Finding prospects is easy. Finding the right person at the right time takes more work.
In my own outreach, I have found companies with a competitor's tags on their website, identified the relevant contacts and asked whether they still use that product. If they do, we can discuss whether our alternative makes sense.
Jānis from Outbound Pros and Hlib from Strongest Group deal with this at scale. Their agencies generate millions of dollars in pipeline for clients every month.
For this session with Apify, I brought them together to share how they do it. We walked through the data sources they use, how they decide who to contact and how they run their outreach through Salesforge.
Watch the full session with Outbound Pros, Strongest Group, Apify and Salesforge.
Programmatic outbound means setting rules for finding prospects, qualifying them and adding them to outreach campaigns.
You decide which companies fit your offer, what information you need and who should receive the message. The workflow handles the repeated searches, enrichment and transfer into your outreach tool.
For example, you could find B2B companies hiring SDRs, check whether they fit your target market, identify the sales leader and add qualified contacts to a campaign.
The process has three parts:
Apify handles the data collection. Salesforge handles the outreach. The decisions connecting those steps determine who receives your message and why.
Apify Actors are programs that perform tasks such as scraping directories, checking websites or finding contact details.
Start with your audience. A directory of local businesses gives you a different starting point from a list of software companies hiring salespeople.
For local businesses, business categories and locations give you a practical way to define the search.
A Yellow Pages scraper can return business names, phone numbers, addresses, websites and other listing details. Email availability depends on the Actor, so you may need a separate enrichment step.
Keep the website URL. The domain helps you research the business, check its technology and find relevant contacts.
For example, 50 categories and 300 cities give you 15,000 search combinations. The number of unique companies will depend on the results, including overlap between categories and locations.
Before combining the results, remove duplicates. Keep previous replies and opt-outs attached to existing contacts so a fresh search does not erase that history.
Google Maps provides another source for searches by business type and location.
Listings can contain websites, phone numbers and other business information. You may still need to visit the company website or use an enrichment service such as Leadsforge to find the person you want to contact.
For smaller businesses, contact details may also appear in trade associations, industry directories or local business listings.
Treat the listing as the start of your research. Check that the business actually offers the services your campaign targets.
Once you have the companies, you need contact details.
A Leads Finder Actor can help with that step. You can also use several providers in sequence, checking the next provider when the first cannot find a suitable result.
Decide which fields you need before running enrichment. An email campaign needs a verified address. A LinkedIn campaign needs the correct profile. A calling campaign needs an appropriate phone number.
Check a sample for the correct company, role and contact details before processing the entire list.
A broad source may require substantial filtering before the results match your audience.
Niche directories can give you a more focused starting point. Options include lawyer directories for legal campaigns and platforms such as Clutch or DesignRush for agencies and service businesses.
Check the available fields and test a small sample. A directory being relevant to your industry does not mean every company in it fits your offer.
A company matching your industry filter is only the first check.
You also need to understand why your offer could matter to that business and which person owns the relevant work.
Website technology and hiring activity can help answer those questions.
A BuiltWith scraper takes company domains and returns technology detections associated with those websites.
For a booking software campaign, you could find dental practices with no detected booking technology and check how patients request appointments.
For an ecommerce campaign, a Shopify detection can help identify relevant stores.
Be precise about what the data establishes. A website scan cannot show every internal system a company uses. No CRM tag does not prove the business has no CRM. An old script may also remain after a company stops using a product.
Check the relevant page before writing your message. If you cannot confirm the setup, ask how the team handles the process.
Job postings can help you identify work a company needs someone to handle.
An SDR vacancy may be relevant to an outbound agency. A paralegal vacancy may provide context for software that supports legal work.
Read the responsibilities in the job description. A title alone gives you much less information about where your offer might fit.
You can search recent postings, such as those published in the last seven days, then check whether the role remains open before reaching out.
Compare sources too. LinkedIn, Indeed and company careers pages may return different results for the same market.
Hiring gives you context for a conversation. You still need to establish whether the company has a need your offer can address.
What you collect should shape who you contact and what you say to them. A practice owner may own appointment bookings. An operations manager may own how a roofing business handles enquiries.
Here are five examples of how a signal turns into a campaign.
Start by checking how patients request an appointment.
If you cannot find an online booking option, you can make that observation and offer a relevant example.
Example message:
Hi {{first_name}}, I couldn't find an online booking option on your website. A simple booking form can collect appointment requests and contact details before your front desk follows up. Can I send you a two-screen example?
The recipient knows what you noticed and what you are offering. They can ask to see the example without committing to a meeting.
Build a list of roofing companies, then inspect how their websites collect enquiries.
A technology scan can support the research, but your message should account for what it cannot see.
Ask how the team tracks enquiries, quotes and follow-ups. That gives you a starting point for discussing the process without assuming the company lacks a CRM.
Contact the person responsible for operations or managing those enquiries. A relevant observation still needs to reach someone who can act on it.
Use a recent vacancy to understand the work the firm needs help with.
If your product supports a task mentioned in the job description, explain that connection in the message.
Be specific about the task. A general claim about helping law firms gives the recipient little to assess.
The opening should make it clear why the vacancy prompted your outreach and where your product could fit.
Check whether the vacancy involves outbound prospecting and whether the company fits your target market.
Then mention the role, explain your offer and finish with a simple question.
