Everybody knows that one of the best ways to get new customers is by contacting them using LinkedIn cold messages. Why? Well, sales teams prefer cold outreach via LinkedIn because this social media is the most effective B2B lead generation channel. Compared to cold calling and cold emails, that is.

However, when crafting a LinkedIn cold message, salespeople often get confused about how to approach their leads. Or, for example, their cold outreach message ends up showing no effect at all. We’ve been there too: testing countless variations, rewriting openers, and learning the hard way what gets replies (and what doesn’t).

That said, let’s make your LinkedIn outreach a winning game. In this article, we’ll focus on the best LinkedIn cold messages — the ones that delivered real results for us and our users — along with practical tips to help you write your own.

And as a bonus, we’ll also introduce you to a LinkedIn automation tool that makes it possible to send these high-performing messages and do it at scale.

What is a LinkedIn cold message?

A LinkedIn cold message is a way to reach out to someone on LinkedIn who hasn’t interacted with you before. These messages typically come in 3 forms:

• Connection request, 
• Message (after the leads accept an invite), 
• or InMail. 

Each type has its own approach and best practices for getting a response. 

For example, a well-crafted InMail can see an average reply rate of 18 to 25 percent, while cold emails usually sit around 3%.

Nevertheless, it’s important to note that one should not limit oneself to using LinkedIn only. In fact, the best way to acquire and close an outbound lead is by using both LinkedIn and email in your outreach strategy. 

The benefits of LinkedIn cold messages

LinkedIn is the biggest social media platform for startups, company founders, CEOs, sales professionals, marketers, recruiters, B2B influencers, and more. With roughly 1 billion users, it’s been recognized as an ideal space to grow your professional network, generate leads, and build business-to-business partnerships.

That’s why marketers often use it for their outbound marketing efforts, such as publishing LinkedIn ads, promoting webinars, and gathering leads for their sales teams. Sales teams and recruiters, on the other hand, typically use LinkedIn for outbound activities such as prospecting and sending LinkedIn cold messages.

But why does cold messaging work so well here?

Firstly, LinkedIn offers more transparency than email. Your recipient can instantly see who you are, what your role is, and decide whether to engage.

Secondly, the larger your network grows, the more leads you can reach, and mutual connections also help increase your acceptance rate.

Lastly, with both connection requests and InMails at your disposal, you always have more than one shot at starting a conversation.

LinkedIn cold message templates & examples that work in 2025

When we first started optimizing our LinkedIn outreach, our reply rates hovered around 10%.

After A/B testing 1000s of messages, we discovered what actually works. 

Now, we’re sharing our best-performing templates — the ones that helped us and our users:

• Increase our response rate
• Book more meetings with hard-to-reach prospects
• Shorten our sales cycle and boost conversion

And yes, every result you see here was tracked directly inside Skylead from our and our clients’ real campaigns.

Of course, Skylead does much more than track replies. You can plug these exact templates into it, personalize them at scale, and automate your entire outreach without sacrificing quality.

Want to skip the manual work and launch a high-performing outreach campaign in minutes? Try Skylead now for free!

We’ll go deeper into how it works in a moment. But now, let’s get into LinkedIn cold messages that helped us and our clients increase conversions by 3x!

General cold messaging tactics and templates

Leverage something you have in common

The first tip about cold LinkedIn messages is to find common ground with your leads. To clarify, this can be anything from liking the same post, influencer, or sport. Here is an example.

Cold LinkedIn connection message template:

Hi {{firstName}},

I noticed you liked {{authorName}}’s post on {{subjectOfThePost}}. I loved it as well. Especially the part about {{statementAndConclusion}}. I’d like to connect since I can see you know a lot about {{Topic}}.

Real-life example:

Or you can drop them an InMail such as this one:

Subject line: Post about {{Topic}}

InMail template:

Hi {{firstName}},

I noticed you reacted to {{authorName}}’s post on {{subjectOfThePost}}. I loved it as well — especially the part about {{statementAndConclusion}}.

Anyways, I noticed by looking at your profile that you’re familiar with {{Topic}}, so I wanted to see whether you are approaching {{KeyProblemYou’reSolving}} in {{currentCompany}}?

I would love to know more about this.

Best, {{Your Name}}

Response rate: 35%

Real-life example:

Mention a shared connection

People are more likely to accept a LinkedIn invite if it references a mutual connection. If you’d like to increase your chances, you can send an invite such as this one, which boosted our acceptance rate by 2x in just one campaign:

LinkedIn connection request template:

Hey {{firstName}},

I noticed that {{mutualConnectionName}} is part of your network too. We {{yourHistory}}. Anyways, I see you work as {{Position}} and like to chat. Maybe we can exchange some tips.

Real-life example:

See if a mutual connection can introduce you

If, however, you prefer to get introduced to your lead by a mutual connection, you can send a direct message such as this one:

LinkedIn message template:

Hey {{firstName}},

I noticed that {{leadName}} is a part of your network. I’ve been following them for a while now, and I just wanted to chat about their experience as {{Position}}.

Would you mind if you introduced me to them? It’s always better to be introduced, rather than reaching out of the blue. It would mean the world to me.

Best, {{Your Name}}

Real-life example:

Stroke their ego

Everybody likes to receive a compliment about their work or an accomplishment. So, one way you can compliment your leads is to find the post you genuinely like and reference it in your cold LinkedIn message, as we have:

LinkedIn connection request template:

Hey {{firstName}},

I loved your post about {{Topic}}. What I loved the most was {{Statement}}.

Anyways, I wanted to connect and chat about how you as a {{Position}} handle {{painPoint}} in your daily work life.

Real-life example:

If they do not respond, you can always send an InMail such as this one:

Subject line: Loved your post about {{Topic}}

InMail template: Hey {{firstName}},

I tried sending an invite, but I guess it got lost somewhere along the way. I wanted to reach out and first say I loved the content you are posting, especially the one about {{Topic}}. What I loved the most was {{Statement}}.

Anyways, I just wanted to connect and chat about how you, as a {{Position}} handle {{painPoint}} in your daily work life, and I'd like a chance to present a solution that {{solutionToPainPoint}} to the table.

If what I offer sounds compelling to you, please let me know. However, if the timing is off, or this is not in the area of your interest at the moment, I'll be happy to enjoy your future posts on LinkedIn. 🙂

Warm regards, {{Your Name}}

Response rate: 30%

Real-life example:

Give reason to reply

By posing a question in your cold LinkedIn outreach, you give your leads a chance to talk a bit about themselves, and you can learn a bit more about their work. So, drop a connection request such as this one:

Cold LinkedIn connection request template:

Hi {{firstName}},

I noticed you work as {{Position}}, so I wanted to reach out and chat about your position. I’m curious what {{Strategy}} has the best {{Result}} from your experience. 😀

Real-life example:

If they do not respond, you can send a cold InMail, such as this one:

Subject line: A quick question

InMail message template:

Hi {{firstName}},

I tried reaching out over a connection request, but it seems it got lost in the sea of requests you might be getting. Anyways, as a {{Position}}, I always like to expand my network and chat with people about their positions. So I came across your amazing profile, and I was curious, what {{Strategy}} has the best {{Result}} from your experience? 😀

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Warm regards, {{Your Name}}

Real-life example:

Leverage a group connection

Leveraging mutual LinkedIn groups is one of the best conversation-starters in cold outreach. Moreover, you can top it up with humor and create a charming first impression. 

Here is a connection message template that does just that:

Cold LinkedIn connection request template:

Always trust a glue salesperson. They tend to stick to their word…

Just kidding, {{firstName}}. I saw that you are also part of the {{groupName}} group. Hope we can learn from each other!

Acceptance rate: 63%

Real-life example:

And if they accept a request and do not respond, your next LinkedIn message could sound like this:

LinkedIn message template:

Hi {{firstName}},

Thank you for connecting. I love chatting with other members of the group. Was curious, how are you solving {{painPoint}} at {{currentCompany}}?

Response rate: 37%

Real-life example:

However, if they don't reply to a connection request, you can send the following InMail:

Subject line: Saw you are also a member of {{groupName}}

InMail template: Hello {{firstName}},

I recently tried connecting on CompanyTinder with you... I mean on LinkedIn. Just joking {{firstName}}, I visited your LinkedIn and saw that we are both a part of the same LinkedIn group.

Anyways, I couldn't help but notice you are {{occupation}} at {{currentCompany}}. I was curious, how are you solving {{painPoint}}?

If you still haven't found the solution, I would love to chat with you this week over a call about how {{nameOfYourCompany}} could help you. Either way, hope Q2 is going great for you!

Best! {{Your name}}

Response rate: 27%

Real-life example:

Then you can proceed by asking them what their biggest challenges are, offering tailored solutions, and presenting your product or service.

LinkedIn cold message for B2B lead generation

If they viewed your profile

Sometimes, your Buyer Persona will view your profile. In that case, you can send them a high-performing connection request such as this one:

LinkedIn connection request template:

Hi {{firstName}},

I saw you viewed my profile on LinkedIn. Let's connect and chat. 😊

Perhaps we discover we can collaborate.

Acceptance rate: 63%

Real-life example:

If they accept your connection request but do not respond, try taking this follow-up message for a spin:

LinkedIn message template:

Hey {{firstName}},

Thanks for connecting. Perhaps, I was just in the pool of the {{typeOfProduct}} you are researching. 😊 However, I do have extensive knowledge of {{painPointTopic}}. Let me know if you are looking for something specific.

Response rate: 29%

Real-life example:

Mention relevant company news

You can also reference recent company news, achievements, or celebrations to catch your lead's attention. In addition, since the company experienced a change, you can present your product/service as a new and refreshing solution on the market. In that case, help yourself with this piece:

LinkedIn connection message:

Hey {{firstName}},

Congrats on {{companyNewsTopic}}. I've been following you for a while now, and this is truly great to hear! I wanted to reach out and chat about an idea that I think your team can benefit from. Let's connect on this.

Real-life example:

However, if they don’t accept a connection request, send them this InMail:

Subject line: {{ProductOrServiceType}} that actually {{benefit}}! 🙂

InMail message template: Hi {{firstName}},

Congrats on {{companyNewsTopic}}. I’ve been following your company for a while now and I think this is a huge deal! Anyways, It would be silly of me to think you’re not using an {{productOrServiceType}} already, but it’s a no-brainer to present something new on the market that actually helps {{Position}} reach {{Result}} specifically. {{shortDescirptionAboutYourProduct/ServiceWithBenefits}}

Let me know if this sounds interesting to you.

Best, {{Your Name}}

Response rate: 20%

Real-life example:

Pitch your product

Some sales professionals prefer to lead with a product or service pitch right from the first touchpoint. 

If that’s your style, these outreach templates can help you do it effectively, with sequences that have driven up to a 67% acceptance rate and 39% response rate.

LinkedIn connection request template:

Hi {{firstName}},

Your profile really caught my attention while I was looking for {{TheTypeofCompanyYouTargeted}} companies. Let’s connect!

Real-life example:

If they accept a connection request, then your following message can sound something like this: 

LinkedIn message template:

Hey {{firstName}},

Thanks for connecting! I am looking for companies that are seeking to improve their {{keyProblemYouAreSolving}}

Did you know that you can achieve {{resultsYourProductProvides}}? I believe {{yourProductOrService}} will be an excellent fit for {{currentCompany}} because {{howYourProductOrServiceHelpsYourClients}}. If this sounds interesting, let’s have a chat! How’s next week?

Real-life example:

However, if they do not accept a connection request, send an InMail with the following call to action:

Subject line: Quick question about {{currentCompany}}

InMail message template:

Hi {{firstName}},

I am looking for companies seeking to improve their {{keyProblemYouAreSolving}}, and your profile caught my attention.

Did you know that you can achieve {{resultsYourProductProvides}}? I believe {{YourProductOrService}} will be an excellent fit for {{currentCompany}} because {{HowYourProductOrServiceHelpsYourClients}}.

If you agree, let’s connect and have a chat! What do you think about next week?

Best, {{Your Name}}

Real-life example:

Use past client wins

If you want to pitch first, you can also use some case studies of similar companies. This way, you can demonstrate bullet-proof case studies of your best clients, similar to your leads in question.

The following template works especially well when someone hasn’t accepted your LinkedIn invite, and has helped our users generate replies even from cold leads.

Subject line: Swift question - not to shake it off 🙂

InMail message template:

Hi {{firstName}},

I tried reaching you through LinkedIn, but I guess your account is also overwhelmed with connection requests, ha?

Anyway, the reason I decided to contact you is that I noticed that you work as a {{Position}} at {{currentCompany}}.

We actually were able to help {{RelevantCompany/CaseStudy}} with {{KeyProblemYou’reSolving}}, so I was wondering how you are approaching it at your company.

Worth a convo?

Kind regards, {{Your name}}

Response rate: 35%

Real-life example:

Refer to an event or webinar where you both participated

One of the best LinkedIn cold messages that point out common ground is the one that references a webinar or an event you both attended. Here is how your connection message can sound like:

LinkedIn connection request template:

Hi {{firstName}},

I see you are interested in attending the same webinar as I am. I am talking about {{[nameOfTheWebinar}}. I’d like to connect with you and discuss the event topic.

Acceptance: 75%

Real-life example:

After your leads accept a connection request, you can continue the conversation by using the following LinkedIn cold message template and pitch accordingly later on: 

LinkedIn message template:

Thanks for connecting with me, {{firstName}}! So, what are you looking to get from this event?

However, if the lead doesn’t respond to your connection request, you can send an InMail that goes like this:

Subject line: Let’s chat about the upcoming {{[NameOfTheEvent}}

InMail message template:

Hi {{firstName}},

I hope you don’t mind reaching out directly to your inbox.

I see you are interested in attending the same event as I am - {{[NameOfTheEvent}}.

