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Can You use Apollo.io as CRM?
Well, it depends on what you expect of CRM.
As I mentioned in my Apollo review; Apollo is a jack of trade platform with plenty of capabilities :
- Lead Database
- Outreach automation
- Outreach analytics
Some of those capabilities align with what you would expect of CRM :
- Contact Management
- Lead generation & Lead scoring
- Sales Pipelune Management
- Campaign management & email marketing
- Calendar management and reminders
- Reporting & analytics
- Open API
In this article, I will explore how Apollo covers each capability.
Contact Management
The core of Apollo.io is the lead database.
You could use Apollo for contact management:
- It is possible to import contacts from another data source.
- You can also segment your Apollo contacts into multiple lists to organize them.
However, using Apollo as your main contact management tool would be complex. It’s that easy to import your own leads into Apollo. So if you are getting a lot of inbound leads from your website, Apollo would not be a great choice for CRM.
Furthermore, Apollo is a tool for the top of your funnel, so it will typically be clocked with a lot of poorly qualified leads. Those are contacts you typically do not want to have in your CRM.
Lead generation and lead scoring
On the other hand, Apollo is a great tool for lead generation. It is what the tool was designed to do.
Apollo is a great alternative to sales navigator. Apollo offers a wide array of search options to find relevant leads. Notably, Apollo offers some intend data which is a great improvement over sales navigator data.
However, pay attention that Apollo data are sometimes outdated. If you are looking for fresh data it is usually better to scrape LinkedIn directly using a tool like Phantombuster.
Sales Pipeline Management
Apollo offers a comprehensive array of tools to manage your sales pipeline. For more information on the topic, you can check out their deal management feature.
The video tutorial below gives a great overview of the feature:
Campaign management & email marketing
Apollo has a feature to run email campaigns, however, it isn’t a great fit for email marketing.
Apollo’s lead database is designed for cold email outreach and is a wonderful tool for building a lead list. Unfortunately, Apollo isn’t great when it comes to email deliverability, which is key for cold email outreach.
You can use Apollo to build your email database but I would not recommend using cold outreach using Apollo’s email automation feature.
If you want to run cold email outreach it is better to use a dedicated outreach tool like Woodpecker or LemList.
Nevertheless, if you decide to use Apollo for running email outreach, I strongly advise combining it with WarmupInbox in order to boost your email deliverability.
Calendar management and reminders
You can build scheduling pages with Apollo. They work similarly to calendly linsk but offer more customisation option.
Here is a detailed tutorial on the topic.
Those scheduling pages are a handy feature to let your prospects pick the meeting time that suits.
Apollo also offers a Task feature, which allows you to get reminders to perform manual tasks like phone calls or sending manual emails. Here is a detailed tutorial about how to work with Apollo’s tasks.
Pro tip: You can use the Apollo API to create tasks automatically. For example, if you are using a separate tool for email outreach and still want to receive follow-up reminders in Apollo, you can do so with the API.
Reporting & analytics
Appolo offers 2 key features for reporting and analytics:
Those 2 features combined provide a comprehensive array of capabilities for analytics. You can relatively easily set up a dashboard to monitor the performance of your SDRs.
The following video gives a good overview of Apollo’s analytics features:
Open API
Apollo does have an API. It is included in all paid plans. My colleague actually wrote an article about how to use Apollo’s API.
Furthermore, Apollo offers Zapier and Make integration which is another great way to move data around to other Systems.
Apollo also has integration with several CRM, like Hubspot, Pipedrive, and salesforce so you can easily combine Apollo with those CRMs.
Can you use Apollo.io as a CRM ?
In conclusion, yes, you can use Apollo.io as a CRM. Apollo.io has most of the capabilities you could expect from a CRM.
Should you use Apollo as a CRM is another question. And the answer is most likely no. Apollo isn’t great when it comes to email automation and inbound lead management.
If your sales team works with inbound leads you would be better off with a CRM like Hubspot or pipedrive.
Apollo is relevant as CRM choice if you are just getting started and plan to focus mainly on cold outreach. As you develop your sales process you can easily shift to Pipedrive, Hubspot, or Salesfoce by leveraging Apollo native integration. If you want to know more about those 3 other CRMs, check out my review of top sales automation tools for B2B SaaS.