An end-to-end outbound system that replaces 80% of SDR manual work. Starts with raw leads in Apollo, ends with a hyper-personalised, multi-sequence campaign live in Instantly.ai. Fully orchestrated by n8n.
A typical BDR spends 60–70% of their time on tasks that aren't selling: finding leads, researching companies, writing personalised emails, managing follow-up cadences. It's expensive, inconsistent, and doesn't scale.
The result: a pipeline that depends entirely on individual effort, burns out reps, and produces wildly variable output month to month. Founders and sales leaders want predictable outbound. This system delivers it.
Need consistent outbound but can't justify a full SDR salary in the first 18 months. This runs 24/7 for a fraction of the cost.
Reps want to close, not prospect. Hand the top-of-funnel to the machine. Reps only touch leads that have already shown interest.
Running outbound for multiple clients simultaneously. One n8n instance handles multiple Apollo workspaces and Instantly accounts.
Want to standardise outbound across an entire sales org. This workflow becomes the single source of truth for lead processing.
Workflow pulls targeted leads from Apollo based on configured filters: job title, industry, company size, geography, and tech stack. Captures name, title, company, and LinkedIn URL automatically. Triggered on a schedule or manually via Airtable interface.
Before spending API credits on enrichment, leads pass through a qualification gate. A scoring node checks company size, role seniority, and domain health. Leads that don't meet ICP threshold are filtered out early. This alone reduces enrichment costs by roughly 30%.
Qualified leads get enriched with context beyond what Apollo provides: company business summary scraped from their website, the lead's most recent LinkedIn post, and recent company news releases. This builds a research dossier that the AI uses to write relevant, non-generic emails.
An AI model (GPT-4 or Claude) receives the full enrichment dossier and generates a three-email sequence, subject line and body for each touch. Each email references something specific to the prospect: a recent LinkedIn post, a company announcement, or a product detail. A built-in remake option lets you adjust any message before sending.
The enriched, personalised lead list is pushed directly to Instantly.ai via API. A new campaign is automatically created and activated with the correct sending schedule, warmup settings, and sequence timing. No manual import, no copy-paste.
As emails go out and replies come in, Instantly webhooks update the Airtable base in real time: lead status, last email sent, reply detected. Sales team has a live view of the entire pipeline without logging into Instantly.
Add your Apollo API key to n8n credentials. Configure your ICP filters: title keywords, industries, company size range, and geography. Set a daily lead cap to stay within Apollo rate limits.
Create a base with fields: Lead Name, Email, Company, LinkedIn URL, Website, ICP Score, Email 1/2/3 (subject + body), Status, Campaign ID, Reply Detected. Connect Airtable OAuth2 in n8n.
Edit the system prompt with your product description, ICP pain points, value proposition, and tone guidelines. The AI uses this as context when generating all three emails in the sequence.
Add your Instantly API key. Configure default campaign settings: sending window, daily email limit per inbox, warmup schedule, and unsubscribe handling. The workflow will use these as defaults when auto-creating campaigns.
Run the workflow manually with a small batch. Verify Apollo pulls the right profiles, enrichment returns useful context, AI generates non-generic emails, and the Instantly campaign is created correctly. Then enable the schedule.
I'll configure the full workflow for your ICP, tools, and sending infrastructure.