Maybe you just overlooked the invitation without realizing it, but if that’s not the case, I’d like to connect with you and pick your brain about this interesting upcoming event.

Best regards, {{[Your name}}

Response rate: 47%

Real-life example:

Investor outreach

If you are a startup looking for an investor, your cold LinkedIn message should have a strong CTA. In addition, investors are decision-makers who don’t like to spend time getting the relevant data from you. Instead, you should present it yourself and show the prognosis of ROI right away. 

That said, you can try out this InMail message example that we pre-tested:

Subject line: Invest in our company and get {{Percentage}} ROI in the first year

InMail message template:

Hi {{firstName}},

I am the founder of {{companyName}}, a company determined to help {{targetAudience}} achieve {{Results}}.

I’ve been following you for a while and noticed you’ve invested in a type of company such as ours. I’ve created a detailed report and estimated that you could earn {{amountOfMoney}} within the first year, with an investment of {{amountOfMoney}} that will cover our 6-month period.

If this interests you, I would love to show you a detailed report and all the calculations over a call.

Best regards, {{Your name}}

Real-life example:

LinkedIn cold message templates for recruiters

If you work as a recruiter in a startup, this would be a perfect cold InMail message example for you.

Subject line: Are you our next {{companyName}} star?

InMail message template:

Hi {{firstName}},

We are {{companyName}}, a team of young people who {{whatYourCompanyDoes}}.

Currently, we are looking for an ambitious person, preferably with the {{Position}} experience and aspirations to grow and develop their career path.

Our team is very successful and fast-developing, and we have multiple sectors where you can further learn and develop your career path. We strive to encourage people who come to our company to contribute their suggestions and propositions to improve their sector and, thus, the company as a whole.

Would you be interested in working in such a young and dynamic team? 🙂

Best, {{Your name}}

Response rate: 65%

Real-life example:

And here is a LinkedIn cold message template for a connection request:

LinkedIn connection request template:

Hey {{firstName}},

I’m HR at {{companyName}}, a team of young people who {{whatYourCompanyDoes}}. We are searching for an ambitious person to fill in our {{Position}} vacancy and aspirations to grow and develop their career.

Real-life example: 

LinkedIn message examples for job seekers

Messaging a recruiter directly

Our Head of Operations, Nikola, says that if you see a hiring manager publishing a job post on LinkedIn, in most cases, it is good to send a connection request to HR. To clarify, this will show that you are serious and proactive and demonstrate initiative. 

That said, here is a template he approved:

Cold LinkedIn connection request template:

Hi {{firstName}},

I’ve noticed you published {{Position}} job post. I’ve been following {{companyName}}, and it’s my dream workplace. So I thought it would be better to send you a message, connect directly, and show you my passion for this role.

Real-life example: 

Cold messaging an employee

This is one of the ways to figure out what the company culture is like and establish a connection with an employee within your desired company. 

LinkedIn connection request:

Hey {{firstName}},

I noticed you work at {{currentCompany}}. How has your experience been in the {{Department}} since you started? I'm searching for job opportunities, and {{currentCompany}} is my #1. I’d like to connect to chat about it.

Real-life example:

And if they respond, you can send a message such as this one to get their referral:

LinkedIn message template:

Thanks for your message, {{firstName}}.

Really appreciate it. On a side note, are you aware that the {{Position}} job listed on {{websiteName}} falls under your department? If not, can you point me to the person usually responsible for recruiting for such roles? I'm considering applying and would like to ensure my application doesn't disappear in the digital chaos.

Real-life example:

Request an informal interview

Sometimes, in your target company, there are no job vacancies that match your expertise. However, that doesn't stop you from messaging their hiring manager and kindly asking for an informal interview. You can test out this template. 

LinkedIn connection request template:

Hi {{firstName}},

I've been following {{currentCompany}} for a while now, and I adore your company culture and achievements. Even though you don't have roles matching my skills, I'd still like to connect and schedule an informal call and present myself in person.

Real-life example:

How to cold message on LinkedIn and get replies

Before sending your first message or LinkedIn connection request to your potential customers, you need to get your outreach strategy straight. This way, you can prepare the ground to generate higher-qualified leads faster. Here are our top tips for doing so. 

Optimize your profile

The first rule to get the best out of your LinkedIn cold message is to optimize your LinkedIn profile. People are more prone to accept a connection request from someone whose entire profile is set up. In other words, you have your:

• Profile and LinkedIn cover image,
• LinkedIn headline,
• Company name,
• LinkedIn summary,
• Education section,
• And LinkedIn URL.

For example, if you are a salesperson, potential customers can check out your LinkedIn profile and see your product/service and what you are all about before accepting a connection request. 

On the other hand, if you are a hiring manager, candidates can take a look at your company name and website. Otherwise, if your profile is not entirely set up, they would mistake you for a fraud. Think of it as the first barrier of defense to prove the validity of your outreach strategy. 

Target the right people - ICP & buyer persona

Both cold emails and LinkedIn connection requests can go down the drain if they are aimed at the wrong target audience. In other words, you need to research and create your Ideal Customer Profile and Buyer Persona. Find out what your ideal company headcount, revenue, or location is. Buyer Persona-wise, figure out what position uses your product/service, whether they are business decision makers or not, and their pain points, so you can tailor your sales pitch. 

If you are a hiring manager, a Persona for each position will be enough. Just make sure to target the correct position, industry, years of experience, and other factors relevant to your job vacancy. 

Lastly, the best way to create these two documents is to analyze your current ideal customers. In other words, find the ones with:

• Highest retention rate and LTV;
• Shortest buying cycle;
• And who would be a referral for your product someplace else.

N.B. Remember that every piece of information in your ICP or Buyer Persona documents needs to be actionable. In other words, create a document with the information you can use for your LinkedIn prospecting or messaging purposes.

Find your leads using LinkedIn filters

Our next piece of advice is to learn how to find your ideal leads. If you are a sales executive, get to the bottom of the ins and outs of the LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters and prospecting hacks. Or find leads outside LinkedIn and trace them back to this social media. And if you are a recruiter, research Recruiter search filters. 

Remember, the goal is to be as narrow as possible so you can find your ideal leads with a high-quality status and shorter close cycles. 

Personalize your cold message

Personalization wins the conversation. Simple as that. The more personalized outreach is, the more people will respond to your LinkedIn connection request, InMail, or even a phone call.

That said, fill your cold outreach messages with personalized points to get their attention, such as:

• First and last name,
• Current company, 
• Position,
• Mutual connection,
• Case studies or posts they shared, 
• Webinar they attended,
• Influencers they follow,
• Or the LinkedIn group they joined.

These are just a few examples of how you can personalize your connection messages or cold emails in general. However, when crafting your first message and even your second, you should always have in mind that you need to offer value and make it all about your prospects. In other words, help yourself with the deeper personalization points such as:

• What are the new customers' main goals, 
• What are their pain points,
• Post they publish,
• Content they created,
• What type of content do they consume?   

These points will help you get a higher response rate. If you don’t want to present your sales pitch or mention pain points right away, you can always send them an interesting article to spark their imagination about your service. 

Don’t forget to end your direct messages with a clear call to action. It can be anything from reading a blog, accepting a LinkedIn connection request, or scheduling an online meeting or a phone call. Nonetheless, try to keep only one call to action per message.

Now, if you really want your message to stand out, remember that a picture is worth a thousand words. That’s why many of our users take personalization a step further by adding personalized images or GIFs to their outreach.

With Skylead, you can insert visuals personalized with your and your lead’s profile photo, company logo, and text with variables. 

Want to see our image and GIF personalization in action? Here’s a video that shows you exactly how it works!

And believe it or not, we managed to amp up our response rate to 76% using it!

Choose to use it yourself, and sooner than later, you may be in a similar situation to our client, Michael Gonzalez, who said:

“We are currently generating 320 bookings, but that's not a limit.’’

Send your cold message, including InMail

LinkedIn users have not one, but three formats they can use to connect with someone on LinkedIn - connection requests, direct message after invite acceptance, and InMails. These two formats are the main ones for the initial contact with potential customers and candidates.

To clarify, InMails are like cold emails but on LinkedIn. You can write your own subject line and have 8K characters available as opposed to a connection request (300 characters). Moreover, you can send InMails to people outside your professional network only if you have a paid LinkedIn subscription. 

Types of InMails & benefits

You can send paid and free InMails. The number of paid InMails you can send depends on your LinkedIn subscription. For example, if you paid for LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you have 50 monthly credits. On the other hand, if you paid for Recruiter Lite, you get 30 InMail credits and 100-150 credits for a Recruiter subscription. Lastly, LinkedIn Premium offers only 15 InMail credits per month.

Contrary to paid InMails, you can send up to 800 free ones, but only to those LinkedIn users who have set their profile to the Open profile status. 

That said, make sure to leverage InMail format as a part of your outreach strategy because of the 3 reasons:

• You can contact people who are your 2nd and 3rd-degree connections without sending a connection request;
• You have more characters available than in connection requests, so you can focus on pain points and a better CTA;
• It's a great alternative if your connection request is pending and you'd like to send a direct message straight to the decision-maker's inbox. 

Lastly, you can use the LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software, Skylead, to automate sending InMails. Skylead is unique on the market because it allows our users to send both paid and free InMails.

Follow up

Salespeople often perceive follow-up messages as pushy and a thing that can drive their leads away. Therefore, 70% of them do not send any follow-ups. However, a lesser-known fact is that if you send a follow-up, you automatically increase the chance of hearing back from your lead by 25%. 

However, if you know how to write a follow-up email after no response or a LinkedIn message, you can increase these chances even more. 

That said, our advice is to research how to write the best follow-ups out there and never miss sending them. 

Here is, according to our experience, the best advice for crafting follow-ups. Depending on the format, a follow-up should be short and focus on at least 2 of the following:

• Catchy subject line;
• Context;
• Value (case studies, solution to pain points);
• CTA. 

Thus, here is one follow-up message that is led by the above-mentioned points.

Subject line: Any thoughts?

Follow-up InMail template:

Hey {{firstName}},

Just checking in to see if you got any thoughts on exploring what {{nameOfYourCompany}} could do for {{theirCompany}}?

We worked with Companies similar to yours, such as:

- {{Company1}}

- {{Company2}}

- {{Company3}}

If you give me a chance for a call to show you, just this once, how other {{ProspectsPosition}} have used this solution to {{smallBenefit}}, I promise we can part ways if you are not impressed. Just let me know when is the best time for you. Anyway, love what you are doing with {{theirCompany}}.

Best, {{Your name}}

Response rate: 27%

Real-life example:

Scale through automation

By now, you’ve seen what works. 

But what if you could automate every single step in your outreach flows, from connection requests and LinkedIn cold messages, to InMails and emails, all while tracking responses in real time?

That’s exactly what Skylead does!

This LinkedIn automation and cold email software helps startups and agencies, sales teams, recruiters, marketers, and alike automate lead generation tasks, such as sending:

• cold emails, 
• connection requests, 
• InMails, 
• and LinkedIn direct messages,  

depending on their leads' behavior. 

To show you just how Skylead follows leads' behavior, let's go through creating one of the outreach sequences using it!

LinkedIn cold outreach campaign

First, choose your lead source, a.k.a. where Skylead will pull the leads from, and insert the source. 

For the sake of this blog, we will select the LinkedIn search results and paste the URL to it. 

Don't forget to choose the type of connection if available. 

Secondly, set up your campaign settings, including your email, LinkedIn, and global settings.

As part of email settings, you can add unlimited mailboxes (email accounts) to send tens of thousands of emails a month at no extra cost. 

You can also create a campaign schedule and set up email tracking in terms of clicks and open emails.

LinkedIn settings let you decide if you’d like to reach out only to those with Premium LinkedIn profiles or Open profiles. You can also set Skylead to collect publicly available information, as well as refresh search and automatically remove leads who haven’t accepted your invites.

In terms of global campaign settings, you’ve got the option to:

• Include leads that replied to your messages
• Include leads found in other campaigns
• Discover new leads only

This is also where you decide on your campaign start date and time.

Now, this is where the fun begins. Meet our Smart sequence, a groundbreaking algorithm that allows you to use multichannel outreach and personalize messages at scale. 

The secret to why the Smart sequences are so powerful lies in the If/else conditions that you can set after each action and let Skylead follow your lead’s behavior and perform actions accordingly.

Here’s what our client, Daniel H., had to say about them:

‘’I like Smart Sequences and the fact that you can combine everything in one funnel…If/else conditions are the most beneficial.’’

Now, to create a Smart sequence, drag and drop actions and conditions, and connect them.

Once you do, write down personalized messages using variables such as first name, company name, and so on. 

For example, here is how your LinkedIn cold message, a.k.a. connection request, can look like:

Keep in mind that if you want to personalize your messaging even more, you can always create a CSV file with custom variables and upload it as the lead source.

Here’s a video that explains just how you can do it:

Once a lead responds to your message, the sequence will stop for that lead, and you can see all the messages from all the platforms collected and available in our Smart Inbox. This way, you can continue the conversation without navigating between the platforms. What’s more, you can even label your leads with tags to calculate conversions and ROI.

And that is the magic of Skylead. 😊 

Frequently asked questions

1. How do these cold message strategies vary in effectiveness across different regions or cultures?

Cold message strategies' effectiveness can vary significantly across different regions or cultures due to varying communication norms and expectations. Tailoring your approach to reflect an understanding of cultural nuances and preferences in communication can greatly enhance receptivity and engagement.

2. What are the long-term follow-up strategies if the initial cold messages receive positive responses?

Long-term follow-up strategies should focus on building a genuine relationship with the recipient. This involves regularly sharing relevant content, updates, and opportunities that add value, maintaining a balance between staying in touch and respecting the recipient's space and interest level.

