“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford

At Apollo, we believe in the power of creating connections and building community to help our customers succeed.

That’s why we’ve created the Apollo Partnership Program, an opportunity for forward-thinking businesses to join our mission of helping businesses everywhere move deals forward with world-class data and seamless automation.

With a custom-fitted partnership plan, your business can unlock more revenue through increased brand exposure, rewards and discounts, and exclusive rights to promote and resell Apollo as a new vetted partner.

Keep reading to learn more about the Apollo Partnership Program and how you can become a part of it.

An overview of the Apollo Partnership Program

The Apollo Partnership Program is an opportunity for innovative organizations to create a mutually beneficial partnership with the Apollo team. This includes offerings like unique go-to-market benefits, dynamic integrations with our application, commission on customer referrals, and so much more.

No matter what you offer or what industry you’re in, there’s an opportunity to work alongside Apollo through one of our four partnership offerings:

• Affiliate partnership. Love using Apollo? Spread the word across your networks and reap the rewards. Affiliate partners earn a 20% commission on all referrals who become Apollo customers.
• Agency partnership. Help your clients hit their sales goals with Apollo’s vast B2B database and end-to-end sales engine. Agency partners gain exclusive rights to resell Apollo as a vetted partner and have the ability to link and manage client accounts with ease.
• Technology partnership. Deliver even more value to your customers with Apollo data directly in your product, integrations that improve usability, and opportunities to attract users of Apollo as new customers. Join our growing list of technology partners.
• Startup ecosystem partnership. Help startups you’re associated with grow faster and easier, while adding value to your program offering. A startup ecosystem partner can incentivize and support startup clients with access to Apollo’s in-depth B2B database and engagement features at a discounted rate.

From agencies and consultants to influencers and investors, Apollo has over 130 unique and successful partnerships across dozens of industries.

Shaun Starkey, Sr. Strategic Partner Manager at Vidyard, says it best, “We’re proud to be an Apollo technology partner. Our customers love using Apollo for accurate contact data and prospecting, and now they can embed our Vidyard videos in their Apollo outbound email sequences. This partnership has truly been a win for both of our companies!”

The benefits of partnering with Apollo

#1: Boost brand awareness and expand your market reach

With over 1 million users and a rapidly growing reputation as the world’s best B2B database (our customer’s words, not ours!), Apollo can help you instantly increase your credibility, as well as your brand exposure.

As an established partner, you’ll receive co-marketing resources and opportunities that are sure to increase brand awareness, expand your market reach, and bring new prospects straight into your pipeline.

#2: Gain access to exclusive Apollo rewards and discounts

When you team up with Apollo, you get:

• The ability to offer Apollo product discounts to your clients, adding it to your list of offerings and helping you stand out from your competitors
• Exclusive rewards and commission when you refer Apollo to members of your network and client base
• Access to a dedicated partner manager who oversees co-marketing opportunities, provides resources for your success, and assures that the partnership as a whole is running smoothly

All of this, with no sign-up fees, no sales minimum, and no stress.

#3: Receive support where you need it most with a custom-fitted, flexible partnership plan

Instead of a one-size-fits-all solution, Apollo partnerships are created and adapted to meet our partners’ specific needs.

Beyond our four diverse partnership plans, our team is open and flexible to creating unique partnerships that serve both of our businesses.

If you’re looking for a uniquely-crafted partnership, reach out to our team at partners@apollo.io. We’d love to work alongside you in creating your ideal partnership.

#4: Meet your goals and grow your business

Our partners gain new sources of recurring revenue every day.

Crush your sales goals by integrating your software with Apollo, incentivizing prospects with Apollo deals and discounts, enriching your own solutions, and/or helping your clients see results with our world-class B2B data and engagement solutions.

Through your affiliation with Apollo, our users will be able to discover your company through an array of different channels and marketing collaborations, too. Not to mention that many of your target accounts will be even more eager to work with you when Apollo’s at your side.

Become an Apollo Partner today and watch your business skyrocket.

Join the Apollo mission to help businesses everywhere find the right buyers and move deals forward with world-class data and seamless automation.

Not sure where to start or where your company might fit in? Let’s chat! You can contact our partnerships team via email at partners@apollo.io.

The post Empower your Clients and Grow your Business with the Apollo.io Partnership Program appeared first on Apollo.

You’re not a mindreader; that’s why buyer intent data is such a valuable tool for uncovering the mystery that is buyer intent.

When intent data is leveraged effectively, it can help you focus your time, money, and effort on the prospects that matter and set up a strong sales pipeline across your organization.

However, nearly 60% of intent data users experience wasted resources as a result of facing the challenges of intent data. Although intent data has loads of potential, if gathered from the wrong resources, it can be unreliable, expensive, hard to interpret, or even noncompliant with data protections.

All of this begs the question: What does it look like to use intent data effectively? And is it really worth your valuable time?

We’ll dive a little deeper into the specific challenges of using B2B intent data, as well as the unlimited potential it can give businesses who harness it the right way. But first, let’s make sure we’re aligned on what we mean by intent data.

What is intent data?

Intent data (often called buyer intent data or purchasing intent data) is a collection of behavioral signs – specifically web content consumption – that help sellers determine a prospect’s purchase intent. It is a set of signals that reveals which leads or accounts are actively researching on first and/or third-party sites.

Whenever someone searches for something online, visits a web page, lingers on a blog post, or does virtually anything online, they are communicating interest. For example, it’s safe to assume that you, the reader of this blog post, have an interest in the topic of intent data, or at the very least B2B sales and/or data solutions.

The value of intent data is based on this idea.

When buyers have a problem, they research to find a solution. The more data and knowledge you have surrounding their searches, activity, and online behaviors, the better you can deliver valuable and relevant messaging to prospects early on in their buyer journey.

How is intent data collected?

Intent data is a fairly broad term, which means it can refer to slightly different things in the world of B2B data solutions.

Based on the solution, intent data can be collected in several different ways :

• Data based off of website traffic (i.e. users or accounts who have visited your website and therefore have shown intent)
• Data based on online advertising engagement
• Data based on content consumption
• Data that reflects relevant online research across search engines, forums, social channels, etc.
• Data from software review sites that help you identify exactly which in-market products are generating interest
• Any of the above layered with valuable contextual information like new job hirings, press mentions, funding rounds, referral sources, etc.

These types of intent data often fall into one of two primary categories: first and third-party data.

First-party intent data

This type of intent data is what you most often imagine when you think about tracking buyer behavior: data that you own and collect yourself from your website and social platforms. It is activity that you pick up from your own audience across your digital properties.

First party intent data can be valuable for identifying purchase intent and it can help your salespeople reach out to proactively address concerns and pain points.

Anything from customer surveys to tracking website activity and taking notes on customer interactions is collecting first party intent data. You likely already have a few tools in place to help you collect it (e.g. analytics tools, sales engagement platforms, your website’s backend).

But it can be rather one-dimensional. Third-party intent data can help you get a broader picture of your prospective customers…

Third-party intent data

More often than not, the best way to access reliable intent data is through a third-party data provider. These data platforms collect relevant insights from all across the web, from competitors’ websites and media publishers to social media platforms and B2B sites.

Using third party intent data opens up a whole world of buyer information. Top data providers crawl millions of public web documents for buying behaviors and bring you scalable and actionable information on best-fit prospects ready to buy.

Bonus: Third party data is often already distilled into audience segments and relevant topics, eliminating your need to sort through swaths of data!

Intent data is collected in many different ways and can take on very different forms. So remember, the kinds of intent data that will be most valuable to you will depend on your organization, your product, and the specific sales and marketing strategies you have in place. Many organizations that have seen great sales results from intent data use several intent data providers or combine first-party with third-party intent data to create a holistic intent view of their target accounts.

