Apollo or Clay Export to Verified Leads With an AI First Line in Smartlead (n8n)

To go from an Apollo or Clay export to verified, personalized leads in Smartlead, paste the export into a Google Sheet and run an n8n workflow that verifies each email, keeps action = send, writes one opening line with your own AI key and adds the lead to a Smartlead campaign. Verification comes first so you only pay for AI lines on addresses that can receive mail.

The free template is n8n-enrich-verify-personalize-smartlead. This guide walks through it.

The order of the steps

The template runs in this order:

1. Read leads from a Google Sheet.
2. Verify each email with the SimpleVerifier API.
3. Keep only rows where action equals send.
4. Write a first line with an Anthropic model.
5. Build the lead with a first_line field.
6. Add the lead to a Smartlead campaign.
7. Everything else goes to a skip branch.

If you put the AI step before verification, you pay for lines on addresses that will bounce. Putting verification first avoids that.

What you need

• An n8n account or a self-hosted n8n.
• A Google Sheet holding your export, with columns email, first_name, last_name, title, company and website.
• A SimpleVerifier API key from the API keys page. It starts with sv_live_.
• Your own Anthropic API key.
• A Smartlead account, its API key and the ID of an existing campaign.

Step 1: get the export into a sheet

Export from Apollo or Clay as a CSV. Open a new Google Sheet, paste or import it and rename the headers to match the six names above. Clay users who also want a check inside Clay can use the HTTP API column instead. The clean a lead list guide covers dedupe and title cleanup, which are worth doing before this workflow.

Step 2: import the workflow

Download the workflow JSON. In n8n create a workflow, open the menu and choose Import from file.

Step 3: add three credentials

• Header Auth for SimpleVerifier. Name is Authorization, Value is Bearer plus your key.
• Header Auth for Anthropic. Name is x-api-key, Value is your Anthropic key.
• Query Auth for Smartlead. Name is api_key, Value is your Smartlead key.

Select each one in the matching node.

Step 4: understand the verify node

It posts { email: <row email> } to https://simpleverifier.com/api/v1/verify, one row at a time with a 600 millisecond gap. A key can make 120 calls a minute. The timeout is 40 seconds because a live check on a slow mail server can take about 30. The API docs describe the answer fields.

The If node passes rows where action is send. That means the mail server confirmed the mailbox. Catch-all and role-inbox addresses come back as send_with_care and go to the skip branch. They are not mixed into the main campaign.

Step 5: the AI first line

The AI node calls the Anthropic Messages API directly with the model claude-haiku-5-5, a fast low-cost model. You can swap in another Anthropic model ID. Calling the API directly means it works on any n8n version.

The system prompt tells the model to write one sentence under 25 words in plain words, to use only the facts given, to never invent news, funding, awards or a recent event, and to write a short neutral line about the role if the facts are thin. It forbids exclamation marks.

The model only sees the title, company and website from your sheet. It does not browse the site. That keeps the line honest and also limits how personal it can be.

Step 6: Smartlead

In Smartlead, open your campaign and add a custom field named first_line. Use it in your first email as {{first_line}}. In the n8n Smartlead node, replace YOUR_SMARTLEAD_CAMPAIGN_ID in the URL with your campaign ID.

The node posts the lead with email, first name, last name, company name and the custom field. Its settings keep Smartlead's global block list, unsubscribe list and duplicate-lead checks on, so leads on those lists are not added again.

Step 7: run 10 rows and read every line

Trim to ten rows. Run it. Open the verify node and check a few results. Then open the AI node output and read each first line. Delete any line you would not send yourself. A model can write something flat, generic or wrong, even with strict rules.

Do not turn on the campaign until a person has read the first batch. Then run the rest and start with a low daily send volume.

What can go wrong

• Every row skips. Open the verify node output. A 401 means a bad key and a 402 means your plan does not include API access or is not active.
• Lines read like templates. Add a notes column and extend the prompt to use it, or write the line by hand for your top accounts.
• Smartlead rejects a lead. Check the campaign ID and that the custom field exists.

Plan details for the API are on the pricing page. If you want the simpler version with no AI step, use verify leads in n8n before Instantly, or see push verified Clay rows to Instantly or Smartlead. The AI cold email personalizer is a free tool for trying first lines on a few rows. AI mode on that tool says coming soon, and it uses fixed rules for now.

Frequently asked questions

Why verify before the AI step? You avoid paying for lines on addresses that would bounce.

Which columns do I need? email, first_name, last_name, title, company and website.

Can I use another model provider? Yes. Swap the AI node and keep the field it produces named first_line.