3. Are there any case studies or success stories of businesses that have significantly benefited from using these specific LinkedIn cold message templates?

Yes. We have a vast library of outreach templates that use these messages, and by examining each type of outreach sequence, you can see other results in addition to the response rate we've stated here.

4. Is it better to cold email or cold message on LinkedIn? 

Cold emails have an average of 3% reply rate, while InMail’s is 18-25%. So, cold messages on LinkedIn are better. But it also depends on your target audience and their preferred channel. So, to maximize getting in touch with every lead possible, you should reach out using both channels.

5. What is a good first message on LinkedIn? 

“Hey {{firstName}}, I loved your post about {{Topic}}, so I wanted to connect and chat.” Or you can use a humorous approach with personalization: “What’s a marketer’s favorite drink? Brand-y. Just kidding, {{firstName}}, saw that you are also part of the {{GroupName}} group. Hope we can learn from each other!”

Ready for your best cold outreach yet? 

We’ve tested thousands of LinkedIn cold messages — and these were the exact ones that brought us (and our users) real replies, booked meetings, and signed deals.

Now it’s your turn.

Skip the guesswork. Skip the manual work. Plug these templates into Skylead, automate your LinkedIn lead generation, and start getting results faster.

Start your 7-day free trial today and see how much easier cold outreach can be!

With quotas looming over their heads and little time to meet them, many SDRs succumb to the spray-and-pray cold outreach tactics. In other words, reaching out to as many people as possible using the same message. The thing is, generic messages don’t work. They haven’t for a long time, and prospects can recognize them from a mile away. So, what’s the better approach? Personalized outreach. It’s the present and the future. And if you’re not in on the game, your results are likely to suffer.

That’s because sales are all about providing a solution to someone’s specific problem and actually solving it. This is especially true if we’re talking about B2B sales.

We’ve built Skylead on the premise of helping individuals personalize their outreach. Thus, in this article, we’re drawing from our own experience to show you how to do it yourself effectively using dynamic placeholders (variables) and images and GIFs.

We’ll also provide message templates that you can immediately use in LinkedIn automation tools and cold email software to scale your personalized outreach efforts, all while saving +11 hours a week.

Let’s go!

What is personalized outreach?

Personalized outreach is a tactic used to connect with prospects that implies understanding who they are and using those insights to create messaging that feels personal and relevant. When done right, it grabs attention, builds trust, and shows you’re genuinely invested in solving their problems. Its focus is on quality, making it ideal for businesses that value meaningful, long-term relationships.

Why personalization matters in outreach?

Did you know that using personalization in B2B sales outreach can lead to a 1.4 times higher revenue growth? Not to mention, personalized emails have 29% higher open rates and can boost conversion by 600%.

There are a lot more statistics that go in favor of personalized outreach. But speaking about tangible benefits, we’d like to specifically highlight that it led our team to:

• Stronger connections. When prospects see you made an effort to get to know them, they'll be more likely to engage with you and form a bond.
• Improved response rates. Your outreach immediately becomes more relevant after referencing a specific pain point of your prospects’ recent achievements.. As a result, they become more inclined to reply.
• Better brand perception. Messages that resonate leave a lasting impression and position your brand as thoughtful. This gives you a competitive edge.
• Saving time in the long run. While personalized outreach might seem like more effort upfront, it saves time overall. Fewer ignored messages mean fewer follow-ups and better conversations lead to quicker results.
• Increased conversions and ROI. Prospects are far more likely to book a meeting, attend a demo, or subscribe to your product/service if they see you understand their pain points. This directly translates into higher ROI.

So, given the benefits, it’s clear that using personalization in cold outreach just makes sense.

The foundations of personalized outreach

But the thing is, you can’t just personalize away without any prep; you need a solid foundation.

That said, before you’ve resorted to this tactic, it’s important you commit to:

1. Knowing your audience

The first step in any personalized outreach strategy is to know who you’re targeting. In other words, defining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and Buyer Persona(s).

Your ICP represents the type of company or individual most likely to benefit from your product or service. 

Meanwhile, a Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer within that same company based on real data and educated guesses about their goals, challenges, and behavior.

Having one without the other won’t cut it. You need both to make sure you’re focusing your efforts on the right people. This way, you won’t waste time reaching out to prospects who aren’t a good fit for your business.

2. Researching prospects

Once you’ve identified your audience, it’s time for LinkedIn prospecting. Then, you should research each prospect individually to uncover details that can make your messaging stand out. 

This may include:

• Recent achievements or company milestones.
• Common pain points in their industry.
• Insights from their LinkedIn profile or company website.

The more specific you can get, the more relevant and impactful your outreach will be. To save time, feel free to use Chat GPT for sales-related prospect research.

3. Settings objectives

What are you trying to achieve with your outreach? 

Are you looking to:

• Book more meetings?
• Increase brand awareness?
• Close more deals?

Whatever it is, it’s important to make it clear from the start. That’s because, after setting objectives, you’ll have specific outcomes to drive your outreach towards. Moreover, you’ll have an easier time tracking results and making improvements to your targeted outreach strategy.

How to write personalized outreach messages or emails for your prospects [+ templates]

As we mentioned before, personalization is a big deal in cold outreach. It provides your prospect with a sense of caring and shows them that you really wish to remove their pain points. 

But how do you actually structure your LinkedIn messages and emails to show you’ve done your homework?

Generally speaking, there are 3 main parts of any message you want to include:

• Hook
• Body
• Call to Action (CTA)

While writing the hook for cold outreach, you must introduce yourself and clearly explain why you’re reaching out. But don’t stop there—include a specific detail about the prospect that prompted you to send the email/message in the first place.

Your hook should be designed to spark interest and provoke a response. For example, you might aim to connect your company with the prospect’s personal or professional needs. To do this effectively, tie your reason for reaching out to your company’s value proposition and explain how it addresses their challenges or goals.

Meanwhile, the body of your message should explain what your company offers in terms of value and features. Just keep in mind that this section is often skimmed over. Prospects typically focus on who you are and what you want before jumping to the closing. Only if those parts resonate will they circle back to read the body. Length-wise, it should not be longer than your hook.

The Call to Action (CTA) is a clear and direct one-liner that prompts the prospect to take action, like booking a call or signing up for an event. That said, it’s important to keep it short and actionable.

Of course, your message length may vary depending on the channel of communication and character limit. Nevertheless, these are the main guidelines you should follow.

How to use message variables in personalized outreach

If you are using sales outreach tools, you’ve probably come across variables that help you create personalized outreach messages for your prospects. 

But if not, dynamic placeholders, a.k.a. variables, are customizable fields that get populated with prospects’ details while the rest of your message remains the same.

Now, let’s say you are using Skylead, our LinkedIn automation and cold email software for LinkedIn lead generation and to personalize your cold outreach. 

Skylead lets you create outreach campaigns based on:

• LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter search results
• LinkedIn posts
• Sales Navigator Lead lists
• Recruiter Talent Pool
• Recruiter Pipeline URLs
• Your custom CSV file with the prospects’ information

In the case of the first 3, Skylead picks up the information from your prospects’ profiles automatically, which it uses to populate the variables. However, if you’re using a CSV file as a campaign source, you need to include their LinkedIn URLs or input the information manually for it to be able to do so.

That said, the basic variables you get to use with our tool are the following:

• First name
• Last name
• Current company
• Years in current company
• Total career positions count
• Total years in career
• College name
• Occupation

Now, apart from these standard variables, you can import your custom variables, as well. Custom variables are the placeholders that you can create, state their purpose yourself, and import to Skylead.

They can be:

• Demographics - Variables such as age, gender, location.
• Firmographics - Company name, size, performance, executive titles.
• Psychographics - Classification by prospects’ opinions, pain points, attitude, interests.

Custom variables can be used only if your campaign source is a CSV file. That said, here’s a quick guide on how to create a Skylead-friendly CSV file with custom variables.

Custom variable examples for your message

The main part of the personalized outreach process is finding as detailed information as possible on the prospect and putting it in the hook part of your message to catch their attention. 

That’s why we are going to concentrate primarily on the variables for the intro of your message.

#1 Personalized outreach hook: Prospects’ original content

When you first meet the person, do you instinctively like them more if they are interested in your thoughts, opinions, and what you created? Most of us will not admit it, but the answer to this question is a big YES.

That is why the first type of placeholder you need to consider is the content they created by themselves, and you can find it on their LinkedIn page or company website. 

It usually includes the following:

• Webinars hosted
• Articles written
• Posts published

Your goal here is to reference something specific they’ve created in the introduction, then position your message as adding value to their existing work.

Example email using prospects’ original content as variables:

Hey {{firstName}},

The reason I’m reaching out is that I’ve read your recent article {{ArticleName}} where you emphasized {{TheirPoint}}.

One sentence that really resonated with me was {{TheirSentenceWithPainPoint}}. 

What if I told you that {{PainPoint}} is easily overcome by {{ProvideLightValue}}.

So I was wondering, have you ever come across {{YourCompanyProduct}}?

Real life example:

#2 Personalized outreach hook: Content that prospects’ engaged with

This type of content implies any post, article, or video they liked or shared on LinkedIn but didn’t create themselves. Alternatively, you can use a webinar or LinkedIn events they attended.

Although not as strong as the previous hook, using content they engaged with still shows your genuine interest and will provide you with an opportunity to relate it to your company.

Example LinkedIn message with content that the prospect engaged with:

Hey {{firstName}},

I’ve noticed that you attended {{WebinarOrEventName}}.

What did you think about {{PainPoint}}?

I was wondering, how does {{currentCompany}} deal with such an issue?

Real-life example:

#3 Personalized outreach hook: Using prospects’ self-attributed traits

Prospects' self-attributed traits are sentences you’ll find on their LinkedIn profile, and they usually show what they are talking about themselves. 

The prospects view LinkedIn as a place where they can talk about their accomplishments, things they are skilled at, and what they like to do in the business world. 

That said, you can easily find this information under their:

• LinkedIn headline
• LinkedIn summary
• Work experience

Here, they will communicate to the world what is important to them, therefore you can hook what your product/service does to this information. 

Example LinkedIn message using self-attributed traits:

Hi {{firstName}}, 

I really liked your profile line about the {{HeadlineWithPainPoint}}. 

What I really liked was the sentence {{SentenceFromHeadline}}. 

What if you could make sure that {{PainPoint}} can be easily overcome?

Real-life example:

#4 Personalized outreach hook: Prospects’ background information

If you cannot find any information we mentioned in previous hook examples, you need to dig a little bit deeper, as a private investigator would. Find schools they attended, hobbies, and personal interests. Again, the rule is that you have to link it back to your company.

Example email using prospects’ background information:

Hi {{firstName}}, 

I noticed you enjoy occasional {{Hobby}}. You know what they say: {{QuoteAboutHobby}}. 

Hiking is pretty much like {{Department}}. What if I told you that {{Department}} process can be {{AtributesFromQuote}}? 

That said, have you ever come across {{YourCompanyProduct}}?

Real-life example:

#5 Personalized outreach hook: Company information

The reason why the previous 4 hooks are so strong lies in the fact that they all include psychographic details. 

Psychographic traits are something that someone believes in, has an attitude for, or something that hits them more to the core. That said, the above hooks trigger the largest response rate as they are closer to the heart.

Now, the following personalization variables are classified as firmographics.

For instance, Wikipedia states that:

‘’Firmographics (also known as firm demographics) are sets of characteristics to segment prospect organizations. What demographics are to people, firmographics are to organizations.’’

That said, it’s not surprising that firmographic details to use as variables would include:

• Merger and acquisition information, 
• Company growth information,
• Website language, 
• Job openings,
• etc.

These variables are the least effective on the list. Nonetheless, if you say only one thing about your prospect’s company specifically, they will feel more special as they know you are talking ONLY to them. 

When using this kind of information, be as detailed as you can but briefer in character length than you would in other cases.

Example email using company information:

Hi {{firstName}}, 

I noticed your company grew {{CompanyStatistics}} in the last year. Congrats!

I understand that as {{occupation}} you must have even more tasks when it comes to {{PainPointProcess}}.

What if I told you that your life as {{occupation}} can be easier so your {{CompanyStatisticsBoosted}}? 

I was wondering, have you ever heard of {{YourCompanyProduct}}?

Real-life example:

#6 Personalized outreach hook: Personalized introduction

If you find previous variables a little more in-depth than you are willing to go, you can help yourself with the previously mentioned concept ideas, but use one variable only. 

To put it simply, you can use a personalized intro that changes depending on the prospect, while the rest of your email or LinkedIn message stays the same for everyone.

Example email using personalized intro:

Hey {{firstName}},

{{PersonalizedIntro}}

That said, I was curious if you are using a solution for your cold outreach?

I would love to show you a solution that can combine Email and LinkedIn with a hyper-personalized approach that will help you book 30+ additional meetings per month and keep your pipeline full.

Real-life example:

Bonus: Short variables

Need additional placeholder ideas that you can use for personalized outreach? Take a look at the following examples:

• {{TeamMemberName}} - Using the leads’ colleague’s name will create a sense of familiarity.
• {{SalesPitchAccordingToTheIndustry}} - You can create a short pitch block in your message according to the prospects’ industry with the main pain points and values demonstrated. 
• {{BirthdayDate}} - If listed on their LinkedIn profile, you can extract this information and prepare a special pre-birthday gift as a Pain Point relief for their business needs.

How to use images and GIFs in personalized outreach

Variables can help you personalize the content of your messages at scale.

But if you truly want to up your personalized outreach game, your best bet is to use them in combination with custom-made images and GIFs.

Not many people realize the power of personalized visuals. But trust us, if you include them in your outreach, you’ll get response rates of up to 76%, as we have!

