Updated on: September 15th, 2026

Are you planning to use a new email domain for cold outreach? In that case, hold off on launching that outreach campaign just yet! There's one step you need to take first - warming it up. Skip it, and your emails might end up in spam. Or worse, not delivered at all. Luckily, you don’t need to be a technical wizard or an email deliverability nerd to get it right. Today, we’ll walk you through how to warm up a new email domain. We’re talking essential setup steps and a safe warm-up schedule you can follow day by day.

Now, let’s get your domain inbox-ready, shall we?

What is email domain warm-up?

Email domain warm-up is the process of gradually sending emails from a new domain to establish trust with email service providers (ESPs) such as Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo.

Why does that matter, though?

Because email providers don’t just let anyone show up and blast emails at scale.

Think about it this way - a new domain is like a stranger at the party. Until it proves it’s legit, it won’t be trusted. And that’s why sending too many emails too soon can set off spam filters or lead to blocks.

So, essentially, by warming up, you’re telling ESPs:

“Hey, I’m real! I send valuable emails, and people want to hear from me.”

Are IP warm-up & email warm-up the same as domain warm-up?

You may have heard terms like IP warm-up or email warm-up thrown around, and while they sound similar, they’re not the same thing.

IP warm-up focuses on building a reputation for a dedicated IP address. If you’re on a shared IP (like most senders are), this doesn’t apply to you.

Email warm-up, on the other hand, is about making sure your individual email account has a good engagement history. And while it’s helpful, it’s not enough on its own.

Now, as far as domain warm-up is concerned, it’s all about the domain itself (e.g., yourcompany.com), and it’s the piece most providers care about long-term.

That begs the question: what happens if you skip it? Well:

• Your emails might land in spam (or get blocked altogether).
• Your sender's reputation could take a hit early on.
• You may struggle with low open rates, bounces, and delivery issues, even if your emails are high-quality.

How domain reputation works

If domain warm-up is the “how,” then domain reputation is the “why.”

Your domain reputation is like a credit score with email providers. The better it is, the more likely your emails are to land in the primary inbox. Meanwhile, the worse it is, the more likely they get flagged, throttled, or dumped in spam.

And just like a credit score, you build (or break) your domain reputation over time.

Here’s what influences it:

• Engagement rate - Are prospects opening, clicking, and replying to your emails?
• Spam complaints - Are they marking your emails as spam?
• Bounce rates - Are you sending to valid email addresses?
• Authentication - Do you have SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up?
• Sending behavior - Are you sending consistently, or randomly?
• List quality - Are you emailing people who actually want to hear from you?

Even the age of your domain and your past sending history matter.

Now, if you’re planning to do cold outreach, it’s smarter to do it from a subdomain (e.g., outreach.yourcompany.com) rather than your main domain, the reason being that subdomains have separate reputations. So, if your cold emails run into deliverability issues, your main domain (yourcompany.com) will remain safe.

Pre-warm-up checklist

Before you send even a single email, there are a few technical boxes you need to tick.

Wait 24–48h before sending

We get it, you want to start sending asap. But firing off emails right after buying a domain is a major red flag to ESPs. Give it at least a day or 2 to settle before configuring anything.

Set up your domain authentication

This step is non-negotiable because, without proper authentication, ESPs are far more likely to treat your emails as suspicious.

These are the 3 main records you need to configure:

• SPF - Confirms your domain is allowed to send emails through a specific mail server.
• DKIM - Adds a digital signature to your emails to verify they haven't been altered.
• DMARC - Tells email service providers what to do if an email fails SPF or DKIM checks.

You (or your IT team) can set these up in your DNS settings. And if you're not sure how, your email provider likely has a step-by-step guide.

WHOIS visibility and domain TLD

Most people overlook these when setting up a new domain, thinking they don’t really matter.

But they do. And by a lot.

WHOIS is basically a public record that shows who owns your domain. Now imagine an email service provider checks that record and finds… nothing. That’s a red flag. Masked or hidden ownership can make you look suspicious. That said, unless you have a good reason to keep your info private, it’s better to keep it visible.

Now let’s talk about that dot-something at the end of your domain - the top-level domain (TLD). Whether it’s .com, .co, .io, or something else, your TLD can impact your deliverability. That’s because some extensions (e.g.,.xyz, .click,.top) are often associated with spam and can get you flagged before you even hit ''send.'' So, if you'd like to stay on the safe lane, we recommend you stick to trusted, familiar TLDs (.com, .org, .co, etc.).

Prepare your sending infrastructure

As we already mentioned, if it’s possible, it’s best to use a dedicated sending domain or subdomain (e.g., sales.yourcompany.com).

That said, we recommend you avoid sharing a sending domain across transactional and cold outreach campaigns, as it can mess with reputation signals.

Also, double-check if you’re sending from a shared IP or a dedicated IP. If it’s dedicated, you may need to warm that up too. Meanwhile, if it’s shared, the IP may already carry a reputation (good or bad), which can affect your deliverability.

Clean & segment your contact list

You want to start your warm-up with people who are actually likely to engage with your emails; those who’ve opted in, replied in the past, or regularly open what you send.

What don’t you want? Old, unverified, or scraped emails belonging to people who have no clue who you are. That’s how you rack up bounces, spam complaints, and zero engagement, all of which will kill your domain reputation before it’s even had a chance.

How to warm up a new email domain: Step-by-step guide

If you’re using Skylead, our LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software, we’ve got good news - you won’t need to worry about any of this. Thanks to our partnership with the email warm-up tool, Mailivery, you can warm up infinite mailboxes at no extra cost. We’ll show you how to enable it in a bit.

But if you’re curious what the process looks like manually or want to understand what’s happening under the hood, here’s a safe warm-up schedule you can follow.

Quick heads-up before we get into it: when you’re warming up a domain, you’re really warming up 1 email account from that domain. You can’t warm up 10 inboxes at once and expect everything to go smoothly. Start with one, warm it up properly, and only then start adding more accounts into the mix.

Week 1: Start small

This week is all about easing in. Start by sending 10 to 50 emails per day.

Make sure you’re sending to your most engaged contacts - people who are likely to open, click, or even reply. These positive signals help build your domain reputation early on.

Also, avoid sending generic messages. Instead, write simple, personalized emails that sound like something you’d actually send. The goal? Get replies, not just opens.

Week 2-3: Gradual volume increase

If your bounce rate is low and you’re not getting spam complaints, you can slowly start increasing your daily volume.

A rule of thumb is to double the number of emails you send each week. So, if you started with 50/day, you can move up to 100/day in week 2, then 200/day in week 3.

You can also expand your list a bit to include moderately engaged contacts. But don’t go straight to cold leads just yet. Also, stick to a consistent sending time and frequency to help ESPs recognize your pattern.

Week 4+:  Reach full volume

By now, if everything’s looking good (and your emails are getting solid engagement), you can start scaling your sales outreach.

Begin including cleaned, verified contact lists (even if they’re colder), but keep an eye on bounce and spam rates. Use tools like Google Postmaster Tools or your warm-up platform to monitor how your domain is performing.

Best practices for successful warm-up

When warming up your email domain, it’s not only the number of emails sent that matters. How you send them and what you send are equally important. To get the best results (and avoid landing in spam), here are a few simple warm-up habits to follow.

Use a tool to do it for you

If manual warm-up sounds like a chore, it’s because it is.

That’s why Skylead comes with an infinite email warm-up included, courtesy of our partner, Mailivery. 

Mailivery is a warm-up tool that works quietly in the background to build your domain and sender reputation over time. It sends and receives emails on your behalf, mimicking human behavior and generating realistic engagement so your email account looks trustworthy to email service providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Zoho.

And the best part? It’s part of your Skylead subscription and, as such, comes at no extra cost!

Here’s what you get with Mailivery:

• Easy setup in just a few minutes - Mailivery’s setup is native, fast, and compatible with all email providers, including custom SMTP. You only need to switch warm-up on in Email settings, and it will run in the background.
• Safer sending volume ramp-up - Mailivery gradually increases email volume at the right pace, helping accounts warm up naturally without looking suspicious.
• Built-in domain health checks - SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and blacklist status are monitored to help ensure safer warm-up and stronger deliverability.
• Daily sending volume control - You can track deliverability for each account and set the maximum number of emails it can send per day.
• Warm-up status tracking for every account - Each connected email account will show warm-up status, so you know when accounts are ready for outreach.

To enable Mailivery-powered warm-up, open your Settings in Skylead and access the Email settings section first. Then, locate the email address you wish to turn the warm-up for, click on the 3 dots in the right corner, and then hit ''Start warmup''.

A pop-up will appear asking you to set daily email and response rates. Once set, don't forget to actually toggle the ramp-up (warm-up) button on and add your Google App password (or that of another provider) for changes to take effect.

Give it a couple of minutes, and Mailivery will begin sending and receiving emails based on a strategy tailored to your domain.

Use non-spammy language

You might be excited to get replies, but that doesn’t mean you should shout for attention. That said, avoid all-caps email subject lines,too-good-to-be-true claims, and language that screams clickbait. Phrases like “Act now!” or “You’ve won!” might work for lottery scammers, but they certainly don’t belong in cold emails. Instead, stick to clean, honest, human messaging. It builds trust faster than you think.

Keep your content real

If your email reads like it was written by a robot, by all means, don’t send it! Use plain language, keep it short, and focus on getting replies. The goal during warm-up isn’t to sell, but to show email service providers that real people are interacting with you.

So, write like you’re talking to one person. Because you are.

Monitor your deliverability & reputation

Keep an eye on how your domain is performing. You can do so through Google Postmaster Tools. Or, if you’re using an email warm-up tool or a cold email software with the warm-up infrastructure built in, that information may already be readily available on the tool’s dashboard. While at it, pay special attention to the following metrics:

• Spam rate
• Domain reputation score
• Deliverability score

You can also run your domain through blacklist checkers (e.g., MXToolbox) to make sure you haven’t been flagged by mistake.

Clean your list regularly

Your contact list isn’t something you set and forget. In fact, approximately28% of emails on your list get stale within 12 months. So, to make sure you’re only sending to people who might care and reply,  you’ll need to regularly remove bounced addresses and prune inactive recipients. This helps maintain high engagement and keeps your reputation strong.

Troubleshooting common email domain warm-up issues

Even with a solid plan, things can still go sideways. That’s just email outreach for you.

Here are the most common warm-up hiccups, what might be causing them, and how you can fix them before they spiral into something worse.

High bounce rate

You’re seeing a bunch of emails bouncing back. Not ideal.

This usually points to one of two culprits: your DNS setup or your list quality.

Firstly, head over to your DNS settings and make sure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are set up properly. Then, double-check that your list only includes clean, verified emails. Anything scraped, outdated, or guessed can ruin your domain reputation.

Low engagement or opens

If barely anyone’s opening or interacting with your emails, don’t panic. Yet.

Take a step back and look at your subject lines. Are they actually compelling, or do they sound like every other cold email out there? Also, check if your message feels human. Are you writing like you’re talking to someone, or are you using a professional email tone?

Finally, make sure the people you’re reaching out to are the ones who are likely to care, rather than everyone everywhere.

Emails still go to spam

You’ve done the basics, but your messages keep ending up in the spam folder. It might be a volume issue. Are you warming up too fast? Pull back a little and give your domain more time to earn trust. Also, recheck your domain authentication setup. One missing DNS record can make a huge difference in how inbox providers treat your emails.

You got blacklisted

It happens, and it sucks. But it’s not the end of the world. Firstly, check if your domain or IP has been flagged by running a blacklist check. You can use a tool like MXToolbox for this.

If you find yourself on a list or see that your IP is blacklisted, pause your sending immediately.

Then dig into why it happened. Look at your bounce rates, spam complaints, sending frequency - anything that might’ve triggered it. Fix the root issue, submit a removal request if needed, and resume warm-up slowly once you’re cleared.

Authentication errors

If you’re getting error messages tied to your authentication records, chances are something wasn’t entered correctly in your DNS.

So, head to your domain registrar and double-check that your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records match exactly what your email provider recommends. One typo or missing character can throw off the entire process. Once they’re in place, give it a bit of time, as DNS changes can take a few hours to take effect.

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Frequently asked questions about how to warm up an email domain

How long does it take to warm up an email domain?

It depends on how many emails you plan to send daily. But generally speaking, you’re looking at a warm-up period of 3 to 5 weeks. You need to ramp up slowly so you don’t trigger spam filters or hurt your domain reputation early on. If you’re using a warm-up tool like Mailivery, the process can be more efficient and safer, since it adjusts the warm-up pace based on your domain’s performance.

How do you warm up your new email?

Start small. Send a few emails per day to people who are likely to open, click, and reply. Then gradually increase your volume week by week. Stick to personalized content, avoid spammy language, and don’t go straight into cold outreach. Or, if you want to skip the manual effort, enable automated warm-up through an email warm-up tool like Mailivery.

Does cold emailing hurt domain reputation?

It can, if done wrong. If you’re sending emails to scraped or unverified contacts, skipping warm-up, or using spammy language, you’re almost guaranteed to tank your reputation. But when done right - with proper warm-up, clean and verified prospecting lists, and personalized outreach - cold emailing won’t hurt your domain. In fact, it can actually help your reputation grow over time through consistent, healthy engagement.

Should I use a new domain or a subdomain?

If you’re sending cold emails, use a subdomain (e.g., sales.yourcompany.com,  hello.yourcompany.com, etc.). This way, even if your inbox runs into deliverability issues, your main domain stays safe. Subdomains carry their own reputation, so you’re not risking the email performance of your transactional or internal comms.

What if I only send 100 emails/day?

That’s a low enough volume that you might not need a long warm-up phase, but you still shouldn’t skip it. Even at 100 emails/day, your domain needs to build trust first. Warm up gradually over 1-2 weeks, focus on engagement, and monitor your domain’s performance before going fully live.

Warm up your new email domain today to protect your outreach tomorrow

You’ve seen why you need to warm up your domain. You’ve also seen how to warm up your email domain. Now here’s the deal: Warming up isn’t some optional step. It’s the one thing standing between you and the spam folder.

So, take it slow. Be consistent. Give your domain the chance to build trust before you hit “send” on that big campaign.

And if you’d rather not do it all manually? Let Skylead + Mailivery take care of it for you on autopilot. 

Start your 7-day free trial with Skylead today to get infinite email warm-up from day 1 and safely scale your email outreach!

Updated on: September 15th, 2026

In B2B sales, prospects rarely say ‘’I’m ready to buy’’ outright. They do, however, leave digital breadcrumbs, drop verbal hints, or show signs in their behavior that tell you exactly where they are in their decision-making process. These are called buying signals. Now, knowing they exist and what they are is one thing. But recognizing them, not to mention acting upon them? That’s a whole different story.

Having been in the B2B space for years, we have analyzed thousands of buying signals. Some were loud and clear - a demo request or a pricing inquiry. Others were more subtle, like a prospect revisiting your LinkedIn profile or forwarding your email to a colleague.

What we’ve learned is this: recognizing buying signals in real-time is a skill. Acting on them the right way is a strategy.

Now, it’s time you picked up on both the skill and the strategy. Thus, we’ll be walking you through the different types of B2B buying signals, both obvious and those not-so-much, and show you how to interpret them the right way. You'll also learn how to respond to them appropriately and how to make them work not just for new leads, but for nurturing existing customers too.

What are buying signals and why do they matter?

A buying signal is any action, behavior, or cue that suggests a prospect is considering a purchase. While there are different ways to categorize these signals (by type, channel, or funnel stage), they’re most commonly grouped by strength: strong, medium, or weak. This is usually based on 2 things: how directly the action indicates intent (e.g., booking a demo vs. liking a social post), and how close the buyer is to making a decision.

Now, why bother studying them? Because 77% of B2B buyers do their own research before talking to a sales rep. Which means that, by the time they get in touch, around 70% of the buying process has already unfolded. That said, if you’re waiting for them to raise their hand, you're already behind.

Buying signals help you act before that. They let you spot intent early, prioritize high-interest accounts, and personalize your approach to meet prospects exactly where they are in their decision-making process.

That said, buying signals aren’t just for new leads. They also show up in your existing customer base, for example, when someone starts exploring an upgrade, revisits your pricing page, or goes quiet after initial engagement. In all cases, knowing what to look for - and what to do when you see it - is what sets great reps apart.

Types of B2B buying signals

Not all buying signals are created equal. But all of them serve the same purpose: to show you where a buyer stands and what they might do next.

We’ve already mentioned that they can vary in strength. But another useful way to categorize them is based on how and where they show up during the buyer’s journey.

Broadly speaking, there are 4 core types of these buying signals:

1. Verbal buying signals

If you couldn’t guess by their name, these happen during live or chat conversations, such as in meetings, calls, or via email. You’ll hear them when a prospect asks things like:

• How long does implementation take?
• Do you offer integrations with the XYZ tool?
• What happens if we outgrow this plan?

What makes these so powerful is how explicit they are. A prospect who’s asking detailed questions is already thinking beyond discovery. Rather, they’re evaluating how your product fits into their world.

2. Nonverbal buying signals

These are trickier to catch but just as telling - especially on video calls or in-person meetings. They include body language cues, such as nodding, leaning in, taking notes, spending extra time reviewing your screen during a demo, etc.

While subtle, these behaviors often indicate interest, curiosity, or agreement. That said, a silent or still prospect isn’t necessarily disengaged. But it does take an observant seller to read between the lines.

3. Digital buying signals

You can find these by analyzing your website traffic, email engagement, content interaction, and other online behaviors that indicate growing interest.

Examples include:

• Repeated visits to your pricing or demo page
• Watching a full product video
• Clicking your CTA in a cold outreach email
• Visiting your LinkedIn profile multiple times

The upside here is scalability. Digital signals can be tracked and scored, giving your sales team constant insights on which leads are heating up and which ones need nurturing. Even better, they can help you actively move prospects down the funnel. For example, if someone keeps visiting your pricing page, your marketing team could place a banner prompting them to book a call, thereby sending warmer leads straight into your sales pipeline.

4. Firmographic, demographic, and opportunity data

These don’t come from the buyers themselves, but rather from the context around them. For example:

• A new VP of Sales joins your target account
• The company raises a Series B round
• Their team starts hiring aggressively
• Their current provider just got acquired

While these don’t scream buyer intent, they mean internal changes are on the horizon, and with them, a renewed interest in solving problems. That’s your cue to step in early, while competitors are still blind to the changes.

18 Buying signals to watch for [+ examples, strength indicators & what to do]

Now that we’ve covered the types of buying signals, let’s talk specifics. 

Below are 18 real-world examples of signals your prospects might show. We have also included examples of what they might say or how they might act, along with how strong each of the signals tends to be. As a bonus, you’ll also find tips and tricks we found extremely useful for pushing your prospects further down the sales funnel.

In terms of signals, we’ll rank them as:

• Strong: Clear indicators of purchase intent. Typically happens late in the funnel.
• Medium: Suggest the buyer is actively evaluating, but might need more nurturing.
• Weak: Indicate early interest or surface-level engagement; not enough to act on just yet, but worth monitoring.

? Note: A single signal rarely tells the whole story. Look for clusters of behavior. One visit to your blog? Weak. One visit, plus a case study download, plus a LinkedIn view? Now we’re talking!

Are objections buying signals?

Yes, sometimes objections are buying signals, rather than signs of rejection. In many cases, when a prospect objects, it means they’re seriously considering your solution - enough to start poking holes in it. That’s a good thing.

Just think about it. Someone who says ‘’I’m not sure this will integrate with our CRM’’ isn’t telling you no. They’re already imagining how your product would fit into their workflow. The same goes for concerns about pricing or timing. If they weren’t interested, they wouldn’t bother raising questions at all.

So don’t treat every objection as a roadblock, as some are actually proof that you’re doing something right. The point is to know when to clarify, when to reassure, and when to dig deeper, which is exactly what effective objection handling is all about.

How to identify and interpret buying signals

Spotting buying signals is part instinct, part process. Yes, some reps are naturally good at reading between the lines. But there are also practical ways to get better at it.

1. Listen actively and observe carefully

A lot of intent hides in plain sight - in how a prospect phrases something, where they pause, what they emphasize. You’ll notice it if you’re actually listening, not just waiting for your turn to speak.

The same goes for nonverbal cues on calls, video, or in person. While you can’t listen to them, you can pay attention to your prospects’ behavior. It will often tell you even more than words.

2. Use lead tracking/analytics tools

When it comes to digital signals, you won't catch them unless you're tracking what matters. Think: email open and click rates, LinkedIn profile visits, return sessions on your pricing page, content downloads, etc. Tools like Mixpanel, Leadfeeder, or Clearbit can show you who's engaging, how often, and in what way.

3. Ask open-ended questions to clarify intent

When something feels like a signal, don’t assume it is. Rather, ask.

Say a prospect brings up integrations. You could follow up with:

• Are you currently comparing tools?
• What would the ideal setup look like for your team?

Make sure your questions are open-ended instead of them being simple yes/no prompts. That way, you can test for real intent without sounding pushy, and give your prospect room to open up, which helps you qualify faster and adjust your sales process accordingly.

4. Look for patterns and validate with feedback

One action might be a fluke. Meanwhile, a cluster of actions? It’s a pattern. If a lead revisits your demo page, downloads a case study, and opens 3 emails in 2 days, there’s probably something going on. Combine behavior data with direct feedback from your calls or emails to confirm the signal before you act, though.

5. Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator Buyer Intent feature

If there were ever a cheat sheet to identify buying signals, it would have to be Sales Navigator’s Buyer Intent feature, currently available to Sales Navigator Advanced and Advanced Plus users.

This feature helps you identify not only which accounts are showing interest, but also exactly who at those accounts is engaging, and how. Not to mention, the feature is fully native, meaning you don’t need a separate intent platform or even a CRM sync to use it.

That said, here’s what it tracks and what you can see:

Now, where is the Buyer Intent feature hiding?

Well, you can access it via:

• The Account Hub dashboard (for saved accounts showing new activity)
• Lead and Account Pages (to see specific people/accounts and their actions)
• Homepage Highlights & Sales Navigator Alerts
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters, specifically the Buyer Intent filter and Product Category Intent (for filtering people who are interested in your category, not just your company)

All of this gives your team the context to act fast, prioritize the right people, and reach out when intent is at its peak.

Buying signal or false positive? How to tell the difference

How to respond to buying signals

Spotting a buying signal is only half the job. What you do next? That’s where the deal is won or lost.

Here’s how to respond the right way:

1. Identify the signal quickly

The window of opportunity doesn’t stay open for long. The sooner you notice and interpret the signal, the higher the chance you'll meet them while they are in decision mode. Wait too long, and that intent can fade or shift to a competitor.

2. Personalize your response based on the signal

Not every signal warrants the same playbook. A pricing inquiry? Speak about ROI. A case study download? Reference similar customers. If they watched your product video, ask what stood out.

In other words, adjust your response and sales tactics to reflect what they just did or said. That way, your message feels like a continuation of the conversation.

3. Address concerns and offer help

If the signal is mixed, like a pricing objection or hesitation about fit, that’s not a red flag; it’s a conversation starter, so don’t dodge it. Instead, acknowledge the concern and provide help. You could pull in a case study, loop in a colleague, or simply ask them if they want you to walk through how other customers have handled the same issue.

4. Create a slight urgency

No one likes being rushed - but no one wants to miss out either (hence the FOMO). That’s where subtle urgency comes in. You can mention onboarding timelines, expiring offers (only if real), or limited capacity, but keep the tone helpful, not hungry. Urgency works best when it sounds like guidance rather than desperation.

5. Guide the prospect toward the next step or close

Every signal should move the deal forward. Your job? Make that next step clear and easy. That might mean scheduling another call, sending a proposal, getting feedback from other stakeholders, or confirming implementation timelines. Whatever it is, don’t assume they’ll take the leap alone - lead them there.

Taking advantage of buying signals

Spotting a buying signal is all fun and games. But you still need to act on it. The good news is you can do that through Skylead- your ultimate LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software.

Skylead is best known for Smart sequences, a.k.a. smart outreach sequences that combine if/else conditions with outreach actions. Smart sequences help you react based on your lead’s behavior, helping you reach them through the fastest possible route.

Now, what’s good about these sequences is that they let you structure your sales outreach in a way that:

• Recognizes buying signals
• Responds to them 

Here’s what that might look like in practice:

Scenario 1: Prospect opens your email

Say you want to address a buying signal where your prospect opens your email but doesn’t reply.

Start by adding an Email step to your sequence. Then, right after it, insert the “If email opened” condition.

Now, say the lead opened your email but didn’t respond. Then, you can add a new path with a follow-up email after no response - one that’s more direct or designed to re-engage interest.

Scenario 2: Prospect clicks your meeting link

Now imagine your first email includes a link to book a call. After that step, you add the “If email link clicked” condition.

If they click but don’t respond, just plug in another Email step to the “yes” path. In this message, you can offer alternative time slots or ask if they need more info before booking, making it easier for them to take the next step.

Not sure which message will work best? Run an A/B test with up to 5 versions to see what resonates. 

Want to make it personal? Add variables (or define your own custom variables) to your message to make it feel custom-made. 

And if you really want to stand out, use Skylead’s native Image & GIF personalization feature. You can add names, pictures, logos, or custom text to your visuals and see your reply rates jump by up to 76%.

Even better, there’s no cap on how far you can scale this. In fact, you can:

• Connect unlimited mailboxes to send tens of thousands of emails per month, all at no extra cost.
• Warm up infinite mailboxes so your emails land in the primary inbox, not spam.

And if you don’t have your leads’ emails yet? No problem. Just add a “Find & Verify Email” step to your Smart sequence. Skylead will discover and double-verify each email before sending anything, so your outreach keeps flowing without interruptions.

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Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between a sales trigger and a buying signal?

A sales trigger is an external event that creates an opportunity to sell, like a company raising funding, hiring new leadership, or launching a new product. It’s a sign that something’s changing inside the business. A buying signal, on the other hand, is a specific action or cue from the buyer that indicates interest or intent, like watching your product video, asking about onboarding, or replying to a cold email.

Can you automate buying signal detection?

Yes. Most sales and marketing platforms now offer behavioral tracking that can detect buying signals in real time. These tools often integrate with CRMs for sales and sales outreach tools, thereby helping you act on signals as well.

Are buying signals useful for cold outreach?

Absolutely. While buying signals are often associated with warm leads, they’re just as powerful in cold outreach. That’s because, even in cold outreach campaigns, prospects show intent by opening emails, clicking links, replying with questions, etc.

These micro-signals help you:

• Prioritize the right leads
• Adjust your messaging
• Know when it’s time to follow up or try multichannel outreach

What if I misread a buying signal?

It happens. Not every action means a prospect is ready to engage. But if you misread a signal, the point is to remain helpful and keep it low-pressure. You can send a follow-up that adds value or asks a clarifying question, as it won’t hurt the relationship. In fact, it might even uncover the real intent you didn’t see at first.

Deals go to those who notice the buying signals

Prospects rarely come out and say, “I’m ready to buy.” But their actions? They give you all the clues.

Spotting those buying signals and reacting fast is what makes the difference - and Skylead helps you do both!

Try it free for 7 days and start turning silent signals into booked calls, more replies, and 3x more deals.

Updated on: September 15th, 2026

If you are looking to scale your outreach, you've likely come across Instantly.ai. This cold outreach software, launched in 2021, promises to help you find, contact, and close your ideal clients.

But before you commit to it, there are a few things to consider. 

Is it worth the investment? 

What do others have to say about it? 

And how does it compare to other tools on the market?

If you're ready to get answers to these questions, dive into our review that reveals:

• Notable Instantly.ai features
• Downsides to using it
• Real users’ opinions on the tool
• How much it costs

We’ve even added a list of 12 alternatives, just in case Instantly features do not fulfill your business needs.

Let’s jump right in!

Instantly.ai or alternatives?

Instantly.ai is one of the cold email software and an email management platform that has quickly become popular for email outreach. 

This cloud-based tool allows users to set up automated email campaigns with follow-ups to reach leads at scale.

Users can add leads to their campaigns by either importing a CSV file with lead information or using Instantly.ai’s native B2B Lead Finder tool.

The software also offers a Unibox, which consolidates all email conversations in one place and various options for message personalization. 

Speaking of personalization, to enhance your outreach, you can use its:

• Pre-set or custom variables
• Spintax - multiple variations of a text to avoid repetition
• Liquid syntax - dynamic text based on data

Additionally, Instantly.ai supports A/Z testing, which lets you test up to 26 different versions of email copy.

Data from Instantly.ai can be pushed to different CRMs and tools via Zapier webhooks.

However, the platform also has a built-in CRM that helps track lead statuses and enables you to make calls and send SMS directly from the platform.

Finally, the software can verify your leads' emails, reducing the chance of bounces and protecting your domain's reputation.

With the basics covered, let’s take a closer look at Instantly.ai’s main features.

Instantly.ai features

Unlimited email accounts

Instantly.ai allows you to connect and manage unlimited email accounts.

As they like to say, this enables you to:

‘’Infinitely scale your outreach.’’

However, despite being able to connect unlimited email accounts, the tool caps the number of active leads and emails you can send per month based on the subscription plan.

Nonetheless, Instantly.ai is still useful for email outreach, especially for those who need to reach a large number of leads quickly.

Why? Because you can use all connected accounts in the same campaign. 

This is possible due to the software’s inbox rotation feature. This feature alternates sending emails from different accounts. In turn, it helps you send more emails daily without triggering automation detection.

Unlimited email warm-up

Instantly.ai is one of the few sales outreach tools (or outreach tools in general) with a built-in unlimited email warm-up functionality. 

This means that you can warm up every new email address that you connect to it to ensure that:

• Fewer emails end up in spam
• Your sender’s reputation remains optimal 

B2B Lead Finder

Instantly's B2B Lead Finder is a database with 160M contacts designed to help find leads that are highly relevant and accurate.

The feature relies on a range of filters — some of which match Sales Navigator filters. These include:

• Job Titles
• Location
• Industry
• Employees
• Revenue
• Domains
• ...etc.

What's more, the feature supports keyword-based searches and lets you apply multiple filters simultaneously. This helps you better narrow your search and pinpoint the most promising leads according to your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and buyer persona.

Another useful feature of the Lead Finder is Lead Enrichment. To use it, upload a list of contacts, and the system will enrich it with additional data. 

Instantly.ai disadvantages

Instantly.ai excels in many aspects. However, certain disadvantages make it less than ideal and position other tools as superior.

Instantly.ai doesn’t support multichannel outreach of any kind.

Moreover, email sequences that you can create with Instantly.ai are pretty basic. You can’t set them up to adjust based on your leads’ behavior. So, if your leads don’t respond, there’s not much you can do.

Why, yes, messages can be personalized. Unfortunately, rich media content, including images and GIFs, can’t.

Analytics could also be improved to provide deeper insight into campaign performance. Additionally, there is no option to export stats to CSV or PDF.

While Instantly.ai claims you can scale your outreach infinitely, that's not quite accurate. In fact, their basic plan lets you send 5,000 emails per month only. Consequently, the mid-tier plan limits you to 100,000 emails, and the top plan caps at 500,000 emails. 

Plus, they limit the number of leads you can upload to the platform. Depending on the plan, you can either upload 1,000, 25,000, or 100,000 leads.

Finally, while the tool can enrich your leads’ information, including their emails, this functionality will cost you extra. Not to mention, there are limits to how many leads you can enrich.

This is a huge con, considering that a certain tool lets you send tens of thousands of emails a month and verify as many emails as you want at no additional cost.

But we’ll get to that shortly.

What Instantly.ai reviews say

While doing the research, we stumbled across both positive and negative Instantly.ai reviews.

As for the positive aspects, we noticed many users are praising the interface.

For instance, one of them, Jonas R, says:

‘’The automation of follow-ups and the user-friendly interface make it incredibly efficient for managing my cold outreach campaigns.’’

On the other hand, Zirva Z. has pointed out certain flaws in her review:

‘’The leads aren't great, and being limited to adding only 100 at a time is really frustrating.’’

She also went on to mention that:

‘’It's not very useful unless you have a really high budget.’’

Instantly.ai pricing

Instantly.ai has 2 main pricing categories  — Sending & Warmup and Leads — with multiple sub-plans.

Sending & Warmup is the pricing plan for sending and warming up emails. 

As such, it doesn’t include access to the B2B Lead Finder and is divided into 3 individual sub-plans. 

The pricing varies and is determined based on the number of leads you can upload and emails you can send.

Meanwhile, Leads plans are meant to streamline prospecting and entail full access to the B2B Lead Finder feature. 

There are a total of 4 of these. They differ in price depending on the number of leads you can verify and include:

But remember, if you want to use Instantly.ai to send and warm up emails and generate leads, you can’t purchase a plan from a single category. Instead, you’ll need one from each.

This means that the price of using the software can quickly skyrocket. 

For instance, if you were to subscribe to their lowest-tier subscriptions, you’d pay a total of $84 for both each month. On the other hand, their highest-tier plans combined set you back an exorbitant $850 a month. 

That said, you might be better off using a tool that offers much more at a lower price.

12 best Instantly.ai alternatives

Are you interested in exploring other software on the market? If so, here are 12 compelling alternatives to Instantly.ai that may provide you with better value for your money.

1. Skylead

Well, hello - that’s us! ?

Skylead is a LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software for agencies and alike who want to scale their business.

It's commonly used by:

• Sales professionals and entrepreneurs who aim to free up as much as 11 hours a week for booking 3x more meetings.
• Marketing professionals seeking to distribute content and secure more backlinks.
• Recruiters on the hunt for the best talent.
• Lead generation agencies focused on acquiring high-quality leads for their clients. 

The biggest difference between Instantly.ai and Skylead is the support for LinkedIn outreach. 

As a matter of fact, our software allows you to create multichannel campaigns that combine different LinkedIn and email outreach actions. All thanks to our Smart sequences.

The tool also lets you personalize messages with AI data-enriched variables, liquid syntax, and spintax, and preset and custom variables. While at it, you can even engage in A/B testing to determine how to best approach leads. 

However, what truly sets Skylead apart in the personalization department is our native image and GIF personalization feature.

Not to mention, Skylead also offers infinite email warm-up, courtesy of our partnership with an email warm-up tool, Mailivery.

Finally, our tool comes with advanced reporting capabilities and even supports CSV and PDF exports. You can also integrate it with any CRM or tool you like, using Zapier webhooks or API.

Now, let’s get deeper into our features that are changing the outreach game as we know it.

Account-based prospecting

The best way to find your ideal leads is to find your ideal companies first. That is exactly what Skylead offers - account-based prospecting. With it you can:

• Create account lists directly in Skylead
• And discover contacts by company to reach out to them.

In other words, once you add your companies, Skylead can help you find and match contacts within those selected companies. This way, you can focus on your target companies that are most likely to convert and have greater lifetime value.

AI data enrichment

Apart from email discovery and verification, we introduced a game-changing feature - AI data enrichment, which you can use to:

1. Enrich contact & company data
2. Prompt AI to get specified info or generate personalized icebreakers for each contact
3. Use all gathered info directly inside your sequences as variables.

It’s Clay-like in what it can discover, but it’s connected to your outreach workflow, so you avoid constant tool switching and data importing.

LinkedIn automation

Skylead is a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool.

It’s the best among other types of LinkedIn automation tools (browser extensions & desktop apps) in that:

• It exists on the ‘’Cloud’’. This means that it doesn’t require an Internet connection or power to run.
• It comes with a dedicated IP address (proxy) that shields your activity, an integrated inbox, and the possibility of adding multiple accounts.
• The tool mimics human behavior, browsing through LinkedIn and scrolling just as a human would. 

Now, with Skylead, you can automate much of your LinkedIn prospecting and LinkedIn lead generation through targeted outreach campaigns.

To create one, you can use the following lead sources:

And, yes, you can connect any LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter account to the software.

Once you do, you can use Skylead to:

• View your leads' profiles
• Follow them
• Send them invites to connect
• Automate LinkedIn messages and LinkedIn inMails

However, the tool isn’t limited to performing actions on LinkedIn. So, feel free to add emails to the mix — including the email discovery and verification feature — and turn the tool into a complete multichannel outreach platform.

Email automation

Much like Instantly.ai, Skylead lets you add unlimited email accounts to help you send tens of thousands of emails a month. 

However, unlike it, it doesn’t limit the number of active leads you can have. You can input unlimited leads, allowing you to reach out to more people.

If you were wondering how it’s possible to send thousands of emails a month, well, it’s because our tool supports inbox rotation. This means that Skylead alternates sending emails from different accounts to keep you within safe limits on each.

Infinite email warm-up

To make sure your emails land where they are supposed to, your mailboxes must be warmed up.

Luckily, Skylead has partnered up with an email warm-up tool, Mailivery, to make this a reality.

This tool allows you to warm up infinite email accounts to stay away from spam and protect your senders’ reputation. Completely free of charge for all our Skylead users.

Email discovery & verification

Namely, our software can find and verify your leads’ emails. In turn, it reduces the chances of bounces that impact deliverability and your sender’s reputation.

And guess what? You can take advantage of this feature without breaking your campaign creation flow. 

Just add the Find & Verify Email step to your sequence for the tool to find and double-verify the existence of your leads’ emails.

The best thing about this feature is that it has one of the highest, if not the highest, email-finding probabilities on the market. 

Not to mention, it’s both unlimited and comes at no extra cost. In other words, as long as you’re subscribed to the tool, you can use it as much as you want. 

This makes Skylead more cost-effective than Instantly.ai, which requires a separate subscription to enrich emails.

Smart sequences

And that brings us to the star of the show: Smart sequences.

In essence, they are algorithms that combine the above-mentioned LinkedIn and email actions with if/else conditions. As a result, you get coherent outreach flows that unfold according to the way your prospects behave.

For instance, let’s say you tried adding a lead to your network on LinkedIn, but they haven’t accepted the invite.

If this were a simple sequence, you’d get stuck at this step and miss the opportunity to get to the lead.

But with Smart sequences, you get to maximize touchpoints by covering every possible scenario.

In this case, you can add the ‘’If Connected’’ condition to your campaign and then define the following steps.

For example, you can set up Skylead to automatically message your lead when they accept your connection request. If they don't, you can try to locate their email address, and if the tool finds it, send them an email. But if that doesn't work, you can always send an InMail to maximize getting in touch with leads.

Of course, there are a thousand more ways this can go. Smart sequence builder is your playground, so feel free to experiment with different branching paths.

Or, you can try our tried and tested Smart sequences templates inside the tool for guaranteed results!

Smart inbox

Smart inbox, although serving the same purpose as Instantly.ai’s Unibox, is far superior. That’s because it not only aids email management. It also lets you manage your conversations on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter, whether it’s messages or inMails.

But what makes our Smart inbox truly irreplaceable is the opportunity to label chats. These labels are great because they can help you keep track of ROI and conversions. That said, you can choose between a couple of predefined ones or add your own.

Image & GIF personalization

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And we agree, which is why we introduced our image and GIF personalization feature.

Believe it or not, by personalizing visuals for each recipient, you can increase your response rate to more than 63%.

That said, our image and GIF editor lets you upload any picture you like and personalize it with:

• Your lead’s name
• Their and/or your profile image
• Their and/or your company logo
• A custom message

The choice is yours! Either way, you’ll surely leave a lasting impression. 

In fact, just look at the astonishing 76% response rate we got using the following visual!

Advanced analytics

Speaking of results, Skylead comes equipped with advanced analytics, which are available on the Reports page. 

Here, you can see how all of your campaigns are performing or examine the stats for a single campaign.

That said, there are 3 ways to observe results:

• In a graph form, to visually compare oscillations between different metrics;
• In table-view, to observe fluctuations on a daily basis;
• Step-by-step, to see how your A/B tests are performing.

Unlike Instantly.ai, Skylead even lets you download these reports. The good news is that there are 2 different formats to choose from: CSV and PDF.

What Skylead reviews say

Skylead reviews are positive, with people praising it for what it has helped them accomplish.

For instance, Daniel Hoffmann, a Managing Director at Toplevel Performance, has said that:

“Since I’ve started working with these clients and using Skylead, I have earned approximately $33.000.”

In the meantime, NewPoort's founder, Toine Boelens, has highly praised our Smart sequences email finder and verifier:

‘’If/else conditions in Smart Sequences are also great. It's low code, so it's great because I'm not good at coding yet. I also like the Find & verify business email step, which finds email addresses most of the time. So you get, like, two ways you can get in touch with the client. ‘’

Instantly.ai vs. Skylead

Pricing

All of Skylead’s native features + access to InboxFlare come with a monthly subscription of only $100 per seat.

AI data enrichment acts as an add-on. What makes this pricing truly different is simple: our core value is not to make money from these credits, and it will never be our business model. Credits are priced based on the actual costs of our third-party providers (OpenAI, Bright Data, etc), and we offer a special rate of $1 for 100 credits. 

To test out the tool and its functionalities, feel free to take advantage of our 7-day free trial period. Moreover, our customer support remains available for a 1-on-1 onboarding call—completely free of charge!

2. Lemlist

Lemlist is a cloud-based tool primarily used for email outreach. Nonetheless, its higher-tier subscription supports multichannel outreach, letting you add automatic LinkedIn actions and calls to the mix.

In terms of LinkedIn automation, the tool can visit your leads' profiles, invite them to connect, and send them a message. Moreover, you can add conditions to your sequences to cover several outreach scenarios.

You can also perform any other action on LinkedIn. However, you’ll need to add it as a manual step to your campaign, the same as calls.

The software offers advanced personalization features, including custom images, intro lines, and dynamic landing pages. 

It's also known for Lemwarm, a built-in email warm-up tool that helps emails stay away from spam.

Now, even though Lemlist comes with an email finder and verifier, like Skylead and Instantly.ai, it limits the number of emails you can discover and verify by plan. In fact, even with their most expensive plan, you can only discover and verify up to 1,000 emails a month. If your needs exceed this, you can purchase additional credits. However, this comes at a cost of $1 per 100 verified emails.

That's not it for limitations, though. For instance, you can't connect unlimited email accounts to the tool. Moreover, although Lemlist offers a B2B lead database with over 450M contacts, the quality of leads isn't the highest.

This is somewhat compensated for with the Chrome extension for prospecting on LinkedIn. However, considering that Chrome extensions inject code into LinkedIn that may jeopardize your account, you might want to think twice before using it.

Instantly.ai vs. Lemlist

Pricing

3. Apollo

Apollo.io is a multichannel sales engagement platform that combines email, LinkedIn outreach, and cold calls in seamless sequences. 

It allows users to set up campaigns that feature both automatic and manual emails.

