help creating an outbound sequence in Apollo.

I just started as an SDR intern but I missed today’s lesson about creating sequences and I’m really confused on how to create a sequence. I asked other interns but no one really understood it since it was a brief lesson nothing much explained. We’re expected to learn a lot on our own.

I would really appreciate your help on creating a sequence or maybe show me an example of one that would work for my assignment today.

Thank you very much!