The good news is that Skylead comes with a native image and GIF hyper-personalization feature that lets you do just that!

It’s built right into the platform, too, meaning that all you have to do to create a custom image or a GIF is click the ‘’Image’’ icon under the message body field.

Then, all you have to do is choose the visual you wish to edit…

…and enrich it with any of the following:

• Your LinkedIn profile image
• Your lead’s profile image
• Custom logo
• Your lead’s company logo
• Text with variables

Once happy with the design, click ‘’Save image’’, and the final product will be inserted into your message.

Best practices for using personalization in outreach

Personalized outreach can make all the difference in standing out, but only if you do it the right way. 

To help you get the most out of your efforts, here are some best practices that we personally tried and tested.

1. Focus on value, not just details

While it’s tempting to show off how much you know about your prospect, personalization doesn’t imply only adding their name or referencing their LinkedIn activity. Rather, it implies solving their problems.

If unsure, ask yourself this while writing your message copy:

• How does this message provide value?
• What’s in it for the prospect?

For example, instead of saying,

 “I noticed your company is hiring a lot,’’

You could say, 

“I noticed your company is growing rapidly—congrats! Scaling a team is challenging, and we’d love to help simplify that process with {{YourProduct}}.”

2. Be relevant and contextual

Personalization without context can feel forced. Thus, it’s important you make sure your outreach aligns with the prospect’s current situation.

Say a company recently announced a product launch. In that case, your message could reference how your solution complements their new offerings or helps them achieve their next goals. This shows your outreach has a purpose.

3. Go multichannel

Don’t limit yourself to one channel only! Rather, opt for the multichannel outreach route by combining LinkedIn outreach with email outreach to maximize touchpoints with leads.

You could go about it manually, but why waste time when, with Skylead, you can do it all on auto-pilot?

As we mentioned, Skylead is a LinkedIn automation and cold email software that you can use to automate LinkedIn messages, LinkedIn inMails, and send tens of thousands of emails a month at no extra cost…while keeping them all personalized!

How is this possible? Well, it’s thanks to our Smart sequences. Namely, Smart sequences are algorithms that you can use to combine LinkedIn and email actions with if/else conditions to form coherent outreach flows that react to your prospects’ behavior.

With Smart sequences, possibilities are limitless. You can create them any way you want to cover an infinite number of personalized outreach scenarios. Or, use one of our proven Smart sequence templates!

4. Optimize timing and follow-up frequency

Timing is everything in outreach, personalized outreach included. Thus, pay attention to when your prospects are most likely to respond and schedule your messages accordingly.

Also, don’t be afraid to send a follow-up email after no response or a LinkedIn message. In fact, many prospects reply only after a 2nd or 3rd touchpoint. Just make sure your follow-ups provide additional value rather than simply repeating your initial message.

5. Test and iterate

Every audience is different, so what works for one might not work for another. That’s why A/B testing is your best friend here. 

If you’re using Skylead, know that you can A/B test up to 5 different versions of your:

• Email subject lines
• LinkedIn inMail subject lines
• Email body messages
• inMail body messages
• LinkedIn messages
• LinkedIn connection request messages

After the results are in, you can check them on our Reports page in Step view.

Then, you can use the data to refine your strategy and double down on what gets the best results.

Frequently asked questions

How do you approach personalized outreach to potential leads?

Start by identifying your ICP and Buyer Persona and researching each prospect to understand their goals and challenges. Use this information to craft tailored messages with a strong hook, value-driven body, and actionable CTA. Also, remember that personalization should focus on solving their specific pain points effectively.

How to scale outreach personalization?

You can use automation tools like Skylead to automate personalization with variables that populate prospect-specific details. However, we recommend you combine automation with genuine research to maintain authenticity while scaling outreach efforts.

How can you balance personalization and scalability?

Balancing both requires automation tools for efficiency and strategic personalization for impact. Use dynamic variables and templates to make messages feel unique. Meanwhile, focus on meaningful details, like pain points or goals, instead of overloading messages with superficial personalization that doesn’t add value.

What is the best tool for automating personalized outreach?

The best tool is the one that fits your needs and budget. However, if you’re looking to personalize LinkedIn messages, InMails, and emails using variables and even add personalized images and GIFs, Skylead is a good choice.

Take your outreach personalization to the next level!

Personalized outreach is no longer optional. Moreover, when done right, it boosts conversions, strengthens relationships, enhances retention, and positively impacts your sales KPIs.

But do you want to know the real secret behind personalized outreach? Treat your prospects as more than just that. Take the time to understand their pain points, goals, and challenges. After all, they’re humans first, and nothing resonates more than authentic, well-researched outreach that shows you genuinely care.

So, commit to doing the research, creating a strategy, and writing messages that truly add value.

And if ready to scale your hyper-personalized cold outreach efforts, check out Skylead. 

Start your 7-day free trial today, and see how meaningful connections lead to measurable results!

A perfectly crafted LinkedIn inMail subject line could be your ticket to outreach success, and let’s explain why!

Reaching out to prospects or candidates can be a frustrating game of chance. Traditional emails often go answered, with response rates averaging around 3-5% for cold outreach. This leaves LinkedIn inMail as a better alternative for professionals in sales, marketing, and recruiting, and the numbers back it up. In fact, inMails have a response rate between 10-25%. This is 300% higher than email when using the exact same content, according to LinkedIn!

But why the big difference? It all comes down to delivery and perception. InMails land directly in a recipient's LinkedIn inbox, where engagement is naturally higher among active professionals. 

However, even with this advantage, not every InMail gets a reply, and LinkedIn inMail subject lines are mostly to blame.

After all, they are the first thing the recipient sees. Thus, they need to make an impact. But between countless ‘’Quick chat?’’ or ‘’Just following up,’’ your prospects are getting tired of generic subject lines. They need something different. Something personalized, clear, and value-driven.

We at Skylead use inMails daily and have had plenty of chances to test what’s working and what's not.

So, if you’re looking for LinkedIn inMail subject line ideas, you’re in the right place!

Today, we’re drawing from our own experience to bring you:

• 20 best LinkedIn inMail subject lines to get responses
• 5 tips on how to write highly effective subject lines

You’ll also learn how to make the most of them using LinkedIn automation.

Let’s get started!

What is LinkedIn inMail?

LinkedIn InMail is a premium messaging feature available to all LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter subscribers. InMails allow you to send messages to anyone on the platform—no prior connection needed. This makes them ideal for everyone looking to bypass LinkedIn connection limit while reaching out to their target audience.

Each Premium plan comes with a specific number of inMail credits every month, which can be accumulated for up to 3 months:

• Premium Career: 5 credits/month
• Premium Business: 15 credits/month
• Sales Navigator Core: 50 credits/month
• Recruiter Lite: 30 credits/month
• Recruiter Professional Services (RPS): 100 credits/month
• Recruiter Corporate: 150 credits/month

Moreover, each time someone replies to your inMail, LinkedIn gives you that credit back. All the more reasons to craft perfect LinkedIn inMail subject lines!

However, if a recipient has their profile set to "Open," you can send them an inMail without using any of your credits. Therefore, you get to save your credits for high-priority individuals.

What is a LinkedIn inMail subject line?

A LinkedIn InMail subject line is the first thing your recipient notices when they get your message—essentially LinkedIn’s version of an email subject line. With an 80-character limit, it’s your chance to grab attention, stand out in their LinkedIn inbox, and compel them to open your message.

What is a good LinkedIn inMail subject line?

A good LinkedIn inMail subject line is a difference between an inMail credit returned and one gone to waste. 

And with just 80 characters to work with, you need to make every word count.

That said, the best inMail subject lines are:

1. Personalized - They reference the recipient's name, mutual connection, role, company, or interests to show you've done your homework.

Example: “Hey {{FirstName}}, {{MutualConnection}} pointed me your way”

2. Concise - Short and sweet to make an impact without overwhelming the other side.

Example: “Quick tip for {{Position}}”

3. Value-driven - They immediately make it clear what's in it for the recipient. Why should they care about opening your message?

Example: “Helping {{TheirRole}} achieve {{Outcome}}”

4. Action-oriented - They use actionable language and calls to action to inspire curiosity or urgency.

Example: “Explore this new strategy for {{Topic}}”

5. Non-salesy: They're authentic, without using promotional or generic phrases.

Example: “{{FirstName}}, thoughts on {{SpecificTopic}}?”

So, in short, a good LinkedIn inMail subject line is personal, to the point, and provides a clear reason for the recipient to engage. 

20 Best LinkedIn inMail subject line examples to improve your response rate

Now that you realize what it is that makes for a good LinkedIn message subject line let’s move on to the actual examples.

These examples have been used by our own team at Skylead and have shown promising results in terms of reply rate. We’ll also leave those for you to compare.

That said, to make examples easy to skim through, we’ve also broken them down into 3 different categories:

• Sales inMail subject lines
• Marketing inMail subject lines
• Recruiting inMail subject lines

Feel free to use them in your outreach as you see fit. Just replace the variables with information relevant to your prospect. Or, if you use Skylead, don’t, since our tool will auto-populate variables for you. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

Also, keep in mind that here, you’ll find examples of LinkedIn inMail subject lines only. 

We’ve got a separate article that walks you through the best LinkedIn inMail examples with a formula to increase reply rate, where you can take a look at inMail body examples. So, be sure to check that out, as well.

LinkedIn inMail subject line examples for sales professionals

1. It seems we have a mutual connection, {{firstName}}

Reply rate: 50%

Why it works:

Mentioning a mutual connection builds trust and familiarity. This makes the message feel less cold and invites replies.

2. Hi {{firstName}}, I noticed you reacted to {{AuthorName}}’s post on {{SubjectOfThePost}}.

Reply rate: 35%

Why it works:

This subject line feels hyper-personalized because it references a specific LinkedIn activity. It also shows you’re paying attention to your leads’ interests.

3. Saw you are also a member of {{GroupName}}

Reply rate: 27%

Why it works:

We commonly use this LinkedIn inMail subject line when outreaching members of LinkedIn groups. It’s an excellent conversation starter that makes your message feel less intrusive.

4. Any thoughts on {{SpecificTopic}}?

Reply rate: 27%

Why it works:

Open-ended questions work great for sparking curiosity and engagement. This subject line invites the recipient to share their perspective, which also makes them feel valued.

5. {{CompetitorName}} is doing this—are you?

Reply rate: 25%

Why it works:

Playing on FOMO (fear of missing out) and competition makes this subject line compelling. It challenges the recipient to think about their own strategy, thus prompting them to reply.

6. Curious how {{NameOfYourCompany}} can help you?

Reply rate: 23%

Why it works:

This subject line directly addresses the recipient’s potential needs while sparking curiosity. Furthermore, it positions your company as a helpful resource, which makes it sound less salesly.

7. Generate 30+ leads every month, {{firstName}}!

Reply rate: 17%

Why it works:

This is a bold, benefit-driven subject line that immediately captures attention. It appeals to results-focused professionals looking to improve their LinkedIn lead generation and lead gen in general.

8. {{Lead’sCurrentCompanyName}}’s pain points are your biggest advantage, {{firstName}}!

Reply rate: 15%

Why it works:

This example cleverly shifts the focus to how the recipient can leverage their current company’s challenges to their own benefit. Therefore, it appeals to problem-solvers and encourages them to think strategically.

LinkedIn inMail subject line examples for marketing teams

1. {{firstName}}, that was a great post on LinkedIn!

Reply rate: 33%

Why it works:

The subject line starts with a compliment, which instantly catches the recipient’s attention. Not to mention, a reference to their name and post adds a personal and relevant note to it, which increases the likelihood of engagement.

2. Loved your article on {{SpecificTopic}}—a quick idea for you

Reply rate: 25%

Why it works:

Referencing specific content they’ve created shows you’ve done your research. Moreover, offering a “quick idea” adds curiosity, and the subject line positions you as someone who can add value to their work.

3. Struggling with {{Challenge}}? Here’s a quick fix.

Reply rate: 24%

Why it works:

This one empathizes with a potential pain point while promising an actionable solution. It’s direct, benefit-driven, and shows you understand the recipient’s challenges.

4. How to increase your {{SpecificMetric}} by {{Percentage}}

Reply rate: 21%

Why it works:

Metrics and percentages catch attention quickly, especially that of data-driven marketers. In this subject line, the value being offered is clearly outlined, making it hard to ignore.

5. What’s trending in {{Industry}} marketing?

Reply rate: 20%

Why it works:

Marketers LOVE staying ahead of trends. This LinkedIn inMail subject line is simple yet intriguing and positions your message as a source of insider knowledge.

6. We can both benefit from this partnership, {{firstName}}

Reply rate: 15%

Why it works:

It emphasizes mutual benefit, making it feel collaborative rather than one-sided. Therefore, it’s ideal for proposing partnerships or joint ventures.

7. Let’s make the most of our time, {{firstName}}

Reply rate: 15%

Why it works:

This conversational subject line is straightforward and respectful of the recipient’s time. It’s casual and professional at the same time and creates an approachable tone for the message.

LinkedIn inMail subject line examples for recruiters

1. Your experience in {{Field}} caught our eye

Reply rate: 30%

Why it works:

This subject line is personal and specific, thus making the recipient feel valued and recognized for their expertise. What’s more, a field reference immediately creates relevance and sparks curiosity.

2. We’re hiring {{Role}} like you at {{Company}}

Reply rate: 27%

Why it works:

This LinkedIn message subject line is clear and direct and immediately highlights both the opportunity and the company. Such a line is, therefore, ideal for piquing interest in active or passive candidates.

3. Is this your next career move, {{firstName}}?

Reply rate: 25%

Why it works:

This question invites engagement by prompting the recipient to think about their next step. Moreover, including their name adds a personal touch.