When engaging leads via LinkedIn, Apollo can automate connection requests, messages, and interactions with posts. 

However, its multichannel sequences—known as Playbooks—are relatively simple. Namely, unlike Skylead's Smart sequences, they don't unfold according to your lead's behavior, making them less than ideal.

Regarding integrations, the platform natively integrates with tools like Pipedrive, HubSpot, and Slack. 

The software also has A/B testing capabilities, which help optimize outreach efforts. Additionally, it comes with a built-in AI writing assistant that those previously using ChatGPT for sales writing may find convenient.

Now, in terms of pulling leads into a campaign, Apollo does it through its databases of over 275M contacts. However, certain users have complained about the quality of these leads.

Like Lemlist, the platform can also scrape new leads from LinkedIn. However, this process, yet again, involves using a Chrome extension and could lead to account penalties.

Instantly.ai vs. Apollo

Pricing

4. Smartlead.ai

Smartlead is a robust email outreach tool designed to automate and streamline lead generation efforts. 

It supports unlimited email accounts and email warmups, features inbox rotation, and uses a Master Inbox for streamlined email management. 

The platform offers advanced personalization options like variables, spintax, and liquid syntax, along with split testing capabilities for up to 26 email variants. 

Smartlead also integrates with various CRMs, including HubSpot, via API and webhooks.

However, it has some drawbacks. 

For example, it lacks image and GIF personalization and an email discovery feature that Skylead has.

And while you can create subsequences for each campaign to make it reactive to your leads' behavior, you must break the campaign creation flow to do so. Not to mention, you can only add leads to your campaign through a CSV file or HubSpot.

Instantly.ai vs. Smartlead.ai

Pricing

Pro and Custom plans support adding additional seats, with each costing $29 a month.

5. Mailshake

Mailshake is a cloud-based tool designed primarily for sending emails and follow-ups. 

Nonetheless, it does have a Chrome extension that transforms it into a multichannel outreach and may lead to getting your LinkedIn account restricted. You can use it to set up simple outreach sequences to automatically:

• View your leads' profiles on LinkedIn,
• Send them invites to connect,
• And messages.

At the same time, you can use the extension for cold-calling purposes, as it comes with a built-in dialer and call recorder. However, this option is available strictly for leads based in the US and Canada. 

Moreover, you can integrate the tool with more than 1,000 software via Zapier webhooks. In terms of native integrations, there are those with Pipedrive and HubSpot.

A/B testing is supported, too, and so is inbox rotation. Unfortunately, you can't connect unlimited email accounts to Mailshake as you can with Skylead and Instantly.ai. In fact, the highest-tier subscription limits you to a maximum of 5 accounts.

LinkedIn automation and calls are restricted to the highest-tier plan, too.

Lastly, the use of a Chrome extension for LinkedIn actions risks account restrictions.

Instantly.ai vs. Mailshake

Pricing

6. Woodpecker

Woodpecker is a tool that automates emails and follow-ups to help individuals connect with ideal clients.

What's great about it is that it lets you connect as many email accounts to it as you want, just as Skylead, Instantly.ai, and Smartlead do. The same can be said about inbox rotation.

Sequences you can create with Woodpecker are condition-based. This means they adapt according to the way your leads behave.

With Woodpecker, you can A/B test up to 5 different variations of your message copy. And if you have trouble writing, its AI writing assistant is there to help.

Moreover, the tool supports plenty of 3rd party integrations, such as the one with Dux-Soup. This integration allows its users to tap into LinkedIn outreach, not just email, but it will cost you more.

That said, not everything's ideal with this tool. 

Why, yes, the Dux-Soup integration turns Woodpecker into a multichannel outreach solution. The catch is, however, that they must subscribe to Dux-Soup’s Turbo plan for this to be made possible. This raises the cost of a subscription that's already steep and depends heavily on the number of contacted prospects.

Instantly.ai vs. Woodpecker 

Pricing

The exact cost of the Cold Email and Agency plan is determined by the number of leads contacted. It ranges between $29 for 500 contacted leads and $395 a month for 25,000. 

Although price points for these plans are the same, they differ in one thing: the Cold Email plan is designed for individuals, whereas the Agency plan is meant to be used by teams. That said, the latter supports adding additional users at the price of $27 per user.

Additionally, the Dux-Soup integration adds an extra $55 a month to the subscription.

7. Salesloft

Salesloft is a cloud-based sales engagement platform ideal for sales teams that want to automate workflows and connect with more prospects. 

Its Cadences—a form of campaign—integrates email, phone, and Sales Navigator tasks, though only emails are automated.

Nonetheless, the platform shines in email tracking and advanced analytics, offering A/B testing and customizable email templates. 

However, Salesloft only integrates with Sales Navigator, missing support for LinkedIn Premium and Recruiter accounts.

Additionally, it lacks the Smart sequences that Skylead has, which limits touchpoints with leads. 

Users have also complained about a less user-friendly interface and a buggy dialer.

Instantly.ai vs. Salesloft

Pricing

At this time, Salesloft doesn’t disclose its pricing details for either of its plans: Essentials, Advanced & Premier. Instead, upon visiting the "Pricing" page, their bot prompts you to contact their team for a tailored quote.

However, the information on the Internet suggests that users are paying anywhere from $75 to $125 per user a month.

8. Outreach.io

Outreach.io is a complete sales engagement platform designed to streamline the sales process for enterprise teams. 

It integrates email, phone, LinkedIn, and live chat into a unified workflow, allowing for seamless multichannel outreach.

The platform lets you create personalized outreach sequences with automated follow-ups and response-based triggers. However, any actions on LinkedIn that are part of your sequences must be completed manually.

The tool integrates well with popular CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot for smooth data synchronization.

Key features include robust email tracking, detailed analytics, A/B testing, and a library of customizable email templates. 

Outreach.io also provides AI-driven sentiment analysis, call scheduling, and a pipeline calculator to estimate necessary sales expenses.

Its conversation intelligence tool, Kaia, offers real-time call transcription and insights, enhancing sales interactions and coaching.

In terms of cons, it's worth noting that the platform can be expensive for small businesses. Furthermore, no free trial is available, and the interface is complex.

Also, the platform connects to Sales Navigator accounts only and caters primarily to sales professionals. As such, it may lack features that marketing experts and lead generation agencies need, such as email discovery and verification.

Lastly, users can connect a maximum of 2 email accounts to the tool unless otherwise outlined in the contract.

Instantly.ai vs. Outreach.io

Pricing

Much like Salesloft, Outreach.io doesn’t disclose pricing details to non-users. Instead, the price is customized and heavily depends on the number of users within a team.

However, we did some research online and found that one user was quoted $130 per month per user, with a minimum requirement of 20 users.

9. QuickMail

QuickMail is an effective outreach tool that goes beyond email campaigns. 

It supports multichannel outreach, combining email, LinkedIn, calls, and SMS to help you reach your prospects where they are.

Linked outreach actions that QuickMail can perform are automatic and include:

• Profile views
• Connection requests
• Messages

Contrary to tools like Skylead, which let you import leads directly from LinkedIn, QuickMail offers 2 import options: a CSV file or Google Drive.

The tool comes with a built-in email warm-up and an inbox rotation feature that maintains high deliverability rates. It supports A/B testing and natively integrates with popular CRMs like Pipedrive and HubSpot. Nonetheless, you can integrate any tool with it via Zapier.

While email verification is available, QuickMail relies on 3rd party tools for this. 

Similarly, Image and GIF personalization, while there, isn't native. For this, you’ll need Hyperise, which incurs additional costs.

Moreover, if you want to use LinkedIn in your outreach, you'll need QuickMail’s Chrome extension, which can put your account at risk.

You can add unlimited team members to your QuickMail account. However, you can connect a maximum of 50 email accounts and 15 LinkedIn accounts to the tool. And this is for the highest-tier subscription.

Instantly.ai vs. QuickMail

Pricing

10. Snov.io

Snov.io is a cloud-based multichannel outreach tool that lets you create automated campaigns that combine emails and LinkedIn touches. These include profile visits, post likes, messages, and connection invites.

The platform lets you add "triggers" to your sequences, similar to Skylead's if/else conditions. These make your outreach smart and adaptable based on how your prospects react. 

Additionally, Snov.io comes with a built-in email warm-up tool and a CRM. While the CRM isn’t the most advanced, it has enough functionality to be a good choice for those on a budget.

Snov.io can verify your leads' emails, but this feature isn’t unlimited. In fact, the number of emails you can verify depends on your plan. 

Furthermore, for LinkedIn automation, you’ll need to pay an extra $69 per LinkedIn account you want to add to the software.

While Snov.io's LinkedIn automation is cloud-based, the tool prompts you to use their 2 Chrome extensions: 

• One for prospecting on LinkedIn
• Another for finding leads' emails across the web. 

However, if you choose to use them, be cautious, as a Chrome extension is not the safest way to do prospecting on LinkedIn.

Instantly.ai vs. Snov.io

Pricing

11. Salesblink

SalesBlink is one of the best Insantly.ai alternatives for cold emailing. 

It uses its AI, BlinkGPT, to craft smart email sequences with follow-ups that adapt based on your leads' behavior. 

Plus, with its email warm-up feature, your messages are more likely to land in your leads’ inboxes instead of their spam folders.

SalesBlink lets you connect unlimited email accounts and automatically rotates them while sending emails, thus keeping you within safe limits. 

Furthermore, it comes with a Unified inbox that keeps all your conversations in one place, similar to Skylead, Instantly.ai, and Smartlead.

Although SalesBlink supports adding multichannel tasks to your sequences, these tasks need to be done manually, making them compliant with LinkedIn's ToS.

The tool also provides email verification, but this feature is limited. Simultaneously, it isn't available to subscribers to the lowest-tier plan.

Instantly.ai vs. Salesblink

Pricing

The number of emails you can send with the software depends on your plan. 

For example, the basic plan lets you send up to 6,000 emails, while the top tier allows up to 100,000.

12. Hunter.io

Hunter.io is a tool renowned for its email finding and verification capabilities.

It boasts a user-friendly interface and frequently updates its database with new publicly available emails. 

One of its standout features is the ability to invite team members and grant role permissions, which makes team collaboration much easier. 

Additionally, Hunter.io offers multiple cold email templates and supports integrations with various CRMs and software via Zapier.

However, there are some limitations. For example, you can only create outreach campaigns if you connect a Gmail or Outlook account. Other email service providers are not supported. It also lacks features like A/B testing, advanced message personalization, and email warm-up.

Furthermore, the tool requires a bit of a learning curve, and the support response time can be slow. 

Instantly.ai vs. Hunter.io

Pricing

How to cancel Instantly.ai subscription?

If you’re not satisfied with Instantly.ai, you can cancel your subscription and try another tool from our list.

Here's how:

1. Log in to your account.
2. Go to the Billing page.
3. Under your active plan (s), find the "Cancel plan" button. Click it to confirm your cancellation.

If you have one plan only, you can use it until the end of the billing cycle.

However, if you have both a Lead Finder and Email Outreach plan and cancel only one, the cancellation of said plan takes effect immediately.

Also, if you want to cancel multiple plans, keep in mind that you'll need to cancel each one individually.

Lastly, to confirm your plan is canceled, look at the date listed next to the plan on the Billings page.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

What is instantly.ai?

Instantly.ai is an advanced email automation tool designed to help individuals manage their email campaigns more effectively. It offers a range of features, including unlimited email accounts, email warm-up, B2B Lead Finder, and a Unibox.

What does Instantly AI do?

Instantly.ai automates various aspects of cold emailing and customer relationship management. It helps users manage multiple email accounts, warm up emails to improve deliverability, find new leads, and keep track of them. The platform also consolidates all emails into a single inbox, making it easier to manage conversations and follow-ups.

How to use instantly.ai?

Using Instantly.ai is easy. Just create an account, add and configure email accounts, and use the email warm-up feature to prepare your accounts for sending. Then, create and launch your email campaigns and manage interactions through Unibox. Finally, use the tracking and analytics page to analyze campaign performance.

Is instantly.ai free?

Instantly.ai is not free but offers various pricing plans to suit different needs and budgets. Each plan provides access to a range of features, allowing you to choose the one that best fits your requirements.

Does Instantly AI have a free trial?

Yes, instantly.ai offers a free trial for new users. This allows you to test out the platform and its features before committing to a paid plan.

How many emails can you send with Instantly AI?

The number of emails you can send per month depends on the plan. For instance, the lowest plan limits you to sending 5,000 a month, whereas the Custom plan allows you to send more than 500,000.

Instantly.ai vs. alternatives: What’s the better option?

And there you have it—our deep dive into Instantly.ai and its top 12 alternatives.

As you’ve discovered, Instantly.ai has some powerful features.  But it's not perfect, mainly because of the lack of multichannel outreach support that tools like Skylead have.

That said, if your strategy relies heavily on engaging prospects across multiple channels, Instantly may not be for you.

Luckily, your perfect alternative is out there, waiting for you to discover it.

We've given you the options. Now, it's up to you to try them out.

But why not start with Skylead? 

With a 7-day free trial, you can experience the true power of email and LinkedIn automation combined.

So, come chat with us, sign up, and begin scaling your outreach — to infinity and beyond!

Updated on: September 15th, 2026

Disclaimer: Skylead is not affiliated, endorsed by, or connected with LinkedIn in any way.

Did you know that businesses that use a multichannel outreach strategy witness an increase in customer engagement by 287%?

Most of us live, work, and shop in the online world, so nowadays, outreach is no exception. Whether in sales or marketing, you target people out of the blue and try to catch their attention, book more meetings, and ultimately close more deals via email and other communication channels.

Implementing a strong targeted outreach strategy can help with lead generation, turning those leads into satisfied customers, and nurturing relationships with them later on.

But how to turn those cold targets into warm leads and convert them into clients? It’s time to learn about the best outreach sequences. Our marketing team has done the research, so you don’t have to, and we’ll go over:

• What are outreach sequences
• 5 types of sequence messages
• 4 best outreach sequence examples
• Outreach sequence best practices

We’ve got a lot to cover, so grab your reading glasses, and let’s begin. ?

What are outreach sequences and how do they work?

An outreach sequence is a planned series of actions and follow-ups carried through one or multiple communication channels that aims to connect with potential leads, customers, or clients. The goal is to build relationships with leads, generate interest, or drive a specific action.

For example, if you’re outreaching via email, the first email would be introductory. If there’s no response, you keep sending follow-ups that contain more information and value with each message.

Depending on the target audience, their interests and preferences, and the overall strategy, you can create outreach sequences using:

• Email
• Social media (LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, etc.)
• Phone calls
• Direct mail

The best outreach sequences aim to add multiple touchpoints with prospects and combine different channels. This means that each message in a sequence is personalized and tailored to address the prospect's previous action in a sequence.

How to create the best outreach sequences?

The main characteristics of the best outreach sequence are their structure and the strategy behind the intended communication. The goal is to gradually build your outreach sequence and drive engagement with your target audience. 

Here are key steps of this process:

1. Identifying goals - Pinpoint your outreach objectives, find your target audience, and understand their wants, needs, and challenges before crafting a tailored outreach sequence.
2. Sequence building and design - Create a series of messages and follow-ups using one or more channels that seamlessly guide them toward taking action.
3. Make sure to personalize messages according to previous research and actions.
4. Timing and frequency - Your main goal should not be too pushy or intrusive, so make sure to space out messages correctly and adjust the frequency accordingly. 
5. Execution - Reach out to your leads manually. However, our advice is to automate outreach sequences for the best results and efficiency. Personalize and schedule, and then let the tool do the work for you, saving you hours of manual work.
6. Analyzing and optimizing - After the sequence begins running, your job is to track engagement and look at metrics closely (open rates, click-through rates, response rates, and conversion rates) to determine whether your sequence is working or not. Make sure to keep optimizing for better outreach results.

Now that we know the basics of the outreach process, let’s look at our tool Skylead, so you can see firsthand how to create and automate the best outreach sequences. ?

Automate your outreach sequences

How to automate your outreach sequences? Glad you asked. Introducing Skylead’s first-to-market smart sequences. As a LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software, we strongly believe in the multichannel approach. That's why you can combine LinkedIn and email in our sequence builder. Our smart sequences help:

• Save up to 11+ hours of manual work per week.
• Book 3x more meetings.
• Reach a higher number of quality leads in less time.
• Increase response rates with our in-app hyper personalization feature, and more.

What makes Skylead’s Smart sequences special is that you can combine email and LinkedIn automation with if/else conditions.  This will help you get to your prospects one way or the other while maximizing touchpoints with leads. You can use all Skylead prime features inside these sequences to help with a more streamlined outreach. This includes:

• AI data enrichment - allows you to add more data to your contacts and company lists, auto-create personalized messages, and boost your response rates.
• Account based prospecting - Helps you create focused company lists, find matching contacts
• Email finder & verifier - Helps you find your leads’ double-verified business emails without breaking the outreach flow, at no extra cost, and with no 3rd party tools.
• Image & GIF personalization - Adds an extra visual touch to your outreach, making each message tailored to your leads’ interests and personal information. Plus, it increases the response rate.
• A/B testing - You can test up to 5 variants of copy to determine which approach works best for which leads. 

Now, let’s create a campaign together to see how it works. It's as easy as 1, 2, 3…

Skylead Smart sequences

1. First, click the “Create new campaign” button.

2. Second, add or create your lead list and adjust your outreach settings and hit Next to create a sequence.

To create a smart outreach sequence, drag and drop the desired actions and conditions and create a coherent outreach flow. Here’s what a simple smart sequence looks like ?

Now that you have a tool that does all this, plus a little bit more, you’re one step closer to building one of the best outreach sequences out there. But before you start creating your outreach flow, let’s look at sequence message types and review tested and proven sequence examples. 

5 Types of sequence messages with examples

1. Educating Messages

When talking to prospects who are still not ready to buy, register, or become clients, you can create and send educating messages. These messages aim to help prospects learn about your product/service and show them how your product can fix their pain points and challenges. The goal is to establish trust and encourage leads to take the desired action.

Here’s an example of a LinkedIn and email educating message:

LinkedIn connection request

Hi {{firstName}},

Ever felt like you needed magic to solve {{painPoint}} at {{Company}}? ✨

{{product/service}} makes these challenges disappear. 

You can:

1. Increase {{metric}} by {{number}}%

2. {{benefit}}

We’re here if and when you’re ready to experience the magic.

Until then, best spells!

Email message

Subject: Would you like magic to solve your {{painPoint}}? ✨

Hi {{firstName}},

Ever wished for a magic wand for {{painPoint}} at {{companyName}}? 

Meet {{solutionName}}—not magic, but close.

Here's what makes {{product/Service}} magical:

1. Eliminates {{painPoint}} and gets your team back on track to success

2. Increases {{metric}} by {{number}}%

Curious? Let’s talk so you can:

• See the magic in action
• Receive bite-sized insights & case studies
• Test-drive with zero fuss at zero cost.

What’s your choice?

Cheers!

2. Messages that build interest

Engagement messages are the most common in cold outreach. Sequences built with engagement messages aim to invoke a reaction from your prospect. Your goal with these messages should be to keep them engaged and get them to build interest in your product/service gradually.

Here’s an example of a LinkedIn and email messages that build interest:

LinkedIn connection request

Hi {{firstName}},

Ever imagine transforming {{challenge}} into an art form? 

Here at {{product/Service}}, we are blending technology and creativity to craft masterpieces.

Curious to paint a brighter future together? Let’s connect!

Email message

Subject: Art Meets {{challenge}} ?

Hi {{firstName}},

Imagine turning {{challenge}} into art. That's what we do with {{product/Service}}. I’m {{yourName}}, and I’m mixing tech and creativity to craft solutions that aren't just effective—they're inspirational.

We offer {{solution1}} and {{solution2}} to {{benefit}}. 

How about a quick chat to sketch out possibilities?

3. Competitor analysis messages

If you plan to talk about the competition, the trick is to give them a simple competitor analysis and show them how they’re getting these results. Then, emphasize how your product/service can help achieve said benefits. Then finish off with a simple and clear CTA that leads the prospect to a particular action, like scheduling a meeting, booking a call, sending a demo link, etc.

Here’s an example of a LinkedIn and email competitor analysis message:

LinkedIn InMail message

Subject: Ready to Outshine {{competitorTool}}? ?

Hi {{firstName}},

Ever wondered why {{competitorName}} leads in {{industry}}? Our audit reveals their key strategies:

{{Describe their approach to key strategy 1}}.

{{Describe their excellence in key strategy 2}}.

Here’s what you can do to get a quick win over them:

{{Your Offer - Task 1}} to elevate your {{result}}.

{{Your Offer - Task 2}} to boost {{specific outcome}}.

Interested in outpacing {{competitorName}}? 

Let's discuss actionable insights in a brief call.

Email message

Subject: We cracked {{competitorName}} {{industry}} strategy ?

If you consider {{competitorName}} a competitor, then you'll definitely want to check out this short audit.

{{Analyze competitor's publicly available workflows or strategies and emphasize what they are doing right.}}

Proposition:

If you wish to surpass competitor name and get a bigger market share, you'll need to: 

{{fWhat you offer - task 1}}

{{fWhat you offer - task 2}}

And this is precisely what we can help you with!

If you want to rise above your competition, let's schedule a quick call and see how we can get you there.

4. Follow-up messages

If your prospect didn’t respond to your first message, all you need is a follow-up. A follow-up is a crucial part of an outreach sequence, and it’s necessary in order to give your prospect a gentle reminder of your existence and to lead them further down the buyer’s journey.