Why is intent data important for B2B sales?

Interest in intent data is on the rise. 80% of B2B brands are already leveraging intent data, with another 16% planning to do so within the next 12 months.

Here are a few of the reasons why:

#1: Get in front of the right buyers early and get ahead of competition

Today’s buyers are self-guided.

More and more of the buying journey is being completed before prospects ever connect with a salesperson. This results in less opportunity to discover what prospective customers need and get them into your sales funnel from the get-go.

With intent data, you can leverage intent signals to identify interested buyers early and gain a leg up on your competition.

With 74% of B2B buyers ultimately selecting the first vendor to provide them value, this is a huge advantage of using intent data in B2B sales!

#2: Find new actively interested leads and boost prospecting efforts

Intent data improves engagement with the prospects already on your radar, but it also helps sales reps identify new buyers and accelerate sales prospecting efforts.

The potential buyers you find using intent data are never completely cold – they have communicated a level of interest and are in the hunt for a solution that aligns with your product’s value. This makes them a sales-qualified lead (or very, very close to one).

And what salesperson wouldn’t want consistent SQLs flooding into their pipeline?!

#3: Prioritize leads by understanding which accounts are ready to spend

Buyer intent data can help you distinguish between the leads who are actively looking for solutions and are ready to spend and the leads who are simply looking into a particular topic.

This allows salespeople to optimize marketing and sales resources and invest their time into the right accounts.

#4: Create hyper-personalized content

As we’ve learned, intent data is great at revealing a prospect’s needs, interests, and pain points. The best salespeople put that information into action, by using those insights to create hyper-personalized, value-based messaging.

Leverage data like browsing history or purchase history to make specific product recommendations, create a personalized email campaign, frame outbound messaging, share relevant landing pages, E-books, and blog posts, and so much more!

The challenges of using B2B intent data

Intent data has a lot of perks – but that doesn’t mean it should be treated as a silver bullet for B2B sales.

Here are some of the challenges of using intent data that users should be aware of:

• Intent data is still maturing. Buyer intent data has really only emerged over the last decade and is still a rather new product category. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that, currently, few industries have the strategies and support in place to effectively and efficiently use intent data to its fullest potential.
• Intent data can come from poor sources. When it comes to data collection, there are a lot of questionable providers with questionable data practices. Whether they are non-compliant with privacy laws, sell outdated information, or are just plain inaccurate, many unestablished data platforms will try to sell you bad intent data. Finding the right data provider can be one of the biggest hurdles to using intent data (But, stick with us! We’ll go over what to look for in a best-in-class data solution).
• Intent data is often used improperly. Too many sales and marketing teams use intent data without a comprehensive strategy. If you’re tracking too many topics or treating every signal of interest as purchasing intent, you’ll end up chasing poor-fit accounts and wasting resources. Intent data requires thoughtful interpretation and a clear strategy.
• Intent data, in isolation, is meaningless. Intent data requires context. For example, a ‘surge’ in activity could mean an eager buyer or it could mean someone who is not in the position to purchase is researching competitors or industry trends. Most intent signals need supplementary data to provide you with the context you need to make smart selling decisions.

Questions to ask when evaluating intent data solutions

Choosing an intent data solution is important; it can be the difference between exceeding your sales quota or wasting time and energy on non-buyers and bad-fit leads.

When evaluating intent data providers, here are a few essential questions to ask to ensure you’re making the best possible investment:

• How is the intensity of intent signals measured and is it reflective of ‘true’ intent?
• How is the intent data gathered and is it from reliable sources?
• Does the data provider offer contextual data? (e.g. company and contact information, job roles, technologies used, keywords)
• Is the intent data being regularly updated and/or refreshed?
• Is the platform compliant with GDPR and other data privacy regulations?
• Is the intent data tool easy to use or is it unnecessary complicated?
• Does it offer an expansive database with granular filtering capabilities?
• Can the data be integrated into your current technology stack for a more streamlined end-to-end workflow?
• Can you leverage the data to build sales automation processes within the tool?

The very best data solutions not only provide you with reliable and scalable intent data, but equip you with all the features you need to put it into action and immediately boost conversions!

Before you go, don’t forget to follow Apollo on LinkedIn and Twitter to never miss out on sales insights and Apollo product updates (we have some exciting things in the works!).

The post Intent Data 101 – How to Supercharge your Sales Using B2B Buyer Intent Data appeared first on Apollo.

It may feel daunting, but establishing a clear and comprehensive sales process for your marketing and sales teams has never been more important.

Research says that B2B companies that have a well-defined sales process experience 18% more revenue growth than companies that don’t have one.

Above all, you need a sales sequence that gives you results. You want to close deals.

And Apollo helps you do just that…

Let’s look at how you can use Apollo to create a successful sales sequence that accommodates the needs of your ideal buyers, guides your sales reps through important accounts, and takes your return on investment to new heights!

What is Sales Sequencing and why is it important?

We should cover the basics.

Sales sequences are all about smart automation and efficient engagement.

They are a scheduled series of sales touch points with prospects. Sales sequencing can include email campaigns, phone calls, social messaging and/or posts, SMS messaging, and any other tasks for your salespeople to carry out during the sales cycle.

It’s important to note that a good sales sequence isn’t vague; they should eliminate all guesswork and include specific and pre-defined intervals between steps, helping salespeople know exactly what to do and when to do it – all without missing a beat.

The best sales sequences have the perfect combination of automation and personalization and utilize the strengths of both to its advantage.

At Apollo, we understand the importance of a well-structured sales process. That’s why we provide you with an entire feature dedicated to helping you build out the perfect sales cadences.

Connect with every connect efficiently with Apollo Sequences

“Sequences are the thing that I like the most from Apollo! They’re easy to use, easy to configure and they send out exactly as you program them to go out.” – Nicolás G, Lead Generation Agent, Mid-Market (G2 review)

As we’ve learned, Sequences are automated outreach campaigns, designed to personally communicate and engage with your target audiences at scale. Use Sequences to create customizable, multi-step touchpoints with automatic or manual emails, phone calls, LinkedIn messaging, action items and more.

And as you use Apollo to create and hone in on your ideal customer profiles, you can create Sequences that speak directly to the value propositions your prospects are looking for.

Apollo Sequences ensure that your team delivers the ideal communications and completes the right task at the right time!

One of the most powerful things about Sequences is that it provides you with clear analytics to see what steps are higher converting and immediately optimize and adjust your Sequence to perform better.

Sequence steps

Steps are the building blocks of your Apollo sequence.

They are the individual messages and activities that you design for your team to successfully engage the prospects you’re targeting. The sequences themselves are made up of as many steps as you choose with as much spacing between them as you want!

Here are the eight types of steps you can choose from:

1. Automatic Email: Use any of your Apollo email templates and/or create new ones to craft personalized, targeted messaging to be delivered automatically based on the parameters you set.
2. Manual Email: Create a manual email when you want more control of your outbound messaging for each prospect. Once your prospect hits this step, a manual task is created with your email template you’ve added, which you can tailor before you hit send.
3. Phone Call: Add notes, tips, scripts and any other helpful collateral within a clear reminder to call (use our Dialer to allow your team to call directly from their Apollo dashboard and automatically capture call recordings and additional insights).
4. Action Item: This is a customizable task where you can add personalized notes to highlight the specific actions you want to be taken. Create as many tasks as you like to perform all of the communications or processes you need to reach a successful sale.
5. LinkedIn: View Profile: Access a contact’s LinkedIn profile from within Apollo and document key information that can help you build rapport when engaging with prospects.
6. LinkedIn: Interact With Post: Review a contact’s activities, engage with their recent posts, and give yourself direction with reminders and relevant notes.
7. LinkedIn: Send a Connection Request: Create connection request templates to make a great first impression.
8. LinkedIn: Send Message: Send personalized InMail messages using templates and snippets and personalize your approach at scale.

