AI Lead Gen & Follow-Up n8n Workflow: Apollo, OpenAI, GHL

AI Lead Gen & Follow-Up n8n Workflow for Apollo, OpenAI, and GoHighLevel

Turn one n8n canvas into a complete AI-powered pipeline: this workflow finds new prospects in Apollo.io (and via SerpApi), uses OpenAI to research and write personalized outreach, sends cold emails + LinkedIn messages, and then automatically classifies and responds to inbound replies—while managing CRM tags and booking with GoHighLevel and Cal.com.

What this workflow does

• Runs daily on a schedule to search for prospects in Apollo.io and businesses in Google Maps via SerpApi.
• Merges, normalizes, and deduplicates the lead list to avoid duplicate outreach.
• For each lead, scrapes the company website and uses OpenAI to generate structured research (industry, pain points, and a personalization hook).
• Uses OpenAI to generate personalized cold email and LinkedIn copy, then:
  • Sends cold email via SMTP.
  • Sends LinkedIn message via the Unipile API.
  • Upserts contacts in GoHighLevel with tags.
• Monitors inbound replies via IMAP, sends them to OpenAI for classification (Hot/Warm/NotInterested/Objection), and routes the conversation.
• Hot replies: tags in GoHighLevel, fetches availability from Cal.com, generates a booking-link email with OpenAI, and sends via SMTP.
• Warm/Objection replies: generates an appropriate OpenAI-written response and updates nurture/objection tags in GoHighLevel.
• NotInterested replies: tags in GoHighLevel only.
• Accepts a Cal.com booking-confirmed webhook to tag the contact in GoHighLevel.

Use cases

• SaaS and agency teams that want AI cold outreach followed by automated reply handling and booking.
• n8n users building a scalable pipeline that tags leads in GoHighLevel based on reply intent.
• Automation engineers who want a connected workflow spanning prospecting → personalization → outreach → follow-up.

Technical details

• n8n nodes: if, code, wait, merge, filter, switch
• Integrations: Apollo.io, SerpApi (Google Maps), OpenAI, SMTP, Unipile API, GoHighLevel, IMAP, Cal.com (webhook + slot availability)