Playbook
Dropleads Playbook
Use Dropleads as a two-phase flow: low-cost contact discovery first, paid enrichment second. Do not use Dropleads people search as the first step for account discovery.1) Start with low-cost discovery
- Use
dropleads_get_lead_countto size the audience before any paid call. - Use
dropleads_search_peopleto inspect masked contacts and validate ICP filters (free). - Use
dropleads_search_peopleafter you already have target account domains, by passingfilters.companyDomains. It is a contact search primitive, not a dependable way to discover target accounts. - Do not build joins or account-discovery flows that depend on every returned lead having
companyDomain. Treat returnedcompanyDomainas optional; if you need account domains as the source of truth, use a company-native search/enrichment tool first. - Tighten filters until sample rows clearly match role, industry, and geo expectations.
- Key filter fields:
filters.jobTitles,filters.seniority(C-Level/VP/Director/Manager/Senior/Entry/Intern),filters.industries,filters.departments,filters.companyDomains,filters.employeeRanges,filters.personalCountries.include(for geo),pagination.page,pagination.limit.
Filter best practices
All Dropleads filters nest under thefilters object. Pagination nests under pagination. The canonical payload shape:
| Filter | Correct key | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Company | filters.companyDomains | Exact domain match for known accounts. Prefer this when you already have domains; do not rely on people-search results to discover a complete account-domain list. companyNames does fuzzy substring matching — “Microsoft” pulls in unrelated businesses. |
| Country | filters.personalCountries.include | Array inside a nested object. |
| Seniority | filters.seniority | Exact values only: C-Level, VP, Director, Manager, Senior, Entry, Intern. |
| Industry | filters.industries | Exact strings from Dropleads. Pilot with a broad search first when unsure. |
Geo filters are best-effort, not verified
Dropleads geo filters (personalCountries / personalStates / personalCities and the organization* equivalents) match against self-reported, LinkedIn-sourced location text — they are not verified against the contact’s actual location. Treat them accordingly:
- City-level is the loosest match and leaks.
personalCitiescan return contacts whose stated city loosely matches even when their real location differs, and non-US contacts can appear under a US-city filter (e.g. a Bulgarian contact surfacing underpersonalCities: San Francisco+personalCountries: United States). Country/state are more reliable. - Person vs. company location are different fields.
personal*filters the contact’s own location;organization*filters the company HQ. Don’t conflate them — filtering a remote employee by company HQ city (or vice versa) drops or leaks legitimate matches. - Verify geo when precision matters. Combine
personalCountries/personalStateswithpersonalCities, then post-filter the returned leads on theircountry/state/city(and exclude obvious mismatches) before trusting the result or spending on enrichment. Do not assume the filter alone guarantees the geo.
2) Escalate paid calls only for shortlisted targets
- Run
dropleads_email_finderfor contacts that passed the discovery pass. - Run
dropleads_mobile_finderonly when phone is required for the workflow. - Keep pilots small first, then scale after quality checks pass.
3) Gate outbound with verifier status
- Treat
invalid,catch_all, andunknownas non-send by default. - Treat
validas the only status that passes automatic send gates. - Respect
credits_chargedin responses for post-execution billing accuracy.
4) Practical sequencing
- Count segment (
dropleads_get_lead_count). - Sample segment (
dropleads_search_people). - Pre-score titles with
run_javascriptif looking for a specific profile (e.g. founders, GTM engineers). - Scrape LinkedIn profiles with
apify_run_actor_syncfor work history/signals (preferred overcall_ai— structured data, faster, cheaper). - Extract signals with
run_javascriptfrom Apify output (e.g. founder detection, hiring signals). - Enrich emails via waterfall (
dropleads_email_finderfirst, then other providers). - Verify candidate emails (
dropleads_email_verifierorleadmagic_email_validation). - Expand only after pilot quality is confirmed.
5) Account discovery boundary
For account-based pipelines, start with a company-native source such asapollo_company_search or another provider that returns account domains as first-class results. Feed those domains into Dropleads via filters.companyDomains to find contacts at known accounts. Dropleads may include companyDomain on returned people, but it is not guaranteed enough to be the join key that creates the account universe.