Note: You’ll need to upgrade your Apollo account to a paid plan for access to all eight of these step types.

Step spacing

The next element of sequencing is deciding on the timing and spacing between your steps.

There are two factors to determine how much time elapses between sequence steps:

1. Schedule: The sequence schedule sets the time and the day in which Apollo sends messages to prospects.
2. “Wait For” time in each step: The “Wait For” time in each step tells Apollo how long to wait in between each step in a sequence.

Remember, the optimal timing for your target audience will depend on your sales strategy. Research your industry and space your steps to support your sales goals and engage your target audience.

Creating a Sequence in Apollo

Let’s walk through how to use these steps to build a deal-closing sequence, from start to finish!

First, launch Apollo, and navigate to Engage > Sequences > + New Sequence. You’ll have the option to start a new one from scratch, clone an existing Sequence, or use one of our many pre-built sequencing templates.

For the sake of this demo, let’s start a new sequence together!

Name and schedule your new sequence on the next pop-up window.

Note: To learn more about creating and editing sequence sending schedules, read here.

Once you click + Create, you’ll find your sequence dashboard. Click + Add Step.

This is where you’ll choose one of the eight step types, as well as the time and wait time you desire between each step, the priority level, and any notes you want to give your SDRs.

For our first step, let’s choose an automatic email.

This is when you’ll start infusing your messaging.

Create a new message manually, or apply templates to streamline email outreach. You can also use snippets or videos to hyper-personalize your messaging.

When you’re done click Save Changes, and you’ll be taken back to your new and improved Sequence Dashboard.

It’s as simple as that!

Repeat the process and add as many steps as you desire to create your most personalized and detailed sales sequence yet!

You can now add prospective buyers to your sequence using your saved contacts, the Apollo LinkedIn Extension, your CRM, and more. Build out as many of these sequences as you need to craft personalized sales experiences for each one of your ideal buyer profiles!

And, looking at the navigation bar at the top, you can see that salespeople can manage contacts, emails, phone calls, see the activity log, AND get reports, all within the same Sequencing dashboard.

Sales and marketing teams are now given a system that works for them and actually saves them time and energy while maximizing conversion rates.

One example of a killer Apollo Sequence

To help you get inspired, take a look at this effective sequence our team has created here at Apollo.

Spanning over 11 days, this intensive, multi-channel sequence is powerful!

It’s targeted at the decision-maker (in this case, the original creator of the company’s account). It lets them know that their teammates are still actively using the product and getting value out of it. It asks if they have time to meet with the AE to re-establish value and go over their needs.

This sequence has over a 77% open rate! Why?

Because it takes a multi-channel approach (email and LinkedIn), includes grabby email subject lines, and uses strategic timing and sending schedules. Not to mention it is highly targeted and personalized.

To see some more examples of successful Apollo sequences, check out our top three sequences blog here.

Sequencing Tips and Tricks

Before we send you off to champion the sales world, here are some additional tips to consider when creating sales sequences in Apollo:

• Personalize your subject line. Personalized email subject lines are 22.2% more likely to be opened. Take advantage of personalization tools like snippets to grab your prospects’ attention from the get-go and boost your open rates.
• Don’t mention all of your value in the first email. In your first email, highlight the most important value you offer to the specific persona you’re engaging with. But don’t bombard them in the first email! Use the rest of your talking points to support your proposal to schedule more interaction.
• Track and optimize your messaging. A/B test email messaging and track key metrics like delivered, opened, replied, and bounced rates to find the perfect messaging, optimize your engagement strategy, and maximize results.
• Do your research and prove your expertise. Communicate what you know about specific technologies, markets, titles, verticals, etc, (the Apollo database can help you out with this one!) and make clear what is unique about your product and service.
• Leverage email templates. No one should spend precious time manually writing individual emails. Create and save email templates and make it easy for you to consolidate the content that is sent to your contacts and allow your team to collaborate and share resources.
• Link your Gmail and Microsoft Exchange accounts for free! Did you know users on free plans can link their Google or Microsoft mailboxes to unlock the power of Sequences? Don’t wait to grow your pipeline, maximize productivity, and move deals forward!

For more sequencing inspiration, check out some of our Apollo sales team’s top performing Sequences.

If you’ve made it this far and still don’t have an Apollo account, what are you waiting for?! Try it out for free and start building sales sequences capable of taking conversions to the moon!

The post Create Your Most Successful Sales Sequence in Apollo and Streamline Engagement appeared first on Apollo.

If you’ve been suffering from unprofitable or inefficient cold email campaigns, you might have even stopped to wonder: Is cold emailing really worth it?

YES, yes it is!

And don’t just take our word for it…

Business founder, consultant, Apollo user, and cold email expert, Daria Tsvenger, is a huge advocate of using cold emailing as a core component of your outbound sales strategy. “Cold email is the best thing you can do for yourself!”, says Daria.

From starting ELG Leads (a growing sales prospecting solution) to speaking at major events, Daria has leveraged the power of cold emailing to connect with the right people at the right time and unlock dozens of professional opportunities.

Keep reading to learn some of Daria’s modern cold emailing strategies and see why Apollo is her go-to tool for creating cold email campaigns that convert.

Back-to-basics: What is cold emailing?

Cold emails are the first impression.

They are the initial outreach emails sent to a potential client who has not heard from you or your company, or who may have heard of you but doesn’t have a direct relationship with you.

Cold emailing creates touchpoints with new contacts, expands brand awareness, fosters new relationships to get prospects interested and excited, and increases your chances of closing a new deal!

Good cold emails do this through:

• Value-based messaging that’s interesting, conversational, and mobile-friendly
• Click-worthy email subject lines
• Plenty of personalization (ie. their name, company, industry, competitors)
• Reference to specific pain points and real solutions
• A strong, single call-to-action

(Stick with us! In the sections below, we’ll show you how to create cold emails just like these in Apollo.)

4 reasons why cold emailing is (still) essential to your sales strategy

Reason #1: Open your own doors to business success

First and foremost: cold emails give you maximum sales autonomy. By being able to reach out to whoever you want, whenever you want, strategic cold emailing allows you to take charge of your sales objectives and make your goals happen.

This is something that especially excites Daria, who has created many opportunities for herself through her dedication to cold emailing.

“As an immigrant, I opened so many doors for myself just through cold email,” Daria says. “I got my first job through cold email, I started representing big mental health spaces [through cold email], and I am currently looking at celebrity interviews through cold email.”

With the right cold email know-how, sellers don’t have to wait for the right opportunity to land on their doorstep. They can go out and make it happen themselves!

Reason #2: Reach your ideal buyers where they spend the most time: their email inbox

If you want to fill your pipeline, your message needs to be where your potential buyers are.

Despite the popularity of instant messaging, texting, and social media, email is still the top communication method at work and is only continuing to grow. One study found that workers spend an average of 6.3 hours a day checking their emails!

“For anything you have to offer, there is definitely a person that could be put in front of it with a cold email”, says Daria.

Sending cold pitches in your email is a great way to ensure that buyers will, at the very least, see your message and become more familiar with your brand.

Reason #3: Personalize outbound messaging at scale

Unlike other outbound sales methods, cold emails can be personalized for each and every recipient across your email list.

And more personalization = higher open and reply rates, better deliverability, and more interest.

In fact, studies have found that marketers who implement personalized and segmented email campaigns report a 760% increase in email revenue.

Those are numbers you can’t afford to ignore…

And with the right email tool, reaching hundreds of potential buyers with a unique and personalized message is well within reach.

