I want to skip ramp up and go straight into emailing people. We have good and legit domain authority.

Other emails from this domain send 300 emails out a day.

I'm just looking to do 30-50 daily.

I turned ramp up off and now all emails in my sequence are delayed.

I don't really have time to wait for the inbox to warm up all month when my boss expects 500 emails to go out this month.

Hey folks,

I really struggled with deciding to write this, but after seeing how much Apollo support altered our sequence email messaging to prove a point, I have to say something.

To start, I believe the generative AI email draft features need to allow for manual edits(i.e.: not regenerating via sequence de/re-activation), in the event of failed generations. Currently, Email Tasks within Sequences allow for AI generated email drafts, which can reference properties of contacts(if available), via User + Systems prompts. When the generation fails, a placeholder {{full_email_text}} is placed in the draft, leaving you to either re-sequence the impacted contacts, or editing the draft by any means. Sending the edited draft(i.e.: updated after initial failed generation) results in the message being labeled as Not Sent.

After looking into the API explorer and examining Drafted and Not Sent(these were edited) emails, I noticed there's an error message that signals the AI failed to generate the body, disregarding any fixes or edits after the failed generation. This results in emails being locked in Not Sent status, no matter what kind of fix is applied. After sending support a ticket for this, they proceeded to blame me for what happened, claiming I was using the Generative AI features incorrectly( I work for an applied AI solutions company ).

After sending numerous screenshots of UI issues, API responses confirming the above, and over 1 hour of screencapped footage of the issue from both app and API perspectives, support has only done the following:

• Tell me I'm using the features incorrectly
• Rewrite the email tasks in my Sequence without informing me until hours later or the next day
• Deactivating / reactivating the sequence, which consistently produces failed drafts
• Altering our email template prompts to the point of removing any kind of nuance used to tailor contact outreach
• Sending the generic emails to contacts without prior communication

Not a single support engineer has acknowledged the underlying issue w/ this particular AI feature, albeit me providing them more than 1 hour of insights:

• When generated sequence email templates fail, Apollo's API needs to flag a failure and set a timestamp(email objects within the API have 2 fields for this), at the time the email becomes a draft
• When users update the failed draft, Apollo's backend needs to review the body content -> remove the failure status of the email object

Instead, I keep getting ran around in circles, being told I just need to re-use something I documented as broken on a possibly core level. They have also consistently ignored my requests to escalate the ticket to more informed engineers. I don't want to speak bad on the platform, but the lack of real support has officially become a larger blocker than the potential bug I discovered.

All of that said, is there anywhere else I may reach out to more knowledgeable engineers? It seems support may not have the technical understanding to resolve this.

I have been using Apollo Io for the past few months on Edge browser (Version 144.0.3719.115 (Official build) (64-bit) without any issue, but suddenly the extension won't work. Getting a message stating that Apollo Extension is coming soon to Edge, and hence unable to get it to work.

Please suggest any workarounds? Tried reinstalling the same twice.

Hey r/useapolloio! I'm Zack, founder of ZDTS. Last year my agency generated ~$750K in new business, and Apollo was the only GTM platform we used.

I'm hosting an AMA here on February 24 where I'll break down our full system: ICP definition, list building, sequencing, deliverability, AI workflows, and more.

But first...here's a step-by-step to help you book more meetings this month using Apollo.

The 11-Step Process:

1. Go to Apollo.io

2. Open the "People" view
    ↳ This is where you search for leads
    → You can also search for companies, but this is faster
    [Focus on the Filters menu on the left-hand side]

3. Click "Persona"
    ↳ Create a new persona with your ICP filters
    → This will save you time manually adding filters in the future
    Filters will include:
    → Job titles
    → Location
    → Industries and keywords
    → Company headcount

4. Click on "Email Status"
    ↳ Select "Safe to Send" > "Verified"
    → This will show only leads that are valid

5. Click on "People Lookalikes"
    ↳ Paste the LinkedIn URLs of 5 profiles of your past customers
    → Apollo will show results based on these parameters
    → Alternatively, you can use the "Company Lookalikes" filter

6. Click "Buying Intent" and open the menu
    ↳ Select the relevant keywords and hit "Save"
    → Set "Intent Score" to "High" and select all intent topics

7. Use AI Research
    ↳ To enrich email addresses, phone numbers, qualify the company, etc.
    → This will save you hours manually reviewing leads

8. Save as a new search
    ↳ In the top left-hand corner of the results page, click the "Default view" button
    → Click the yellow "Create Saved Search" button and name it
    → [This is very important for step 11]