4. A role that matches your skills and goals

Reply rate: 24%

Why it works:

This subject line aligns with the recipient’s aspirations. Thus, it shows that the opportunity has been thoughtfully matched to their profile.

5. Let’s talk about your career growth in {{Field}}

Reply rate: 22%

Why it works:

Career growth is a top motivator for candidates. That said, this LinkedIn inMail subject line works because it feels collaborative and highlights a mutual interest in their success.

5 Tips for writing high-converting LinkedIn inMail subject lines

So, we've provided you with LinkedIn inMail subject line examples that you can immediately use in your LinkedIn outreach.

But they will only get you so far. The goal is to be able to write high-converting ones on your own.

That said, here are 5 tried-and-tested tips to help you create inMail subject lines that will stand out in your prospects' LinkedIn inboxes.

Use data or metrics to grab attention

Data-driven subject lines instantly stand out because they promise measurable value, which B2B leads are drawn to.

Thus, our advice is to incorporate:

• Percentages,
• Numbers,
• Metrics,

Or any other data that can give your subject line credibility and a results-oriented edge.

Incorporate questions to spark curiosity

Questions are a natural attention-grabber because they encourage the recipient to pause and think. Moreover, by posing a question, you create curiosity about what the rest of the inMail contains, which prompts the other party to open it. Just make sure the question is relevant to their challenges or goals, though.

Avoid generic or overused phrases

If I had a nickel for every time I saw ''Let's hop on a quick chat'' and similar in my inbox... well, I wouldn't be rich because it's nickels we're talking about. But you get the gist. This type of LinkedIn inMail subject line is overused, meaning it hasn't been working for a while now.

That said, if you want the subject line to perform, you need to be original, creative, and specific. Such a line will show that you've put thought into your outreach instead of just automating away with no specific strategy.

A/B test subject lines to find the most effective ones

Even the best LinkedIn inMail subject lines need a bit of tweaking from time to time.

That said, to figure out what works best for your audience, perform regular A/B testing where you send one subject line to one group of leads and another to the other. Or A/B test up to 5 inMail subject lines on autopilot using Skylead. 

To compare the variations against each other, make sure to track the number of inMails sent as well as open and reply rates. Then, optimize accordingly.

Write subject lines from your lead’s perspective

Your subject line should speak directly to the recipient’s needs and priorities. Therefore, it’s important you frame your copy around what’s in it for them—not you. That can be solving a problem, achieving a goal, gaining a benefit, or anything else for that matter.

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How to increase the impact of your LinkedIn inMail subject line

So, you've mastered the art of crafting the perfect LinkedIn inMail subject line. But now, it's time to put your knowledge to the test. 

And to do so, you need to send some inMails.

Sure, you could go about doing it one by one, manually. But there's a better approach: LinkedIn automation tools.

Our very own Skylead is one of the best LinkedIn automation and cold email software on the market.

In fact, it's commonly used by sales professionals, marketers, agencies, and recruiters around the world who wish to save 11+ hours a week on manual outreach tasks.

However, unlike similar tools, Skylead can help you send both:

• Free inMails
• And paid inMails

Along with:

• Invites to connect,
• LinkedIn messages,
• Tens of thousands of emails a month at no extra cost,

…all on autopilot!

What’s more, these actions can be combined with if/else conditions to form Smart sequences; our first-to-market outreach sequences that respond to the way your prospects behave to find the fastest path to them.

On top of letting you take advantage of LinkedIn and email outreach simultaneously, our tool can also help you find and verify emails of your leads. Without breaking your outreach flow, at that, since you can also add this action to the sequence. 

You can even warm-up infinite mailboxes, courtesy of our partnership with InboxFlare, an email outreach tool. 

And did we mention you can also use our native image and GIF personalization feature for added impact?

But what’s particularly relevant to LinkedIn inMail subject lines is our A/B testing feature.

Let’s get into it deeper!

How to A/B test LinkedIn inMail subject lines with Skylead

As we mentioned already, Skylead lets you A/B test up to 5 different versions of your inMail subject line.

On top of LinkedIn inMail subject lines, you can also split test:

• LinkedIn inMail body
• LinkedIn connection request message
• LinkedIn message
• Email subject line
• Email body

You can access this feature on the Smart sequence builder page by clicking on the inMail step in your sequence.

Then, a menu will appear on the right side with fields to insert a LinkedIn inMail subject line, inMail body, and signature.

Use the slider on the right to scroll down, and click the ‘’Add A/B variant’’ under the signature field. And voilà! You will have created another version!

Here is also where you can turn the Paid inMails option on or off.

To A/B test LinkedIn inMails subject line, copy the same body you used for the 1st variant and only change the subject.

Once happy with your variations (and your Smart sequence), start your outreach campaign. And then, wait for the results to start coming in, which you can evaluate on Skylead’s Reports page.

Opt for a side-by-side view to easily see how different variants stack against each other.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

What is the difference between an InMail and a LinkedIn message?

The main difference between a LinkedIn InMail and a standard LinkedIn message is who you can send it to. LinkedIn messages can only be sent to your 1st-degree connections, while InMails let you message anyone on the platform. Moreover, inMail is a LinkedIn Premium feature.

How to write LinkedIn inMails?

To write an effective LinkedIn InMail, firstly, use a specific subject line to grab attention. Then, open the inMail with a relevant hook, address the recipient’s pain points with a clear value proposition, and keep it concise. End with a strong CTA to which the recipient can easily respond.

What are LinkedIn inMail credits?

LinkedIn InMail credits are part of LinkedIn Premium plans and determine the number of paid InMails you can send monthly. Each plan provides a specific number of credits per month, ranging from 5 (Premium Career) to 50 (Sales Navigator). Unused credits roll over for up to 3 months. Meanwhile, if your recipient replies to your InMail, LinkedIn returns the credit to your balance. 

Make the most of your inMail subject lines

Crafting the best LinkedIn InMail subject line is both an art and a science.

And no, you probably won’t hit the jackpot with your first one—it takes consistent testing and refining to get it just right.

Nonetheless, the InMail subject line examples and tips we’ve shared above are designed to guide you in the right direction. But it's up to you to put what you've learned into practice.

And what better way to do so than at scale, with Skylead as your automation ally?

Delegate time-consuming outreach activities to Skylead and save 11+ hours a week—time you can better spend perfecting your LinkedIn InMail subject lines!

So, come test Skylead for free for 7 days to unlock your full outreach potential and watch your LinkedIn inMail response rates soar!

If you're in sales, chances are you've given social selling on LinkedIn a try. You may also be all too familiar with the following scenario: you spend hours sending invites to connect, crafting messages, and follow-ups only to realize the results are…nowhere to be found. Conversations die out before they've truly begun, engagement is flat, and you're left wondering if all this effort is even worth it. But LinkedIn isn’t the problem. It's how you're using it. LinkedIn is a powerful sales engine, but only with the proper LinkedIn sales strategy.

So, how do you create one? And, more importantly, how do you put it to work?

Since our sales gurus, Andrea and Pavle, are experts on sales (and LinkedIn), we thought we'd pick their brains to answer these. And now, we'll be using their knowledge and firsthand experience to break down:

• How to create and execute a LinkedIn sales strategy that gets results;
• How to track and analyze its performance;
• And what mistakes you need to avoid to minimize wasted efforts.

So, if you are ready to turn things around on LinkedIn sales-wise, it's time to dig in!

How effective is LinkedIn for sales?

Why bother using LinkedIn for sales to begin with?

Because it’s home to over 1 billion professionals spread across 200 territories. Out of these, a whopping 63 million are decision-makers and another 10 million C-level executives. This means your audience is definitely there. You just need to get to them.

Basic users are slightly limited when it comes to LinkedIn prospecting and LinkedIn lead generation. And while you can use any LinkedIn Premium subscription to get to sales leads, Sales Navigator remains your best bet.

That’s because it’s aimed precisely at sales professionals and equipped with over 50 lead and account LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters that simplify prospecting. Not to mention, it comes with advanced features that aren’t available to other Premium subscribers (e.g., Buyer Intent and Persona features).

We could spend hours talking about the LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs Premium differences. But instead, let’s focus on the stats that prove just how effective LinkedIn, or Sales Navigator, is for sales professionals.

Namely, its users manage to:

• Close 31% more deals
• Connect to 4x more decision-makers
• Save 65+ hours annually due to reduced tool switching

Moreover, Forrester Consulting conducted a study on Sales Navigator in 2023, where they revealed that this subscription yields an impressive 312% ROI over the course of 3 years. It also pays itself off in less than 6 months.

So, if you’re in sales and LinkedIn, especially its Sales Navigator, isn’t part of your strategy, it’s likely you’re losing out on some serious opportunities.

What is a LinkedIn sales strategy & why do you need one?

A LinkedIn sales strategy is a structured plan for using LinkedIn to find prospects, generate leads, and drive sales. It focuses on tapping into LinkedIn’s networking opportunities, sharing valuable content, and using sales tools to connect with potential customers, build relationships, and nurture them into clients.

In fact, with a LinkedIn strategy in place, you can:

• Target the right individuals who fit your Ideal Customer Profile and Buyer Persona.
• Build credibility and trust through thought leadership posts, insightful comments, and meaningful conversations.
• Increase efficiency by focusing on high-value activities like nurturing warm leads and minimizing time spent on low-potential prospects.
• Drive measurable results by converting these leads into paying customers.

On the other hand, without a clear and actionable LinkedIn sales strategy, the results are often wasted effort, time, and, ultimately, money.

What should you do before creating a LinkedIn sales strategy?

So, having a social selling strategy for LinkedIn is a must. That much we established.

But now, let’s show you what you should do before you create one, according to our sales team at Skylead.

Identify your sales objectives & goals

Every successful LinkedIn sales strategy starts with clear objectives. That’s because defining them upfront helps you measure success later on.

To establish them, think about what you are trying to achieve.

Are you looking to:

• Generate leads, 
• Increase product demos, 
• Or drive sales directly?

Objectives are meant to guide your strategy and point you in the right direction.

But a strong LinkedIn sales strategy also needs goals to keep you focused and on track.

Unlike objectives, goals are specific, measurable, and highly influenced by key performance indicators (KPIs).

For example, your goals could be to:

• Bring 250 warm leads from LinkedIn in Q1.
• Increase product demos by 30%.
• Bring $20K of sales directly from LinkedIn.

To track these goals effectively, you’ll need to define relevant KPIs.

Based on the examples above, your sub-KPIs could be to:

• Increase connection requests by 50%
• Reach a 30% response rate

When clearly defined, KPIs become measurable, allowing you to plan activities, allocate resources, and monitor progress efficiently. As you move closer to your goals—and, ultimately, your objectives—you can refine and optimize these metrics to improve your results over time.

Define your ICP and Buyer Persona

After you identify your objections and goals, it's time to figure out who to target. In other words, you should define your Ideal Customer Profile and Buyer Persona.

Your ICP represents the type of companies that benefit the most from your product or service. 

In the meantime, your Buyer Persona is a more detailed representation of decision-makers within those companies.

To paint a better picture, say you’re selling a CRM for small businesses. In that case, your ICP may include SaaS companies with 10-50 employees. As for your Buyer Persona, it could be a VP of Sales who struggles with pipeline visibility and wants to simplify the sales process.

With these two defined, you can focus on the right people and improve your odds of driving sales.

Optimize your LinkedIn profile

What’s the first thing your prospects will see after you’ve invited them to connect?

Your LinkedIn profile!

Thus, it needs to make a strong first impression. Otherwise, your entire efforts could be for nothing.

So, before creating and implementing a LinkedIn sales strategy, you need to optimize it for impact.

Firstly, begin with your profile photo. Use a high-quality, professional image where you look approachable and confident. Avoid selfies or overly casual pictures, as they don’t inspire trust.

You should also make your LinkedIn cover photo count. Use it to highlight your expertise, showcase your company’s branding, or feature an eye-catching tagline that tells prospects how you can help them.

Then, focus on your LinkedIn headline. Emphasize the value you bring or the problem you solve instead of simply typing out your title. For example, try ''Helping SaaS companies streamline their sales process and close more deals.’’

Your headline should be complemented by a strong LinkedIn summary. Focus on who you help and how and the results you’ve achieved. Keep it conversational but professional, and don’t forget to include keywords your audience might search for through Boolean search.

Finally, opt for a custom URL (e.g., linkedin.com/in/yourname). It makes your profile easier to share and looks way more professional in emails and on business cards.

Prepare supporting resources

Outbound outreach is one of the LinkedIn sales strategies. But truth be told, the chances of your closing a deal after the 1st message are slim, to say the least. Your prospects will likely have questions before they're ready to convert. Some of them may also object to what you're offering.

But, as our wonderful Head of Sales, Andrea, says:

''Hearing things like “I’m not interested” or “I don’t have time” doesn’t mean you’ve lost your prospect. It just means you need to handle their objection.''

Some objections you can handle on the spot. But it's better to be safe than sorry. In other words, you should prepare supporting resources.

For instance, Andrea commonly uses case studies that our marketing team has prepared to handle objections involving uncertainty about profitability. They demonstrate measurable results in terms of the ROI that Skylead has delivered to other businesses.

Some other resources you could create yourself or have your content team do to aid objection handling include:

• Blog posts that explore your prospects' pain points in detail and provide solutions to them
• Videos, such as product demos and how-to-guides
• Case studies that explain how you solved others’ problems
• eBooks or whitepapers that establish your expertise

A good practice is to also anticipate the most common questions or concerns your prospects may have and prepare materials/scripts to support your answer.

For example, if they say:

• ‘’This seems too expensive,” have a value breakdown or an ROI report ready to provide.
• ‘’I’m not sure this will work for my industry,” share industry-specific case studies or testimonials.
• ‘’I don’t have time to implement this,” explain how your solution saves time in the long run.