The goal is to keep in touch with your prospects and give them the right kind of motivation to respond to you.

Here’s an example of a LinkedIn and email follow-up message:

LinkedIn message

Hi {{firstName}},

Just following up on my previous message about how tackling {{challenge}} can feel like a steep climb. Imagine {{product/service}} as your personal helicopter, offering a swift lift to the top, bypassing those obstacles effortlessly.

Still curious to fly above the challenges? Let’s schedule that demo and start soaring together.

Looking forward to your response.

Email message

Subject: Ready to Soar Above {{challenge}}? ?

Hi {{firstName}},

Just touching base following my previous message about transforming your approach to {{challenge}}. Think of {{product/service}} as your on-demand helicopter, ready to take you to the top without the climb.

Are you ready to explore how we can elevate your journey with a brief demo?

Eager to see your ascent!

5. Re-engagement messages

Sometimes, prospects lose interest, change their email addresses or they would like to revisit your conversation in a few months. In these cases, you can do two things: in the first, send a re-engagement message to restart the conversation. In the second case, use Skylead’s Find & verify business email feature to get to your prospect's new email address and then send the re-engagement message. Convenient, right?

Here’s an example of a LinkedIn and email re-engagement messages:

LinkedIn message

Hi {{firstName}},

Long time no chat! ?️ {{product/Service}} has evolved since we last spoke, unlocking new ways to tackle {{challenge}}.

Curious about the updates? Let's dive back in with a quick demo or chat.

Looking forward to reconnecting!

Email message

Subject: A lot has changed at {{product/Service}}! Let’s catch up ☕

Hi {{firstName}},

It's been a while! Since our last conversation, {{product/Service}} has grown, offering new {{benefit}} for {{challenge}}.

Up for a brief update? A quick chat or demo could spark new ideas.

Best outreach sequence examples

Enough theory. Let’s get to the actual social proof – a section where we show you our best outreach sequences that have been tested and optimized to perfection to produce great outreach results. 

Given that we believe that multichannel outreach is the way to go, we’ll show you 4 of our sequence templates, which are sure to bring results. All you need to know about them is that our Head of sales, Andrea, closed 50+ meetings while using them! ✨

1. Reach out to leads who reacted to a LinkedIn post of an industry expert

In this outreach sequence, we’ve used a combination of educational and conversion messages. Let’s look at the stats:

• 76% acceptance rate
• 35% reply rate
• 85% open rate

The sequence works because we used both LinkedIn and email and exhausted all communication channels to get to our prospects in any case. If you’re trying to reach people who reacted to someone’s LinkedIn post, the presumption is that you’re probably not connected to them. 

We’re using InMails because, from our experience, people generally respond better to them. If you can send them for free, without spending your InMail credit, even better. The Find & verify email feature is here to reach prospects by email if they’re not as responsive on LinkedIn. Email is important in outreach. In fact, 77% of B2B buyers prefer to be contacted by email. 

2. Target specific group members

This particular sequence landed many new users, and our sales team got to book more meetings than usual. We’ve used follow-up, engagement, and conversion messages and utilized both communication channels. Here are the results:

• 53% acceptance rate
• 27% reply rate
• 73% open rate

Targeting specific group members means that we are looking for decision-makers and we want to reach them faster. You can do this by using Sales Navigator search results with the Group members filter. In the sequence we’re using the If connected condition for LinkedIn to cover all leads from our lead source. Then, if they’re not responsive on LinkedIn, we find their double-verified email address and try reaching them there.

3. Approach people who checked out your website

Marketers, behold! A sequence that will target people who stumbled upon your website and need a little nudge to take action. If you're using a 3rd party tool on your website that can tell you what company visited your website, you can easily find those people on LinkedIn and reach out. Let’s get right into the stats:

• 43% acceptance rate
• 23% reply rate
• 71% open rate

In this sequence, our sales team used educational and engagement messages to spark additional interest and give social proof and more information to prospects already interested in your product/service. We also opted for a multichannel approach that works every time!

4. Educational sequence with a focus on email

This sequence is part of our free trial period and is also available to all Skylead users. Our sales team made this template to show you how to engage with your target audience and get them hooked to your product/service with carefully crafted messaging and tone. 

We’ve used educational and engagement message types, focusing on email, but also using LinkedIn as the other communication channel. Here are the stats:

• 63% acceptance rate
• 41% response rate

To see template messages, you need to register for a 7-day free trial with Skylead.

Outreach sequences: Best practices

After testing and experimenting with different approaches, we’ve formed a list of best practices we always keep in mind when creating outreach sequences. Let our experience serve as a guide for you to create the best outreach sequences. ?

Use a multichannel approach

What if we told you that 58% of people check their emails first thing, and14% check social media? This statistic just proves that using two or more communication channels is a must in outreach. We’ve said it once and will say it again: the multichannel approach is the best way to go for higher response rates and faster overall results.

Automate outreach

Businesses that automate outreach campaigns can improve their response rate by a whopping 250%. If your goals are reaching a larger audience or you just want to save time on manual outreach and focus on building and nurturing relationships with prospects, outreach automation is the best solution for you. Plus, a great perk is faster and better results, too. ?

Add a catchy subject line

Did you know that creating a catchy subject line is directly linked to a higher open rate? A good subject line combined with pre-header text is what helps prospects decide whether they will open and read your email.

Our best advice would be to keep it short, simple, and around 55-60 characters (under 30 characters if you want to stand out in mobile inboxes). Regarding emojis, our research suggests that you should use 1 emoji per subject line. Also, do not put emojis instead of words to avoid confusion. 

Personalization

In this day and age, if you want to stand out online, you need to personalize your approach. If you create tailored messages, emails, and follow-ups and then add visual elements to the mix (Skylead’s Image & GIF personalization), you’ll surely get a higher response rate. In fact, up to 63%, to be exact.

Keep it short

No prospect wants to read a huge message with a standardized template approach. If you plan on creating an effective outreach sequence, you need to be concise and to the point. Otherwise, your message will get lost in your prospects’ inboxes with no trace.

However, if you don’t get a yes the first time around, creating a strong follow-up message after no response can up your chances of success. In this case, the same rules apply - keep your messages short, but with each one, add more value and personalized elements.

Relevant value proposition

Each message you craft and send in an outreach sequence should bring value to your prospect. Once you gather information about your target audience, make sure to find relevant touchpoints and spread them evenly across your sequence. With each message, there needs to be more value. You need to tell your prospects that your offer is precisely what they need.

Pro tip: Andrea, our Head of sales, says that in sales emails, it’s never about you. It’s about the prospect and their problems that can be solved only with your solution and your solution.

Include social proof

In outreach, it’s all a numbers game. This means that adding certain bits of proven information, results, or statistics will spark more interest with prospects. Link a case study, or add 1 or 2 sentences to your outreach message to add social proof to your outreach.

Call-to-action (CTA)

Our sales team told us to tell you that when creating calls to action, you need to think about creating the perfect environment for your prospect to take the desired action. Naturally, your entire message should build up to this closing moment, the so-called CTA. To avoid confusion, use just one prompt instead of a couple. Keep their focus through the message body and then add the CTA.

From our experience, a good CTA should be:

• simple
• straightforward
• clear

Determine the timeframe of the sequence

In outreach, as in life, timing is everything. Determining the duration and the spacing between messages is equally important as the messages. If you send messages too often, they’ll be considered spam, but the sequence won't be successful if you don’t contact them often enough. It’s all about balance, so make sure to space out your outreach messages anywhere from the standard 2 to 5 business days.

A/B testing for optimization

Not sure if your content is good enough? No worries. A/B testing, also known as split testing, is here to help with constant campaign improvement. We advise you to incorporate frequent A/B tests into your outreach sequence strategy to get better results faster. Make it a habit to always look into better ways of reaching out to prospects.

Frequently asked questions

How does one tailor outreach sequences for different industries, such as tech versus healthcare, to ensure relevance and higher engagement rates?

Tailoring outreach sequences for different industries involves researching industry-specific pain points, language, and trends. For tech, emphasize innovation and efficiency; for healthcare, focus on compliance, patient care, and privacy. Customization increases relevance and engagement by addressing specific needs and interests of the target audience.

Can the effectiveness of an outreach sequence vary by geographical region, and if so, what adjustments should be made to cater to different cultural preferences?

The effectiveness of outreach sequences can indeed vary by geographical region due to cultural and time differences. To adjust, incorporate local time, business etiquette, language nuances, and cultural norms. Understanding regional communication preferences and holidays can also enhance the personalization and effectiveness of the outreach.

What are the long-term impacts of using these outreach sequences on brand reputation and customer relationships, especially in cases where recipients might perceive the outreach as spammy?

Long-term impacts of using outreach sequences on brand reputation and customer relationships depend on execution. If perceived as spammy, it can harm reputation and deter potential customers. Conversely, value-drive, personalized outreach can enhance brand perception, foster trust, and build lasting relationships, highlighting the importance of customization and relevance.

Ready to put these best outreach sequences to use?

Of course you are! Now that we covered everything you need to know about creating the best outreach sequences, it’s safe to say that if you follow these instructions, you are well on your way to success with your outreach efforts. So, let’s review what we’ve learned so far:

• Using automation tools in outreach saves time, boosts results, and gives you more time to focus on building better sequences and nurturing relationships with leads.
• Using a multichannel approach, which means two or more communication channels, is key to a faster and more effective outreach.
• Personalization is the key to higher response rates.
• Catchy subject lines are directly related to higher open rates.
• A clear CTA leads to better click-through and response rates.
• Strategic timing in outreach sequences improves overall results and affects all relevant metrics.
• By combining relevant content with personalized communication, we build trust and interest.

So, what’s the next step? Well, all you need now is the right automation tool to assist you in creating the best outreach sequences and building successful campaigns that bring jaw-dropping results. This is where Skylead comes to the rescue. You can register for free, start your 7-day free trial, and begin creating the best outreach sequences out there! Let the outreach begin! ?

Updated on: September 15th, 2026

Disclaimer: Skylead is not affiliated, endorsed by, or connected with LinkedIn in any way.

If you've ever wondered if there is a way to speed up lead-generation activities and overcome the time-consuming, repetitive nature of the manual marketing and sales process, we have a proposition. Why not automate lead generation?

Yes, that's right. Automation has been around for a while, especially for lead generation and management. And no wonder it's so effective since this way, you can find the most qualified leads and scale up your business. But, more importantly, you can generate your leads daily. 

Having automated our own lead generation process, we’ve witnessed its power firsthand. And now, it’s time you did the same. 

Not sure how to do so? Fear not! We’ll guide you on how to automate every sales and marketing lead generation task by showing you how we did it—step by step!

You’ll also learn the difference between automating inbound and outbound lead generation and get a rundown of the best tools to help you do it.  

What is automated lead generation?

Automated lead generation is a process of using technology to perform time-consuming sales and marketing lead generation tasks on your behalf. To do this, you have different kinds of automation tools at your disposal. For example, you can use software to automate sending emails or LinkedIn connection requests.

Automated lead generation offers benefits such as:

• Reducing human error and thus improving your workflow;
• Saving time by performing manual tasks and decreasing workload;
• Providing insights into the performance of lead generation activities so you can optimize the process and improve it;
• Consistency in the workflow so you can generate leads daily;
• Leaving room to focus on building relationships and lead nurturing.

That said, there are plenty of automation tools on the market to choose from. 

However, let’s first distinguish the types of automated sales and marketing lead generation activities to discover which tool you should use accordingly. 

Types of lead generation automation

There are 2 types of automated lead generation, but they work best when used in synergy.

1. Inbound lead generation automation

Inbound lead generation is a marketing strategy for attracting leads to your company. For example, a marketing team can create content that is valuable to the best leads for your business. The purpose of the content is to compel a lead to take specific actions first that will eventually lead to sales.

Since today’s leads often prefer to research independently, inbound lead gen aims to assist rather than sell. It guides potential leads to valuable resources, just like this blog, ebooks, and guides, allowing them to explore your brand and offerings at their own pace.

That said, the purpose of inbound lead generation automation is to streamline the said process using automation tools.

For example, you can use the following types of tools to automate your inbound tasks: 

• Chatbot - to provide answers to questions and nurture leads;
• Pop-ups & forms - to offer personalized content, lead magnets, or surveys on the website.

2. Outbound lead generation automation

Outbound lead generation is about finding and reaching out to your ideal leads directly. Rather than waiting for leads to find your website and reach out, like in inbound lead gen, you are the one who makes the first move. 

That said, to automate your outbound lead generation tasks, you can use the following types of tools:

• Email marketing and outreach tools - for outbound marketing and sales to automate sending emails, newsletters, or themed email sequences;
• Prospecting tools - for marketing and sales to find outbound leads and contact information;
• Social media automation tools - for sales to automate outreach on social media;
• Advertising tools - for marketers to automate buying digital advertising space.

B2B lead generation automation vs B2C lead generation automation

Business-to-Business (B2B) lead generation automation is a process of using software to generate potential leads who work in a company to offer them your services.

On the other hand, Business-to-Consumer (B2C) lead generation automation uses software to streamline and generate leads who are individual customers. 

Even though they have different potential customers, both B2B and B2C companies use the same lead generation automation for a similar purpose. 

With that in mind, here is how different companies use automation tools for their purpose.

How to automate lead generation

It’s not enough to know the difference between inbound and outbound lead generation automation. You need to know HOW to execute the process successfully.

To help you do just that, we’ve prepared a step-by-step lead generation automation guide. It’s informed by experiences and tactics that proved effective to us and is designed to get you immediate results.

How to automate outbound lead generation

1. Define your ICP and buyer persona

Your outbound lead generation needs a good basis to get quality leads that convert. That’s why sales teams start their lead generation process by creating their Ideal Customer Profile and Buyer Persona, as we have. This way, you can generate the best leads and guide them through the sales funnel. Not to mention, these documents can help with lead scoring.

What worked best for us when it comes to the creation of both of these documents was to analyze current customer data and gather users who:

• Have the shortest buying cycle;
• Have a high retention rate; 
• Would advocate for our product.

2. Find contact data

Once you establish your ICP and Buyer Persona, it’s time for prospecting.  

Almost all sales teams use LinkedIn prospecting to find the best leads for their sales funnel. Moreover, there are a lot of proven LinkedIn lead generation strategies out there to find quality leads. You can also find leads using different databases like Zoominfo or Crunchbase.

However, when it comes to gathering the leads’ contact information, we’ve learned it’s best to automate the process using: 

• LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator to get publicly available info and profile URLs;
• Tools to identify your website visitors, such as Lead Forensics;
• Scraping tools for Facebook group members;

This way, you can build your lead lists, send them to your CRM, and prepare for email or LinkedIn outreach. 

3. Craft a compelling message

Whatever channel you use to reach out on, consider your messaging carefully. Cold outreach is hard when you know nothing about the person. That said, it’s important to include research into the lead generation process and figure out what your leads are all about.

In other words, comb through their company page, LinkedIn profile, and find the About section, posts they published, or what they shared. This way, you can personalize your communication and appear genuine when explaining how you can solve their problems.

For successful messaging, we found mentioning your unique selling point tailored to your leads’ exact pain point, particularly useful.  That said, if you need help crafting such a message, you can always use ChatGPT for sales messages.

4. Send cold emails

It’s easy to let the cold email mistakes slither into your outreach. However, you reduce the chances of some of these mistakes by using automated lead generation tools to send cold emails. 

Just keep in mind that 70% of salespeople stop at one cold email. Meanwhile, incorporating follow-up messages into your sequence increases your chances of hearing back by 25%. That’s why we make sure to send follow up emails as well, as you should.

5. Automate LinkedIn lead generation

LinkedIn and email outreach have been part of the sales funnels for years. And with hundreds of leads we reach every week via LinkedIn, it’s time-consuming and nearly impossible to get the desired results. Unless you use different automated lead generation tools, that is.

That’s why various LinkedIn automation tools are there to help you streamline different outreach actions on LinkedIn. For example, our very own Skylead can automate sending connection requests, messages, free and paid inMails, and even emails. In addition, you can combine these actions and create scenarios based on your leads’ behavior. But we’ll talk more about that later on.

5. Gather lead information

Once you start conversing with your leads, you need to keep track of them. 

This is where CRM, like HubSpot or Pipedrive, comes into play. To clarify, Customer Relationship Management is a software that helps you automate gathering all the information about your sales leads in one place, such as:

• Notes about the sales leads,
• Lead scoring,
• Information about the company,
• Deal value,
• Position in the sales funnel,
• The next task to perform,
• Conversation link, and so on.

This way, you can check where your leads are in the funnel and what level of nurturing they need.

7. Nurture leads

Speaking of nurturing leads, you can do so by integrating your CRM with your outreach tool and exchanging the information between the two. Then, you can label leads or send them to outreach campaigns. 

We commonly use Skylead for our customer-nurturing program. Why? Because you can use it to send automated outreach campaigns for: 

• Churn customers, if you have any special upgrade or to offer a discount;
• Current customers, to send them personalized content, upsell, or offer help as their dedicated account manager.

Moreover, our Smart Inbox also helps with nurturing by consolidating all conversations across email and LinkedIn in one place. You can use it to respond to leads directly and label them to monitor conversions and ROI.

How to automate inbound lead generation

1. Set up your lead generation website

The first step towards automated lead generation is creating a website to connect all your lead generation automation tools. We can write an entire blog on creating a website, but we’ll mention 3 most important things.

Firstly, good practice here is to create a website that will provide the best user experience with UX/UI design that converts. 

Secondly, your content marketing team must prepare visuals and copy for the website. The copy needs to provide information about your product or service. However, it should be presented in a way that describes how it solves the problem and removes pain points your high-quality leads have. 

Lastly, it would be best to create an SEO plan to rank your website better.

2. Create a lead magnet

The next step is for your content marketing team to create a lead magnet. 

A lead magnet could be a guide, eBook, or mini-course that you publish on your website, available for leads to download in exchange for their contact information, like their name and email.

This lead generation strategy helps you gather emails, allowing you to send newsletters to leads or pass the contacts to your sales team to reach out to them. Just remember, though—you shouldn’t ask for an email unless you’re offering something genuinely valuable.

Once your lead magnet is ready, you can automate the process by connecting your forms to a CRM like HubSpot or Monday. This way, new leads are automatically added to your pipeline. And if your CRM is integrated with sales engagement tools, you can even send leads straight into campaigns.

Lastly, to promote your lead magnet, you can publish ads to generate a large pool of leads. Alternatively, use pop-ups to promote the content throughout the website depending on users’ behavior.

3. Set up your landing page

To attract high-quality leads, whether organically or through ads, you’ll need a landing page that offers a seamless user experience. In other words, it must contain concise information tailored to your high-quality leads. 

A good approach is to have dedicated feature pages that highlight the main features and explain the problems they solve.

Say you’re offering a project management tool. In that case, one feature page could focus on “Efficient task management.” This page could detail how your tool enables teams to assign tasks, track progress, and meet deadlines. Include a step-by-step walkthrough of the feature, screenshots of the interface, and testimonials from teams that have successfully used it to build credibility.

Moreover, your landing page should have a converting design and messaging that motivates visitors to take action. Make sure it’s properly optimized for SEO to increase visibility as well.

Finally, don’t forget a clear call to action and a contact form or lead magnet to capture those valuable leads.

4. Capture leads with a chatbot

Another way to generate leads via your website is to use a chatbot. It allows you to turn your website visitors into leads and qualify them for future sales or marketing activities. 

You can set up a chatbot to offer lead magnets or some free service depending on users’ website behavior. Or, if a person wants to contact your customer support, develop a list of questions a chatbot will pose before connecting. This is a perfect automation system for lead scoring, qualifying, and integrating with lead distribution to route prospects to the right sales teams.

Many chatbots can also automatically gather information like email addresses, company size, and other relevant details. Once collected, you can set it up to create a new deal in your CRM and seamlessly add those leads to your outreach campaign, just like with lead magnets.

5. Get traffic to your page

Once you’ve set everything up, the next step is getting leads to visit your website. 

There are 2 main ways to bring in traffic:

• Paid - you can launch paid campaigns via Google Ads, Bing Ads, or social media such as Facebook or LinkedIn. You can either target new leads or retarget your previous visitors.
• Organic - Create blogs or videos that follow SEO standards so they can rank better organically and get you as many visitors as possible.

6. Nurture the leads automatically

When you start getting leads to your website, you need to nurture them to some sort of conversion. Therefore, look no further than using pop-up forms or chatbot conversations personalized to their web behavior.  

You can personalize messages and offer relevant content based on things like:

• The pages they are visiting, 
• If they are returning customers, or 
• Their exit intent.

7. Use marketing automation for lead generation

Once you gather your leads’ emails, it’s time to use marketing automation to reach out to them. You can create email campaigns to offer personalized content on a mass scale according to your leads’ behavior. 

For example, you can send certain messages depending on whether they opened an email. In other words, you can create outreach sequences with different scenarios to offer tailored content that will lead to conversion.

The good practice here is to start with valuable educational content. Then, offer a solution to the particular problem, and then present your product or service. But by all means, never start the first message with a pitch!

Best tools to automate lead generation

You know how to automate your lead generation, and now’s the time for action.

But to actually do it, you need the right tool for the job.

Lucky for you, we’ve tested several lead generation software on the market. Based on our findings, we’ll name a few of the best and their average ratings, as per Capterra, G2, and Software Advice.