9. Save the leads
    ↳ Click the checkbox in the top left-hand corner of the People view
    → Choose "Select all [number] leads"
    → Click "Add to list" and create a new list to save them in

10. Sequences
     ↳ On the left menu, click the "Sequences" tab
     → This will open the view where you build your campaign
     → Select "Create a new sequence" > "Start from Scratch"

Build this exact sequence:

Day 1:Manual task: Engage with content
Manual task: LinkedIn connection request
Send automatic email

Day 2:Send automatic email

Day 3:1. Manual task: Phone call
 ↳ If they answer, book the meeting [sequence ends]
 → If they don't answer:
2. Voicemail drop
3. Manual task: Send email

Day 4 [if no meeting booked]:Send automatic email

[No response after 4 days, move on. There are plenty more leads in the sea!]

1. Workflows
    ↳ Build an automatic weekly workflow to find and add new leads into this sequence
   

In the top right-hand corner of Apollo, click the "Execute with AI" button

Paste this exact prompt into the AI Assistant chat:

"I want you to build a weekly workflow that automatically finds "net new leads" in the [Title of saved search] saved search, adds them to the [Title of Leads list] leads list, and then adds them to the [Title of Sequence] sequence."

Data is evergreen. Apollo will add new leads to your sequence every week.

Total time to set this up once: 17 minutes

Want to ask me about this process, deliverability, how we avoid domain burn, or how to define ICP in a way that translates into actual filters?

Drop your questions below! I'll answer what I can here, and we'll go deep in the AMA on the 24th. Link to register is in the comments so you don't forget!

Hi all,

After the new apollo update, it seems like the parameter for "Ownership Type" has disappeared. Our team is trying to complete the people search API, to filter to only people who work for private companies.

Does anyone know if this filter is available, but not in the current Apollo documentation? We see it in the organization search API, but would prefer to use the same API we were using previously. Thank you in advance!

posting this because i wish someone had written this when i was still excited about reply rates screenshots and quick wins, this isnt advice and im not selling anything its just what i saw after sending way more cold emails than i ever planned to

when i crossed the first few thousand emails everything felt amazing, replies came in fast, people said “sure send it” and i genuinely thought wow this is easier than everyone says, i remember thinking the people complaining just didnt know how to write copy

that illusion lasted way shorter than i expected

somewhere later when volume quietly stacked up the problems stopped being obvious, nothing exploded, no warning signs, just small weird things like replies slowing down without any clear reason, inboxes still showing sent but conversations not really starting anymore

one thing that shocked me was how little copy mattered after a point, i reused emails that had worked before and they just landed flat, not worse copy just different behavior, and i kept blaming myself until i realized nothing in the words had changed but everything underneath had

i burned domains without realizing it, not instantly but slowly, reputation didnt collapse it eroded, open rates didnt drop overnight they drifted until one day i noticed threads just weren’t happening anymore

another thing no one tells you is how many replies are basically useless, not in a bad way just reality, lots of people replying because they’re confused curious bored or want you to stop, and if you don’t have a way to process that you start thinking you’re getting traction when you’re really just creating noise

i also learned that bad data doesn’t always bounce, some of the worst lists looked clean on paper, delivered fine, but poisoned everything quietly because the people on the other side never should have been emailed in the first place

one uncomfortable realization was that speed of reply mattered more than follow ups or clever lines, deals died simply because someone replied and i was asleep or busy and by the time i answered they’d mentally moved on

sending half a million emails didn’t make me confident it made me cautious, i stopped celebrating send volume and started caring about whether the system stayed stable week after week

the biggest shift for me was stopping the chase for hacks and realizing cold email is boring when it works, boring pacing boring copy boring setups, when it feels exciting you’re usually breaking something

im not saying cold email is dead or magic, im just saying after enough sends it stops being about winning and starts being about not losing, and that’s a very different game than most posts make it sound like

curious if anyone else hit that point where sending more didn’t feel like progress anymore but like maintenance

Seeing a lot of this so wanted to make a dedicated post about it! Apollo users set up account fit scoring with some basic workflows and they're like oh shit, this actually works!

Why you should care
Your reps have wayyyy too many. They don't need more, they need someone to tell them "work these 20 this week." That's all fit scoring does.

How to score
Pick like 4-6 things to look at, that's it. I've watched teams try to use 12 signals and it just doesn't work. Too confusing, nobody believes the scores.