Having these resources ready in advance allows you to respond quickly and confidently. Thus, they minimize the chances of potential deals going to waste.

How to create a LinkedIn sales strategy

By now, you should know exactly who your target audience is. But you still need to think about the best way to reach them.

That said, you can use one or combine several prospecting strategies into a broader LinkedIn sales strategy.

To get you started, here are 4 prospecting strategies. Need more? Check out our LinkedIn prospecting blog, where we’ve covered a total of 18!

Different prospecting strategies to include in your LinkedIn sales strategy

1. Using Sales Navigator filters to zero in on ICP and Buyer Persona

Sales Navigator filters help you translate your ICP and Buyer Persona into actionable search criteria. 

That said, one of Andrea’s and Pavle’s LinkedIn sales strategies is to rely on account and lead filters to filter out ICPs and promising individuals inside them. 

Then, they build Lead lists that they later use to create outreach campaigns in Skylead.

But Skylead doesn’t only support campaign creation from Sales Navigator Lead lists—it also allows campaign creation directly from its search results. This is a faster approach, though not as detailed as the first. 

2. Fishing for leads through LinkedIn groups

Speaking of search filters, did you know that Sales Navigator, unlike standard LinkedIn, has a dedicated "Groups" filter? This one is especially useful since it allows you to isolate members of specific LinkedIn groups, which you can later outreach through a search-based Skylead campaign.

Before jumping into campaign creation, though, you’ll need to take a few preparatory steps:

• Identify groups your audience is likely a part of.
• Compile information about these groups into a single place for easy reference (e.g., CSV file).
• Consider joining these groups yourself to engage with members (if they are active).

That said, most LinkedIn groups are inactive these days. Nonetheless, the right groups can still be valuable sources of leads. You just need to be strategic about how you use them.

3. Setting up lead alerts to determine the right moment to reach out

Sales Navigator has a handy feature that helps you stay updated on your leads’ activity—alerts.

You can use these alerts, as our sales team does, to track when:

• Leads post or engage with content.
• They’re mentioned in the news.
• They switch roles or companies. 

This can help you identify whom exactly to reach out to and when with relevant, personalized messages. 

So, if you want to increase the likelihood of starting meaningful conversations, incorporate these alerts into your LinkedIn sales strategy.

4. Attracting prospects through thought leadership content

Thought leadership isn’t a direct prospecting strategy. Nonetheless, it plays a big role in warming up leads, increasing brand visibility, and making your direct outreach more effective.

At its very core is content. That’s because quality content grabs attention, starts conversations, and builds trust.

That said, your content should speak directly to your target audience's pain points, challenges, and goals. So, before you go about creating it, think about what your ICP and Buyer Persona would find valuable. Then, make a list of topics you could cover that aim to educate rather than only sell.

You'll also need to plan for different content formats, such as:

• Text-only posts
• Images
• Videos
• Carousels
• LinkedIn Pulse articles
• LinkedIn polls

From our experience and that of our sales team, videos and carousels drive the most engagement and have the highest reach on LinkedIn. Still, you want to balance them with other post types to keep your content appealing to those with different consumption preferences.

Moreover, LinkedIn's algorithm loves consistency. This means that to remain on people's radars, you need to post at least 2-3 times a week. Thus, it's important to create a posting calendar. And stick to it!

Of course, posting is only part of the equation. You’ll need to reply to comments you receive, keep conversations going by asking follow-up questions (this will increase your reach, too!), and comment on others' posts. That's how you’ll establish credibility and authority on LinkedIn and build thought leadership that sells for you.

How to prepare a LinkedIn sales strategy message according to the prospecting strategy

Your messaging is just as important as the strategy and sales tactics you’re using.

Since each strategy calls for a slightly different tone and structure to really connect with your audience, we’ve got you covered with some practical tips to simplify message creation.

And to make it even easier, we’ve included message examples for each strategy—personally approved (and used) by Andrea and Pavle!

1. Sales Navigator filters

Focus on personalization and contextual relevance when reaching out to prospects found through filters.

• Reference a detail from their profile or company to make your outreach feel extra personal.
• Keep your message concise, focusing on how you can address a specific challenge they face or offer value.

Template example:

‘’Hi {{FirstName}}, I came across your post about {{PainPoint}} and couldn’t help but think about the challenges that come with it. 

When I worked with {{SimilarCompanies/Professionals}}, we tackled this by {{Solution}}, leading to {{TangibleBenefit}}. 

I’d love to share a few insights or ideas that might help you achieve something similar if you're open to it.''

2. LinkedIn Groups

When targeting leads from LinkedIn Groups, establish a connection by referencing your shared interest in the group or ongoing conversations.

• Mention the group explicitly to build rapport.
• Position yourself as helpful and not overly promotional.

Template example:

“Hi {{FirstName}}, I saw we’re members of the same group, {{GroupName}} and wanted to reach out. 

I specialize in {{Expertise}} and thought it’d be great to connect and exchange ideas!”

3. Sales Navigator alerts

Timing is everything when using Sales Navigator alerts. Thus, craft your message around the alert to show you’re paying attention and reaching out with purpose.

• Acknowledge their recent activity, like a promotion or a post they shared.
• Use the alert as a conversation starter to build engagement.

Template example:

“Hi {{Name}}, congratulations on your new role at {{Company Name}}! 

Transitioning into {{Role}} must be exciting. But having worked with others like you, I know how tough it can be trying to handle {{SpecificChallenge}} while navigating new responsibilities.

One approach that’s proven effective for others in your field is {{Solution}}, which helped them achieve {{Result}}.

I’d be happy to share more details. Let me know if you’re open to a quick chat!”

4. Thought Leadership content

When reaching out after sharing thought leadership content, reference your post or their comment to bond immediately.

• Highlight shared values or goals to build credibility.
• Use the message to guide them toward exploring your expertise further.

Template example:

“Hi {{Name}}, I noticed you liked my recent post about {{Topic}}. It’s great to see others in {{Industry}} contributing to the discussion! 

I’d love to hear your thoughts—what’s been your biggest challenge with {{Issue}}?”

How to execute a LinkedIn sales strategy

After choosing one or more prospecting strategies we talked about, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and execute. This is where strategy meets action.

No matter which approach you take—leveraging Sales Navigator filters, finding prospects through LinkedIn groups, setting up lead alerts, or sharing thought leadership content—the next step boils down to one activity: outreach.

Here’s how you can effectively execute your LinkedIn sales strategy with outreach as the core focus.

1. Choose the right tool for execution.

Attracting sales leads naturally is the dream.

But you don’t want to rely on generating inbound leads only. And cold outreach is how you’ll get outbound leads.

You could do everything manually, for sure. But know that tools can simplify and speed up the process drastically.

When it comes to LinkedIn-specific tools, Sales Navigator is the gold standard, especially for prospecting, as we’ve explained earlier.

Then, you also need to decide on a tool to use for the actual outreach part. 

You have a number of LinkedIn automation tools to choose from. However, our advice is to go for Skylead. Not because it’s ours but because it’s truly the most complete tool on the market.

To paint a picture, our Skylead is your one-stop-shop LinkedIn automation and cold email software that sales teams can use to:

• Automate lead generation at scale.
• Combine LinkedIn outreach with unlimited email outreach to maximize touchpoints with leads.
• Find and verify emails of leads to reduce bounces.
• Increase response rates to 76% and more with hyper-personalized images & GIFs.
• Warm-up infinite emails thanks to our partnership with one of the best email warm-up tools, InboxFlare, to keep emails away from spam.

In essence, Skylead lets you make the most of your LinkedIn sales strategy and compliments it by introducing multichannel outreach into the mix. This is possible thanks to our Smart sequences. We were the first tool on the market to introduce this feature, which lets you combine LinkedIn and email steps with if/else conditions. As a result, you get coherent outreach flows that react according to your leads' behavior to reach them in the fastest way possible.

And did we mention you get all this at a single price?

On top of a reliable outreach solution like Skylead, you also need to choose a CRM. If you don’t use one already, that is. 

A CRM helps you connect all your leads’ details, track their progress through the sales funnel, and monitor conversions. Some of the best CRM software for sales include HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, and Monday.

If you want, you can also use content scheduling tools for LinkedIn, such as Hootsuite or Buffer. However, LinkedIn has its own post-scheduling feature. So, if other social media platforms aren’t part of your sales strategy, these may be redundant.

The point is to choose tools that fit your workflow and the ones that you’ll actually use.

2. Create an outreach campaign

After choosing the tools, it’s time to create an outreach campaign.

We’ll walk you through the process using Skylead and Sales Navigator search as a lead source. 

However, bear in mind that you can also use these lead sources with our tool:

• Sales Navigator Lead list (as mentioned)
• LinkedIn and Recruiter search result
• Recruiter Talent pool and Pipeline URL
• LinkedIn post
• LinkedIn event
• CSV file

That said, here’s how to create a campaign step-by-step.

Step 1: Use Sales Navigator filters to refine search

Narrow down your audience in Sales Navigator using filters like industry, job title, geography, company size, etc.

Once your search results are refined, copy the search URL.

Step 2: Begin campaign creation in Skylead

Now it’s time to hop into Skylead.

• Go to the Campaigns page and click Create New Campaign.
• Name your campaign.
• Paste the search URL into the corresponding field.
• Choose a connection degree.
• Hit Next.

Step 3: Define campaign settings

There are 3 types of settings to set up next:

• LinkedIn settings
• Email settings
• Global settings

Under LinkedIn settings, you get 2 options you can toggle on or off:

• Collect contact information - If turned on, Skylead will collect publicly available information from your leads’ profiles.
• Refresh search automatically - Turned on, it prompts Skylead to refresh search results and add new leads into a campaign if they appear.

If you’d like to use email as an outreach channel, use email settings to select the specific accounts. Skylead lets you connect unlimited mailboxes and rotates through them while sending emails. As a result, you can send tens of thousands of emails a month at no additional cost.

Finally, as part of global settings, you get to set a schedule Skylead will use for the campaign, along with targeting options. 

When you’re happy with the settings, click Create sequence.

Step 4: Create your Smart sequence

This is where you get to build your own Smart sequence.

Just drag actions and conditions from the right and drop them into the workspace. Then, connect them to each other to form coherent outreach flows. Don’t forget to set delays between steps while at it!

Here’s an example of a Smart sequence for inspiration.

Need more inspiration? We’ve got a library of Smart sequence templates that Andrea personally tested. So, feel free to check them out and use them in your outreach for guaranteed results!

Step 5: Add hyper-personalization

Message-based steps (e.g. Invite to connect, LinkedIn message, inMail, and email) allow you to use variables for personalization.

But we’ve got another feature that helps you truly stand out in your leads’ inboxes: native image & GIF hyper-personalization.

To enter the image & GIF editor, click the Add image button above the message field.

Then:

• Click Create new template
• Upload the image/GIF
• Submit

A new window will open where you’ll have the option to personalize the visual with:

• Your or your leads’ LinkedIn profile photo
• Your leads’ logo or a custom logo
• Custom text

Once you’re happy with the results, just click Save Image, and it will be added to your message for a chance at up to 76% response rate, as we had using this feature.

And if you’re happy with your entire sequence, this is consequently the time to kick your campaign running!

The tool will then reach out to your prospects on your behalf. If they reply, the chat will immediately appear in your Smart inbox, where you can take over the conversion and nurture away.

Smart inbox is consequently where you can label leads according to whether they are warmed up, if they booked a call, or converted. Thus, you can also use it to keep track of conversions and ROI.

How to analyze the success of your LinkedIn sales strategy

Crafting and executing a LinkedIn sales strategy is only half the battle. To make sure it’s working as intended—and to make improvements where needed—you need to track and analyze its performance.

That said, the first thing to do is analyze the KPIs that you defined in the strategy. Doing so will help you determine which parts of your strategy are driving results and which need to be refined.

Depending on the type of KPIs that you want to analyze, you can use LinkedIn’s native analytics to track:

• The demographics of your profile viewers (e.g., job titles, industries, locations).
• The performance of your posts and articles, including impressions and engagement rate.
• Trends in follower growth and audience interactions over time.

In terms of specific LinkedIn sales strategies, LinkedIn’s social selling index is a good indicator of whether your thought leadership strategy is working or not.

What’s more, if you’re using Skylead for outreach, you can easily keep track of different KPIs, like the number of leads you reached out to (connections sent), connections accepted, response rate, etc. These are available on our Reports page via:

• Graph view to spot oscillations at a glance;
• Table format to analyze day-to-day change in performance and sport patterns;
• Step-by-step mode to identify exact spots where prospects drop off or engage.

Furthermore, if you aren’t sure of the impact of the messages you prepared in a strategy, a good practice is to experiment with A/B testing. For example, while creating a Smart sequence in Skylead, you can define up to 5 different variants of your messaging and compare them against each other later on.

Of course, if results aren’t there immediately, that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. Often, they take time to show. That said, Andrea suggests you give your LinkedIn sales strategy 2 to 4 weeks to reflect progress. Only then should you evaluate its performance and optimize it accordingly.

Common mistakes to avoid when creating and executing a LinkedIn sales strategy

Even the best-intentioned LinkedIn sales strategies can fall flat if certain pitfalls aren’t avoided. 

That said, here are some of the most common mistakes to watch out for—and how to steer clear of them.

1. Not adjusting your strategy to your audience

Your audience isn’t a monolith, so your approach shouldn’t be universal. After all, a generic strategy often leads to low engagement and missed opportunities. 

Avoid this mistake by:

• Tailoring your messaging and content to the specific needs and pain points of your ICP and Buyer Persona.
• Regularly revisiting your target audience criteria to make sure they’re still relevant.

2. Sending generic connection requests

Nothing screams “spam” more than a connection request that says “Let’s connect!” without context. These requests often get ignored or outright declined. 