Nonetheless, you are free to research other tools and check review websites should you feel the need to do so.

1. Skylead

Yup. As we previously mentioned, that's us. ? 

Skylead is an all-in-one LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software that streamlines the most time-consuming sales outreach tasks. 

These tasks include sending:

• LinkedIn connection requests 
• Messages,
• InMails,
• And emails all on autopilot

…to all the leads you imported into Skylead via LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Recruiter, or CSV file.

But LinkedIn and email outreach aside, you can also use Skylead to:

• Find your ideal companies and the right contacts inside them
• Get AI-enriched company and prospect data and generate personalized icebreakers
• Warm up an infinite number of emails,
• Find and verify email addresses of your leads,
• Improve response rate, courtesy of the image and GIF personalization feature.

Moreover, you can sync Skylead to your favorite CRM in 3 clicks. Or connect it to any other tool in your stack using webhooks or API to push data in or out.

Now, let’s take a closer look at groundbreaking Skylead features.

Features

Account-based prospecting

The most effective way to find your ideal leads is to start by identifying your ideal companies. That is exactly what Skylead helps you do with account-based prospecting.

With it, you can:

• Create account lists directly in Skylead
• Discover contacts by company and reach out to them

In other words, after you add your target companies, Skylead can help you find and match relevant contacts within those companies, keeping your pipeline closely aligned with your ICP. This allows you to focus on the companies most likely to convert, become valuable partners, and bring higher lifetime value.

AI data enrichment

In addition to account-based prospecting, we have introduced a powerful AI data enrichment add-on.

You can use it to:

• Enrich contact and company data
• Prompt AI to find specific information or generate personalized icebreakers for each contact
• Use all collected insights directly in your outreach sequences as variables

It works similarly to Clay in terms of what it can uncover, but it is built into your outreach workflow, helping you reduce tool switching and avoid repeated data imports. And did we mention it's up to 95% more cost-effective compared to similar tools on the market?

LinkedIn & email automation

Skylead seamlessly combines LinkedIn and unlimited email automation, allowing you to reach your leads through the channel that suits them best.

This wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for our Smart sequences. 

Skylead was the 1st tool on the market to introduce this feature, which has changed how everyone performs sales.

But what are Smart sequences? 

Simply put, they are coherent outreach flows you create using different LinkedIn and email actions and if/else conditions. These if/else conditions allow Smart sequences to operate in real-time, adjusting as they go according to your leads' behavior to find the fastest path to them.

That said, here is an example of one Smart sequence.

What’s really great is that the number of outreach scenarios you can create with Smart sequences is truly limitless.

You can play around with different actions and conditions as you see fit. Or you can use our pre-tested Smart sequences inside our tool, which have been proven to work. The choice is yours.

Email discovery & verification

Setting up a Smart sequence with email steps is easy when you have your leads' addresses. But what if you don’t? 

You rely on our email discovery and verification!

With this feature, you can find and double-verify your leads’ business emails to:

• Reduce bounce rates
• Protect your domain reputation

This functionality is built into the platform, meaning we don’t rely on third-party services to perform it. Thus, you can add an email discovery and verification step into your Smart sequence to find and verify emails without breaking the outreach flow.

Moreover, Skylead offers unlimited email discovery and verification credits at no extra cost. This allows you to expand your outreach without worrying about added expenses.

Infinite email warm-up

Speaking of features that come at no additional cost, Skylead has partnered with Mailivery, one of the best email warm-up tools, to bring you another one: Infinite email warm-up. 

Mailivery lets you warm up an unlimited number of email accounts to make sure your emails always reach your leads.

That said, here’s what Skylead users can take advantage of thanks to our partnership with Mailivery:

• Easy setup in just a few minutes - Mailivery’s setup is native, fast, and compatible with all email providers, including custom SMTP. You only need to switch warm-up on in Email settings, and it will run in the background.
• Safer sending volume ramp-up - Mailivery gradually increases email volume at the right pace, helping accounts warm up naturally without looking suspicious.
• Built-in domain health checks - SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and blacklist status are monitored to help ensure safer warm-up and stronger deliverability.
• Daily sending volume control - You can track deliverability for each account and set the maximum number of emails it can send per day.
• Warm-up status tracking for every account - Each connected email account will show warm-up status, so you know when accounts are ready for outreach.

As you can, with this powerful tool and Skylead, your outreach remains secure, effective, and truly limitless.  

Native image & GIF personalization

If you want your messages to stand out and be memorable, visuals are a powerful tool.

Luckily, our native image & GIF personalization makes it easy to create eye-catching visuals that are bound to get noticed.

You can use our built-in editor to customize images and GIFs with your and your prospect’s name, picture, company logo, or any other detail that speaks directly to them. However, you don’t have to customize one by one.

This hyper-personalized approach not only looks good; it actually gets results! In fact, our users have seen response rates soar by as much as 76% simply by adding personalized images and GIFs to their outreach. 

So, if you want to make a lasting impression and boost engagement, this feature is your go-to.

Skylead use cases

Skylead users include:

• Sales professionals
• Marketing experts
• Agencies
• Recruiters

Now, let’s see how these teams are using Skylead:

Pricing

Skylead has an all-in-one pricing plan of $100 per seat/month.

Average rating: ⭐ 4,8 / 5

2. OptinMonster

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This is another tool you can use to automate lead generation. Marketing teams typically use it for e-commerce lead capture. However, B2B marketers frequently use it for their lead-generation efforts as well. 

OptinMonster is a software that offers automated lead generation forms presented as pop-ups, slide-in windows, and gamified spin-to-win wheels. Moreover, you can place these pop-ups or forms on any landing page. 

That said, these automated forms help you gather contact information to: 

• Build an email list for your email campaigns, 
• Display personalized content, 
• Nurture your visitors through their customer journey.

Features

OptinMonster’s main advantage is that it turns your website visitors into paying customers, webinar attendees, or newsletter subscribers. 

That said, many B2B marketing teams use these forms to increase their conversion rate, thanks to:

• Page-level targeting - You can display pop-ups, forms, and notifications based on the user’s interaction with different landing pages.
• Exit-intent technology - OptinMonster monitors visitors’ movements and detects when they plan to exit the page without leaving their contact information or making a purchase. This feature can boost conversion rates and, as part of your content strategy, increase newsletter subscribers and webinar sign-ups for future campaigns.
• Lightbox pop-up - This type of pop-up appears based on triggers, prompting visitors to make a choice with minimal distractions as the background content fades. Thus, it keeps their attention focused on the decision.
• On-site retargeting - You can show returning visitors something new every time they return to your website. Simply create pop-ups to show new promotions or offers based on their previous interactions on your website. 
• List segmentation - Reduce website abandonment and churn by personalizing content for leads on your email list and website. What’s more, you can integrate OptinMonster with any CRM app, such as HubSpot or email automation software, to further adjust your messaging. 

? Pro tip: Create a synergy between your marketing and sales teams. Once you generate leads through OptinMonster, you can push them automatically to your Skylead sales or marketing campaign through API.

Pricing

OptinMonster has 4 pricing plans:

In addition, they offer around 40% off per month if you opt-in for an annual subscription.

Average rating: ⭐ 4,3 / 5 

3. Moosend.com

In general, Moosend is an email automation tool that helps you create and send personalized newsletters to your leads. It’s most suitable for small businesses specializing in e-commerce. However, this automation tool can be used for B2B email campaigns as well.

Features

One of the best things about Moosend is that you can create newsletters or pop-up banners with a simple drag-and-drop. 

In addition, they leverage AI to analyze the data from your website, such as your subscriber behavior. This way, you can send more personalized messages or email notifications and maximize customer experience and retention.

That said, similar to Skylead, you can use this marketing automation tool to create a sequence with if/else conditions, such as “if the purchase was made” and so on. This way, you can check for your subscribers’ actions and send suitable follow-up messages.  

Moosend offers a vast library of templates for creating newsletters or landing pages for email marketing campaigns. Whichever you choose, you’d be glad to hear that every template comes with device optimization functionalities. 

Next, you can group leads from your email list and send separate messages. You can divide the leads based on keywords, if they clicked on the link in the previous email, etc. 

Like OptinMonster, Moosend can help you gather new leads and increase your lead generation efforts. In other words, it offers customizable forms like pop-ups to promote your lead magnets, like webinars, and create email lists. 

Lastly, you can integrate Moosend with your CRM, such as HubSpot, or other apps to streamline your related tasks.

Pricing

Moosend has 3 pricing systems:

• Pro - This plan is suitable for small businesses because it goes from as low as $9 per month for up to 500 subscribers. On the other hand, this plan goes as high as $5840 a month for up to 1M subscribers. 
• Moosend+ - Contains everything in Pro, plus add-ons of your choice. However, you need to reach out to Moosend directly to get a custom quote for this one.
• Enterprise - This plan is for agencies. Pricing is also custom-made, so contact their team for details.

Average rating: ⭐ 4,6 / 5

4. Mailchimp

Another email automation software on our list is Mailchimp. 

This marketing automation tool started as software that helps marketers create newsletters in the e-commerce environment. However, it has developed into a more well-rounded automated lead generation tool. 

Features

Email marketing

Firstly, Mailchimp offers an email automation tool for sending newsletters or other messaging material to your subscribers. You can create your own message design or use the template. 

Regarding targeting, you can segment your leads based on their behavior, such as: 

• Campaign activity, 
• Location, 
• If the last email opened, 
• App activity, etc.

Lead generation

Mailchimp offers a couple of features that are perfect for B2B lead generation. 

Firstly, they have their own website builder to create beautifully designed landing pages for your new leads. In addition, you can make it from scratch or from the numerous templates they offer.

Secondly, they offer sign-up and pop-up forms for your website to generate potential customers. Moreover, you can also integrate their free appointment scheduling tool so potential leads can book calls with your sales team. 

Lastly, Mailchimp offers a campaign manager that combines social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads, into one dashboard. This way, you can target potential leads with interests similar to those of your current contacts. You can also retarget visitors as they browse the web or social media. 

Automated customer journeys

Last but not least, Mailchimp has a function to enhance user experience with Customer Journey Builder. In other words, you can automate activities, such as emails and follow-ups, according to your leads’ behavior and nurture them to conversion. 

Moreover, you can integrate Mailchimp with any app, including your CRM of choice or LinkedIn outreach solution for omnichannel presence.

Pricing

Mailchimp offers 4 plans with the following highlighted features:

• A free plan is for up to 1K emails sent. It includes forms, landing pages, and pre-built email templates.
• The Essentials plan starts at $13 a month. This plan includes up to 5K emails sent, 3 audiences, and simple automated customer journeys.
• The Standard plan starts at $20 a month. It includes up to 6K emails sent, 5 audiences, enhanced customer journeys, newsletter templates, a predictive analytics tool, and a campaign manager.
• The Premium plan costs $350 per month. It includes everything from other plans plus 150K emails sent, as well as advanced segmentation and targeting.

Average rating: ⭐ 4,4 / 5 

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5. Tidio

As mentioned before, one of the best ways to capture leads is via live chat or chatbot. And Tidio is one of many on the market. 

This tool can automatically collect and qualify leads based on their website behavior. For example, let’s say a visitor lands on your pricing page. A chatbot can then ask if they are interested in a custom quote, and if they are, invite them to leave their contact information. 

Moreover, you can set Tidio to answer FAQs, offer news, or upsell your users. This way, you’re leaving time for your support team to focus on burning problems while improving your customer experience. 

Pricing

Tidio offers a couple of plans:

Average rating: ⭐ 4,7 / 5

Automated lead generation examples

So, you know how to automate your lead generation and the tools to use when doing so.

Now, let’s walk you through real-life examples of automated inbound and outbound lead generation. And what better way to do so than to use our very own?

a. Outbound lead generation automation example

In October 2023, we launched Skylead 3.0 on Product Hunt and received an incredible 2nd place.

But that wouldn't have been possible if we didn't automate our outbound lead generation.

Namely, what we did several months before the launch was find leads using Product Hunt LinkedIn groups.

Why these groups, though? Because they’re filled with individuals already interested in Product Hunt. And since the purpose was to generate leads who’d vote for us once we launched, these individuals were highly valuable.

The first step was to identify such groups. Then, we took advantage of LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters, specifically the ''Group'' filter, to isolate their members so we could add them to our campaigns. 

The next step was to create a targeted outreach campaign using Skylead.

To do so, we copied the search URL from Sales Navigator. 

Then, we visited a Campaigns page in Skylead and clicked the ‘’Create’’ button.

We gave the campaign a name, selected the Sales Navigator search result as the campaign type, and pasted the URL. We also decided to go with 2nd and 3rd-degree connections and clicked Next.

Moving on, we defined email, LinkedIn, and global settings and proceeded to create a Smart sequence.

Here's an example of a Smart sequence one of us created for this purpose.

Moreover, since Skylead supports A/B testing of up to 5 different subject lines and messages, we decided to add a few variants to see what drives the best results.

To maximize the number of leads we got to and get more votes, each member of our team kicked off their own campaign. But first, we turned off the option to include leads from other team campaigns to avoid contacting the same individuals.

b. Inbound lead generation automation example

To naturally attract leads, we decided to create a lead magnet that our audience would find genuinely useful. That’s how our sales eBook came to life—built on the same principles and strategies we used to scale Skylead.

The eBook was a collaboration between our marketing and sales teams. Alongside creating the content, we also designed a brand-new landing page with a form to collect lead information. Once someone filled out the form, they were instantly redirected to a page where they could download the eBook for free.

However, the eBook didn’t benefit only those who downloaded it. Thanks to the lead generation form, we were able to capture the email addresses of inbound leads that we later used in outreach.

We compiled them all into a CSV file and used it to create a CSV-based campaign in Skylead. As a result, we managed to convert a high percentage of warm leads into paying customers.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Can you automate lead generation?

Yes, you can automate lead generation using a variety of tools designed to perform repetitive tasks like prospecting and outreach. By setting up automated workflows, you can streamline these processes and generate leads consistently, thus saving time and boosting efficiency.

What is the fastest way to generate leads?

The fastest way to generate leads often involves combining inbound and outbound automation. Using targeted ads and automated outreach emails to quickly identify, engage, and convert leads with minimal manual effort.

What are the ethical considerations when automating lead generation on LinkedIn?

When automating lead generation on LinkedIn, it's vital to maintain transparency and respect user privacy. Avoid spamming and ensure all automated interactions provide value to potential leads. Ethical automation respects LinkedIn's terms of service, focusing on building genuine connections rather than exploiting the platform.

How can businesses ensure the quality of leads when using automation tools?

To ensure the quality of leads when using automation tools, you should define clear target parameters and continuously refine your ideal customer profile. Utilizing advanced filtering options and personalized outreach messages can significantly increase the relevance and quality of automated lead generation efforts.

Can automation tools integrate with other CRM platforms, and how does this affect lead management?

Many automation tools like Skylead are designed to integrate seamlessly with CRM platforms, enhancing lead management processes. This integration allows for the automatic update of lead information and activities, providing a unified view of the sales funnel and enabling more efficient tracking, nurturing, and conversion of leads.

Automate lead generation to skyrocket your leads

80% of marketing automation users experience an increase in the number of leads, and even 77% an increase in conversion. That is no small number to ignore. 

That said, we hope this article helped you understand how you can automate your lead generation activities.

However, before you do, create a good-quality basis for the automation, starting from your website, content strategy, and LinkedIn profile. Only then will you be able to pave the way for successful lead generation automation. 

Once you go automation, you will also start looking at your other tasks and ask yourself:

‘’Can I automate that?’’

So, don’t wait a second longer! Sign up for Skylead’s 7-day free trial and automate your lead generation away!

Updated on: September 15th, 2026

Disclaimer: Skylead is not affiliated, endorsed by, or connected with LinkedIn in any way.

Gone are the days of going through business cards, calling prospects left and right, only to close a deal. Over the years, numerous sales outreach tools have emerged, all aimed at streamlining prospecting and lead generation.

Yet, because there are so many of them, today's sales reps are often at a crossroads, wondering which tool they would benefit the most from.

To help you choose, we've tested the top cold outreach solutions on the market and are sharing our two cents. 

So, if you are looking for the perfect outreach software for sales, brace yourself—the ultimate breakdown of tools is coming!

Sales outreach tools overview

TL;DR? Here’s a quick comparison table to help you pick your ideal tool complete with what each is best for, its pros and cons, starting price, and user rating.

Updated on 14.5.2025.

What are sales outreach tools?

Sales outreach tools are software or platforms designed to facilitate and streamline the sales outreach process. These tools automate repetitive tasks such as sending messages and follow-up emails, leaving you with more time to focus on researching and nurturing your leads to conversion.

To clarify, with sales outreach tools, sales teams can:

• Get to more prospects faster,
• Maximize touchpoints through multichannel outreach,
• Personalize communication,
• Segment prospects according to their stage in the sales funnel,
• and close more deals.

Benefits of using outreach tools for sales

Why are sales teams increasingly turning to outreach tools? Because of the evident benefits of doing so. For example,  McKinnsey’s research confirms that about a third of all sales tasks can and should be automated.

And we agree, but here are other benefits we’ve discovered using sales outreach tools. 

Firstly, there's the increased productivity. With an outreach aid that automates manual tasks, sales reps can shift focus to high-value activities like nurturing leads. 

Secondly, sales outreach software can often integrate with various platforms. As a result, you get a centralized hub for all sales activities. This reduces the time spent switching between tools and streamlines the entire sales process—from prospecting to conversion.

Lastly, we cannot discuss the benefits of using a sales outreach solution without mentioning scalability. With features like A/B testing, sales teams can optimize their outreach strategies based on data-driven insights. This leads to improved results, as teams can quickly identify what works best and scale with their winning approach accordingly. As a result, you get an influx of leads and customers, all without a drop in performance. 

26 Best sales outreach tools

You're sold on using sales outreach tools but aren't sure which one(s) to choose. We've spent extensive time testing top-tier software, so you don't have to! Now, let's review our top picks to bring you closer to the answer!

#1 Skylead - Best overall sales outreach tool for smart, hyper-personalized multichannel outreach

That’s us! Hi! ?

Skylead is a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software, the first on the market to introduce Smart sequences. It's the outreach software for sales teams looking to book 3x more meetings and save +11 hours weekly on manual work.

Pros

Skylead is a one-stop-shop outreach tool, meaning it has everything a salesperson might need — in one place! That said, it comes with solutions for:

• Account-based prospecting
• AI data enrichment
• LinkedIn and email outreach
• Unlimited email automation
• Email discovery & verification
• Image & GIF personalization
• Email warm-up

Its highlight feature is Smart sequences, a revolutionary algorithm that allows you to take full advantage of multichannel outreach. With Smart sequences, you can combine LinkedIn and email outreach actions and if/else conditions. The sequence unfolds based on the prospect's behavior, adapting as it goes to find the fastest path to them. 

Speaking of email outreach, Skylead lets you connect unlimited email accounts at no extra cost. Moreover, the software supports inbox rotation, which means that you can send tens of thousands of emails per month with it. And to make sure these land in the primary inbox (not spam), we've partnered up with Mailivery -a leading email warm-up tool - to bring you infinite email warm-up. And guess what? It’s completely free for all Skylead users!

Skylead also consolidates all your communications into one Smart inbox, allowing you to manage all messages seamlessly. Furthermore, it lets you organize chats with labels to keep track of conversions and measure ROI.

The software also stands out due to its native image & GIF personalization feature and variables for personalizing messages. We've run the numbers, and as it turns out, these two combined have brought our response rate to 76%!

In addition, Skylead offers account-based prospecting. With it you can:

• Create account lists directly in Skylead
• And discover contacts by company to reach them out.

In other words, once you add your companies, Skylead can help you find and match contacts within those selected companies so your pipeline stays aligned to your ICP. This way, you can really zero in on your target companies that are most likely to convert.

Moreover, you can enrich these leads and companies thanks to  AI data enrichment. In other words, you can use it to:

1. Enrich contact & company data
2. Prompt AI to get specified info or generate personalized icebreakers for each contact
3. Use all gathered info directly inside your sequences as variables.

It’s Clay-like in what it can uncover, but it’s connected to your outreach workflow, so you avoid constant tool switching and data importing.

This sales engagement platform lets sales reps in on in-depth analytics and allows for A/B testing of different subject lines and messages. Thanks to these, you'll surely find something that strikes a chord with your target audience! 

Also, if you want to push lead or campaign data to your CRM, you can! Skylead integrates with any software via webhooks or API.

Lastly, if you're working with an international sales team, you'll love that our tool is available in 7 different languages, including:

• Spanish
• Portuguese
• French
• German
• Italian
• Dutch
• Arabic

…making it even easier to collaborate globally.

Cons

It's not that it's ours, but we truly haven't found any "real" cons to using Skylead. Why, yes, Skylead doesn’t have a video customization feature. Nonetheless, our users can use Sendspark's AI-powered Dynamic Video Functionality to personalize videos on top of images. Moreover, all Skylead users can get 50% off their first month with Sendspark. Just create your account on their platform and use the promo code ''SKYLEAD50'' to claim the offer.

What others said about Skylead

Allen F. shares our enthusiasm for the platform and mentions how Skylead revolutionizes your campaigns! He is particularly fond of the library of campaign templates that are easy to tweak. He even says you can have your first campaign running in about 15 minutes! 

Alex S. has also had nothing but good things to say about Skylead. He even went so far as to say that this product has literally changed the way he works! He praises the interface and notes how building detailed sequences with the tool is incredibly easy.