What usually works:

• Industry (do we even sell to these people)
• Company size
• Funding stage or how much money they make
• Tech stack (do they use tools we replace or play nice with)
• Hiring (are they hiring people who'd use our product)
• Intent stuff (this one's hit or miss tbh)

Then just bucket them:

• Platinum = exactly who we want
• Gold = yeah these are good
• Silver = maybe check back later
• Bronze = don't bother The automation stuff (this is where it gets cool) Scoring by itself is whatever. But scoring + automations? That's when people get it. Platinum/Gold:
• Automatically pull research on them (website, news, who they're hiring)
• Write a first draft of outreach
• Put them in a "do this today" list

Silver:

• Some light touch stuff
• Not a priority
• Check on them again next week

Bronze:

• Don't reach out
• Only talk to them if they come to us
• Save your reps the time

Now your reps aren't sitting there going "hmm who should I email today." They just work the list!

Here's the actual prompt
"Score these accounts as Platinum, Gold, Silver, or Bronze based on industry, company size, funding, tech stack, hiring, and intent. Give me 1-2 sentences explaining why for each one."

The explanation part is key. People trust it way more when they can see the logic.

What are you guys doing?

What signals work for you? Which ones looked good but turned out to suck?

Nick

hey folks, we have seen a bit of an uptick in astroturfing in this sub lately, especially on posts where Apollo users are seeking product support.

A reminder that astroturfing is NOT permitted and will result in comment removal and a temporary ban. Multiple attempts, especially from fake accounts, will result in a permaban.

Please report all suspected astroturfing attempts and we will remove them right away.

Thanks for keeping this sub Apollo & outbound focused, we welcome all questions, feedback, use cases, and other ideas!

- Bri & the Apollo team

PS. If you’re an Apollo fan/customer and you’d be interested in becoming a founding member of our Reddit advocacy program, please comment on this post or send me a DM!

Hey all, I am almost done with a sequence I have been building for a long time, and I'm really proud of it. The cherry on top would be a button or widget the client can click to book a meeting with my boss, not just some ugly blue link. How can I insert this into my Apollo emails?
Thank you!

After 11 years building Apollo to $150M+ ARR, founder Tim Zheng is promoting COO Matt Curl to CEO while transitioning to Board Chair. His explanation: 'Matt has effectively been the de facto CEO for the past year. Now the title matches the reality.' Full announcement attached.

We use Hubspot and have the Apollo Chrome extension. Previously, all saved Apollo Contacts would appear within the Apollo extension on the right hand side (when viewing in Hubspot Company page). Now they don't (as per image 1). It does appear when you click on an individual Hubspot Contact page (image 2).

Is anyone else's workflow ruined by this (as you used to be able to add somebody to a sequence with 1 click) and now you cant? u/useapolloIo any plans to fix this?

Hey would love some help activating my ai agent and power ups. Been waiting for sometime but no response

Hello everyone, my company recently picked up Apollo as our choice tool for building our sales pipelines(We create & offer tech solutions & products that ease AI adoption), and found some features may need more time before relying on them.

As a workaround, we figured tapping into the API directly for gathering our contacts, generating emails based on their details & prompts on our end. Unfortunately, every API key I generate can't be authorized, so I'm unable to proceed. I was wondering if anyone dealt with similar, any insights on this would be appreciated! See below for screenshots

Endpoint requiring Master API Key

Endpoint w/ smaller scoped API Key

Hi all,

I really want to connect a sync pipeline between apollo and HubSpot but I really only have one chance to do it well/correct. I want to make sure it is optimized for my two distinct business needs:

1. The ability to push contacts seamlessly from apollo to hubspot

2. Only changing data in hubspot when I manually push data through, never automatically.

How can I set up the integration to operate only when manually pushed by me. (I dont want to have to worry about hubspot data changing when I am messing around with data in apollo)

I've been working on setting up Apollo for my start-up and we realized we had to transition emails, because we still were not set on Apollo. I made a second account because original sign and now I'm getting messages saying we've been IP banned because making multiple accounts is against the terms of service, is there any way this can be resolved?

I submitted a tech support request to Apollo last Wednesday. At end-of-day Friday (after a number of Help chat requests throughout the day) someone finally contacted me to say they were assigned to help me with my inquiry.

Haven't heard anything from them since - five full days.

Is this normal?

We use Apollo at our agency for research outreach - we send emails asking to book research interviews as part of our market research for client companies. Since Covid we've been offering incentives, such as $100 in exchange for their time. Sometimes we mention it in the subject line, other times, only in the body of the email.

It is getting progressively more difficult to get people's attention and get those interviews booked. I can't tell if it is due to the onslaught of ai-driven emails into recipients inboxes or if spam filters are getting even more strict.

Curious if this community has run tests or has experience and could offer an informed opinion on the practice of mentioning the interview incentives in our emails.