Leveraging email personalization in her Apollo campaigns is something that Daria does to keep seeing results. “I love that Apollo allows you to send emails at scale while also creating a one-on-one conversational feeling. I can send 300 emails per day and still have personalized conversations,” Daria says.

Reason #4: Create and establish valuable connections through networking

Networking is a powerful tool; creating connections and exchanging ideas with like-minded people, industry professionals, thought leaders, and established brands can fast-track growth and results.

And more often than not, a rewarding connection starts with a cold email.

With no public relations background or official journalism credentials, Daria created a valuable connection and got an article published at Forbes just through cold pitching in an email.

If there is an entrepreneur, sales professional, or any other person that could provide you value, don’t wait to reach out. Sending a simple cold email that highlights mutual benefit could secure you an invaluable relationship or business opportunity.

How to build your best cold email campaign in Apollo

With all of these awesome benefits, surely you’re inspired to kick off a new cold email campaign!

Apollo.io is the end-to-end sales engine that makes cold emailing easy and, more importantly, effective. Let us show you how to create your best cold email campaign in Apollo.

Step #1: Find and collect quality contacts that align with your ICP

It goes without saying: to send out cold emails that provide value and generate interest, you need to find best-fit recipients.

In Apollo’s database of 250M contacts, users have 65+ advanced filters to help them find the contacts that perfectly align with their company’s ideal customer profile (ICP).

Apollo filtering attributes include:

• Job titles
• Company name
• Location
• Employee headcount
• Funding
• Revenue
• Industry and keywords
• Technologies used
• And more!

Let’s say the persona you wanted to target in your next cold email campaign was an Atlanta-based private banking or accounting company with over 200 employees that uses Apache or Nginx technologies.

Head to the Searcher, apply your filters in the left sidebar, and there you have it: a list of best-fit contacts ready to be added to your cold email list.

Bonus! With all your filters applied, you can save your search for future use and even subscribe to get automatic alerts when new contacts are added.

If you’re like most professionals, LinkedIn is probably one of your go-to prospecting tools. To find email contacts and add them directly to your email campaigns, you can also use the Apollo Chrome Extension in LinkedIn.

When you search in Sales Navigator, the Apollo Chrome Extension allows you to save selected leads along with their contact information. You can also email them, add them to a sequence, or add them to an Apollo list, all from your LinkedIn browser!

To start prospecting alongside our Chrome Extension, download it here.

Step #2: Create highly-targeted sequences and add contacts

Now that you have your contacts, you need to build out the structure of your cold email campaign in sequences. Sequences are automatic outreach campaigns with any number of sequential contact points and tasks that you can customize to personally engage your target audiences at scale.

To create your new sequence, navigate to Engage > Sequences > + New Sequence. Name and schedule your sequence and click + Create.

Then, create the bones of your sequence using sequencing steps.

There are eight different sequencing steps to choose from in Apollo, but for our purposes, we’ll stick to creating automatic and manual email steps.

When you create an email step, this is the time to choose your sequence schedule, create your subject line and email body, add in personalization snippets, and/or create and load a email template.

Once you customize each step to your liking, your sequence might look something like this:

Now, you’re ready to add contacts to your campaign via the Apollo Searcher, the Chrome Extension, a CSV file, or straight from one of your Apollo lead lists. To learn more about adding contacts to a sequence, check out this instructional video.

Step #3: Fine tune your messaging with A/B testing

Creating successful cold email campaigns isn’t a one-and-done kind of thing. It requires continuous testing and optimization.

In fact, the ability to test and adjust her cold email strategy is one of Daria’s favorite things about using Apollo. “Apollo is great at helping me test my messaging and different assumptions in the business development journey,” she says.

One of her biggest pieces of advice is to leverage A/B testing in all your cold email campaigns. This allows you to test multiple messages in a sequencing step and determine which message engages more prospects and helps you better reach your audience.

It’s as simple as selecting the Add A/B Test button under the desired sequence step, selecting the email you wish to edit, and adding the desired varied email copy. From here, Apollo will send an even traffic distribution to each message variant in the test.

Daria suggests that you test your email subject line first, and then your email body second (but, remember, not at the same time).

“Invest in one subject line in terms of the open rates that you see, and then proceed to the next step of optimizing the email copy that gets the most replies,” advises Daria.

Step #4: Track cold email campaign performance and optimize

To build out cold email campaigns that continue to produce results, you need to leverage performance data.

Alongside tracking and optimizing your messaging with A/B testing, look to Apollo Reports and Analytics to gain valuable insights on cold email interested, replied, and open rates, # of emails delivered and bounced, sequence performance, net new people in your funnel, and so much more.

Your cold emails might not get results immediately, but that’s ok. Daria says, “It can take about a month to understand which is the best messaging combination, to properly scale messaging, and to effectively outreach to potential buyers.”

As long as you stay consistent and are responsive to what the data suggests, the results will come…

Parting thoughts

With the right tools, cold emailing is the ultimate strategy for reaching your ideal buyers, generating interest in your product, and creating opportunities for your own business success.

Sign up for a free Apollo.io account to build your most effective cold email campaign yet! And don’t forget to follow Apollo on LinkedIn and Twitter to never miss out on new sales, marketing, and recruiting insights.

The post How Cold Emailing (Still!) Drives Outbound Sales and Boosts Conversions appeared first on Apollo.

Building client relationships, delivering on company promises, and aiming for the highest customer retention and satisfaction is all a part of the job.

That’s why it’s so important that you invest in data and engagement tools that you can trust! For Howard Lee, owner and founder of LFDM Marketing, Apollo gives him all the functionality he needs to find, engage, and deliver to his clients.

“I never recommend a tool I don’t trust,” Howard says, “For me, Apollo, is my insurance…For my clients, [I recommend] Apollo as their primary method for generating revenue streams.”

With exclusive interview insights from Howard, we’ll cover how LFDM uses Apollo to streamline their workflow and why he and his team recommend Apollo to clients looking to boost marketing initiatives.

A bit of background on LFDM Digital Marketing Advisors

LFDM is a team of marketing advisors who work with businesses looking to fill gaps in their digital marketing strategy. Starting with an initial marketing audit, they provide a “digital swiss army knife” of tools, talents, and tactics that are custom-fitted to the needs of their customers.

From SEO consulting and social media management to web design and development, LFDM is a solutions-oriented company through and through.

“Instead of selling them a generic package, I am going to audit their company and then customize that for my clients,” Howard says, “And that’s why Apollo turned out to be really crucial. Because [with it], I know exact ways ROI can be brought in, fast!”.

Over the past two years, Howard and his team have leveraged Apollo tools in some awesome ways. Let’s get into specifics…

3 reasons why Howard loves using Apollo for LFDM’s workflow

#1: Combine first-rate data with killer automation

Accurate data + intelligent automation = unlimited sales success! This is one of the many reasons LFDM loves Apollo.

“In general [data and automation] are sold as two separate services, which adds additional steps that can be a time and money suck,” Howard says, “There’s no other platform that has both the data portion and the automation portion that Apollo has.”

And, well, he certainly isn’t wrong!

According to G2, Apollo ranks higher than any other sales intelligence platform in contact, company, and industry data availability. Pair that with groundbreaking automation features like Sequences, Rules Engine, and Job Change Alerts, and you have yourself the perfect go-to-market engine.

#2: Add best-fit prospects into your campaigns in a fraction of the time

With a database of over 250M contacts and advanced filtering across 200 different attributes, it’s a breeze to find contacts for your sales funnel that perfectly align with your ideal customer profile (ICP).

“With Apollo, I don’t have to hunt anymore,” Howard says, “If I wanted to do a campaign including 500 individuals, to gather that would have taken me a week, now, it takes me a minute. And on top of that, I have the convenience to be able to filter things around until I find the exact perfect list, which I couldn’t do before Apollo.”