Instead, personalize every connection request with a reference to something specific about the prospect, such as their recent post or a common interest.

For example:

"Hi {{FirstName}}, I loved your recent article on {{topic}}—it gave me some great insights! I’d love to connect and exchange ideas on {{shared interest}}."

3. Sending sales pitches right after connecting

The fastest way to lose a connection is by pitching your product or service immediately after connecting. Social selling is about building relationships above all. 

Therefore, engage with their content before sending a direct message. When you finally message them, focus on providing value first and your offerings second.

4. Neglecting to follow up with connections

Not everyone will respond to your initial outreach message. That doesn’t mean they’re not interested, though. In such a situation, a lack of follow-up can cost you some valuable opportunities. 

Avoid this by scheduling polite and value-driven follow-ups spaced a few days apart.

To follow up after no response, feel free to share a relevant blog post or case study with a message like:

"Hi {{FirstName}}, I thought this article might be helpful based on our earlier conversation about {{topic}}. Let me know if it resonates!"

5. Giving up too soon

LinkedIn sales strategies often take time to show results, as we pointed out earlier. Many give up after a few weeks of minimal engagement. By all means, don’t do the same! 

Instead:

• Be consistent with your efforts.
• Evaluate your performance occasionally and make data-driven adjustments.

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Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

How do you use LinkedIn effectively for sales?

Focus on building relationships. Optimize your profile, create engaging content that speaks to your audience’s pain points, and use Sales Navigator for targeted prospecting. Combine this with personalized outreach and consistent engagement to nurture leads and drive conversions.

What’s the recommended balance between inbound (content-driven) and outbound (cold outreach) efforts in a LinkedIn sales strategy?

A 60/40 split is often ideal, from our experience. This means you should devote 60% of your efforts to inbound (content-driven) strategies to build trust and visibility and 40% to outbound (cold outreach) to directly engage with prospects. Then, adjust as you go based on audience response and resource availability.

How can I make the most of a LinkedIn sales strategy if I’m working with a small team or limited resources?

You can maximize efficiency by using automation tools like Skylead to save time on manual outreach. This leaves you time to focus on high-impact activities like relationship-building. Also, prioritize connecting with your ICP and Buyer Persona and repurpose content (e.g., turning blog posts into videos or carousels) to maximize your reach with minimal effort.

Seal the deal with the proper LinkedIn sales strategy

Creating and executing a successful LinkedIn sales strategy is the difference between chasing leads aimlessly and actually closing deals.

So, take the time to plan it out and put it into motion when you're confident you’ve got it right. And whatever you do, don’t cut corners—success on LinkedIn is all about doing things the right way.

Just keep in mind that results may not come overnight. But that’s just part of the process. Be patient, stay consistent, and tweak things as needed. Over time, it’ll all start to click, and your hard work will pay off.

Need a little help along the way? Skylead can handle the repetitive outreach tasks for you, freeing up your time to focus on what really matters: nurturing those valuable connections.

The best thing is that you can try it out for 7 days free of charge! Got questions or just want to say hi? Our team’s here on live chat, ready to help and cheer you on on your way to becoming a social selling expert on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn automation tools are the future of sales, and let me tell you why.

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, it also became clear that doing it manually was time-consuming and not sustainable in the long run. People needed a smarter, faster way to perform their operative tasks, such as LinkedIn outreach. Thus, LinkedIn automation tools were born.

We actually built Skylead - the ultimate LinkedIn automation and cold email software - to help these individuals save 11+ hours a week on manual work so they 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.

We’ll also introduce you to the types of LinkedIn automation tools available and explain how to choose the one for you.

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.

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 (e.g., Skylead);
• Chrome extensions (e.g., Dux-Soup);
• Desktop apps (e.g., LinkedHelper 2)
• Web browsers.

A cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool operates using a dedicated IP address, also known as a proxy hosted on the internet, which helps shield your activity. Unlike tools that store data on local servers or your computer, cloud-based tools store everything online.

This also means such software can run even when your PC is off. In addition, you can select an IP address from your home country or any other country. What’s more, only cloud-based software can have multiple accounts and integrated inboxes. 

Lastly, cloud-based LinkedIn automation platforms mimic human behavior. In other words, they click and view pages on LinkedIn as humans would. This makes them virtually undetectable. It also means you can outreach new leads and send new connection requests carefree.

Extensions, desktop apps, and web browsers, on the other hand, lack a dedicated IP address and the ability to mimic human behavior. This 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.

You won’t always find all the details about how LinkedIn automation tools work, though. If or when that happens, it’s best to reach out to their customer support.

Should I use a LinkedIn automation Chrome extension? 

No. While LinkedIn automation tools based on Chrome extensions might be cheaper, they come with significant risks. These extensions are not safe as they inject code directly into LinkedIn, making it much easier for the platform to detect automation. If caught, you could get your LinkedIn account restricted permanently.

Web browsers and desktop apps are slightly safer than Chrome extensions since they don’t inject code into LinkedIn. However, they still lack the advanced features and security that cloud-based tools offer. Thus, if you’re looking for safety and functionality, cloud-based options are the way to go.

Why you should use a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool

If you want to avoid LinkedIn restrictions and get the most out of your automation software, go for a cloud-based solution. Unlike extensions, they don’t inject code into LinkedIn, and you don’t need to keep your PC on for them to work. They also mimic human behavior, so LinkedIn can't detect them. 

Besides being the safest option, cloud-based tools have added perks like integrated inboxes and support for managing multiple accounts.

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]

Now that you’ve got all the info you need to choose the right SaaS product, let’s dive into the list of the best and most popular LinkedIn automation tools.

We’ve personally tested each one and 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 one-stop-shop LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software. It offers sales teams, marketers, agency founders, and recruiters a chance to streamline their multichannel outreach efforts. 

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. You know what that means - you get extra features and don’t have to keep your PC turned on for it to work. 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.

Furthermore, it is completely safe to use since it mimics human-like behavior. What’s more, it executes each action a different number of times every day to keep your account safe and healthy.

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 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 an email and LinkedIn outreach combo - a multichannel outreach tool in your LinkedIn sales strategy is a must in 2025. It creates a more engaging and well-rounded lead-generation 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 whether your leads respond on LinkedIn, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Recruiter, or email, 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 LinkedIn and email 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, ours is the only LinkedIn automation and cold email software that 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. 

Infinite email warm-up

Ok, combining email with your LinkedIn outreach is all fun and games. But you can’t go into it unprepared.

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, InboxFlare, 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 InboxFlare, you get top-tier features like:

• AI-powered warm-up strategy perfectly suited to your domain
• Warm-up in 30+ languages to reach audiences across the globe
• Hyper-realistic warm-up with custom topics
• Domain health monitoring
• Deliverability testing

InboxFlare 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 profile picture, company logo, and other profile 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 InboxFlare come with a monthly subscription of only $100 per seat.

This makes it the most cost-effective of all LinkedIn automation tools.

But the features aren’t all you get. You also get videos, tutorials, sales hacks, support calls on how to perfectly target your leads, 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. 

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. However, other LinkedIn automation tools, such as Skylead, can integrate with it. Thus, you can get the best of both worlds. 

Simply grab the search URL or a lead list URL and paste it into Skylead. And just like that, you will have imported your lead into a campaign!

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. TexAu

Audience score: ⭐ 4.2 / 5.0

TexAu is a data scraping tool with a Chrome extension and a desktop app. 

This is a direct alternative to PhantomBuster, which can send LinkedIn connection requests and messages and engage with posts on autopilot.

Pros

TexAu can scrape data from almost anywhere, including Facebook and LinkedIn groups, Google and LinkedIn search results, LinkedIn profiles, YouTube, Quora, and Twitter. We found this really useful, as it gave us more sources to find leads.

Moreover, this software offers email enrichment, which we also found helpful. In other words, it can analyze LinkedIn accounts and find and verify business emails. 

Cons

People on review websites reported having difficulty setting up proxies. What’s more, there are frequent bugs and a lack of tutorials for beginners, as pointed out in this review that says:

‘’There are some UI and UX improvements to be made, and there is also a bit of a learning curve.’’

Lastly, TexAu doesn’t have Smart sequences and an integrated inbox like Skylead does.

Pricing

Like PhantomBuster, TexAu has 3 plans, with pricing depending on the time software executes the activities, email verification credits, and more. 

5. 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

It also supports both free and paid inMails, which we didn’t find to be the case with many other tools on the list, except for Skylead.

Moreover, it also integrates directly with some of the best CRM software for sales, Pipedrive and HubSpot. 

Finally, the cloud-based solution provides added flexibility and security, making it more reliable than the Chrome extension alone.

Cons

Dux-Soup lacks some advanced features like Image and GIF hyper-personalization, Smart sequences, and email automation. Additionally, the cloud-based option is only available on the highest-tier plan. This means lower-tier users are forced to rely on the Chrome extension, which isn’t the safest.

Pricing

Dux-Soup has Individual, Team, & Agency pricing plans available with multiple sub-plans:

6. LinkedHelper 2

Audience score: ⭐ 4.8 / 5.0

Unlike Dux-Soup, Linked Helper is a LinkedIn automation tool based on a desktop app. Unfortunately, this still means that it has no dedicated IP address and the possibility of running multiple accounts. In addition, your PC needs to be on for it to work in the background.

Pros 

LinkedHelper 2 offers the creation of a LinkedIn Recruiter-based campaign to help all recruiters out there manage potential candidates.

All processed contacts are stored in its internal CRM. Here, you can view the history of contacts through all your campaigns, search by tags, and add notes. LinkedHelper 2 also has an integrated inbox, which came in handy to us when we wanted to interact with leads manually.

Cons

LinkedHelper doesn’t have some other more advanced features that many other LinkedIn automation tools already have. 

These features include:

• Image and GIF hyper-personalization
• Smart sequences 
• A/B testing

Additionally, it does not have email automation.

Pricing

For as low as $15 per month, you will get some basic lead generation options. 

However, bear in mind that you’re limited to sending 20 connection requests and 20 messages a day under this Standard plan.

Nonetheless, if your requirements exceed this, LinkedHelper 2 also offers a Pro plan at $45 that lets you send unlimited connection requests.

7. Zopto

Audience score: ⭐ 4.3 / 5.0

This LinkedIn automation software is a cloud-based solution for social selling. 

Zopto is compatible with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, LinkedIn Premium, and Recruiter accounts. 

Pros

Firstly, Zopto offers an email enrichment feature. In other words, it can find business emails, like Skylead, PhantomBuster, and TexAu, and verify them. 

Additionally, Zopto includes LinkedIn post scheduling and A/B testing, along with an integrated inbox and CRM integration via Zapier or API. 

Moreover, the recently added Smart sequences let users create dynamic outreach flows triggered by lead behavior that mix LinkedIn and email actions. Zopto also provides basic automation on X in the form of automatic post likes.

Cons

While Zopto includes email enrichment, it limits how many leads you can enrich based on your pricing plan. Moreover, despite its Smart sequences, Zopto lacks advanced features like image and GIF hyper-personalization. Not to mention, its X automation is limited to post liking.

Pricing

Zopto comes with a total of 4 pricing plans:

8. MeetAlfred

Audience score: ⭐ 3.2 / 5.0

MeetAlfred is a cloud-based software with automated social media features. 

It focuses on social selling via your LinkedIn profile. In addition, it can schedule posts on Instagram, X, and LinkedIn.

Pros

This LinkedIn automation tool lets you create drip campaigns combining:

• Profile views
• Invites to connect
• Messages
• Free inMails
• Emails

Additionally, all processed contacts are stored in MeetAlfred’s internal CRM. This means you can easily access and manage all your 1st-degree connections information and filter the contacts by company, industry, type of LinkedIn account, X, and much more. 

MeetAlfred also offers integrated inbox and email automation.

Cons

MeetAlfred lacks Smart sequences, email discovery, and verification features. It also doesn’t include native GIF and image personalization. You can personalize visuals while using it, but only if you subscribe to a third-party tool, Hyperise, which they integrate with. Naturally, this will cost you extra.

Pricing

MeetAlfred offers 3 pricing plans: 

And if you decide to take a Hyperise subscription alongside MeetAlfred, plan for an additional $69 a month.

9. Dripify

Audience score: ⭐ 4.6 / 5.0

This cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool works with Premium, Sales Navigator, Recruiter Lite, and basic LinkedIn accounts. 

Pros

Dripify allows the creation of sales funnels on LinkedIn by automating some actions as a part of their sequence with conditions. These actions include viewing profiles, sending regular messages and connection requests, and skill endorsement. 

In addition, you can integrate other software, such as HubSpot, through Zapier. Lastly, it supports A/B testing and has a Recent activity feature on its reports page.

Cons

Dripify indeed offers Smart sequences. However, only Pro & Advanced users can use them. In addition, you don’t have the option to automate the paid InMail step.

Secondly, Dripify has no email automation feature. Thus, you can’t get to leads who aren’t active on LinkedIn.

Additionally, you cannot send more than 75 connection requests a day. And while there is activity control, you need to be an Advanced user to access it. 

Dripify also doesn’t offer Image & GIF hyper-personalization, nor can you create custom variables using it

Lastly, Dripify doesn’t have an email discovery and verification feature. So, if email is part of your outreach, you’d be better off with a Dripify alternative.

Pricing

Dripify has 3 different pricing plans:

10. Expandi

Audience score: ⭐ 4.3 / 5.0

Expandi is a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool with support for both LinkedIn and email outreach. 

Pros

Expandi published its Smart sequence feature a year after Skylead did, making it the second tool on the market to do so. They offer additional actions such as skill endorsement and following companies, which we found useful (though, not essential).

Like Skylead, Zopto, and LinkedHelper 2, Expandi has the option of creating LinkedIn Recruiter-based campaigns. 