Still wondering whether Skylead can deliver results? Check out everything that our client, Dennis Goyal, had to say about using it! ?

Pricing

Skylead offers an all-in-one solution priced at $100 per seat per month. If you've got a steady seat count, though, you can also opt for our annual plan, which gives you 2 months free.

AI data enrichment acts as an add-on. What makes this pricing truly different is simple: our core value is not to make money from these credits, and it will never be our business model. Credits are priced based on the actual costs of our third-party providers (OpenAI, Bright Data, etc), and we offer a special rate of $1 for 100 credits.  We also negotiate volume discounts with our providers. This means that, as overall usage across all users increases, costs will decrease and will be passed back to our users. This makes AI data enrichment up to 95% more cost-effective compared to similar tools on the market. This makes it the most cost-effective and the most comprehensive tool on this list.

And if you’re an agency looking to white label Skylead, reach out to our sales team to get more details on how that can be done.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.8 (17)
• Product Hunt: 4.9 (59)

Skylead overview

Now, let’s compare Skylead to the remaining 25 sales outreach tools!

#2 Expandi - Best for automated LinkedIn profile engagement

Expandi is another cloud-based sales outreach platform designed for LinkedIn and email automation.

Pros

We discovered that, much like Skylead, Expandi comes equipped with Smart sequences. These allow for multichannel outreach and support additional LinkedIn actions that engage users’ profiles, such as auto-post likes and auto-endorsements.

Expandi automates sending personalized LinkedIn messages, emails, and free inMails. There are also a variety of templates to choose from, many of which can be extremely useful. 

Cons

While playing around with Expandi, we noticed that it lacks a native image and GIF personalization feature. Although we were able to personalize images thanks to their integration with Hyperise, we had to pay extra for it. 

Finally, the tool cannot discover and verify email addresses unless they are publicly available on someone's LinkedIn profile. In other words, this makes it an incomplete tool for seamless email outreach and positions Expandi alternatives as superior.

What others said about Expandi

Overall, the reviews are somewhat similar to our conclusions. For example, Adi R. notes that Expandi is easy to use, intuitive, and good for automating tasks. However, he isn't overly happy about having to perform certain tasks manually since the tool doesn't handle them.

Pricing

• Business: $99/mo per seat + $69/mo per seat for image & GIF personalization (via Hyperise)
• Agency: Custom

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (31)

Skylead vs. Expandi

#3 Zopto - Best for automating likes & greetings on LinkedIn

Zopto falls into the category of cloud-based multichannel sales outreach tools.

Pros

Zopto has a Smart Sequences feature, which is fairly new to the market. We tested it out and noticed that we can form outreach flows from different LinkedIn and email actions and conditions.

Speaking of LinkedIn actions, in addition to automating standard ones (e.g., View profile, Follow, Invite to connect, etc.), the tool can also automate likes, endorsements, and even greetings (birthdays, anniversaries, job changes). 

Cons

Despite its email enrichment capabilities, Zopto is limited to discovering 5,000 contacts a month, as compared to Skylead, which has an unlimited email discovery feature. Additionally, the latter has a higher success rate in finding verified emails.

One of Zopto's main selling points is Zhoo, its AI assistant. Yes, it sounds innovative, but it's essentially just a ChatGPT 4 integration used for generating emails and messages. We found it more cost-effective to use a different sales outreach tool and simply pay for a ChatGPT Plus subscription. 

But do you truly need one? It depends. Our sales team has compared GPT-generated sales copy against our own and saw better results with the latter. However, we're not opposed to using ChatGPT for sales—it can be quite helpful, especially when inspiration is lacking.

As Zopto’s final con, when we wanted to analyze our campaign results, we found no option to export a report.

What others said about Zopto

Eldar L.mentions that Zopto makes creating and running several campaigns at a time easy. Nevertheless, he finds it inconvenient that the tool lacks detailed analytics. And he’s right. We noticed that statistics are only presented as pie charts, which, frankly, don't offer much clarity on the campaign's performance.

Pricing

• Basic: $197/mo per seat
• Pro: $297/mo per seat
• Agency & Enterprise Basic: Starting at $156/mo per seat (minimum 2 users)
• Agency & Enterprise Pro: Starting at $237/mo per seat (minimum 2 users)

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (66)

Skylead vs. Zopto

#4 Lemlist - Best for ensuring email deliverability

Lemlist is a cloud-based email outreach tool. However, when we tested it, we noticed that it has a Chrome extension for LinkedIn prospecting and outreach.

Pros

Lemlist is primarily an email outreach tool that sales teams can use to set up unlimited email campaigns. It also supports multichannel campaign creation, making it possible to incorporate LinkedIn actions and calls (through AirCall integration) into your outreach flow.

This tool allows for advanced personalization thanks to custom intro lines, images, and engaging landing pages. 

Lemlist also has Lemwarm, a warm-up and deliverability booster designed to prevent your emails from ending up in spam.

What we found particularly interesting is their integration with the website tracking tool, Snitcher. This means you can identify company-level traffic on your website and, based on that, send relevant prospects to a Lemlist campaign.

They’ve also recently added an AI helper to their offerings, which helps users segment leads, create outreach sequences, write messages, and analyze replies.

Cons

We don't like how Lemlist uses a Chrome extension to scrape information from LinkedIn. Chrome extensions inject code into LinkedIn that this platform can easily detect and penalize you for. Therefore, it compromises the safety of your LinkedIn account.

Also, Lemlist can indeed find and verify leads’ email addresses. However, it’s worth noting that the highest plan includes only 1,000 credits. If your requirements exceed this limit, you’ll need to pay extra to have the tool find and verify additional emails. The same goes for using Lemwarm, as it’s not included in the pricing.

The last thing we didn’t like is that we needed to pay per email account (mailbox), compared to Skylead, which supports adding unlimited email accounts at no extra charge. With it, you just need to pay per LinkedIn account.

What others said about Lemlist

Darpan C. thinks Lemlist is a complete email outreach tool. He loves the interface, variables, and A/B testing capabilities. Nonetheless, he believes analytics could be more extensive.

Pricing

• Free Plan: $0 (available as Chrome extension / LinkedIn scraper)
• Email Pro: $69/mo per 3 mailboxes
• Multichannel Expert: $99/mo per 5 mailboxes (billed annually)
• Enterprise: Custom

If you require additional mailboxes, you can add them to your plan at $9 per mailbox. 

You can also purchase additional email verification credits, where 1 credit costs $0.01. Keep in mind that you can’t purchase fewer than 5,000 credits, though.

Contrary to Mailivery- which Skylead users get access to for free - Lemlist’s email warm-up feature, Lemwarm, is also billed separately and starts at $29 per mailbox per month.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (388)

Skylead vs. Lemlist

#5 Reply - Best sales software for semi-automated multichannel outreach

Reply is a multichannel, cloud-based outreach software. Nonetheless, it also has a Chrome extension for contact enrichment and outreach automation.

Pros

We’ve discovered that Reply can handle tasks across multiple channels, both automated and semi-automated.

When it comes to automated actions, it can:

• Send emails
• Like recent posts (LinkedIn)

Meanwhile, actions like:

• Profile views,
• Connection requests,
• LinkedIn messages,
• And inMails.

…can be both automated and semi-automated, depending on how you set them up.

Setting up a campaign with Reply is straightforward: you decide on the steps, then add your prospects. You can also add triggers to your sequence, similar to the conditions you’d find in Skylead. Plus, every mailbox you connect gets email warm-up included, which helps improve deliverability.

It's also worth mentioning that Reply supportsA/B testing for email copy and offers pre-made email and sequence templates, like Skylead. Alternatively, you can create sequences from scratch or have AI generate them for you. 

Speaking of AI, their new SDR feature, Jason AI, can even identify your ideal leads, write your initial outreach messages, handle replies, and book meetings. Though this is part of the AI SDR plans only.

Finally, Reply also lets you track your campaign performance step-by-step, supports integrations via Zapier, and natively integrates with Pipedrive and HubSpot.

Cons

Reply’s smart inbox allows users to manage their emails efficiently. However, it doesn't support the management of messages received from other platforms as Skylead does.

At the beginning, we mentioned that Reply has a Chrome extension for discovering and enriching contacts. While this may seem like a pro, it's not particularly useful, especially when enriching contacts via LinkedIn. As already said, Chrome extensions inject code into LinkedIn, which the platform can detect, making them unsafe to use.

What others said about Reply

Terry L. loves Reply's multi-step campaign builder that can automate the email-sending process and semi-automate LinkedIn actions. Although the platform was buggy initially, he admits the team quickly resolved issues.

However, Terry wasn’t the only one to report issues with the platform. Multiple users had the same complaints. Some have even said that the support team isn’t equipped to handle them.

Pricing

• Email Blast: Starts from $59/mo per user / 1 mailbox
• Multichannel: Starts from $99/mo per user / 5 mailboxes
• AI SDR Starter: Starts from $300/mo
• AI SDR Growth: Starts from $1,500/mo
• Agency Starter: Starts from $166/mo
• Agency Advanced: Tailored

Reply also charges extra for its add-ons:

• LinkedIn automation: $69/month per account
• Calls & SMS: $29/month per account
• AI & Live Data: Starts at $39/month for 200 credits
• Email Validation: Starts at $20/month for 5,000 validations

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (96)

Skylead vs. Reply

#6 Snov.io - Best for email enrichment

Snov.io is a cloud-based multichannel outreach tool, though it started as an email-only platform. 

Nonetheless, it comes with a Chrome extension, a.k.a. LinkedIn prospect finder.

Pros

While testing Snov.io, we've concluded that its email verifier produces fairly accurate data. 

Snov.io also eliminates the need for email warm-up tools. Namely, the tool has an email warm-up feature, like Lemlist and Reply.io, which automatically initiates realistic email conversations on your behalf. Furthermore, it marks emails as important, reads them, and moves them from spam to the inbox to enhance the sender’s reputation.

We also liked that it’s conditional, multichannel campaigns are easy to set up, and you can play around with different variables and email templates while doing so. Like Skylead, the software lets you connect as many email accounts as you want and supports mailbox rotation.

Snov.io recently added LinkedIn account rotation, as well, making it possible to distribute actions across multiple LinkedIn accounts (up to 5).

It even has a built-in CRM, which saves you money by eliminating the need to pay for additional software.

Cons

Since the tool uses a Chrome extension to find prospects on LinkedIn, it isn't the safest to use.

What’s more, if you're looking to discover a large number of emails or contact many leads, this tool might not be the best fit. Their top-tier subscription offers 100,000 email finder credits and lets you reach out to 100,000 recipients. However, we found it overly expensive —  especially when compared to Skylead, which allows for unlimited email discovery and sending at a cost 7x lower.

What others said about Snov.io

Yevhen B. praises Snov.io’s drip campaigns and the ability to track open, click, and reply rates. Nonetheless, he says that the interface can overwhelm new users and that the email enrichment process can be slow.

Pricing

• Trial: $0
• Starter: $39/mo per seat
• Pro: $99 / $189 / $369 / $738/mo per seat, depending on the number of credits (1 credit = 1 prospect found, 1 email found, or 1 email verified).
• Managed Service: Starting at $3,999/mo

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (215)

Skylead vs. Snov.io

#7 Closely - Best sales outreach tool for campaign tracking

Closely is another cloud-based multichannel sales outreach tool with a Chrome extension for finding emails on LinkedIn and data scraping.

Pros

We liked its intuitive dashboard. From there, it’s easy to navigate to the multichannel campaign builder, where you can combine different LinkedIn actions and emails into a Smart sequence.

The tool also comes with an AI agent that acts like a virtual SDR. It can qualify your leads, perform company research, and personalize your message automatically.

Moreover, Closely makes campaign tracking effortless thanks to its streamlined stats page. It also makes it possible to export stats to a CSV file. In the meantime, if you wish to send the data to another software, you can do it via webhooks.

Cons

As opposed to Skylead, the lead source for email outreach campaigns can only be a CSV file with leads’ information. Speaking of CSV files, while the tool enables you to export statistics in this format, it does not support PDF exports like Skylead does.

Yes, the software can automate profile views, post likes, endorsements, connection requests, and messages on LinkedIn. Still, the crucial outreach component is missing: inMails.

We also noticed you can have no more than 25 campaigns running simultaneously.

Lastly, since a Chrome extension is involved, the safety of your LinkedIn account can be compromised when using the tool.

What others said about Closely

Muhammad Abdullah A. believes Closely is easy to set up, like us. The only problem is he can’t use it to contact his 1st LinkedIn connections.

Pricing

• Starter: $189/mo for 1 sender*
• Growth: $389/mo for 3 senders + 15,000 credits**
• Essential: $769/mo for 10 senders + 50,000 credits
• Enterprise: Custom

*1 sender = 1 LinkedIn + 1 email account
**Credits can be used for finding emails, LinkedIn enrichment, or AI-powered tasks.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (155)

Skylead vs. Closely

#8 Waalaxy - Best tool for beginners to multichannel outreach

Waalaxy is a cloud-based software with a LinkedIn Chrome extension, aimed at automating sales teams’ LinkedIn and email outreach.

Pros

Waalaxy is great for beginners to outreach who don’t have much technical knowledge. With it, you can create a multichannel campaign from a:

• LinkedIn search URL
• Sales Navigator search URL
• Recruiter search URL
• LinkedIn post URL
• Sales Navigator lead list
• CSV file

The tool also supports A/B testing and message personalization, courtesy of variables. Plus, it has customizable pre-filled message templates and an AI writing assistant, Waami.

Additionally, we found pushing leads from Waalaxy to a CRM using Zapier webhooks straightforward.

Cons

Unlike Skylead, which offers customizable sequence templates and the opportunity to create a sequence from scratch, Waalaxy limits users to pre-built options. 

Waalaxy charges extra for the inbox, too, which makes it less cost-effective. 

Finally, the tool connects via a Chrome extension to your LinkedIn account. Naturally, we don’t recommend using it if you want to keep your LinkedIn account restriction-free.

What others said about Waalaxy

Shekh Riazul I. swears Waalaxy's UI is extremely easy to use and navigate. Nonetheless, the software sometimes has a hard time detecting the account. He also frequently has to wait for the Dashboard to load.

Pricing

• Pro: $43/mo per seat
• Advanced: $88/mo per seat
• Business: $131/mo per seat
• Elite: $538/mo per seat
• Enterprise: Custom

Waalaxy also charges $34/month for access to the LinkedIn inbox.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (252)

Skylead vs. Waalaxy

#9 Instantly - Best for straightforward email outreach

Instantly is a cloud-based software for email outreach at scale.

But it actually offers more than that. Namely, it comes with a built-in B2B lead database of over 160 million contacts and a lightweight CRM that includes a Unibox, where you can manage conversations across all your connected inboxes.

Pros

Instantly allows you to connect unlimited email accounts and supports inbox rotation, like Skylead, which helps safeguard and protect your domain.

Moreover, it features an unlimited email warm-up function to guarantee email deliverability. The tool also enables you to personalize your emails with variables and schedule them as needed.

We couldn’t help but notice how straightforward Instantly.ai is. And if you aren’t interested in leveraging LinkedIn outreach, this might just be one of the best tools.

Cons

Instantly isn't designed for multichannel outreach.

Why, yes, the tool can verify email addresses. However, verification credits aren’t part of the subscription plan. As such, they incur an additional cost.

What others said about Instantly

James O. states that Instantly helped him increase his outreach at a low price compared to other sales tools. However, he thinks the software is a bit limited in terms of salesflow customization, and we agree.

Pricing

Instantly has 3 different pricing categories depending on the solutions offered. This means that, if you want to access their full suite, you’ll need to subscribe to each category separately.

Sending & Warmup plans (for email warm-up and outreach):

• Growth: $37/mo per seat
• Hypergrowth: $97/mo per seat
• Light Speed: $358/mo per seat

Leads plans (grant access to the B2B lead database):

• Growth Leads: $47/mo per seat
• Supersonic Leads: $97/mo per seat
• Hyperleads: $197/mo per seat
• Light Speed: $492/mo per seat

CRM plans:

• Growth CRM: $47/mo per seat
• Hyper CRM: $97/mo per seat

Rating

• G2: 4.8 (3,668)

Skylead vs. Instantly

#10 HubSpot Sales Hub - Best for building personalized email sequences

HubSpot Sales Hub is HubSpot’s powerful, cloud-based outreach solution for sales teams.

Pros

The tool is great for building personalized email sequences. With it, you can automate emails and follow-ups. However, you can also set reminders to send emails or inMails manually, make calls, or send invites to connect on LinkedIn.

In addition, the software lets you run multiple A/B tests on your email sequences.

Cons

Building multichannel campaigns with HubSpot Sales Hub isn’t possible at this time.

At the same time, this isn’t a complete sales outreach software. You could use it if you’re a complete novice to outreach. But why not subscribe to Skylead and integrate it with HubSpot instead?

Hungry for multichannel sales tactics, Smart sequence blueprints, and tried-and-tested outreach templates you can use alongside Skylead and HubSpot? Grab the free Sales Playbook packed with the exact recipes we used to grow our user base from 2,500 to 10,000+ in just 9 months!

What others said about HubSpot Sales Hub

Fernando P. finds HubSpot's interface and customer support great. He loves having all leads and customer journeys under one system. Still, he notes the tool could be improved with AI so as to provide more valuable insights.

Pricing

HubSpot Sales Hub divides its plans into 2 categories based on company size:

For individuals & small teams

• Sales Hub Starter: Starts at €15/mo per seat
• Starter Customer Platform: Starts at €15/mo per seat
• Sales Hub Professional: Starts at €90/mo per seat

For businesses & enterprises

• Sales Hub Professional: Starts at €90/mo per seat
• Sales Hub Enterprise: Starts at €150/mo per seat

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (481)

Skylead vs. HubSpot Sales Hub

#11 Dripify - Best sales outreach tool for its ability to integrate with various software

Originally a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool, Dripify has since evolved into a full-blown multichannel sales outreach platform by adding the email channel into the mix.

Pros

Dripify is a great tool for anyone interested in social selling on LinkedIn. 

The software can connect to LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter Lite accounts. It can extract leads from LinkedIn search URLs, LinkedIn events, LinkedIn groups, CSV files, or your network.

It now also supports email outreach, making it a more well-rounded solution. What’s more, you can find and verify email addresses directly inside the platform without the need for external tools.

Its notable feature is drip campaigns, which rely on a sequence of different actions, conditions, and delays. It’s also praised for its ability to integrate with numerous software thanks to webhooks.

Cons

While Dripify now supports multichannel outreach, in contrast to Skylead, it’s still missing some important features. For one, it doesn’t offer A/B testing, which limits your ability to experiment with different subject lines and message/email copy.

Furthermore, you can’t bring your A-game to personalization with it since no image personalization feature is available.

At the same time, the tool doesn’t support campaign creation from LinkedIn posts or Sales Navigator lead lists, as some Dripify alternatives do. And while you can automate it to send free inMails, the same doesn’t apply to paid ones.

Finally, Dripify’s team doesn’t provide one-on-one onboarding, so you’re left to figure out the tool’s functionalities on your own.

What others said about Dripify

Don F. believes Dripify is a solid communication platform for keeping in touch with LinkedIn connections.

Pricing

• Basic: $59/mo per user
• Pro: $79/mo per user
• Advanced: $99/mo per user
• Enterprise: Custom

Rating

• Capterra: 4.7 (475)

Skylead vs. Dripify

#12 SalesLoft - Best sales outreach solution for building and managing pipelines

SalesLoft isn’t your typical sales outreach tool. It’s a cloud-based platform used for sales engagement.

Pros

The platform combines multiple tools that help salespeople increase and manage pipelines. As such, it goes beyond outreach. Nevertheless, SalesLoft's cadences (campaigns, if you will) that combine email, phone, and Sales Navigator steps make it one of the best sales outreach tools. 

We have found the tool’s email tracking, analytics, and A/B testing a boon! We were also happy to find out that the software comes with nifty email templates that can be customized for added personalization. There’s also an option to save new ones!

Cons

The tool only integrates with Sales Navigator, no LinkedIn Premium and/or Recruiter accounts.

Furthermore, unlike Skylead, Salesloft lacks Smart sequences. Consequently, its users are unable to maximize touchpoints with leads, resulting in less personalized outreach flows and lost opportunities for lead generation.

What others said about SalesLoft

James W. is absolutely sold on the customer support that the SalesLoft team provides. However, he admits the platform can become slow.  

Many people have also mentioned that the SalesLoft dialer isn’t up to par. Additionally, they've pointed out that the tool is quite expensive.

Pricing

• Advanced: Available upon contact
• Premier: Available upon contact

SalesLoft doesn’t publicly disclose its pricing because it’s tailored to each company based on its size and requirements. We’ll respect their decision and won’t say how much we’ve paid during our short time with them. However, the word on the street is that people are paying anywhere from $120 to $165 per account.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.3 (221)

Skylead vs. SalesLoft

#13 Yesware - Best sales software for Gmail & Outlook outreach

Yesware is a sales outreach platform that integrates directly with Gmail & Outlook through a Chrome extension.

Pros

Yesware, like Skylead, allows for:

• Multichannel campaign creation (you can connect your Sales Navigator account to the tool),
• Automated follow-ups in case of no reply,
• Email & attachment tracking (open rate),
• Advanced email performance analysis.

Additionally, it supports:

• Scheduling meetings and calls,
• Setting follow-up reminders.

