How to Set Up Lemlist and Apollo for Cold Email, Step by Step

Lemlist and Apollo are a popular pair for cold email: Apollo finds the right people, and Lemlist sends the emails. Neither tool sets itself up for you, and a rushed setup is how domains get burned. This guide walks through the full setup, from sending domain to first campaign.

What each tool does

• Apollo is a B2B contact database. You use it to search for prospects by industry, company size, title and location, and to get their work emails and company details.
• Lemlist sends your cold email sequences from your own mailboxes, with personalization, follow-ups and mailbox warmup.

Both tools overlap a little. Apollo can send sequences and Lemlist has its own lead database. Many teams still use Apollo for data and Lemlist for sending, because each is strongest at its own job.

Step 1: Set up a separate sending domain

Don't send cold email from your main company domain. If something goes wrong, you don't want your everyday email to suffer.

• Buy a domain close to your brand, such as a "get" or "try" version of your name.
• Redirect it to your main website, so anyone who checks it lands somewhere real.
• Create a few mailboxes on it with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, under real names from your team.

Step 2: Add SPF, DKIM and DMARC

These DNS records prove to Gmail, Outlook and other inbox providers that your emails really come from you. Your email provider gives you the SPF and DKIM values to add; DMARC is one more record that tells providers what to do with emails that fail the checks. Without them, much of your email will land in spam.

Step 3: Connect and warm up your mailboxes

Connect each mailbox to Lemlist and turn on warmup (Lemlist's warmup tool is called lemwarm). Warmup sends and replies to emails automatically to build a good sending reputation. Give new mailboxes a few weeks of warmup before you launch a campaign, and keep it running afterwards.

Step 4: Build your prospect list in Apollo

Use Apollo's filters to match your ideal buyer: industry, employee count, job title, seniority, location, and keywords that describe their business. Save the search so you can return to it, then add the best matches to a list.

Quality beats quantity. A few hundred well-matched prospects will outperform thousands of loose matches.

Step 5: Verify every email before you send

Contact data goes out of date as people change jobs. Before importing, run your list through an email verification tool such as Reoon, and remove addresses marked invalid. Treat "catch-all" and unknown results with care. Bounces are the fastest way to damage a new domain.

Step 6: Import into Lemlist and add personalization

Export your verified list from Apollo as a CSV and import it into a Lemlist campaign. Map the columns to Lemlist variables such as first name and company name. Add your own columns too, like the trigger you're writing about or a one-line personal note, and use them as custom variables in your emails.

Step 7: Build the sequence

• Write three to four short, plain-text emails, spaced a few business days apart.
• Make sure the sequence stops for anyone who replies.
• Keep links and images to a minimum, especially in the first email.
• Consider turning off open tracking, since tracking pixels can hurt deliverability.
• Include a simple way to opt out.

For what to say in each email, see our cold email playbook for consulting firms.

Step 8: Set sending limits and a schedule

Start with a low daily send per mailbox and increase slowly. To send more, add mailboxes rather than pushing one harder. Schedule sends for business hours in your prospects' time zone.

Step 9: Test before you launch

• Send the sequence to yourself and check every variable fills in correctly.
• Check that test emails land in the inbox, not spam, in both Gmail and Outlook.
• Launch to a small batch first, and watch bounces and replies before scaling up.

Common mistakes

• Sending from the main company domain.
• Skipping warmup to launch faster.
• Importing unverified lists straight from a database.
• Sending too much from too few mailboxes.
• Long, salesy first emails with links and attachments.

Don't want to set this up yourself? Zyplonek Connect builds the whole system for you in your own Lemlist and Apollo accounts: verified lists, sequences and setup, tested and ready to run.