Overview
Apollo categorizes emails into 2 types:
- Business: the email address that a contact uses specifically for work purposes. For example:
contactnameexample@apollo.io - Personal: the email address that a contact uses for private affairs outside of working hours. For example:
contactnameexample252@gmail.com
By default, Apollo sets your Primary email to Business. However, your industry, ideal customer profiles, and campaign objectives, among other factors, will often dictate the type of email address that best fits your prospecting needs. For example, if you are in the recruiting industry, you are more likely to need a contact's personal email. If you sell to a B2B market, you are more likely to engage with a contact through their business email.
Please note, you cannot access the personal emails of contacts from the EU, UK, and Switzerland due to GDPR restrictions. Keep calm and keep compliant.
Refer to the sections below to find out how to change your primary email type and how to access a contact's personal email when you use the Apollo Search tool.
Change Your Primary Email Type
You can change your Primary email at any time, provided you are a superuser/admin. However, please note that Apollo only applies the new Primary email type to the Net New contacts that you request. Apollo does not change the Primary email for any existing saved contacts. This means that you can change your email type with peace of mind, knowing that you won't disrupt the contacts that you have already enrolled in a Sequence.
If you are not an admin, you cannot access the Prospecting Config menu. Contact your Apollo system administrator to change your Primary email type.
To change your Primary email, launch Apollo, click Settings, and then click Prospecting Config.
Scroll to Primary Email Address.
You have 3 options: Business, Personal, or Any.
Please note, if you select Any, Apollo still sets a contact's business email as the default. However, if Apollo finds both business and personal emails for a contact, you receive both. In this scenario, Apollo only charges you 1 credit for the 2 emails. For more information about email credit charges, please refer to the "Will Apollo Charge Me For More than One Email Per Contact?" article.
Click the radio button for the email type that you want to set as Primary.
Please note, if you integrated your Apollo account with Salesforce or HubSpot, carefully consider which email type you set as Primary. Apollo uses the Primary email when mapping a contact’s data to your CRM. Apollo cannot map secondary emails to a CRM.
Click Save.
You have now updated your Primary email.
Please note, it can take up to 10 minutes for your new Primary email setting to reflect in your prospecting system. So make yourself a cuppa coffee and before you know it, voila—Apollo will have made the change!
Change Your Primary Email Type in the Apollo Chrome Extension
You can also change your Primary email type directly within the Apollo Chrome Extension.
To do so, open the Apollo Chrome Extension and click ... More on the bottom right of the modal.
Scroll to Primary Email and click the email type drop-down.
Click the email type that you want to set as Primary.
You have now updated your Primary email from within the Apollo Chrome Extension.
For more information about how the Chrome Extension works, please refer to the "Apollo Chrome Extension Overview" article.
Access a Contact's Personal Email
If you have set your Primary email as Personal or Any, for 1 credit you can access all verified email addresses for a contact. This means that as long as Apollo finds a contact's verified personal email address, you can view it from that contact's profile page.
Please note, when you add a contact to a sequence, Apollo always uses the Primary email. Apollo also only displays the secondary email if it can find a verified Primary email first.
Launch Apollo, click Search, and then click People.
Do you use Apollo to source your ideal candidates? If so, you can leverage the Person Info filters to find the contacts that best fit your job requirements. For more information, refer to the "Person Info Filters" article and the "Company" section of the "Company Info Filters" article.
Apply the filters on the left of your screen to refine your Search.
Please note, if your Primary email type is Personal, you can only filter by Email Status in the Saved tab. If your Primary email type is Business, you can filter by Email Status in the Saved and Net New tabs.
Click the Net New tab. Then, click the name of the contact from which you want to access information.
Click Access Email and Phone Number on the contact's profile page.
Apollo verifies the data and displays the personal email on the contact's profile page.
Please note, if you set your Primary email as Personal and Apollo can only find a verified business email for a given contact, Apollo does not save the business email or charge you any credits. If you set your Primary email as Any, Apollo prioritizes a verified business email, but also displays the verified personal email on the contact's profile page. Apollo only charges 1 credit per contact and displays all the verified email addresses it finds. For more information, please refer to this article.