One of these must-have, time-saving features is the Apollo Chrome Extension: the ultimate prospecting tool that allows Apollo users like Howard to find and add best-fit contacts directly into their pipeline in a fraction of the time!

When you use LinkedIn, the Apollo Chrome Extension allows you to find new prospects with verified data that includes direct mobile numbers and email addresses. You can add these contacts to lists and sequences that you’ve already built in Apollo with a single click. You can also stay on top of job changes with alerts and update your contacts directly.

It’s as simple as that!

#3: Create opportunities for new business ventures

The best founders always have their eyes on new business opportunities.

Howard revealed to us that he has been using Apollo for just that!

Recently, he has used Apollo to find shuttered companies in new verticals to expand out to and test their potential for restoration. He has been searching by industry within Apollo’s database to find high-potential sites that other domain brokers (who don’t use Apollo) have missed.

He describes this newest experiment as a low-risk method of acquisition.

“And that’s what I like about having data from Apollo,” Howard says, “You have a low-risk resource of potential acquisition, you have a low-risk resource of outreach, and all that ROI is there for sure.”

LFDM Marketing Advisors recommend Apollo to their clients. Here’s why…

It’s Howard’s job to set up his clients for marketing success and help them achieve a high ROI. So, naturally, he recommends that his clients get set up in Apollo.io!

Here are some of the specific reasons why Apollo is Howard’s go-to tool for servicing his clients…

You can easily find your ideal buyer with advanced filtering

One of the biggest superpowers that Apollo gives to users is the ability to search across hundreds of millions of contacts using advanced filters.

“Targeting is more important than ever. [It’s] going to be super crucial moving forward and the only way to do that is you get as much precise data as you can,” Howard says.

In his experience, the keyword search, technologies used, and funding filters are some of the most valuable to his clientele. For them to be able to find and identify exactly which contacts align with their buyer personas and have the budget and the technology stack to get the most value out of their product is a game-changer.

In Apollo, you can even save and subscribe to your filtered searches and get email alerts when Apollo finds new people and/or companies that match your search criteria.

For more information about using filtering, developing personas, and Search Subscription, visit our comprehensive Knowledge Base.

You can discover your most effective messaging with A/B testing

As an experienced marketing advisor, Howard is always stressing the importance of effective messaging to his clients. When it comes to engaging with potential customers, it’s important that what you say and how you say it is perfected.

“With Apollo, it’s easy to feel like you have a limitless universe [of buyers], but it is in fact finite. So you need to make sure your message gets through”, he says.

And what better way to make sure your message is resonating than with A/B testing.

In Apollo, A/B testing allows you to test multiple messages in a sequence step. Apollo sends an even traffic distribution to each message variant in the test. This can help you to determine which message engages more prospects and helps you better reach the intended audience.

Howard says that he encourages his clients to test email subject lines first and follow up by testing the body of their email. Clients can then leverage this data to improve the effectiveness of all their future outreach sequences.

You can better understand your market with Apollo Analytics and Reports

Howard loves the transparency that Apollo Analytics gives to his clients’ marketing initiatives.

In Analytics, you can track metrics that reveal the best outreach times, email campaign performance, sequencing performance, message effectiveness, and so much more.

“All the best practices that you read about are not always going to apply to your industry,” says Howard, “You start getting a proprietary understanding of your specific business using Apollo analytics to really figure out your market”.

And from a personalized Apollo dashboard, users can access all of this valuable data in one place!

The more you evaluate what works and what doesn’t, the more you can test and improve your Sequences to increase candidate engagement.

Parting thoughts

The team over at LFDM loves Apollo, not only for the limitless functionalities that it gives to them as a company, but for the ability that it gives them to support their clients in building effective marketing initiatives that take their business to the next level!

Don’t wait to leverage all of Howard’s favorite Apollo features! Sign-up for a free Apollo account today, or request a demo of Apollo to see our platform in action.

The post How Marketing Agency Founder Howard Lee Delivers to his Clients using Apollo.io appeared first on Apollo.

Failing to do proper recruitment sourcing results in loads of wasted time, money, training opportunities, and negatively affects company culture.

But recruiting top-tier talent is easier said than done. Consider the data from recent studies:

• 72.8% of recruiters struggle to find quality candidates.
• 45% of surveyed hiring managers said they could not fill much-needed positions due to the lack of qualified talent.
• 95% of SMBs say talent acquisition is a current challenge.

By honing in on your sourcing strategy and hiring the right talent the first time around, your company will start moving in the right direction from day one. More importantly, you will be able to focus on critical aspects of your recruiting job instead of getting caught up in the weeds. But how can you jumpstart the ever-important talent search?

With the right data and engagement tools of course!

Apollo makes work enjoyable and unlocks your ability to do more. Get out of the monotonous, nitty-gritty, details and spend more time on strategic candidate sourcing that is better for you and your business! Scale your activity and perfect your talent sourcing strategy, from hunting to meetings and everything in between.

With an all-in-one workflow solution that combines powerful features like an expansive B2B database, Sequences, email templates, and Analytics and Reports, in one easy-to-use platform, you do more, in less time, with less hassle.

In this blog we’ll highlight how Apollo supports our users beyond sales; we help you find the right talent, too. Read on to learn the 5 tips for recruitment sourcing with Apollo.

Tip #1: Build targeted company lists with Apollo list building

For ambitious recruiters, efficiency is key. The best way to speed up your recruitment sourcing efforts is to build strong candidate and company lists from the get-go.

When you use Apollo, list building is simple. We provide advanced filters which highly granular data points like names and titles, company revenue, location, technologies used, job postings, keywords, and so much more!

If you’re starting a search for new candidates that fit similar criteria of past lists, take advantage of the lists you have already built by using the Saved Search feature in Apollo.

This allows you two time-saving benefits:

1. You can quickly launch a search using specific filters, give that list a name you can easily reference, and then save it for future use to continuously work from.
2. You can apply specific filters to every search you initiate in Apollo by default by saving the search criteria and clicking a “Set as default” check box.

Tip #2: Create hyper-personalized outreach Sequences that target top candidates

It’s important that recruiters use the right sourcing strategies to make candidate outreach as effective as possible. With the right recruiting tool, it’s possible to build sequences of unique touchpoints that automate outreach processes and allow recruiters to connect with candidates at speed and scale.

In Apollo, Sequences does just that…

Sequences are customized outreach campaigns with any number of sequential contact points and tasks that you can customize to personally engage your target audiences at scale. They help recruiters deliver communications to candidates and complete the right tasks at the right time to speed candidates through your pipeline and turn them into best-fit employees.

When you build out your sequences, you have eight steps to choose from and arrange:

• Automatic Email: Use any of your Apollo email templates or create new ones to craft personalized and targeted messaging that is delivered based on the parameters you set.
• Manual Email: Use to schedule and deliver follow-up emails that you can fully customize.
• Phone Call: Add notes, tips, scripts, and any other helpful information with a reminder to call a candidate.
• Action Item: A blank canvas to schedule any number of necessary internal communications or processes along the way.
• LinkedIn: View Profile: Access a contact’s LinkedIn profile from within Apollo and document key information that can help you build rapport when engaging with prospective candidates.
• LinkedIn: Interact With Post: Review a contact’s activities, engage with their recent posts, and give yourself direction with reminders and relevant notes.
• LinkedIn: Send a Connection Request: Create connection request templates to make a great first impression.
• LinkedIn: Send Message: Send personalized InMail messages

The timing between these steps is all determined by you. Schedule a specific time and date for steps to automatically happen or tell Apollo how long to wait between each sequencing step.

Here’s an example of a recruiting sequence we’ve had a lot of success with at Apollo (and check out that killer open rate of 70.5%!):

Fully equipped with automatic emails, LinkedIn messages, personalized snippets, and value-based messaging, this is a beautiful example of a strategic sourcing effort at work!

