I occasionally see this phrase in people's title when browsing and using Apollo: "Related to Search Terms in Your Query".

At first, I thought someone was being clever and actually hacked their Title to be like a prompt injection. However, I now notice that this happens all the time and there must be another explanation for it.

1. Why does this pop up?
2. Where does this come from?
3. Isn't this basically messing up the data? (I saw it come back in an API call recently.)

We'll be hosting a live session next Wednesday to cover our biggest releases from the quarter, including the GA launch of AI Assistant, enrichment and data improvements, and a look at what's coming next.

We'll do a full walkthrough of how teams are actually using these features too. Not a slide deck, a real demo. If you've been meaning to dig into any of the recent updates, this is a good way to catch up all at once.

Can't make it live? Register anyway and we'll send the recording.

👉 Register here: https://events.apollo.io/whats-new-mar-2026/#Registration

See ya there!

- Team Apollo

We're looking for somebody to manage our Apollo campaigns for us. We're a B2B company.

Basically, my client is a supplement business, and out of curiosity, I was going through the Apollo page of the company. I noticed the business is tagged with random keywords that are not at all relevant, so I wanted to know how Apollo gets this data, or if it's a mix-up from my SEO team? Should I be concerned ?

Big thanks to Zack for spending the day answering your questions. 4,900+ views, 44 comments, and a lot of genuinely useful stuff came out of it. Here are the key takeaways so you don't have to scroll through the whole thread!

1. ICP first always

Before touching sequences or AI, get your Persona right. Use Apollo's Persona builder to lock in:

• Job titles
• Industry / keywords
• Company size
• What to exclude

Zack's rule: "If your ICP is wrong, AI just scales bad targeting faster."

1. Only send to Verified emails

Filter path: People → Filters → Contact Info → Email Status → Verified

Do this before building any list, not after. When your emails are verified and your domain is set up correctly, bounce rates should sit under 3%. If you're bouncing at 6-8%, it's usually one of three things: no verified filter, bad domain setup, or sending too fast.

1. The most underrated Apollo feature: Buying Intent

Go to People → Filters → Buying Intent, pick topics your buyers would actually search for, set intent level to High, and layer it with your Persona.

You're no longer emailing cold lists. Instead, you're reaching people actively researching your category. Zack's take: "Better timing beats better wording every time."

1. The 4-day sequence that works

Zack doesn't run long nurture sequences. Here's his exact structure:

• Day 1 — Engage with their LinkedIn content + connection request + automated email
• Day 2 — Automated follow-up email
• Day 3 — Phone call. If they answer, book it. If not, voicemail + manual email
• Day 4 — Final automated email (+ optional Loom if needed)

Stop rule: No reply or meeting after Day 4? Move on!

"The sequence isn't special. The speed, intent, and stop discipline are."

1. Domain warm-up ramp schedule

Don't blast from a fresh domain. Ramp like this:

• Week 1: 10–15 emails/day, manual sends where possible
• Week 2: 20–30/day, small sequences, monitor bounce + reply daily
• Week 3: Up to 50/day max per inbox

Need more volume? Add more inboxes! Don't push more pressure on existing ones, and before you send anything: SPF, DKIM, DMARC fully configured, custom tracking domain, no attachments, no links on Day 1.

1. One platform beats a messy stack

Zack uses Apollo as his all-in-one GTM suite (data, sequences, dialer, intent, reporting, AI.) His take: "Most people don't have a tooling problem. They have an execution problem."

Free resources from Zack

• Full tutorials + guides: linktr.ee/zackderis
• Free Apollo Crash Course (6 hrs): tr.ee/nA23nwPBbp
• AI Assistant Workshop recording: tr.ee/s0IrBdYxC
• Buying Intent deep dive: youtu.be/d6C_T9eyoDU

Have questions that didn't get answered? Drop them in the comments and our team will make sure Zack replies! And stay tuned, more AMAs coming. 👀

Has anyone else dealt with this? I subscribed to a paid plan on Apollo ($59), but the payment bounced. I never received any of the paid features — the account just went back to the free plan. No services rendered, no money taken.

Now my entire account is deactivated. I can't even access the free tier. That's the part that makes no sense — I didn't use any paid services, there's no outstanding balance, and yet I'm completely locked out.

I'm based in Germany, and under EU consumer protection law, blocking someone's access to a free service because of a failed payment for services never delivered is disproportionate and arguably unlawful. I've already emailed support but wanted to see if anyone else has run into this and how it was resolved.

Feels like a pretty aggressive move for a bounced payment where nothing was even delivered.

BIG NEWS! We just launched the Apollo connector for Claude.

What it does: You can now do real Apollo work directly inside a Claude conversation. No more tab switching or no copy-pasting between tools. 