The platform also has email templates available to personalize as you see fit. We also like how it lets you save your own templates.

Cons

Based on our personal experience with the tool, we can tell you that Yesware doesn't track email deliverability rates.

In addition, its primary focus is email outreach, while LinkedIn outreach takes a backseat. This is clear because the tool only works with Sales Navigator accounts. LinkedIn Basic, Premium, and Recruiter users can’t do much with it—other than automate their cold emailing.

Also, when setting up a multichannel campaign with Yesware, you are limited to 2 Sales Navigator actions: sending a connection request and an InMail. The tool doesn’t perform these actions automatically, either! Instead, it simply alerts you when it's time to complete them manually.

What others said about Yesware

Kim R. believes Yeware is decent, easy-to-use software. She is happy with the customer support provided and likes its real-time reporting and analytics features. Yet, she thinks it’s expensive and not so easy to integrate with other programs. Also, she found some features too complex. 

Pricing

• Free
• Pro: $19/mo per seat
• Premium: $45/mo per seat
• Enterprise: $85/mo per seat
• Custom Plan: Contact sales

Rating

• Capterra: 4.3 (175)

Skylead vs. Yesware

#14 Hunter - Best sales outreach tool for finding and verifying professional emails

Hunter is a well-known cloud-based prospecting, data enrichment, and email lead generation software.

Pros

Hunter is the outreach tool for you if you're a sales professional looking to find verified prospect data — in seconds! In doing so, it boosts email deliverability and protects the sender’s reputation.

With Hunter, we found out that setting up an email outreach campaign is straightforward. Meanwhile, readily available variables help you craft emails that feel highly personal and induce replies.

Finally, Hunter seamlessly fits into your workflow through native integrations with different tools and Google Sheets. Alternatively, you can send over data to a software of your choice using Zapier webhooks or API.

Cons

Hunter is strictly an email outreach tool, which means it lacks features for social selling.

Although the tool can find and verify your leads' emails, these features are not integrated into the outreach flow as they are in Skylead. In other words, the tool needs to discover and verify emails first. Only once it returns results can you start an email outreach campaign.

Lastly, the tool can’t extract emails from social media profiles.

What others said about Hunter

Pedro A. believes that Hunter is one of the best sales outreach tools for email scraping. He's noticed a high accuracy in finding and verifying European email addresses. He thinks it'd be great if Hunter made it possible to enrich a person based on their LinkedIn URL, though.

Pricing

• Free: €0
• Starter: €49/mo / 3 email accounts
• Growth: €149/mo / 10 email accounts
• Scale: €299/mo / 20 email accounts
• Enterprise: Contact sales

Each plan comes with a limited number of email verification credits. You can purchase additional credits, but keep in mind that the cost will depend on your subscription plan.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (687)

Skylead vs. Hunter

#15 Mailshake - Best outreach tool for setting up simple drip campaigns

Mailshake is a cloud-based sales engagement platform with a Chrome extension for LinkedIn automation and an AI email writer.

Pros

Mailshake has an intuitive sequence builder that you can use to automate parts of the sales engagement process, like sending cold emails and follow-ups. Unlike other tools, where sequences stop when the prospect responds, Mailshake has the option to continue its campaign even if the lead responds. In other words, other tools like Skylead have an option to manually get leads back to a campaign once they respond. However, if you wish that the sequence just continues despite your leads’ response, you’ll like this option.

You can also use Mailshake to automate profile views on LinkedIn, along with invites to connect and messages.

Clearly, Mailshake supports multichannel outreach, and it even makes it possible to add calls into the mix, courtesy of the built-in dialer. Although this is a manual task.

Cons

LinkedIn automation, which isn’t even complete, and cold calling are exclusive to the highest-tier subscription.

Additionally, Mailshake automates LinkedIn actions through a Chrome extension. That said, it may not be the safest option for your LinkedIn outreach.

What others said about Mailshake

Engin A. is impressed by how easy this sales outreach platform is to use. He is also satisfied with the onboarding process. However, he says that Mailshake can prove expensive for medium to large teams.

Meanwhile, more than one person has noted you have to be very careful about daily sending limits for email accounts connected to Mailshake, as Gmail tends to flag emails sent in bulk as spam. That’s why Skylead has inbox rotation—a feature that has caused many Mailshake users to turn to Skylead!

Pricing

• Starter: $29/mo per user / 1 mailbox
• Email Outreach: $49/mo per user / 2 mailboxes
• Sales Engagement: $99/mo per user / 10 mailboxes

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (123)

Skylead vs. Mailshake

#16 SalesBlink - Best sales tool for AI-powered email outreach

SalesBlink is a cloud-based sales outreach tool for cold emailing.

Pros

SalesBlink lets you take advantage of its AI, BlinkGPT, to create smart email sequences with follow-ups adjusted to the outcome. It also lets you enrich your emails with variables and personalized images.

What’s more, thanks to the software’s email warm-up feature, your emails are sure to land in your leads’ inboxes, not spam.

Additionally, SalesBlink allows you to connect multiple sender accounts and automatically rotates them while sending emails to ensure you stay within limits.

Finally, the tool makes managing conversations effortless, keeping them all in a unified inbox.

Cons

We found it inconvenient that the tool limits the number of emails you can send depending on your subscription plan. With the highest subscription, you can send up to 100,000 emails. 

However, if you don’t want to pay the highest subscription for this, sales outreach tools like Skylead and Instantly, which allow you to send unlimited emails, may be better suited.

Moreover, while you can add multichannel tasks to your sequences, you have to complete them manually. Therefore, no real multichannel outreach is supported. Email sequences are smart, unfolding based on your prospect’s behavior. Nevertheless, Skylead is superior in this regard as well, as it comes with Smart sequences and support for multiple channels.

What others said about SalesBlink

SalesBlink is Alfred R.'s go-to tool for email outreach, and he proudly talks about it! The absolute best for him is its top-notch AI email assistant, which saves him immense time and optimizes his email management. The only downside he could think of is that you can't add a lot of information when describing a business to the AI, which tells us that the AI feature is not that complete.

Pricing

SalesBlink plans are split into 2 categories:

For Own Business

• Starter: $29 /mo per account
• Growth: $99 /mo per account
• Business: $199 /mo per account

For Lead Generation Agencies

• Agency Starter: $99 /mo / up to 3 clients
• Agency Growth: $199 /mo / up to 10 clients
• Agency Business: $299 /mo / up to 25 clients

Rating

• Capterra: 4.7 (223)

Skylead vs. SalesBlink

#17 Saleshandy - Best outreach tool for A-Z testing

Saleshandy is a cloud-based software for email automation and prospecting.

Pros

The software has an up-to-date pool of over 700 million verified leads that you can search through and include in your outreach. It also has a Chrome extension that finds prospects’ emails on LinkedIn (phone numbers also, but at a higher cost).

Its highlight features, such as simple (not smart) email sequences, email scheduling, email tracking, and email warm-up, streamline your cold email outreach, enhance deliverability, and help you generate more leads.

What really caught our attention, though, were the A/Z tests. The software allows users to test up to 26 different subject lines, email bodies, and CTAs.

Cons

Saleshandy doesn't support reaching out to prospects via LinkedIn and channels that aren’t email. While you can identify leads’ emails on this social networking site, be cautious; using its Chrome extension might compromise the safety of your LinkedIn account.

There’s an add-on for email verification, too. However, it costs extra.

What others said about Saleshandy

To Shamim Ahmed A., Saleshandy is one of the best and most affordable sales software for email outreach. He praises its many features, such as unlimited email warm-up, email automation, and analytics. Still, he hopes the warm-up feature will be further improved in the future.

Pricing 

• Email Outreach Plans: From $36/month for the Outreach Starter to $299/month for the Outreach Scale Plus per account.
• B2B Lead Database Plans (emails only): From $29/month for the Lead Starter to $1299/month for the Lead Scale Plus per account.

Saleshandy’s email verification add-on will cost you an extra $79 for 25,000 recipients.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (125)

Skylead vs. Saleshandy

#18 Woodpecker - Best sales outreach tool for coming up with email copy quickly

Woodpecker is one of the best cold email software with add-ons that turn it into an all-in-one sales outreach platform.

Pros

Woodpecker is natively an email outreach tool. Nonetheless, it supports creating multichannel campaigns with LinkedIn actions and calls through built-in integrations with Dux-Soup and AirCall.

The platform allows you to connect unlimited email accounts and auto-rotates them to keep email deliverability high.

Woodpecker can also warm up your mailboxes, verify your leads’ emails, and also lets you A/B test up to 5 different email variants. 

It even comes with an AI assistant that generates copy for your campaigns. However, as we said previously, we tested out AI-generated copies, and the results weren’t much better than our own. In some cases, the results were even worse.

Cons

Woodpecker relies on 3rd party tools for its multichannel outreach, which incurs additional costs.

Additionally, its email verification probability isn’t as high as Skylead’s or Hunter.io’s.

What others said about Woodpecker

Woodpecker is a standout software in Michael L.'s eyes due to its ease of use and great support. While not as advanced as some other sales outreach tools, he states it fares well in the cold emailing department.

Pricing

• Starter: From $29mo per account
• Growth: From $188/mo per account
• Scale: From $1,354/mo per account
• Max: From $9,999/mo prt account

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (33)

Skylead vs. Woodpecker

#19 Wiza - Best for extracting lead information from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator & Recruiter

Wiza is a Chrome extension that is used to scrape prospect information from LinkedIn.

Pros

Wiza is compatible with LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter accounts. It’s notable for its instant email verification capabilities. At the same time, it allows you to export prospecting lists from LinkedIn to CSV or sync them to your CRM.

On top of extracting verified work and personal emails from LinkedIn, Wiza can also extract work and cell phone numbers that are publicly available on LinkedIn.

FIY, the software will use up your verification credits only if it manages to find valid prospect information.

Cons

We can’t say that Wiza is a real sales outreach tool, even though some categorize it as such. Instead, it’s a prospecting tool that can only inform your outreach strategy.

Also, since this is another Chrome extension on the list that injects code into LinkedIn, it could lead to a ban on the platform.

What others said about Wiza

As per Prerana B., Wiza is convenient, fast, and accurate. She also likes how the tool can scrape leads' information from LinkedIn. On the flip side, she finds it a bit expensive. However, while Prerana praises Wiza for its email discovery and verification capabilities, we’ve found Skylead to have a much higher email enrichment success rate.

Pricing

• Free: $0
• Starter: $49/mo per user
• Email: $99/mo per user
• Email + Phone: $199/mo per user
• Team plan: Starting at $399/mo (annual commitment)

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (20)

Skylead vs. Wiza

#20 GrowMeOrganic - Best sales outreach tool for automating hyper-personalized follow-ups

GrowMeOrganic is a cloud-based outreach solution for cold emailing. It also features a Chrome extension that can extract verified emails and phone numbers from LinkedIn.

Pros

GrowMeOrganic is great for automating cold emails and follow-ups based on your prospects’ behavior. We liked that the tool has a native image personalization feature and can track open, click, reply, and conversion rates.

GrowMeOrganic is compatible with email accounts from all providers.

Cons

Another Chrome extension, another major downside. To preserve your LinkedIn account, you are better off choosing another tool, at least for prospecting and email enrichment.

GrowMeOrganic also lacks support for LinkedIn outreach. As such, it misses out on the opportunities the greatest platform for social selling holds.

Furthermore, we noticed it’s impossible to download a PDF report. Only CSV and XLS exports are available.

What others said about GrowMeOrganic

Raghavendra D. has been using GrowMeOrganic for a while and says it's an excellent tool for sales automation. She finds its LinkedIn and Google My Business email scraper incredibly useful! Nonetheless, she doesn't like that this is a Chrome extension, nor do we. She’d like it better if there were an option to search for leads directly through the platform.

Pricing

• Starter: $49/mo / 1 user
• Growth: $99/mo / 5 users
• Pro: $199/mo / unlimited users

Rating

• Capterra: 4.2 (10)

Skylead vs. GrowMeOrganic

#21 Lusha - Best for prospecting around the Web

Like Wiza, Lusha is primarily a cloud-based prospecting tool, although salespeople can also use it for email outreach.

Pros

Lusha has a handy Chrome extension, which can extract prospects from anywhere. It also has a built-in B2B prospecting tool with filters that can get you up to 1,000 leads in one go.

Furthermore, you don’t have to resort to another software for your outreach; you can automate Lusha to send emails. Rather than relying on your time zone when doing so, the tool, like Skylead, lets you set different time zones for different email sequences. In other words, it reaches out to your leads when the time is right...for them!

To top it off, Lusha added an AI Playlists feature, a.k.a. lead lists that automatically update based on your saved filters to keep your pipeline consistently full of new, high-potential contacts.

Cons

Lusha uses a Chrome extension to extract prospects from different sites. If you are prospecting on LinkedIn, it could threaten your account’s existence.

Moreover, this tool is only compatible with Gmail and Outlook accounts. If your email account is with a different provider, you won’t be able to use it for your outreach. Also, you can only connect one email account to Lusha, and it must be the one you used to register on the platform.

Lastly, its built-in database of B2B leads includes 45 million contacts in North America and 21 million in Europe. If your target audience is based on other continents, this may result in missed outreach opportunities.

What others said about Lusha

Ben B. reports that Lusha speeds up his prospecting and lead generation and offers great value for money. The only problem is that the quality of data found could sometimes be better.

Pricing

• Free: $0 / 1 seat
• Pro: Starts from $29.90/mo / 3 seats
• Premium: $69.90/mo / 5 seats
• Scale: Custom

Rating

• Capterra: 4.1 (383)

Skylead vs. Lusha

#22 MeetAlfred - Best sales automation tool for X outreach

MeetAlfred is a cloud-based sales outreach platform designed for LinkedIn, email, and X outreach.

Pros

MeetAlfred is different from other multichannel sales outreach tools in that it also integrates with X (formerly Twitter). As such, you can use it to automate different activities on three fronts: LinkedIn, email & X.

The tool’s campaign builder allows for adding infinite steps — from profile views and invites to connect to follow-up messages, inMails, emails, and X DMs. At the same time, it lets you set up delays between steps and personalize your messages with customizable templates and variables.

We also found it convenient that you can connect the tool to your Facebook and Instagram accounts. Although MeetAlfred can't be used to message prospects on these platforms, you can use it to create and schedule posts.

Cons

Unlike Skylead, MeetAlfred doesn’t have Smart sequences. Consequently, the software’s integrated inbox only shows your LinkedIn/Sales Navigator messages. If your campaign includes emails and DMs, you must manually check for new ones.

What others said about MeetAlfred

Martin P. considers MeetAlfred a perfect sales tool for someone with experience using this type of outreach software. He is fond of its simple interface and lots of customizable templates. Nevertheless, he believes it might be difficult for beginners to use.

Pricing

• Free: $0
• Individual: $59/mo per user
• Business: $99/mo per user
• Team: $79/mo per user

Rating

• Capterra: 2.8 (13)

Skylead vs. MeetAlfred

#23 LeadConnect - Best outreach solution for following up on LinkedIn

LeadConnect is a Chrome extension used for prospecting and outreach on LinkedIn.

Pros

LeadConnect connects to LinkedIn Basic and Sales Navigator accounts and pulls leads’ information from a LinkedIn search or a CSV file. 

This tool lets you send personalized connection requests along with up to 6 automated follow-up messages.

Additionally, thanks to its native integration with HubSpot, pushing leads and conversations to the latter is as simple as a single click.

The tool also works with Findthatlead, Hunter.io, and Anymailfinder to discover your prospects’ email addresses. This is especially handy, as it gives you another channel to contact users who haven’t responded: email.

Cons

You can only use LeadConnect to contact users via LinkedIn. The tool doesn’t support sending inMails and emails, either. 

The platform works only with LinkedIn Basic and Sales Navigator accounts. So, it cannot be used by anyone subscribed to LinkedIn Premium or a Recruiter plan.

With LeadConnect, you can only automate connection requests and LinkedIn messages.

Plus, given that LeadConnect is a Chrome extension, it could lead to account restrictions.

What others said about LeadConnect

In Sheryl S.'s opinion, LeadConnect is a great sales outreach platform for growing her LinkedIn network. She also mentions that it's quite easy to use. The only issue is that when there are a lot of prospects to discover, she sometimes has to refresh the URL.

Pricing

• Free Forever: $0
• Professional: $ 25.95/mo per account
• Grow: $ 45.95/mo per account
• Ultimate: $ 85.95/mo per account

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (98)

Skylead vs. LeadConnect

#24 Evaboot - Best tool for scraping leads from Sales Navigator

Like Wiza or Lusha, Evaboot is a Chrome extension for Sales Navigator prospecting.

Pros

Evaboot allows users to build lead lists from Sales Navigator in seconds and export them to CSV. 

In addition to scraping leads, the tool can also find and verify professional emails. 

Cons

Evaboot is only compatible with Sales Navigator, rendering it useless for LinkedIn Basic, Premium, or Recruiter subscribers.

Furthermore, this is a Chrome extension that, as you already know, can harm your Sales Navigator account.

We’ve tested the tool and can also tell you that their email discovery feature frequently provides inaccurate information or no information at all.

Lastly, this isn’t an email automation tool or any other type of outreach software. Yes, you can use the information gathered to contact leads. However, you’d need to subscribe to an Evaboot alternative that provides this functionality to do so.

What others said about Evaboot

Ky K. says Evaboot is easy to use and effective at what it does. However, the slight downside is that it doesn't allow him to select the number of leads to export.

Pricing

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (14)

Skylead vs. Evaboot

#25 Dux-Soup - Best LinkedIn automation tool for sending free and paid inMails

Initially a Chrome extension for LinkedIn automation, Dux-Soup now also offers a cloud-based sales outreach solution.

Pros

Dux-Soup can automate the following LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter actions:

• Endorsements
• Follows
• Profile visits
• Personalized connection requests
• Personalized messages to 1st connections
• inMails (free & paid)

With it, you can mix and match different actions to create unique drip campaigns that stop once your prospects respond. 

We like that you can also customize time delays between individual steps and monitor campaign statistics once the campaign is live.

The software natively connects to Pipedrive, HubSpot, and SharpSpring. Nonetheless, you can also connect it to another CRM using Zapier webhooks.

Cons

Dux-Soup has a cloud-based solution for LinkedIn outreach, but it’s only available under their most expensive subscription plan. Those on lower plans have to rely on their Chrome extension for automation, which could compromise their LinkedIn accounts. Not to mention, the tool can only run while the browser is open.

Moreover, the software can’t be used for email outreach or any other type of outreach.

What others said about Dux-Soup

Leilani S. finds that Dux-Soup simplifies prospecting on LinkedIn. Her favorite feature is the X-ray tool, which enables her to discover LinkedIn profiles via Google. However, she notes that the software occasionally disrupts her workflow by randomly refreshing her page.

Pricing

Dux-Soup has 3 different plan categories:

Individual & Team Plans

• Pro Dux: $14.99/mo per seat
• Turbo Dux: $55/mo per seat
• Cloud Dux: $99/mo per seat

Agency Plans

• Pro Dux: from $337.50/mo for 30+ seats
• Turbo Dux: from $412.50/mo for 10+ seats
• Cloud Dux: from $371/mo for 5+ client seats

Rating

• Capterra: 4.0 (16)

Skylead vs. Dux-Soup

#26 Salesloop - Best for expanding your LinkedIn network on autopilot

Salesloop is designed to work with all types of LinkedIn accounts: Basic, Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter.

The software allowed us to build campaigns using LinkedIn search and by uploading lead lists in CSV format. Should you decide on the latter, you can also enrich your messages with custom variables for an added dash of personalization (on top of pre-set ones).

To make campaign tracking easier, Salesloop lets you download CSV reports.

Cons

Currently, the software supports LinkedIn automation only, although email and X (Twitter) integration are supposedly in the works. It also misses out on Smart sequences and, instead, relies on simple campaigns for its automation.

Additionally, Saleloop doesn’t integrate with any CRM natively. We were also disappointed to find out you can’t connect it to other tools via webhooks or API.

Lastly, unlike Skylead, which is one of the best sales outreach tools to support image & GIF personalization, Salesloop doesn’t currently offer this feature.

What others said about Salesloop

Krishan Kant S. is grateful for Salesloop because it improves his productivity and increases business performance. On top of that, it brings about financial benefits. He doesn't think the tool has any flaws.

Pricing

• Solo: $49/mo per 1 user
• Team: $199/mo per 6 users ($39 per user with a minimum of 3; tailored plans for more than 6 users)
• Managed Service: $2,000/mo

Rating

• G2: 3.5 (3)

Skylead vs. Salesloop

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Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Are sales outreach tools the same as CRM?

No. Sales outreach tools are designed to automate the initial contact with potential customers through various channels (e.g., email, phone). On the other hand, CRM software is all about tracking interactions, managing sales pipelines, and storing information about leads and customers.

Can you use sales outreach tools without a CRM?

You can definitely use sales outreach tools without a CRM, especially if your business is small or just starting to build its sales process. Nonetheless, pairing these tools with a CRM is a smart move as your business grows and interactions with customers increase. This combo ensures a smooth workflow.

How do sales outreach tools ensure data privacy and security?

Sales outreach tools use various methods to safeguard sensitive information. This includes data encryption and compliance with GDPR. Many tools also manage consent and preferences to comply with privacy laws. Furthermore, trustworthy vendors have clear privacy policies and security protocols displayed on their websites.