Tip #3: Keep talent pipelines’ contact details up-to-date with Apollo CSV Enrichment

As a recruiter, you often deal with large lists of contacts and it is crucial that you keep them up-to-date for effective segmentation and targeted engagement.

Apollo’s CSV Enrichment feature allows you to import CSV files of prospective candidates directly into Apollo for one-click enrichment with our verified data. This is a great way to leverage the vast amount of verified data available in Apollo within other systems that you use every day, but have not directly integrated with Apollo.

CSV Enrichment works for both people and companies; so that you can rest assured that your candidate data sets (whether they live in Excel, Sheets, Google Drive, etc.) are accurate and ready to be put to use.

Our own recruiters at Apollo leverage this feature, nearly every day. “CSV upload is a phenomenal way to import potentially large datasets in a quick and efficient way for enrichment and other uses,” says one of our Apollo recruiting managers.

The enrichment opportunities in Apollo don’t stop there! We also offer CRM Enrichment, API Enrichment, and job change alerts. Click on these links to learn more about how Apollo supports you in keeping your candidate data squeaky clean.

Tip #4: Gain recruiting insights from everywhere with the Apollo Chrome Extension

Meet your new favorite sourcing tool: the Apollo Chrome Extension!

It unlocks Apollo functionality in tools that recruiters use every day, including LinkedIn, Gmail, and Google Calendar, as well as many of the major brand websites across the internet.

When you use LinkedIn, the Apollo Chrome Extension allows you to find new candidates with verified data that includes direct mobile numbers and email addresses. You can directly add these contacts to lists and sequences that you’ve already built in Apollo with just one click.

How simple is that?!

Beyond LinkedIn, recruiters can use the Extension to track emails and schedule follow-up reminders in Gmail, access insights and intelligence directly from Google Calendar, grab entire web pages and convert them into lists with Apollo Everywhere, and more.

Note: To enable Apollo Everywhere, launch the Apollo Chrome Extension and click the toggle for ‘Apollo Everywhere’.

The Apollo Chrome Extension is a functional data and engagement tool that is perfect for recruiters looking to find and add the right candidates into their pipeline with ease.

Try it out yourself! Download the Apollo Chrome Extension here.

Tip #5: Optimize your talent acquisition process with Analytics

To be a results-driven recruiter, you need to consistently track performance and make data-based adjustments to your recruitment sourcing process.

Use Apollo Analytics to track the performance of your emails and gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of your sourcing strategies.

In Analytics, you can track scheduled, delivered, open, replied, and interest rates, as well as call performances and high and low-performing sequencing reports. And from your personalized Apollo dashboard, you can access all of this valuable recruiting data in one place!

The more you evaluate what works and what doesn’t, the more you can test and improve your Sequences to increase candidate engagement.

Take-aways

You may know Apollo as a sales engagement platform, but Apollo’s all-in-one functionality and infinitely adaptable in-app tools make it a perfect tool for talent sourcing, too!

To sum up:

• Build out highly-targeted company lists, ready for candidate sourcing.
• Target potential candidates with automated and personalized Sequences.
• Use Apollo CSV Enrichment to keep important candidate data up-to-date.
• Gain valuable recruiting insights and functionalities across all your tools with the Chrome Extension.
• Use Analytics and Reports to make actionable changes to your recruitment sourcing process.

The last thing you’ll need is an Apollo.io account to put it all together…

Create a free account to expand your talent pool and improve your recruitment process, today!

The post 5 Tips for Recruitment Sourcing in Apollo appeared first on Apollo.

Chaos aside, running your sales team running efficiently is key to moving toward those revenue and growth goals.

Jeff Kreinik, the former CRO at BuzzCast, managed a team of account executives and can speak to this all too well. In the early days of working with this team, their outbound B2B sales process was extremely disjointed with different parts of their workflow spread across multiple systems.

In the search for a more efficient solution, Jeff found Apollo. And within months of moving to Apollo’s end-to-end sales engine, his account executives were accomplishing their sales prospecting tasks in less than half of the time it used to take and filling the pipeline four times faster.

Jeff was also pleasantly surprised to find that he suddenly had an easier way to gain insight into team activity and thus set more targeted KPIs for his team.

For Jeff, Apollo was not just a prospecting tool, but a system for sales team management. Here are three ways Jeff used Apollo to more strategically manage his sales team.

#1 – Jeff refined KPIs based on Apollo Analytics

Before Apollo, Jeff kept the team’s goals fairly vague. Because they were using so many different systems, it was hard to track what was working and what wasn’t. However, this changed with Apollo.

“Once we started using Apollo, I was able to track all kinds of KPIs such as the number of accounts targeted each week, or the number of contacts added to an outbound Sequence,” says Jeff. “I tracked a total of ten different KPIs within Apollo, and by doing so, I was able to set specific expectations for individuals and for the team as a whole.”

When the KPIs were more specific, Jeff was also able to be more strategic in helping his team excel. He started to pick up on patterns in team activity within Apollo and could then make suggestions accordingly.

“I gained a lot of insights, and after gathering about three to six months of data in Apollo, I could then project what my team was capable of,” Jeff explains.

#2 – Jeff sped up teamwide prospecting 4x by centralizing their work within Apollo

“Our process before Apollo was highly inefficient,” says Jeff.

“We used one platform to identify targets and create lists, and another platform to find email addresses. Once we had emails, we’d export those to another platform to do our outreach. And then after that, if someone was interested, we were manually adding them to a CRM.”

By switching from multiple platforms to centralizing everything within Apollo, Jeff could help his team maximize their time.

“We were able to 4x the speed at which we could fill the pipeline,” Jeff says.

Not only was his sales team prospecting faster with Apollo, but Jeff could also direct his team to make strategic changes to outbound efforts faster.

“Our marketing director and I created several different email templates, and we would have the account executives A/B test our different templates in Apollo,” explains Jeff.

“We could quickly get back results and then make adjustments across the team to arrive at the best email subject lines, messaging, and calls to action that would drive more pipeline growth.”

#3 – Jeff improved team results with better coaching

By using Apollo to track team activities, Jeff was able to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of his different sales reps. He was also able to allow each account executive to work based on their specific interests.

“I had one AE who was very good at breaking down financial markets into revenue, and I had another AE who really wanted to focus on regional markets,” says Jeff. “Since our prospecting was now more standardized within Apollo, this allowed me to empower those reps to work the way they wanted as long as they stayed within the parameters and templates in Apollo.”

By using Apollo as a coaching tool, Jeff could uncover where individuals were inefficient or where they could lean into their strengths.

“I found that I was expanding the way I managed each AE beyond just how to use a software tool, and I was instead more focused on how they were spending their day as a whole,” says Jeff.

To summarize…

At the end of the day, Jeff was truly able to lean into his role as a leader by taking advantage of the right tools in the right way.

Jeff highly recommends Apollo for other sales leaders, but he also recommends being open minded.

“We all have access to the same tools for prospecting, but what’s important is to be smart about how you use those tools. Try to be more efficient with how you approach prospecting and don’t be afraid to try new things. Spend more time being thoughtful, and I’m sure you’ll see results,” says Jeff.

If you’re a CRO or sales leader wanting to better manage your team’s prospecting activities like Jeff, try Apollo for free today.

The post 3 Ways a CRO Used Apollo to Manage the Sales Team and Fill Pipeline 4x Faster appeared first on Apollo.

The answer should be on your highly-targeted B2B lead list; your list of best-fit contacts you can move through your sales funnel to become customers.

But, building out a fully-stocked lead list is easier said than done…

Too many sales teams waste time and leave money on the table by using lead lists that are inaccurate and out of date.

