How to Run Multichannel Outreach Sequences in Apollo

Overview

Multi-channel outreach is proven to be the most effective strategy for capturing your buyer’s attention, from C-Suite prospects to individual contributors. In an analysis of over 100,000 outbound sales campaigns, Apollo found that adding one diversified touchpoint, in addition to an auto-email, increases your chances of booking a meeting by up to 14%.

Add more touchpoints and the meeting booked rate goes up by as much as 24%.

Check out the following sections to conduct multichannel outreach with Apollo.

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How to Run Multichannel Outreach in Apollo: A Checklist

Use Apollo to create automated, multi-step touchpoints for your sales outreach, build a consistent and effective pipeline, and identify top messaging performers with A/B testing.

Follow this 7-step checklist to improve your prospecting efficiency, and engage in more meaningful conversations with your ideal customers.

Step 1. Build sequences

Use Apollo sequences to effectively run outbound campaigns at scale and book more meetings with semi-automation. One sequence can hold a series of emails, calls, and LinkedIn tasks to help you reach your prospects.

Use a Sequence Template

Create a sequence and select “pre-formatted” to start with an Apollo pre-built sequence.

Click Create and customize to click into each step and edit the messaging.

Use AI to Create a Sequence

Click AI-assisted when you create a new sequence to get a head start. Then, review the pre-filled fields and edit as you see fit.

Click Generate content. Apollo AI then creates an outbound sequence with suggested touchpoints and email drafts. Continue reviewing and editing the email content.

When you’re ready, click Save and activate sequence.

Build a Sequence from Scratch

Click From scratch and give your sequence a name.

Set your sequence sending schedule to business hours to ensure your emails send during your recipient’s business hours. This increases the likelihood of gaining a response.

Select the first step in the sequence. Apollo  recommends sending the first email manually to make it highly personalized and relevant.

Use AI to write the initial email draft or pull any email templates from the Apollo sequence template library here. Save the email.

Add at least 4 more steps to the sequence, including a mix of automatic and manual emails, phone calls, linkedin tasks, and other action items. Looking for inspo? Feast your eyes on the Apollo sequence templates.

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Step 2. Set a sequence ruleset

Edit the sequence ruleset before pushing it live. With sequence rulesets you can define who you can and cannot email within a sequence.

When you’re ready, toggle the sequence on to activate it. 

Now you’re ready to add contacts to the sequence.

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Step 3. Run A/B testing

Add an A/B test your sequence steps  to test variations of your emails and drive more opens and replies. 

• • Apollo automatically distributes the prospects across each variant proportionally.
  • With a single click you can copy your initial email to version B and make tweaks to the variables you want to test. 

• Without testing in place, it’s like throwing darts in a dark room. Here’s how to start:
  • Send out your first sequence with 2-4 email variants and keep an eye on email metrics. 
  • If you’re getting below-average engagement (anything under 20% open rate, 4% reply rate, or 1% email interested rate) add an email variation — something that’s completely different from the first email across subject line, body copy, and CTA.
  • Statistical significance should start to appear around 200 recipients (100 recipients/variant). 
  • Once you get a winner, start testing more granular variables in isolation. Keep the same format, but test subject line vs. subject line, CTA vs. CTA, etc.

Learn more about the art of A/B testing in this master class lesson.

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Step 4. Execute your sequence tasks

• Navigate to tasks to see all the tasks created for you as your prospects move through each step in your sequences.
• Launch the Apollo home page to view all of your tasks sorted by the sequence of steps you need to take; call, email, or action item.
• Apply any of the filters on the left depending on which tasks you’d like to view or execute first.

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Step 5. Track sequence performance

• As soon as you add contacts to your sequence, Apollo starts to schedule emails for your first step. Click into a sequence and keep track of statistics from the sequence’s overview page. 

• From here, you can also access sequence diagnostics to identify and resolve any issues with your domain health, email deliverability, and contact data accuracy. The more you monitor and iterate the more you can  improve sequence performance.
• Explore Apollo’s pre-built dashboards to track and analyze key engagement and prospecting metrics, like:
  • Most Engaged Email Demographic
  • Most Engaged Call Demographic
  • Prospecting Activity
• Build out one of your own dashboards for full flexibility to slice and dice the data and get as granular as you want.

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Step 6. Automate meeting scheduling

• Create your meeting calendar links to plug the urls or timeslots into any one-off emails or email sequence steps.
• When you create your meeting types, make sure to set them up properly with your availability, zoom/google meet links, and email reminders.

View and manage all of your meetings in Apollo.

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Step 7. Automate end-to-end prospecting workflows

Once you’ve built your sequence, you can use Apollo plays to automatically add contacts to it and nurture them at the right time.  

• Choose to build an automation play from scratch or get started with one from our plays template library.
• Explore all possible automation actions in plays to save time on multiple use cases, like prospecting, outreach sequencing, or admin and deal updates, including: 
  • List automations
  • Sequence automations
  • Notifications
  • Task creation automations
  • Update field automations
  • Deal automations 
• You can run automation on contacts or companies. If your team focuses primarily on account-based prospecting, you can now automate that entire workflow with plays.

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