Select the perfect tool and seal your sales deals easier than ever!

Here's the thing: the sales game has seriously leveled up from the old-school days. Today, we've got a whole arsenal of sales outreach tools at our disposal. Sure, choosing the right one from the bunch can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. But that's what you've got us for! So, if you feel indecisive after all this talk about the top software on the market, choose Skylead. 

Start your 7-day free trial now and close more deals than ever—way faster!

Updated on: September 9th 2026.

Disclaimer: Skylead is not affiliated, endorsed by, or connected with LinkedIn in any way.

LinkedIn is a professional social media platform with over 1 billion users in more than 200 countries. It is used for B2B lead generation because its conversion rate is 3x better than that of any other social media platform. Moreover, the audience on LinkedIn has 2x buying power.

So, no wonder many sales teams use LinkedIn prospecting as their basis for targeting. After all, without LinkedIn, many sales executives would have a hard time generating B2B leads. Even marketers around the world use LinkedIn for B2B marketing lead generation. Not to mention recruiters who began using it to find top talents for their companies.

But as LinkedIn lead generation became the standard, technology followed as people wanted a faster way to perform their operative tasks, such as LinkedIn outreach. Thus, LinkedIn automation tools were born.

We actually built Skylead - LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software that helps you  save 11+ hours a week on manual work so you can focus on what matters. Nurturing leads and closing deals.

Of course, the market has grown since we launched, and now there are plenty more tools that promise to automate LinkedIn activities.

Interested in finding and using one yourself? Let us help you with that!

In this article, we cover the 18 most popular LinkedIn automation tools that we personally tested.

What is LinkedIn automation?

LinkedIn automation is a technology that tools use to perform different LinkedIn activities you would usually do manually. In other words, this technology automates the tasks, meaning it performs them on your behalf. These activities include LinkedIn profile views, sending connection requests, follow-up messages, or LinkedIn InMails.

LinkedIn automation serves for LinkedIn lead generation purposes. For example, you can build your LinkedIn network, make new connections, and outreach them on autopilot, or automate sharing gated posts.

In outreach terms, LinkedIn automation essentially recognizes your lead source, such as a LinkedIn search URL. It analyzes LinkedIn pages, performs actions according to your settings, and interacts with the selected LinkedIn users. Moreover, some LinkedIn automation tools can also search for publicly available information on your leads’ LinkedIn profiles. 

The best LinkedIn automation tools can even send personalized messages and images according to individual leads' information, which is available on LinkedIn. Also, they even use messaging sequences to send follow-up LinkedIn messages if the lead doesn’t respond. Most importantly, they support account based prospecting, meaning finding your ideal companies first, them matching them with decision-maker inside them.

Lastly, some tools can send bulk messages to all leads at once. However, this is something you need to be cautious of when it comes to safety. Don’t worry, though. We will talk about how the best LinkedIn automation tools do it below.

What are LinkedIn automation tools & why should you use them?

LinkedIn automation tools are software that use automation technology to automate LinkedIn activities. They take over time-consuming tasks like sending connection requests and messages, allowing you to focus on more important things.  In addition, they test and analyze your performance and show you what you need to improve. 

There are many more benefits other than the ones we just mentioned, though. 

So, let's go over the 6 most important ones.

1. LinkedIn automation tools save you time

By streamlining the most time-consuming LinkedIn activities, these tools really do save you time. That said, they can save you 11+ hours of work per week, depending on which one you choose.

2. They provide detailed reports

You can perform manual outreach by yourself. However, keep in mind that you would need to dig into reporting yourself, as well. The thing is, it can take you hours to gather and analyze the metrics. On the other hand, LinkedIn automation tools do all this on your behalf.

3. They give you the option to A/B test—everything

Depending on which LinkedIn automation tool you choose, you will have the option to A/B test your:

• Connection request messages;
• Message sequences;
• Follow-up messages;
• InMails; 
• Subject lines.

Then, you can see which versions work best and use them in your future outreach campaigns.

4. These tools help you personalize your outreach

LinkedIn automation tools can also help you send personalized messages at scale. In other words, these tools use custom variables that allow you to reach out to your leads in a more natural way.

Some also allow you to use personalized images and GIFs, which can help you increase the response rate by 76%.

5. They let you run multiple campaigns at the same time

If you have different Ideal Customer Profiles or Buyer Personas, you can run multiple outreach campaigns at the same time. This way, you can be more productive, as you don’t have to wait to finish with one target audience to reach out to another.

6. LinkedIn automation tools allow you to focus on building relationships

With the most time-consuming tasks delegated to these tools, your focus can be directed elsewhere. 

In other words, you now have time to focus on more crucial tasks such as:

• Social selling;
• Building relationships;
• Nurturing leads;
• And closing more deals.

Types of LinkedIn automation tools

Not every LinkedIn automation software is built the same way.

Based on their infrastructure, there are a total of 4 types of LinkedIn automation tools:

• Cloud-based tools
• Chrome extensions
• Desktop apps
• Web browsers.

A cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool store everything online. This also means such software can run even when your PC is off. What’s more, only cloud-based software can have multiple accounts and integrated inboxes. 

Extensions, desktop apps, and web browsers often leads to bulk messaging, which can be risky. They also don’t support managing multiple LinkedIn accounts, and your computer needs to stay on for campaigns to keep running.

What should you look for in a LinkedIn automation tool?

When selecting a LinkedIn automation tool, it’s important to know which features will best support your outreach efforts.

So, here is what you need to consider when choosing the best LinkedIn automation tool for yourself.

1. Cloud-based infrastructure

As mentioned, other types of LinkedIn automation tools either inject the code into LinkedIn or do not offer additional perks, such as an integrated inbox. 

So, to: 

• Get the best out of these tools,
• Avoid getting detected or bulk messaging, 
• And get your money’s worth, 

You should consider using only a cloud-based solution.

2. Drip campaign functionality

Why use LinkedIn automation just for scraping publicly available information when you can do much more with it? 

That’s right - some LinkedIn automation tools only have the data scraping option and do not allow you to set up your outreach campaigns. 

So, when choosing such a tool, think about what you want to do with it first. If you wish to use it as more than just a data scraper, opt for tools with a drip campaign feature. 

Or, even better, choose tools that offer Smart sequences - an algorithm that follows your leads’ behavior and acts accordingly.

3. Hyper-personalized messaging

Think LinkedIn automation means losing the ability to send personalized messages? Think again. The best LinkedIn automation tools have gone above and beyond to make personalization easy and effective—and they’ve nailed it.

For example, if you wish to personalize the text of your follow-up messages or InMails, you can use native variables such as:

• First name;
• Last name;
• Occupation;
• Company;
• Etc.

Moreover, some tools even let you create custom variables, giving you even greater control over your messaging. This way, your outreach stays personal, even when it’s automated.

4. Automatic stop feature when prospects reply

Worried about tools continuing to send messages even after a prospect responds? Don’t be. The best LinkedIn automation tools automatically stop follow-ups as soon as a lead replies. This lets you jump into the conversation or move them into another campaign without any awkward overlaps. So, keep this feature in mind when choosing the right tool for your needs.

5. Image & GIF Personalization

You can hyper-personalize your Images and GIFs with some tools, as well. And it’s worth it—this kind of personalization has been shown to boost response rates by up to 76%.

In the upcoming list of the best LinkedIn automation tools, we’ll highlight which ones offer this feature. So, stay tuned!

6. Advanced reporting capabilities

LinkedIn automation tools analyze your target audience’s behavior and give you detailed reports in real-time. That said, you can use them to track metrics like response rates, profile views, and accepted connection requests.

Some tools, like Skylead, even let you label leads, making it easy to calculate conversion rates.

Either way, the idea is to make data-driven decisions quickly. Just be sure to choose a tool with the analytics features that best align with your needs.

7. Integrated inbox to communicate with prospects

If you’re already using multiple tools, you probably know how difficult it is to navigate between the platforms to communicate with clients. Therefore, one feature you really need to consider is an integrated inbox. 

For example, Skylead’s Smart Inbox centralizes all your messages, leads, and communication channels in one place. This means no more hopping between software. Everything you need is right at your fingertips.

8. Integration with other tools

If your workflow depends on a CRM, don’t worry—you don’t have to give it up when choosing a LinkedIn automation tool. Just look for software that supports CRM integration.

CRM integration is invaluable for keeping your data flow seamless. It allows automatic data transfers between your CRM and the LinkedIn automation tool, so you can avoid the hassle of downloading and re-uploading CSV files.

Some tools achieve this through Zapier webhooks, APIs, or both. Whichever route you take, remember that integration is a necessity for productivity, not a luxury. Therefore, prioritize tools that can connect to your existing setup.

9. Support for multiple channels

LinkedIn automation tools are great for lead generation. But let’s be honest. Sales teams do their best work when they take the multichannel outreach route. Relying solely on LinkedIn outreach just isn’t enough anymore, especially with the LinkedIn connection limit pushing teams to explore alternative ways to reach prospects.

So, to maximize getting in touch with leads, search for a tool that combines LinkedIn automation with email outreach.

Speaking of email outreach, if you want to reach even more leads and bypass the email-sending limits, why not look for a tool that lets you connect multiple mailboxes? For example, Skylead allows you to add unlimited email accounts to one campaign and send thousands of emails a month at no extra cost. In other words, it enables you to contact your leads more effectively and achieve your goals.

18 Best LinkedIn automation tools [+free options]

Let's dive into the list of the most popular LinkedIn automation tools.

We’ve evaluated them based on the following criteria:

• Audience score
• Pros
• Cons
• Pricing

Let’s get into it!

1. Skylead

Audience score: ⭐4.8 / 5.0

Yes, that’s us. Hi! 🙂 

Skylead is your LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software best suited for agencies, and sales teams who want to streamline every part of their outreach process. Skylead covers everything from prospecting, AI data enrichment, outreach and handles replies with AI SDR. 

With this tool, you save 11+ hours of work per week. This way, you have a lot of time to focus on lead nurturing and closing 3x more deals.

Moreover, Skylead is a cloud-based solution and most importantly - compliant with LinkedIn. In addition, you can integrate it with your favorite CRM via webhooks using Zapier, or you can transfer leads’ data between the two via API.

Lastly, Skylead’s reporting system and A/B testing will help you analyze your campaign metrics. Thus, you can clearly see what works best for your target audience and make data-driven decisions. 

That said, let’s get into the main features.

Smart sequences 

Skylead was the first tool on the market that started using Smart sequences—a groundbreaking algorithm that executes steps in the order you set, depending on your leads’ behavior. To clarify, a Smart sequence is a combination of different activities you can perform on LinkedIn and/or by email. 

What makes the Smart sequences smart is the if/else condition. To paint a better picture, let’s create a smart outreach sequence together. 

Say we wanted to invite a person to connect. There are 2 scenarios here: they can either accept the invite or not. That is where the If/else condition comes in handy.

If the person accepts the connection request, you can instruct Skylead to send a regular message, as shown in the example above. 

But if they don’t, you can send an InMail or even email if you’re open to taking the multichannel route.

In regular sequences, if the prospect doesn’t accept your connection request, the rest of the sequence stops. With Smart sequences, the flow continues, thanks to the conditions. 

Even if they don’t respond to these messages, you still have View and Follow steps to send them a subtle reminder. 

Lastly, you can have as many touchpoints in the Smart sequence as you’d like, and Skylead will do it all for you in real-time. Or, if you don’t wish to create a Smart sequence by yourself, you can use some of Skylead’s in-app pre-tested Smart sequence templates.

With Smart sequences, you don’t have to spend countless hours reaching out to each lead manually. Skylead does it all for you, making your outreach 5x more effective than any other LinkedIn lead generation tool.

Unlimited email outreach

Having a multichannel outreach tool in your LinkedIn sales strategy is a must in 2026. It creates a more engaging and well-rounded sales engagement experience for your prospects. More importantly, it shows them that you genuinely care about solving their pain points.

And when you factor in email outreach’s incredible ROI—$36 for every $1 spent—it becomes even clearer why this combination is so powerful.

What may surprise you is that Skylead is the only tool on this list that allows you to connect unlimited mailboxes. This means you can send thousands of emails a month without risking your domain’s reputation and without any extra costs.

But there’s more. Skylead’s integrated Smart Inbox ensures that you can manage all your conversations in one place.

Additionally, with clear icons, labels, and a user-friendly interface, you’ll always know where your prospects responded and their current status.

Email discovery & verification

When we said Skylead is a one-stop solution, we really meant it. 

Along with multichannel outreach, Skylead includes a built-in email discovery and verification feature. You can seamlessly add this step to your Smart sequence, and the tool will discover and double-verify your leads’ emails without interrupting your outreach flow.

In fact, Skylead offers unlimited email discovery and verification. Most tools can only do one or the other. Others might collect publicly available emails, but only if the lead is already in your LinkedIn network. 

Account based prospecting

The best way to find your ideal leads is to find your ideal companies first. That is exactly what Skylead offers - account based prospecting. With it you can:

• Create account lists directly in Skylead
• And discover contacts by company to reach them out.

In other words, once you added your companies, Skylead can help you find and match contacts within those selected companies so your pipeline stays aligned to your ICP. This way you can really zero in on your target companies that are most likely to convert, are your true partner, and have greater lifetime value.

AI data enrichment

Apart from email discovery and verification, we introduced a game-changing feature - AI data enrichment which you can use to:

1. Enrich contact & company data
2. Prompt AI to get specified info or generate personalized icebreakers for each contact
3. Use all gathered info directly inside your sequences as variables.

It’s Clay-like in what it can uncover, but it’s connected to your outreach workflow, so you avoid constant tool switching and data importing.

AI SDR

Skylead's AI SDR extend automation beyond outreach by handling personalized replies, and keeping conversations moving without constant manual effort. By combining LinkedIn and email outreach with AI-powered conversation management, teams can respond faster, stay consistent, and spend more time focusing on building trust and closing more deals.

Infinite email warm-up

To make sure your emails land where they are supposed to, your mailboxes must be properly warmed up.

Luckily, Skylead has partnered up with an email warm-up tool, Mailivery, to make this a reality.

This tool allows you to warm up infinite email accounts to keep emails away from SPAM and, thus, protect your senders’ reputation. Completely free of charge, as long as you are a Skylead user.

What’s more, with Mailivery, you get:

• Easy setup in just a few minutes - You only need to switch warm-up on in Skylead's Email settings, and it will run in the background.
• Safer sending volume ramp-up - Mailivery gradually increases email volume at the right pace, helping accounts warm up naturally without looking suspicious.
• Built-in domain health checks - SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and blacklist status are monitored to help ensure safer warm-up and stronger deliverability.
• Daily sending volume control - You can track deliverability for each account and set the maximum number of emails it can send per day.
• Warm-up status tracking for every account - Each connected email account will show warm-up status, so you know when accounts are ready for outreach.

What's more, Mailivery is compatible with all major email service providers (Gmail, Outlook, Zoho, etc.). But just in case it isn’t compatible with yours, you can add a mailbox using a custom SMTP.

Image & GIF hyper-personalization

Once you finally get through to that lead, you want to make an impact, don’t you? 

That’s when Skylead’s Image and GIF hyper-personalization comes into play! 

You can use it to offer products and services in a less conventional way, wish your clients happy holidays, schedule a casual meeting, and so much more! What’s more, by using it, you can increase your response rate by up to 76%, as we managed to do with this GIF!

Skylead does the heavy lifting by automatically pulling details like your lead’s picture, company logo, and other information. This means no more wasting time creating endless variations of the same image.

What’s more, Skylead is the only tool on the market that has a native, built-in image and GIF personalization. Other tools may ask you to pay extra for it, but not us!

Pricing

All of Skylead’s native features + access to Mailivery come with a monthly subscription of only $100 per seat.

AI SDR and AI data enrichment act as an add-on. What makes this pricing truly different is simple: our core value is not to make money from these credits, and it will never be our business model. Credits are priced based on actual costs of our third-party providers (OpenAI, Bright Data, etc), and we offer a special rate of $1 for 100 credits. 

We also negotiate volume discounts with our providers. This means that, as overall usage across all users increases, costs will decrease and will be passed back to our users. This makes AI data enrichment up to 95% more cost-effective compared to similar tools on the market.

This makes it the most cost-effective and the most comprehensive tool on this list.

But the features aren’t all you get. You also get tutorials, sales hacks, support calls on how to perfectly target your leads during the sales engagement process, and a 1-on-1 onboarding with our customer success team to get you started!

2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Audience score: ⭐4.5 / 5.0

One tool that is familiar to all sales teams around the world is LinkedIn Sales Navigator.  It's compliant with LinkedIn because, well, it's LinkedIn's product.

This LinkedIn Premium subscription plan is widely used for prospecting and social selling (as it has its own inbox).

Although primarily used by sales teams, including ours at Skylead, recruiters and marketers also use it to:

• Zero in on the leads,
• Gather information, 
• And perform outreach.

Pros

The main difference between Sales Navigator and LinkedIn Premium is in advanced LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters. 

You can choose among more than 50 Lead and Account filters, depending on whether you wish to find your ICP or Buyer Persona. 

Moreover, with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you: 

• Get 50 paid InMails;
• Can create different lead lists;
• Set alerts for the leads;
• Set your Sales Navigator account leads preferences;
• Use an in-built Persona advance filtering;
• Get Buyer Intent insights.

Cons

Even though Sales Navigator is perfect for prospecting, it is not ideal for outreach on autopilot.

Pricing

If you are wondering how much does LinkedIn Sales Navigator cost, know that it has 3 pricing plans:

3. PhantomBuster

Audience score: ⭐4.5 / 5.0

PhantomBuster is an extension-based solution for data extraction. 

It acts as a sales and marketing tool that automates the scraping of publicly available data from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and other social media platforms. 

Pros 

PhantomBuster is not a LinkedIn automation tool with the full package. However, it does come in handy, as we found, and saves you a lot of time when you wish to scrape particular leads from LinkedIn or anywhere else.

It is a nice addition to outreach tools, as it saves your automated scraped data in CSV and JSON formats. Therefore, you can download them and upload them elsewhere to create outreach campaigns. 

Moreover, it also includes an email enrichment feature, allowing you to find email addresses. However, we were saddened to find out it doesn’t offer email verification, which means you risk higher bounce rates that could harm your domain’s reputation.

Cons

Although PhantomBuster offers automation for some LinkedIn actions (sending LinkedIn connection requests or messages), it doesn’t have Smart sequences. In other words, you cannot create your advanced workflows. Lastly, it doesn’t offer email outreach automation, and it is an extension, so it is not the safest tool to use. 

Pricing

PhantomBuster offers 3 different pricing options. 

The difference between them is in the time software runs during a 1-month period and the number of automated actions it performs:

4. Bearconnect

Audience score: ⭐4.9 / 5.0 (G2 only, 21 reviews)

Bearconnect is an AI-powered LinkedIn automation platform built for founders, sales teams, and agencies who want outbound and inbound LinkedIn activity running from one dashboard.

It handles connection requests, follow-up sequences, and drip campaigns on the outbound side, while also covering AI post writing, scheduling, and engagement tracking on the inbound side. Every plan includes unlimited connected LinkedIn accounts, a unified inbox across profiles, Workspaces for organizing accounts by client or team member, brand voice profiles for on-tone AI content, and built-in safety features like dedicated IPs and automatic cool-down handling to protect connected accounts.

Pros

Bearconnect is one of the only AI-powered LinkedIn automation tools that combines inbound content and outbound outreach in a single dashboard, backed by its Workspace feature for splitting accounts, campaigns, and inboxes by team member or client. It also supports unlimited LinkedIn accounts under one subscription rather than charging per seat.

Cons

Bearconnect is built specifically for LinkedIn, so unlike some outbound platforms, it does not extend to email outreach or other channels.

Pricing

Bearconnect charges per connected LinkedIn account rather than a flat fee:

For example, 5 connected accounts on the annual plan works out to 5 × $47 = $235/month. Full pricing details are available on the Bearconnect pricing page.

5. Salesforge

Audience score: ⭐4.5 / 5.0

Salesforge is an AI-powered outbound sales platform that brings LinkedIn automation, email outreach, deliverability tools, and AI agent into a single workspace. Built for B2B sales teams and agencies, it helps users manage prospecting, automate outreach, and scale campaigns across LinkedIn and email without switching between multiple tools.
Besides automating outreach, the platform also includes inbox management, mailbox warm-up, and AI personalization to support the entire outbound workflow.

Pros

Salesforge helps you streamline your LinkedIn and email campaigns from a single platform, manage every conversation through a unified inbox, improve email deliverability with built-in warm-up, and leverage AI to generate personalized outreach while automating follow-ups.

Cons

Because Salesforge includes a wide range of outbound features, new users may need some time to become familiar with the platform.

In addition, domains and mailboxes are purchased separately, while the AI SDR (Agent Frank) is available as an additional paid add-on. Lastly, LinkedIn and email outreach, active contacts, personalization, and verification credits are also credit-based. If you spend what you have in a base plan, you'd have to buy more.

Pricing

Salesforge offers three pricing options:

6. Dux-Soup

Audience score: ⭐ 4.1 / 5.0

Next in line, we have Dux-Soup. Originally a Chrome extension, it has since expanded to offer an additional cloud-based solution.

Pros

Dux-Soup is an easy-to-use LinkedIn automation tool that's a good fit for beginners or small teams. 

It allows you to create simple drip campaigns using the following steps:

• View 
• Follow
• Invites to connect
• LinkedIn message