That’s why, in our July webinar, we invited sales experts Scott Duffey, Enterprise Solutions Director at Chargeback Gurus, and our very own VP of Sales, David Bennion, to share their tips and tricks for building a lead list that converts!

Below, we’ll recap the webinar and share their actionable advice for supercharging your prospecting process.

First, some context on Apollo

You’ll soon learn that Scott and David are big Apollo.io fans, especially when it comes to highly-targeted sales prospecting.

So, let’s start with a brief Apollo introduction….

What’s Apollo.io?

Apollo.io is the future of go-to-market. With Apollo, every seller, marketer, founder, and recruiter, can move business forward with more ease and less time wasted.

We equip B2B professionals with everything needed to make work clear, quick, and simple.

Our customers use Apollo to:

• Find every prospect. Uncover high intent contacts in your target market with our vast B2B database and advanced search filters.
• Connect with every contact. Create multi-step outbound sequences at scale, automate your emails and stay on top of the steps in your outbound prospecting process using our platform.
• Move business forward. Optimize your sales strategy by unlocking opportunities across your workflow.

With all of these functionalities, you better believe Apollo has tools for lead generation and list building! Keep reading to learn tips and tricks first-hand from the featured webinar’s expert sales professionals…

The challenges of list-building

Before jumping straight into actionable practices, Scott and David mentioned that one of the biggest obstacles to creating a list of best-fit leads is fully understanding and identifying your ideal customer profile (ICP).

“The most important thing for me when it comes to building a list is absolutely understanding who the right buying persona is for my service, [but] that’s also a big part of the challenge”, Scott admits.

And identifying that ICP is only half the battle…

Sales teams need to not only know who their buying personas are, but also their personas’ needs and pain points, their market, goals, etc. Only then can you create a list full of leads that you are ready and able to provide immediate value to and convert into happy customers.

How Apollo helps you build better lead lists

So how do you gain the insights you need to kickstart your list-building process? With an all-in-one sales intelligence engine of course!

In this next section of the webinar, Scott gave his best practices for using Apollo to build lead lists that exponentially grow your pipeline (and, your revenue!).

Find the right buyers with highly granular filtering

Only best-fit leads should enter your lead list. And, in Apollo, you have 65+ advanced filters to help you find them!

“What’s been nice in the time I’ve worked with Apollo is how adept the filtering functionality is within the service,” Scott says. “[The Apollo database] almost always captures exactly who you’re looking for…and it’s those people that are the ones that you want to make sure that you save and create your list”.

As you create your lead list, you can tailor your Apollo searches using filters like:

• Title
• Company name
• Funding
• Technologies used
• # of employees and department headcount
• Revenue
• Alexa Rank
• Job postings
• And more!

These filters can be found by navigating to the Searcher where the filters sidebar will be on the left.

Applying filters that align with your company’s ICPs gives you a launching pad to create your most effective messaging and engagement strategy down the line!

Build automated Sequences for targeted engagement

Now that you have a beautiful lead list, it’s time to put it to use.

For this, Scott uses Sequences, Apollo’s must-have feature for creating automated outreach campaigns. “Getting more strategic with my lead list – for me – is being able to send out the right messaging through good sequencing”, he says.

Scott uses a smattering of templated emails, call tasks, and LinkedIn actions to engage his leads with the right messaging at every touchpoint.

Here is an example of one of Scott’s sequences that targets his buying personas in the travel and leisure industry:

This is a simple three-email, one-call sequence, scheduled over the course of a month; and it’s just one example of Scott’s many sequencing strategies to reach the contacts on his lead list.

And he isn’t alone…

In recent customer interviews, 75% of Apollo’s top power users said that sequences and sequencing automation are must-use features across their sales cadence.

Aside from providing you with hands-off engagement for your leads, Apollo Sequences also gives you:

• Institutionalized best practices for engaging leads into easy-to-follow guides that automatically add defined tasks to your Apollo dashboards on set schedules, which ensures consistency and accountability for your sales team.
• A/B testing for message templates, scripts, and strategies to confirm the best version of any step in your sales process.
• Reporting to compare and optimize your approach and help you to confirm the best times for every message you send.
• Detailed analytics that are specific to your messaging and sales activities, such as how many messages were delivered, opened, replied to, and bounced.

Send the best message every time with templated emails

Another Apollo tool that Scott loves is email templates.

Email templates make it easy for you to share your best messages with each contact and they also allow your team to collaborate and share resources with ease.

Scott shared that it’s his practice to create templates that are unique to the vertical and the service he is selling, and then add them into his sequences, scheduled at just the right time.

Here is an example of a template Scott included in the email sequence above:

Enhanced with personalization snippets and value-based messaging, this is a beautiful example of strategic outreach at work!

“[Sequences and Templates] really increase your chances of not only connecting with the right person but connecting with them at a time when they are thinking about the topic at hand,” David concludes.

Other tips & tricks for creating an effective lead list strategy

• Send value-based initial touchpoints. Scott has a tried and true method for sending an initial email touchpoint: acknowledge their pain point, state your value, and make a request for further connection. Get inspired to write that first email with this example of Scott’s initial touchpoint template below:
• Leverage Apollo functionalities for external lists with CSV file uploads. One of Scott’s biggest prospecting success stories started with a simple CSV file upload into the Apollo platform. Targeting contacts at a large footwear distribution company, Scott created and uploaded a CSV file into Apollo and, once he had that list created, he could perform extensive filtering, update contact information, target his personas, etc.“From that, I received back significant responses of excitement,” Scott says. “Once I was able to launch engagement, my pipeline grew exponentially overnight!”
• Patience is key. It’s important to remember that, especially when you are dealing with your best-fit leads, success isn’t always immediate. It’s often a long term, relationship-based strategy that engages your leads with precise, targeted messaging. Be patient and focus on giving your prospects value that resonates with them over time.

Q&A summary

Our live audience asked some great questions that maybe you have, too! Check out the recap of the Q&A:

Question #1: How do salespeople identify the specific roles they want to reach?

“A first principle [is asking] who is this going to benefit, who’s going to find value in my solution, that’s your persona. It’s also really important to think ‘Who’s going to buy my solution?,” David answered. “There are people who are going to use [your product], and there are people who are going to buy it. You want to be able to resonate with both of those folks, but you need to know how to communicate with the decision-marker at the end of the day.”

David adds, “Also whether you have a product marketing team, or, if you’re a smaller organization, maybe it’s your CEO…[Ask them] ‘Who are we trying to solve problems for, what are their jobs, and how are we going to be helping them?”

Scott’s answer was similar. He encourages people to rely on team members who specialize in identifying your company’s ideal buyers, “Circle back to your leadership team or your marketing group and identify who’s best going to be able to utilize the product or service that you’re selling…who is going to benefit most from your product or service. So, [for example] in my case, it’s anybody that pays attention to revenue.”

Question #2: How long should an email sequence be?

Scott says, “Personally, I go for three. I send a first one, then an email a week later that’s much smaller than the first one, and then a couple weeks later I always pepper in a LinkedIn connection request…I also try to sprinkle in a call in the middle and at the end. So that’s around 6 efforts and 3 emails. [But] absolutely stretch it out to more than just one person at the company…you don’t know who is the contact who is going to get back to you.”

Question #3: What makes Apollo better and/or different from the competition?

David, as the VP of Sales at Apollo, jokingly admits he is a little biased, but goes on to give some of the reasons why Apollo prides itself as the world’s leading end-to-end sales solution.

“One of the reasons that makes us unique is our data set. It’s just the biggest, the most complete, the most up-to-date, making it the most accurate”, he says, “For example, we share when and where people change jobs…it’s a singular feature, but it really is a feature of a bigger solution which is data that makes you as efficient as possible. Another differentiating factor [for Apollo] is our ease of use…Some of the solutions that you see in the market today are pretty heavy to set up and get started. Apollo’s mission is to make go-to-market simple and accessible for all.”

