What is Apollo?
Apollo is a sales intelligence and engagement platform that combines a large B2B contact database with outreach automation and lightweight CRM functionality. The core idea is that sales teams shouldn't need four different tools to go from "identify a target company" to "booked meeting" — Apollo tries to handle the whole workflow in one place.
The database is Apollo's standout feature: over 275 million contacts with attributes including job title, seniority, company size, industry, geographic location, revenue, funding stage, and technology stack. You can filter this database with precision — for example, "find all VPs of Product at US-based SaaS companies with 100–500 employees that use Salesforce and have raised Series B or later" — and export a list of verified email addresses and LinkedIn profiles in minutes.
Once you have a list, Apollo lets you enrol prospects in automated multi-step email sequences, track opens and replies, and manage the pipeline in a basic CRM. The AI features write initial sequence drafts and suggest personalisation based on the prospect's profile. For early-stage B2B companies that need a quick path from "no pipeline" to "booked meetings", Apollo is one of the most efficient starting points available.
Who is it for?
- Early-stage B2B founders doing their own sales and needing to build a prospect list fast
- SDRs and account executives who need to prospect efficiently without a dedicated data provider
- Growth teams testing new ICP segments before committing to expensive outbound infrastructure
- Recruiters searching for passive candidates by role, location, and company size
- Small sales teams that need a combined database + outreach tool without paying for separate subscriptions
Key features
- Contact database: 275M+ contacts with emails, phone numbers, and LinkedIn profiles
- Advanced filters: 65+ filtering attributes including job title, company, industry, tech stack, funding, headcount, and keywords
- Sequences: multi-step automated email sequences with scheduling, personalisation fields, and A/B testing
- AI email generation: describe your product and ICP and Apollo drafts outreach sequences for you
- CRM integration: basic pipeline management built in, plus integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive
- Chrome extension: surface contact info and company data directly on LinkedIn profiles
- Intent signals: see which companies are actively researching topics relevant to your product (paid feature)
- Analytics: open rate, click rate, reply rate, and bounce rate per sequence and per step
Step-by-step setup
- Go to apollo.io and create a free account — no credit card needed
- Complete the onboarding: add your company name, role, and what you sell
- Go to Search and use the filters on the left to define your ICP:
- Job Titles: "VP of Sales", "Head of Marketing", "Founder"
- Company Size: e.g., 50–500 employees
- Industry: SaaS, FinTech, Healthcare, etc.
- Location: United States, Europe, etc.
- Technologies Used: Salesforce, HubSpot, Shopify, etc.
- Review the results and save contacts — you'll see email addresses for contacts within your monthly credit limit
- Create a list and add your saved contacts to it
- Go to Sequences and create a new sequence — use the AI generator to draft initial emails based on your product description, or write your own
- Enrol your contact list in the sequence, set sending delays (3–5 days between steps), and activate
- Install the Chrome extension to find contact info when browsing LinkedIn — saves time on individual prospect research
- Connect Apollo to your CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot) under Settings > Integrations if you're managing pipeline elsewhere
Tips for getting the most out of it
- Validate your filters on a small sample first. Build a list of 20 contacts, manually review their LinkedIn profiles, and ask yourself: are these genuinely my ICP? If more than 20% are off-target, refine your filters before scaling up.
- Use the tech stack filter strategically. If your product integrates with or replaces a specific tool, filtering for companies using that tool gives you a warm angle. You can open with "I see you're using [tool] — we integrate with it and help teams like yours do X."
- Clean your list before importing to sequences. Apollo's email verification isn't perfect. Run your export through a verification tool (NeverBounce, ZeroBounce) before sending sequences to keep bounce rates below 3%.
- Combine Apollo for prospecting with Instantly for outreach. Apollo excels at finding contacts; Instantly's unlimited inbox + warm-up infrastructure excels at sending. Many growth teams use both in combination.
- Check intent signals before cold outreach. Apollo's intent data shows which companies are actively searching for solutions like yours. If a prospect is showing strong intent, prioritise them and personalise your outreach — they're 3–5x more likely to respond.
