SOP 179: Build an email outreach list
Successfully build a list of contacts for outreach and marketing for your business
Last Updated / Reviewed: 03/29/2024
Execution Time: 30 Mins
🚀 Goal: Quickly build a list of contacts to outreach.
🤞 Ideal Outcome: Successfully build a list of contacts for outreach and marketing for your business.
🤔 Why this is important: To help get your message in front of relevant people — customers, journalists, and founders in hopes of growing your business.
🧐 Where this is done Apollo.
🗓️ When this is done: After you’ve identified your customer persona/avatar.
👨 Who does this: Outreach specialist, PR/marketing consultant, or any person responsible for outreach strategy for your business.
__⚠️Prerequisites or requirements: __You need to have an Apollo account (free to sign up).
Click here to get the most up-to-date version of this SOP
Before you start
You are most likely to become your customers. If you have not done this, please follow the SOP below to create a set of customer personas that are most relevant to your business.
Task: SOP 161: How to create buyer persona (web version).
Build an outreach email list on Apollo.
01▸ Head to Apollo and create a free account. To save time, it’s recommended that you sign up with your Google account.
02▸ On the next page, Apollo will request access to your Google account. Click “Allow”.
03▸ In the onboarding screen, select “Finish Setup” in the top corner.
04▸ You will see a pop-up, click “Get Started Now”.
05▸ On the next screen, select “Apollo Database”.
An onboarding pop-up will show. You can exit the onboarding screen for now.
06▸ You will now see Apollo’s database filter dashboard. We will primarily build our contact list based on these filters: Job titles, location, employees, and keywords.
07▸ Set the filter criteria based on your customer persona. In this example, we’ll attempt to find Startup CEOs, founders, and marketing directors that are based in the US. Ideally, you should set the criteria based on the customer persona for your company.
Job Titles — Search for “founder”, “CEO”, and “marketing directors” and select the ones that apply. You can select more than one.
You should start seeing a list of contacts on your right once you apply the filter.
Location — Set the location to the United States. Once selected, the contact list should be updated accordingly.
Employees — Since we’re targeting startups, select companies where there are 1-50 employees.
Industry & Keywords — Apply common for startups. For example: “startup”, “saas”, “agency”, “eCommerce”.
Once you’ve completed the filter, you will now have a list of potential prospects for outreach.
08▸ Select the people that are on this list and click “Export”.
Note: You’re only allowed to export 25 contacts at a time on Apollo’s free plan.
09▸ Click ”confirm” to export the list of contacts to your email.
10▸ Next, click “I Will Comply” in the Terms of Services Pop-up.
You should see a confirmation message on the top right corner that the export has been completed.
Check your email and download the contact list.
Repeat step 10-14 for as many contacts you want to outreach.
That’s it! You’ve now created a list of potential emails/contacts for outreach. You can import this list to your preferred CRM or spreadsheet.