Apollo vs Instantly.ai - cold outreach tool comparison

Apollo's Sequences feature allows you to create campaigns that send emails and messages, as well as queue tasks to engage with sales leads effectively. While the tool supports basic sequences of emails and actions, it's important to note that advanced conditional branching isn't a strong point, with a focus on mostly linear sequences.

• Automatic and manual email tasks: You can set up emails to go out automatically or as manual tasks that need editing before sending.
• Social media integration: Reach out to leads via LinkedIn with options to send connection requests and messages.
• Phone call and action item tasks: Include calls to prospects and custom actions in your campaign sequence.

Reddit users have shared their experiences with Apollo's campaign creation, indicating a neutral to negative sentiment.

😐 "Apollo has its own email sequence function and they’ve recently added email warm up too. So really, all you need is Apollo, and nothing else." - r/Emailmarketing

👎 "schedule emails to be sent out it doesn't work or it works so badly that it is useless" - r/LeadGeneration

Instantly.ai's Sequences feature offers a straightforward solution for setting up email campaigns designed for simple outreach. The linear nature of the sequences allows you to focus on sending emails and queuing tasks without the complexity of forking, conditionals, or branches.

Key aspects of campaign creation:

• Linear Sequences: Follow a straight path without branching, ideal for simple campaigns.
• Add Step: Easily insert additional steps to extend your campaign as needed.
• Add Variant: Introduce variations to your emails for A/B testing or personalization.
• Templates and Variables: Access pre-written content and insert dynamic fields to streamline your workflow.

When it comes to deliverability, Apollo offers features like managing multiple mailboxes to spread out your email sending and avoiding rate limits that could affect your email deliverability. However, users looking to improve deliverability through email warming will need to integrate an additional service, as Apollo does not provide this directly.

• Multiple Mailboxes: Manage several mailboxes to distribute sending volumes.
• Rate Limits: Set daily and hourly limits to prevent being marked as spam.
• Deliverability Score: Although not shown in the screenshot, typically such a feature would help monitor your sender reputation.

Reddit feedback suggests that while Apollo's features can be effective, users have had varied experiences, and there are recommendations for best practices in email deliverability:

🤔 "Allowing link tracking adds some inherent risk when sending emails" - r/Emailmarketing

🤔 "Make sure to limit the number of emails going out each day" - r/sales

Instantly.ai's Sequences feature takes a proactive approach to deliverability issues by incorporating unlimited email warming in even its most basic package. This service is designed to improve the sender's reputation and inbox placement by simulating genuine interactions like email opens and reads.

• Email Warming: Integrated into the product, promoting better deliverability.
• Spam Avoidance: Implements practices to reduce the chance of emails being marked as spam.
• Rate Limits: Configurable settings to control the volume of emails sent, preventing sudden spikes that might harm deliverability.
• Multiple Mailboxes: Manage and warm multiple email accounts simultaneously.

😕 "Been doing the warm up for almost 2 months now and still even basic messages going to spam" - r/Emailmarketing

Apollo's Sequences feature shines in personalization, making sure your emails to sales leads feel unique and catered to them. Here's how you can customize your emails:

• Dynamic Variables: Inject any field from Apollo's database into your email using {{ }} brackets to personalize your content.
• Normalized Fields: Apollo provides normalized references for a natural feel in emails.
• Email Preview: Check how your email looks by previewing it with an existing lead's data or sending a test to yourself.
• Rich Media Content: Enhance your emails with meeting invites, Vidyard recordings, and images.
• Extensive Enrichment Data: Access a wide array of data points, as Apollo specializes in data enrichment.

With Instantly.ai's Sequences, you can create highly customized emails for each lead. The personalization features offer a strong blend of templates, placeholders, and additional options to tailor your outreach for maximum impact.

• Template variety: Start with pre-made templates or create your own.
• Placeholder variables: Insert {{placeholders}} for personalization.
• Preview function: Easily preview emails before sending.
• Rich content: Add links, emoticons, and images to emails.
• Advanced options: Track emails and set daily limits for sending.

Apollo's AI in Sequences offers impressive capabilities for creating personalized outreach. You can guide the AI to generate one-liners, subject lines, and even entire emails by providing information about your company, product, and target persona. Additionally, the tool provides the unique feature of recording, transcribing, and analyzing video call meetings, which can be invaluable for sales review and training purposes.

• Guided AI Generation: Direct the AI to craft messages aligned with your brand and target audience.
• Customization: Modify one-liners, openers, subject lines, and full emails for a tailored approach.
• Recording and Analysis: Automatically record and transcribe video calls, analyzing them for improved sales strategies.

When evaluating the AI capabilities of Instantly.ai's Sequences feature, it's important to note that, unexpectedly, the tool does not offer AI functionalities for crafting sales sequences. This could be a potential drawback for users looking for AI assistance in writing sentences or using custom signals for each lead.

• No AI functionality: Despite the name, Instantly.ai does not provide AI features for sales sequences.
• Custom signals: There's no option to leverage AI for custom lead signals.
• Sentence writing: Users cannot use AI to write entire sentences within the tool.

Apollo's Sequences feature offers native enrichment that gives you valuable buyer signals and data from various sources about your leads. This helps you personalize your outreach with enriched data parameters, making your engagement more targeted and informed.

• Data Enrichment: Access detailed lead profiles including job changes and buyer signals.
• Personalization: Use enriched data to customize emails and increase relevance.
• Lead Insights: Gain actionable insights with real-time data on lead activities.

Instantly.ai's Sequences feature includes a Native Enrichment sub-feature that provides additional insights into your leads. While it does not have its own enrichment database, it allows you to enrich a list of leads you've added by pulling data from various sources. This can give you more information on your leads, such as buyer signals, to enhance your sales efforts.

• Enrichment of added leads: Use data from external sources to add details to your leads.
• Manual upload required: There is no inbuilt database; you need to add leads manually.
• Buyer signals: Gain insights into potential interest and readiness to buy.

👍 "Try instantly.ai — it’s the best for leads and verification" - r/LeadGeneration

When using the Sequences feature in Instantly.ai, it's important to note that social platform automation, especially for LinkedIn, is not directly available. You might need to integrate other tools like Dripify or Hey Alfred to fill this gap. This could be a consideration for those who rely heavily on social automation for their sales processes.

• Social Automation Limitation: Direct automation for LinkedIn and other social platforms is not built-in.
• Third-party Integration Needed: To automate social tasks, you will need to use additional tools like Dripify or Hey Alfred.

Apollo's Sequences feature includes social automation that simplifies your engagement with leads on platforms like LinkedIn. You can create tasks for various actions, schedule them according to your priority, and even automate interactions without manual input. This is a significant time saver for anyone looking to enhance their social selling efforts.

• Task variety: Create tasks for emails, phone calls, or LinkedIn interactions.
• Custom scheduling: Set task priority and due dates to your preference.
• LinkedIn automation: Automate messages, post interactions, and connection requests.