How to Connect Instantly to an AI Agent
Instantly is the cold email platform of choice for a lot of growth teams — fast inbox warmup, deliverability tooling, and unlimited sending accounts. The catch is that everything happens in the dashboard. Adding leads is a CSV upload. Pausing a campaign is three clicks. Checking reply rates means logging in and clicking through analytics. At scale, that friction adds up.
Carly is a full-service AI agent with 60+ integrations — email, calendar, CRM, project management, and more. Instantly is one of those integrations. Once connected, you can manage campaigns by emailing carly@usecarly.com or chatting with your agent at dashboard.carlyassistant.com. No more dashboard sessions for routine work.
Connect Instantly
Instantly uses an API key. In your Instantly account, go to Settings → Integrations and generate a new key. Then go to dashboard.carlyassistant.com/integrations, find Instantly under Email, click Connect, and paste the key.
Done. Your agent can now read campaigns, add leads, pause sequences, and pull engagement metrics. See the full Instantly integration page for use cases and FAQs.
What Your Agent Can Do With Instantly
Add Prospects to a Sequence
Email your agent:
To: carly@usecarly.com Subject: Enroll prospects
Add these to my “Series A VPs Marketing” sequence in Instantly:
• Lena Park, lena@northbeam.io, Northbeam • David Wu, david@plivo.com, Plivo • Anita Joshi, anita@stripe.com, Stripe
Use first name and company in the merge variables, start step 1 today.
The agent enrolls the prospects with the right merge fields. No CSV file, no upload screen.
Pause a Sequence When a Prospect Replies
Chat message to your agent:
Lena Park just replied positively. Pause her in the “Series A VPs Marketing” sequence in Instantly and create a deal in HubSpot with stage “Discovery.”
Two integrations, one message. The agent pauses the lead in Instantly so they don’t get more cold emails, and opens the HubSpot deal so it shows up in your pipeline.
Pull Reply Rates
To: carly@usecarly.com Subject: Campaign metrics
Pull reply rate, open rate, and bounce rate for all my active Instantly campaigns this week. Flag anything below 1% reply rate or above 2% bounce rate.
The agent queries Instantly and emails back a summary with the underperforming campaigns flagged. Useful as a Monday morning ritual.
Route Replies to Your CRM
When a prospect replies in Instantly, the agent reads the reply, classifies the intent (interested, not interested, out of office, ask later), updates the CRM accordingly, and drafts a personalized response for you to review.
The Agent Learns How You Work
After a few weeks, the agent picks up on your patterns. It knows which sequences you typically enroll certain ICPs in, the way you tag leads, and the response templates you reach for. You stop re-explaining and start delegating.
This applies across everything — not just Instantly. The agent learns your sales tone, your CRM hygiene rules, and the kinds of replies you want flagged for personal attention.
Build a Dedicated Outbound Agent
Your main agent handles everything for you. But you can also create specialized email agents with their own email addresses dedicated to outbound operations.
You are an outbound operations assistant. When someone on the sales team emails you:
1. If they send a list of prospects, parse name, email, and company
2. Look up each prospect's company size and industry via web search
3. Enroll qualified prospects in the matching Instantly sequence (size + industry)
4. Reply with a summary of who was enrolled and who was skipped (and why)
Skip prospects whose company is in our customer list (check HubSpot first).Give this agent its own address — like outbound@yourdomain.usecarly.com. SDRs send prospects to it and get a clean enrollment summary in return.
Workflows That Replace Manual Cold Email Operations
Daily Pipeline Hygiene
Chat message to your agent:
Pull every Instantly contact who replied in the last 24 hours. For each, check if they’re already in HubSpot. If not, create them and tag the deal stage based on the reply sentiment.
The agent reads replies, decides intent, dedupes against the CRM, and pushes new contacts in. Daily pipeline hygiene that used to take 30 minutes happens in seconds.
Sequence A/B Testing
To: carly@usecarly.com Subject: Compare sequences
Compare reply rates and meeting-booked rates for “Series A VPs v1” and “Series A VPs v2” Instantly sequences over the last 30 days. Tell me which is winning and by how much.
The agent pulls the data, runs the comparison, and tells you which subject line, body, and cadence is performing better.
Mass Pause When Travel Hits
A holiday weekend approaches. You don’t want emails sending. Email Carly: “Pause every active Instantly sequence Friday EOD and resume Tuesday morning.” Done.
Instantly + Other Integrations
The agent chains Instantly with the rest of your stack:
- Instantly + HubSpot — Replies become CRM updates and deal stage changes
- Instantly + Google Calendar — Booked meetings auto-create calendar events with prep notes
- Instantly + Slack — Positive replies trigger a notification in #revenue
- Instantly + Apollo — Pull prospects from Apollo lists straight into Instantly sequences
- Instantly + Apify — Scrape lead lists and enroll directly without CSV uploads
FAQ
Do I need a specific Instantly plan?
Carly works with Instantly’s standard API, available on most paid plans. Check your plan’s API access in the Instantly settings before connecting.
Can the agent enroll leads with custom variables?
Yes. Tell the agent which merge variables to fill in for each lead — first name, company, role, custom fields — and it passes them through to Instantly when enrolling.
Will Carly mess with my warmup or deliverability settings?
No. The agent only manages campaign and lead operations. Warmup, sending domain config, and deliverability settings stay where you set them in the Instantly dashboard.
Can the agent generate replies for me?
Yes. When a prospect replies, ask the agent to draft a response. It uses the conversation context, your past response style, and any relevant CRM data to write a personalized reply.
Will the agent respect my campaign sending limits?
Yes. Carly uses Instantly’s standard API, so the platform’s sending limits, throttling, and inbox rotation rules apply to anything the agent does.
What’s the difference between the main agent and a specialized email agent?
Carly is your personal AI assistant — it handles Instantly, email, scheduling, and 60+ other tools. Specialized email agents are AI employees you create for specific outbound, support, or operations jobs — they get their own email addresses and operate autonomously.
Connect Instantly to your Carly agent →
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