The vacancy gives you a relevant business detail. You do not need to add unrelated personal information to make the message feel researched.
Avoid assuming the company wants an agency simply because it is hiring. Your offer still needs to make sense alongside its recruitment plans.
Competitor tags can help you identify companies worth contacting.
I start with competitors where we have a clear reason customers choose us. Then I find websites showing those tags and identify the people responsible for the relevant tool.
My first question asks whether the company still uses the product.
That gives the recipient room to confirm or correct the information. If they still use it, we can discuss whether our alternative makes sense for their situation.
The tag helps identify the audience. Product fit, pricing or a specific use case must give the person a reason to consider switching.
Salesforge is a multichannel outreach tool where you can connect email mailboxes and LinkedIn accounts, then run both channels in one sequence.
Once you have qualified the contacts, keep the information behind that qualification available when writing the campaign.
If a company entered your campaign because it is hiring SDRs, that should remain the basis of your LinkedIn message.
An email and a LinkedIn connection request can support the same conversation. You can refer to the email or continue the same offer without repeating the entire message.
Plan the sending capacity before adding a large list to a campaign.
Email campaigns need enough mailboxes for the activity you intend to run. You can set up domains and mailboxes through Mailforge or bring your own infrastructure.
LinkedIn activity depends on the connected profiles and their sending limits.
Adding accounts increases the capacity you can manage. You still need to control activity for each account and monitor delivery and responses.
A sequence does not need more steps simply because the tool supports them.
Start with a clear message and test whether another follow-up produces useful conversations.
Look at the additional meetings and positive replies alongside bounces, opt-outs and delivery. Keep the steps that contribute to the campaign's goal.
The right sequence length depends on the audience, offer and results.
Spintax can create combinations that read awkwardly when individual phrases do not fit together.
Writing complete message variants gives you more control over the observation, offer and question.
Read each version as a whole. Check that the message remains clear and that the company data supports the opening.
Apify and Salesforge have APIs, MCP servers and CLIs that let an AI assistant work with connected tools.
You can use those connections to coordinate research, process results and prepare campaigns.
Give the assistant enough information to assess the results.
Specify:
You can ask the assistant to identify suitable Apify Actors and test a small sample. For a larger run, request a cost estimate and check it against the Actor's pricing.
Review the sample before increasing volume. Check whether the businesses fit, the contacts hold relevant roles and the information supports the proposed message.
Clay can be part of this process, but it is not required.
You can coordinate work through Claude and connect the tools directly. You can also begin with manual runs in Apify while defining the selection rules.
Compare the options based on the work required to build, check and maintain the process, along with its cost.
If you are new to Apify, run searches in the interface first. Understanding what each Actor returns makes it easier to decide which steps to automate.
Enterprise outreach involves more people and a more complicated buying process.
Contacting one person gives you limited information about who uses the product, who evaluates it and who approves the spend.
Build a list of relevant contacts within each account.
A potential user may care about a specific task. A department leader may focus on team performance. The person approving the purchase may need a business case.
Write each message around that person's responsibility. Keep a record of replies so future outreach reflects what you already know about the account.
The page someone visits after reading your message should continue the same offer.
A potential user and a senior executive may need different information before agreeing to a call.
Check whether the page answers the questions that matter to that audience. It should explain what you do, who it is for and why the company should take the next step.
Strongest Group's reported average of around 1,500 meetings a month comes from an operation that includes email, LinkedIn and substantial cold calling.
That context matters when assessing what an email and LinkedIn campaign alone might produce.
Calling gives you another way to reach relevant people and follow up on an account. Whether you add it should depend on the value of the account, available contact data and your team's capacity.
A reply rate tells you how often people respond. You still need to understand what those responses contain and whether they lead to business.
Some Outbound Pros clients booked demos every day with average reply rates around 0.35%.
Another client had a 3% reply rate but collected around 700 negative replies in one month.
Those examples explain why the percentage needs context. A higher reply rate can include many people saying no. A lower rate can still produce opportunities at sufficient volume.
Use reply rate to investigate the campaign, then check the quality of the conversations.
Track whether positive replies become qualified meetings, opportunities and revenue.
Compare campaigns with similar audiences and sending conditions. Keep email and LinkedIn reporting clear enough to understand what each channel contributes.
For each segment, I want to know whether the offer starts relevant conversations and whether those conversations become business.
That is what should guide the next campaign and where you put more resources.
It depends on the source and Actor. Some return business details and websites, leaving email discovery to another step. Leadsforge can handle the enrichment using waterfall data from multiple providers. Check the output fields before running the search.
Check the requirements of the specific Actor before buying a separate subscription. Whether it needs a BuiltWith account depends on the Actor you choose.
Run the addresses through an email verification service. Keep the verification result with each contact and monitor bounces after launch. Verification helps assess an address, but it cannot guarantee inbox placement.
Start with a short sequence and measure what each additional step contributes. Add more steps only when the results justify them.
No. You can connect tools through APIs, MCP and CLI, or begin with manual searches and exports while you define the process.
Choose an audience, collect the information needed to qualify it and write the offer around something you can support.
Start with a batch you can review. Check the company matches, contact details and messages. Use the conversations to decide which parts deserve more volume.
When the list is ready, start your email and LinkedIn outreach in Salesforge. Or hire Agent Frank and let the AI SDR handle prospecting and follow-ups on your behalf.
