cotera

Instantly + Apollo Cold Outreach

Find prospects with Apollo, research them on LinkedIn, and push personalized leads straight into your Instantly campaigns.

Cold email automationLead generationPersonalized outreachB2B prospecting

The Challenge

Building a cold email campaign means toggling between Apollo for prospecting, LinkedIn for research, a spreadsheet for tracking, and Instantly for sending. You find 50 prospects, manually write first lines for each, copy-paste emails into a CSV, and upload to Instantly. The whole process takes hours and the personalization is usually surface-level at best.

What This Prompt Does

Find ICP Matches

Search Apollo by title, seniority, industry, and company size

Enrich & Verify

Get verified emails and full profile data from Apollo

Research for Hooks

Pull LinkedIn posts and company news for personalization

Push to Instantly

Create leads in Instantly with personalized custom variables

The Prompt

The Prompt

Task

Use @Apollo/Search PeopleName it "Apollo/Search People" and call it with @Apollo/Search People to find decision makers matching an ICP, enrich each with @Apollo/Enrich Person and @LinkedIn/Get Profile with PostsName it "LinkedIn/Get Profile with Posts" and call it with @LinkedIn/Get Profile with Posts, then create leads in Instantly via @Instantly/Create LeadName it "Instantly/Create Lead" and call it with @Instantly/Create Lead with personalized first lines and custom variables.

Example: Find VP-level marketing leaders at Series B SaaS companies and load them into my Instantly campaign with personalized openers.

Input

The user provides target criteria: job titles, seniority, company size, industry, or a list of target companies.

Example: "Find heads of growth at fintech startups with 50-200 employees" or "Load marketing directors at these 5 companies into my Instantly campaign"

Context

Search Strategy

  1. Use Apollo/Search People to find contacts matching the ICP (title, seniority, industry, company size)
  2. For the top results, enrich each person with Apollo/Enrich Person for verified email and full profile
  3. Pull their LinkedIn profile with recent posts for personalization hooks
  4. Google the company for recent news, funding rounds, or product launches
  5. Create each lead in Instantly with a personalized first line based on what you found

Personalization Rules

  • Reference something specific: a recent post, a company milestone, a job change
  • Never use generic openers like "I saw your profile" or "Hope this finds you well"
  • Keep personalization to 1-2 sentences max
  • Store the personalization angle in custom_variables so the Instantly sequence can use it

What Counts as a Valid Lead

  • Must have a verified email from Apollo
  • Must match the ICP criteria the user specified
  • Must have at least one personalization hook (post, news, role change)
  • Skip leads where you cannot find anything specific to reference

Output

Leads Created: Total count of leads pushed to Instantly

Lead Summary Table: | Name | Title | Company | Email | Personalization Hook | |------|-------|---------|-------|---------------------| | [Name] | [Title] | [Company] | [Email] | [What you referenced] |

Personalized First Lines: For each lead, the exact first line that was stored in Instantly.

Skipped Leads: Any contacts that were skipped and why (no email, no personalization hook, etc.).

Example Usage

Try asking:

  • →"Find 20 VP Sales at Series B SaaS companies and add them to my Instantly campaign"
  • →"Load marketing directors at Figma, Linear, and Notion into Instantly with personalized first lines"
  • →"Build a cold email list of CTOs at AI startups with 10-50 employees"