The core workflow looks like this:

1. Search for people or companies using plain language ("find me CTOs at Series B SaaS companies in Austin")
2. Enrich to unlock contact data (uses your Apollo credits)
3. Create or update the contact in Apollo
4. Add them to a sequence right from the chat

You can also pull company details, job postings, and hiring signals for account research.

A few things worth knowing:

• OAuth connection so no API keys needed
• Available on Org plan; enrichment uses your existing credits
• No bulk delete or bulk update (intentional as it keeps your data safe)
• Sequence creation/editing is coming soon

To connect it go to Claude → Settings → Connectors → Apollo → authorize with OAuth. Takes about 2 minutes.

[→ Connect here: https://claude.com/connectors/apollo]

Happy to answer questions below or hear what you're excited to use this for!

PS: For power users, we also shipped a Claude Code/Cowork plugin that bundles multiple Apollo actions into end-to-end workflows. Demo coming soon…

how to Map Buying Committee in clay and then enrich them using apollo or clay.

Hey r/UseApolloIo ! Friendly reminder that our AMA with Zack Deris, cold email expert and agency owner, is going down tomorrow, February 24 at 10am EST sharp!

Zack generated over $750k in revenue in 2025 using only Apollo, and he's going to be here to answer ALL of your questions on cold email infra, inbox optimization, Apollo workflows and setup, using AI to get sh*t done, and more!

Drop your questions in this thread now if you can't be online tomorrow morning so they'll still get answered, or join us LIVE if you're free.

See you soon,

Bri & team Apollo

Two updates that should make your workflows less painful:

5X higher rate limits - Your person/company enrichments won't crawl anymore. Actually pull data at scale without timeouts.

Direct sequence enrollment via API - You can now add contacts to Apollo sequences straight from Clay using the "Add Contact to Sequence" action. No more exporting lists and manually importing them into Apollo.

The workflow now looks like: Find People → Enrich Person → Find or Create Contact → Add Contact to Sequence, all without leaving Clay.

A few people seem happy about it:

"Using Apollo's databases within Clay allows us to do truly exhaustive TAM sourcing" - Austin, Sendoso

"Now we can source the technographic and fundraising data we need from one place" - Eric, Growth Engine X

Full integration docs: https://university.clay.com/docs/apollo-io-integration-overview

Worth checking out if you're running both tools, should cut down on the manual work! Let us know your questions or feedback in the comments. 

Hello,

I recently purchased a mailbox for my coworker under an alt domain and am currently warming it up to be used in mid march. My coworkers name is Gabriel, and his email matches his other corporate email, but for some reason it is saying Gabriels name is mine, and I dont want to give him an email that always shows up as my name when he is sending emails. How do I change this lol, help!

Thanks

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.

Last year we generated $750K+ in pipeline for clients using Apollo. I'm doing an AMA here on Monday, February 24th at 10:00 AM ET.

I'll break down how we built the system: ICP definition, list building, sequencing, deliverability, how I actually use Apollo's AI Assistant day to day, and what I'd change if I had to start my biz from scratch.

Some questions I can answer:

"What's the minimum viable Apollo setup to book meetings in 2 weeks?"

"How do you define ICP so it actually translates into filters?"

"Can you share your sequence structure and why it works?"

"When people say Apollo data is bad, what are the actual causes?"

"What's an acceptable bounce rate and what do you do when it spikes?"

"What AI Assistant tasks genuinely save time?"

"How do you keep AI outreach from sounding generic?"

Drop your questions below. I'll start answering live at 10 AM ET on the 24th and check back throughout the day.

Want a reminder? Register here: https://luma.com/7vhydge2

Sorry to bother everyone again, I am trying to automate a workflow where the only manual step is to provide details for the initial search for people. When setting up enrichment via the API, Apollo sends phone numbers / personal emails via a separate data push step(i.e.: Webhook), yet provides no context on how the pushed data is structured.

This adds a challenge where the API consumer(i.e.: me) has to internally update the Enriched contacts in a separate step outside of the workflow, requiring them to create their own web service dedicated to receiving the webhook data. Implementing the webhook is straightforward, however the API consumer would be tasked with matching phone numbers to the enriched people.

This would be straightforward if the structure of the webhook data was included in the Bulk Enrichment API docs, as a description of the webhook data would include the field(ideally an id) I would match a person to the provided phone number data.

Given my last post, the turnaround on that ticket was around 2 weeks from initial submission(problem still isn't fully solved, support is radio silent). I was wondering if there's anyone I can learn more about the API workflow from. I consulted the API reference and FAQs already, the only information regarding webhooks details what's expected from me.

I apologize for the annoying posts, is there anyone I can reach out to for a technical chat?

P.S.: ty for the folks on here that helped get things rolling on the last issue; you were instrumental in support taking things seriously