LeadOcean + Instantly: Send Verified Leads to Cold Email Campaigns

You get a three-part pipeline: a LeadOcean export, split by email_status, loaded into two Instantly campaigns. Verified addresses go to your main campaign. Catch-all addresses go to a second campaign, so a bad domain cannot drag down the first. Both sides are plain REST with a key, so a short script does the job.

Use two exports, not one, because the status decides the risk. A verified address has been checked against the mailbox. A catch-all domain accepts everything, so a catch-all address may still bounce, and LeadOcean marks it as such in email_status. That is the whole reason to split.

Related: the LeadOcean integrations hub, the Smartlead recipe, the Reply.io recipe, the Salesloft recipe and pricing.

How it works

Six steps. Instantly takes up to 1,000 leads per request and checks them against your blocklist and existing leads (source: Instantly API reference, September 2026).

1. Get both keys. Sign up at app.leadocean.io and copy a key from the API keys page. Create an Instantly API key with a scope that allows leads:create.
2. Size the list. Run a free count before you spend records. A search with count=true and limit=1 costs nothing, and meta.total is capped at 100,000.
3. Export verified. POST your filters to /v1/exports with emailStatus set to verified.
4. Export catch-all. Repeat with catch_all_valid and catch_all. Same filters, a second file.
5. Create two campaigns in Instantly. One for verified, one for catch-all. Copy both campaign ids.
6. Push each CSV. Send 1,000 rows at a time to POST /api/v2/leads/add with the matching campaign_id.

Run a small test first. Free has no bulk CSV export, so on Free search with POST /v1/people/search, then call POST /v1/people/enrich with reveal_email set to true for each person to get the address. Each person returned costs one record. Check one lead in Instantly before you send the rest.

Prefer to click? The LeadOcean app has an Exports page with a filter builder, a column picker, the record price before you start and a Download button. The script below then pushes the file.

Configuration

Steps 3 and 4, the exports. Several values in one filter join with OR.

curl -X POST https://api.leadocean.io/v1/exports \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"instantly verified","filters":{"jobLevel":["VP"],"jobFunction":["Sales & Business Development"],"country":["CA"],"emailStatus":["verified"],"emailType":["work"]},"limit":10000,"columns":["profile_first_name","profile_last_name","current_job_title","current_company_name","current_company_domain","email_N_address","email_N_status"]}'

curl -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" https://api.leadocean.io/v1/exports/EXPORT_ID
curl -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" -o verified.csv https://api.leadocean.io/v1/exports/EXPORT_ID/download

For the second file, change emailStatus to ["catch_all_valid","catch_all"] and download to catchall.csv. Contact columns need a key with the enrich scope.

Step 6, the push. Instantly uses a bearer token and an api.instantly.ai base URL. The batch size of 1,000 is Instantly's documented maximum.

import csv, os, sys, time, requests

URL = "https://api.instantly.ai/api/v2/leads/add"
HEAD = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['INSTANTLY_API_KEY']}"}
path, campaign_id = sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2]

leads = [{
    "email": r["email_1_address"],
    "first_name": r["profile_first_name"],
    "last_name": r["profile_last_name"],
    "company_name": r["current_company_name"],
    "job_title": r["current_job_title"],
    "website": r["current_company_domain"],
    "custom_variables": {"email_status": r["email_1_status"]},
} for r in csv.DictReader(open(path)) if r["email_1_address"]]

for i in range(0, len(leads), 1000):
    body = {"campaign_id": campaign_id, "leads": leads[i:i+1000],
            "skip_if_in_workspace": True}
    print(requests.post(URL, headers=HEAD, json=body).json())
    time.sleep(2)

Instantly's rate limit is shared by the whole workspace and by API v1 and v2 (source: Instantly rate limits, September 2026). A 10,000-row file is 10 requests, so the limit is not a problem here. It matters if other automations hit the same workspace.

Run it twice: python push.py verified.csv VERIFIED_CAMPAIGN_ID and python push.py catchall.csv CATCHALL_CAMPAIGN_ID. The response reports leads_uploaded, in_blocklist, duplicated_leads and invalid_email_count.

Field mapping

Map the status as well as the address. Instantly does not know which of your leads came from a catch-all domain, so write email_status into custom_variables and you can report on it later. It also lets you pull a bounced segment and trace it back to its status.

Instantly's bulk endpoint takes email, first_name, last_name, company_name, job_title, phone, website, personalization and custom_variables, plus a few status fields. The lead schema allows no other fields, so extra data goes in custom_variables (source: Instantly OpenAPI spec, September 2026).

Column ids come from GET /v1/exports/columns, which needs no key.

Cost at 10,000 rows

A 10,000-row run needs LeadOcean Solo at $97 a month, because bulk CSV export is not on Free. Instantly's Hypergrowth plan lists 25,000 uploaded contacts at $97 a month, and Growth stops at 1,000. All Instantly plans include API access; webhooks start at Hypergrowth (source: Instantly pricing, October 2026). Prices below are monthly billing.

Instantly bills by uploaded contacts and monthly emails, so a 10,000-lead list in one workspace sits well inside Hypergrowth. Count the emails too: a three-step sequence to 10,000 people is 30,000 sends. That sum is ours.

A first month of both tools is $194 at list price. That sum is ours.

Troubleshooting

FAQ