As a daily user himself, Scott couldn’t wait to chime in on this one, “Another big thing for me, is its affordability for a great solution…[Chargeback Gurus] have looked at other services, and we feel that the value we get for the price point, as well as the service, is far and away over somebody else,” Scott says. “On top of that, Apollo has so much functionality built in and they are constantly rolling out new things!”

Question #4: What is the 1-2 sentence summary of building a lead list that converts?

David summarized it beautifully, “Know your industry, the accounts and the personas that you want to reach out to and build your list based off of those filters. And if you can get more granular form there, you’ll do even better.”

In Closing

Apollo is proud to share the voices of users, just like you, whose best practices are proven to take sales results to the next level!

Not an Apollo user? Worry not! Sign up for free and start using Scott’s lead generation methods today. And don’t forget to follow Apollo on LinkedIn and Twitter to never miss out on future Apollo webinars, events, and sales insights.

The post Apollo Webinar Recap: How to Build a Lead List that Converts appeared first on Apollo.

Apollo’s database gives you a complete and accurate source of prospect data. And with our open API and API developer portal, you can connect our high-quality data to your other systems and workflows.

You don’t have to be a software developer to consider the Apollo API. Read on to learn the basics.

What is API?

API stands for application programming interface, and it is essentially a set of coded rules that allows companies to share data in real time between applications. Central to an API is an API portal, which is similar to a bridge in that it connects what is being coded with those who want to use the code.

API portals can look different at different companies, but on a basic level, they enable access to an interface for you to securely engage with data you need in real time.

How sales teams benefit from the Apollo API

The Apollo API developer portal is a no-brainer for a strategic sales organization wanting to leverage Apollo’s data to keep a CRM platform current or enrich contact records in other systems.

First and foremost, this allows you the flexibility to use Apollo data in the way that works best for you, rather than adjusting your sales workflows around Apollo.

Also, the API developer portal helps your operations team stay informed and work smarter with insights such as API status and uptime as well as usage analytics.

Last but not least, the API developer portal is very simple to use. Everything regarding configuration, documentation, and subscription to our open API is housed within our easy-to-navigate portal.

What it looks like to search, update, and enrich with the Apollo API

Apollo’s API allows you to enrich your records in bulk, search for people, and receive a list of active job postings for a company in the Apollo database.

You can also use our API to manage and track your opportunities with companies and people in Apollo. Create, view, and update existing opportunities with ease.

To manage contacts across Apollo and your systems, you can use the API to create a contact, update an existing contact, search for contacts, and manage contact stages and ownership. The same capabilities apply to Accounts as well.

As far as managing your workflow, you can take advantage of the API to search for Sequences and add or remove contacts from a Sequence. For additional workflow management, create tasks to perform on a contact or get a list of tasks.

As a developer or operations professional, everything you need to use Apollo API is easy within the API developer portal. In this portal you’ll find the following six features (and more!):

1. An API QuickStart guide to help you begin using the most popular endpoints for the most common ways our customers use Apollo API.
2. API key management that allows you to generate multiple keys, name and delete keys, and one click to copy an API key.
3. Easily-accessible analytics with a detailed report of your credit usage and rate limits.
4. Clear subscription management.
5. Access to technical support via email when you need to quickly resolve a technical issue.
6. Documentation to connect to almost everything you can access within the Apollo platform including contacts, accounts, Sequences, and more.

How to get started with Apollo API today

You don’t need to be a paying customer to take advantage of our open API. Anyone with an Apollo.io account can get started!

Once you’ve signed up and created a login, you’ll find everything you need related to Apollo API in the API Management menu. Use the QuickStart Guide to learn how to use the API, upgrade your plan if you need access to more features, and contact technical support all within the portal.

Sign up today to get started, or if you’re an existing user on a Professional or Custom plan, visit the Apollo API here.

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While prospecting is extremely important, it can also be fairly time-consuming if you don’t have the right solutions to support your efforts. And, as any business owner knows, time is extremely valuable.

Someone who truly understands the value of time AND the value of prospecting is Desmond Legge, the founder of Growth Systemz – a B2B SaaS consulting business. Desmond helps early-stage SaaS companies achieve incredible revenue growth goals.

“Time is the only currency you have as a founder or business owner,” says Desmond. “Spending time on what really matters in your company is going to be the difference between success and failure, particularly in the early stages of your company.”

When it comes to prospecting, Desmond has been able to make the most of his time by using Apollo, a B2B go-to-market solution. In fact, he saves five to ten hours weekly when using Apollo for prospecting as compared to other systems he has used in the past.

“Starting your own business is really about maximizing your time, and Apollo is a great tool to help you do that,” explains Desmond. “You’ll spend less time prospecting, managing spreadsheets, and verifying contacts, and have more time to invest in your product or service.”

Here are the two main ways Apollo helps Desmond find more of the right buyers, in less time.

Keeping prospecting work consolidated in one place

Before running his own company, Desmond worked in sales for several large organizations. At these companies, prospecting was the main part of his role, but it also took way more time than necessary. In part, this was because he was going back and forth between multiple systems as part of his workflow.

“It’s common for there to be multiple, distributed systems for sales at these larger organizations, and ultimately, those solutions cost significantly more than Apollo,” explains Desmond. “I remember being in my previous sales roles and wondering why all of these prospecting tasks couldn’t just be on one platform. So, I’m really grateful that Apollo exists and puts everything in one place. That’s a huge part of the value in using Apollo.”

When it comes to prospecting and sales overall, Desmond spends most of his time in Apollo, which acts as an end-to-end sales solution.

“I love that the outbound campaigns are built inside Apollo so that you’re not wasting time exporting contacts to a CSV and then uploading them to another platform. That in itself is a huge time saver,” says Desmond.

Contact scraping in bulk

In past sales roles, Desmond would spend a ton of time using clunky systems to scrape for contacts one by one.

“I would talk to my sales managers and directors about being more efficient with this, and we couldn’t figure out how,” says Desmond. “And then, when I started my own company, I used Apollo and it has been a night and day difference in terms of prospecting efficiency.”

In Apollo, Desmond can search in bulk and also scrape entire pages of LinkedIn in bulk.

“This is saving myself and my clients who use Apollo a significant amount of time,” says Desmond. “I recommend Apollo to all of my clients, and right out of the gate I tell them to use bulk prospecting. Not everyone has been through the process of prospecting the historical way, so they don’t always have the same appreciation for bulk prospecting that I do. But it’s a huge time saver.”

Reaching out with accurate email addresses

Another way Desmond avoids wasting time is by ensuring his outreach efforts are reaching the right inboxes thanks to Apollo’s email verification.

When you request an email within Apollo, a six-step verification process kicks in to validate the email. We do the work for you of comparing data against LinkedIn, cross-checking against bounced emails, and other verification steps.

This industry-leading automated verification process occurs in real-time to provide you with the accurate information you need to prospect effectively.

“This is another really good feature that ensures you’re only sequencing contacts that have a high degree of accuracy. This is something that not a lot of platforms do well,” says Desmond.

To summarize…

At the end of the day, Desmond finds Apollo to be a no-brainer decision for any business founder.

“Don’t forget that there’s a dollar amount attached to your time as a business owner,” advises Desmond. “So yes, there’s the cost of the more advanced Apollo plans, but the ROI is significantly higher than ten times. The time you end up saving on prospecting is way more valuable than the cost you pay for Apollo.”

If you’re a business founder wanting to find more of the right buyers in less time like Desmond, try Apollo for free today.

The post How Business Founders Can Find More of the Right Buyers in Less Time appeared first on Apollo.