Lastly, Expandi can integrate with any other tool via Zapier webhooks. 

Cons

Expandi offers Image and GIF hyper-personalization, but like MeetAlfred, it outsources this feature to Hyperise. Thus, it will cost you extra. What's more, it’s worth noting that this Hyperise package is limited to 5 templates and 5,000 impressions, with each image view counting toward that limit.

In addition to the extra cost, Expandi lacks email discovery and verification. These features are essential for domain safety and verified multi-touch approach. Expandi can scrape publicly available email addresses from the leads’ LinkedIn profiles once connected to them. Unfortunately, these emails are almost always personal ones.

Lastly, many users on review websites report that this tool has become too buggy to use lately, with one user going as far as to say it’s:

‘’A whole lot of mess.’’

Thus, how about you opt for an Expandi alternative instead?

Pricing

Expandi has one pricing plan of $99 per month.

However, the Hyperise integration adds an additional $69 per month, bringing the total to $148 per month.

11. We-Connect.io

Audience score: ⭐ 4.6 / 5.0

We-Connect.io is a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool, like Skylead, Dripify, Zopto, and Expandi. 

Pros

We-Connect.io has A/B testing, a convenient feature for those who are still researching their perfect outreach strategy or wish to test different outreach messaging.

In addition, the tool has a Smart sequences feature, which lets you combine different LinkedIn and email actions triggered by conditions.

Whether your prospects come from LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator, you’ll be able to see them, as We-Connect.io has an integrated inbox, too. 

Moreover, it has auto endorse and post-engagement features that we liked, as well as API and Zapier integration. 

Cons

Sadly, We-Connect.io doesn’t offer advanced features like Image & GIF personalization or email discovery and verification. Email automation, while there, isn’t available for users of their Starter plan. Finally, unlike Skylead, they don’t offer 1-on-1 onboarding sessions to every new user.

Pricing 

We-Connect.io has a total of 3 pricing plans available:

12. Octopus CRM

Audience score: ⭐ 4.5 / 5.0

This is another extension-based LinkedIn automation tool. 

As it is designed for LinkedIn automation only, Octopus CRM users can solely perform LinkedIn outreach once they connect their LinkedIn profiles.

Pros

One of the main features of Octopus CRM is that it allows you to send bulk messages to 1st-degree contacts. Moreover, the tool is capable of viewing your leads’ profiles, sending them invites to connect, and endorsing their skills.

In addition, its reporting page has very detailed analytics for the features it offers. The report page includes various activities, such as the number of connection requests sent or the current Social Selling Index. 

Lastly, Octopus CRM supports Zapier and HubSpot integration.

Cons

Firstly, as it is a browser extension, this LinkedIn automation bot is not the safest to use. Secondly, it doesn’t have Smart sequences, nor does it have an InMail message step.

Lastly, Octopus CRM supports all LinkedIn subscriptions. However, you need to pay the highest subscription plan if you use a Recruiter account. 

Pricing

Depending on the features available, Octopus CRM offers 4 pricing options:

13. Salesflow

Audience score: ⭐ 4.2 / 5.0

SalesFlow is a cloud-based solution with an integrated inbox and its own CRM. 

It is adequate for anyone who wants to leave the campaign running to professionals, even though the features available are modest.

Pros

In SalesFlow, you can send up to 2,000 LinkedIn messages and follow-ups. The tool also supports email automation, meaning you get to take advantage of full multichannel channel outreach.

In terms of campaign sources, you can set up automated campaigns in SalesFlor using either:

• Sales Navigator search
• Or LinkedIn search.

You can also personalize your messaging with variables, both pre-set and custom ones.

Cons

Unfortunately, SalesFlow doesn’t offer email discovery, verification, or Smart sequences features. Furthermore, it doesn’t have any image personalization capabilities, so you cannot go all personalized for your prospects. 

Lastly, it doesn’t support Recruiter campaigns, nor can it send paid inMails, like most LinkedIn automation tools we tested.

Pricing

SalesFlow has 3 pricing plans: 

14. LinkedFusion

Audience score: ⭐ 4.3 / 5.0

Another LinkedIn automation tool worth mentioning is LinkedFusion. 

It is a cloud-based solution with an integrated inbox that perfectly works with any LinkedIn account. 

Pros

With LinkedInFusion, you can personalize messages with a few variables like name, company, and location. It also supports campaign creation from the CSV file.

You can also connect it with any other app through Zapier. 

What’s more, it natively integrates with Google Sheets, plus it offers native integrations with most CRM software (e.g., HubSpot). 

Lastly, LinkedFusion team provides many LinkedIn tutorials that explain advanced growth hacks. 

Cons

LinkedFusion doesn’t have Smart sequences, and some users reported on Capterra that the existing sequences are not easy to set up.

Furthermore, even though it offers image personalization, it does so through Hyperise, so you need to pay extra per month. 

Lastly, its pricing plan limits how many connection requests you can send per day.  

Pricing

LinkedInFusion has 3 pricing plans in store. They depend on other features and the number of connection requests and messages you can send per day:

To personalize your images and GIFs using Hyperise, count on paying an additional $69 a month.

15. Lead Connect

Audience score: ⭐ 4.2 / 5.0

Lead Connect is an extension-based tool that supports LinkedIn Basic or Sales Navigator search campaigns. It also lets you create campaigns from CSV files.

Pros

Lead Connect has a pretty simple drip campaign with only a few steps available. On the other hand, it offers various sequence and message templates, which we liked. However, the number of templates depends on the pricing plan. 

Integration-wise, you can link Lead Connect with HubSpot. In addition, you can even get the email discovery feature thanks to the integration with other tools such as Hunter.io. However, you will need to pay extra for it.

Cons

Lead Connect doesn’t offer Smart sequence like Skylead or Expandi does. In addition, it doesn’t support Recruiter integration and needs Zapier to integrate with other CRM software. Lastly, you can’t use it to personalize images or GIFs of any kind.

Pricing

LeadConnect offers 4 subscription plans based on the number of templates, connection requests, and messages you can send per day:

16. Waalaxy

Audience score: ⭐ 4.5 / 5.0

LinkedIn automation tool, Waalaxy, is a cloud-based software. 

However, its free version uses a Chrome extension to perform automated tasks. This means it’s not the safest to use since it injects code into LinkedIn and acts like a bot. 

Pros

With support for LinkedIn and email, Waalaxy lets you reach prospects through their preferred communication channels.

That said, you can use it to create automated campaigns from:

• LinkedIn search URLs,
• Sales Navigator lead lists,
• And CSV files.

Furthermore, you can experiment with A/B testing using this software and use its AI assistant to craft messages.

Cons

As its free version is extension-based, Waalaxy is not the safest tool to use. In fact, many users on review websites have reported having their LinkedIn account banned once they started using this tool.

In addition, it doesn’t have image & GIF personalization, and it only has 3 text variables: company, first and last name. We found them limiting, to say the least.

They do offer Smart sequences, but the problem is you can’t build your own. Instead, you are limited to their sequence templates. Lastly, they don’t have native email discovery & verification features, and their integrated inbox costs extra.

Pricing

Waalaxy has 4 different pricing plans:

You also need to pay an additional $22 a month for the LinkedIn inbox.

17. Salesloop

Audience score: ⭐ 3.5 / 5.0

As a fairly new cloud-based solution on the market, Salesloop works with all LinkedIn Premium account types.  

Pros

Salesloop lets you create a simple 2-step drip campaign with no conditions from LinkedIn search results or Sales Navigator lead lists. In addition, you can create a campaign using a CSV file, where you can define custom variables.

Salesloop also allows you to download a CSV report, which we liked.

And if you are not automation savvy, they also offer a done-for-you deal. Just bear in mind that you need to pay a steep price for it.

Cons 

Salesloop doesn’t have Smart sequences. Furthermore, the drip campaign doesn’t support many LinkedIn activities. In fact, it supports invite-to-connect and follow-up message steps only. What’s more, the tool has no email automation and doesn’t integrate with any CRM. Lastly, the option to personalize images and GIFs isn’t there, either.

Pricing

Salesloop has 3 pricing plans with the monthly cost of:

18. IFTTT

Audience score: ⭐ 4.6 / 5.0

This tool is not your standard LinkedIn automation tool, as it’s not for lead generation. 

However, it is extension-based, and you can use it to automate your LinkedIn activities, such as publishing content, sharing a link, or an update. 

It was created mainly to automate activities on countless platforms, including WordPress, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Evernote, and others.

That said, it doesn’t automate LinkedIn messages. 

Pricing

The pricing of IFTTT is fairly simple. In fact, there are a total of 3 plans available:

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Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

We’ve noticed some questions regarding LinkedIn automation tools burning online with no answers. At least not the precise ones. So, let’s change that.

Is LinkedIn a lead generation tool?

LinkedIn is a social media platform used by professionals. Marketers, salespeople, and recruiters also use it to find and generate new leads via LinkedIn campaigns. It is not a lead generation tool, per se, but, rather, a place where you can generate leads using different LinkedIn automation and generation tools.

Can you automate lead generation on LinkedIn?

Yes. For example, you can find the leads’ data through LinkedIn prospecting. Then, use automation tools to scrape the contacts and create a sequence to reach out to them on autopilot. In other words, with LinkedIn automation tools, you can automate parts of LinkedIn lead generation activities.

How do you automate in LinkedIn?

By using LinkedIn automation tools, you can automate LinkedIn lead generation tasks. The activities you can automate range from data scraping to sending connection requests, follow-up messages, InMails, follows, and profile views. Simply log into your LinkedIn automation tool and select the activities you wish the algorithm to perform. 

What is an automation tool in LinkedIn?

The automation tool for LinkedIn is software used to perform different activities on LinkedIn that you usually do manually. In other words, these tools automate LinkedIn activities such as profile views, following other LinkedIn users, sending connection requests, regular LinkedIn messages, or InMails.

Is Linkedin automation illegal? 

No. LinkedIn automation isn’t illegal. However, since LinkedIn doesn’t like its users to use automation, it carefully analyzes accounts’ activities. If it registers unusual activity, LinkedIn can restrict your account. So, be careful about which LinkedIn automation tool you choose and inform yourself of what is considered a cause for restriction.   

Does LinkedIn allow automation tools?

No. LinkedIn doesn’t like its users to use automation. That is why they imposed limitations, such as the number of connection requests sent per week. They even analyze users’ behavior and can restrict your account if they notice anything suspicious. Thus, if you want to use LinkedIn automation, it’s better to choose a tool like Skylead that operates safely.

Is there a LinkedIn bot?

LinkedIn automation tools (also known as LinkedIn bots) are software that use bots to automate your activities on LinkedIn. Sales teams and recruiters around the world use LinkedIn automation tools to automate tasks such as sending connection requests, messages, and inMails to get in touch with the leads.

Ready to automate your LinkedIn outreach?

Now that you are familiar with the most popular LinkedIn automation tools, which one would you choose?

…Skylead, of course! 😉

Jokes aside, our advice is to go with the tool that gives you the most options you need for your business. And the more comfortable you get with automating your LinkedIn outreach, the more creative you’ll become in generating leads and setting yourself apart from the competition.

Not sure which features to prioritize in LinkedIn automation tools? Here’s a list of 7 must-have features for a reference:

Now, go and automate your LinkedIn outreach and reach those ambitious goals!

Let’s chat! Drop by and say hi to our customer support team, and let them help you sign up for Skylead’s 7-day free trial. We can’t wait to meet you!

If you've ever wondered if there is a way to speed up lead-generation activities and overcome the time-consuming, repetitive nature of manual processes, 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 what tool you should use accordingly. 

Types of lead generation automation

There are 2 types of automated lead generation, but they best work 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 the 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. 

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 scrape 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

Whether you wish to use LinkedIn outreach or any other medium, 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 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 Chat GPT 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.

6. 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 them out. 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 outreach 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 and qualifying. 

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 automated 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 a LinkedIn automation and cold email software that streamlines the most time-consuming marketing, recruiting, and sales outreach tasks. 

These tasks include sending:

• LinkedIn connection requests 
• Messages,
• InMails,
• And emails 

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

But there’s so much more you can do with this tool!

In fact, Skylead is a one-stop-shop cold outreach solution that also allows you to:

• Warm up an infinite number of emails,
• Find and verify email addresses of your leads,
• Take advantage of unlimited email outreach to send tens of thousands of emails a month.
• Use image and GIF personalization in your communication.

Moreover, you can connect Skylead to any tool, such as your CRM, using webhooks or API and push or send data. 

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

Features

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. 

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

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, 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 InboxFlare, one of the best email warm-up tools, to bring you another one: Infinite email warm-up. 

Compatible with all major email providers and custom SMTP, InboxFlare 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 InboxFlare:

• AI-powered warm-up strategy: InboxFlare’s AI crafts a warm-up plan specific to your domain to guarantee your emails stay out of spam.
• Custom warm-up topic: The tool lets you select email topics, then generates and sends personalized warm-up emails to mimic real engagement and improve deliverability.
• Warm-up in 30+ languages: With warm-up emails available in over 30 languages, reaching a global audience has never been easier.
• Continuous domain and health checks: InboxFlare continuously monitors your domain settings, blacklists, and inbox configurations to keep your email health optimal. You can also run deliverability tests to see exactly where your emails land and then fine-tune your approach.

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, profile picture, company logo, or any other detail that speaks directly to them. However, you don’t have to customize one by one. Skylead automates this process by pulling information directly from LinkedIn profiles.

This hyper-personalized approach doesn’t only look 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 any 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.
• Onsite 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 subscriber’s 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, respectively:

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 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 would fill out the form, they'd be 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, automated outreach emails, and LinkedIn automation tools allows you 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!

Is Dripify falling short of your expectations for LinkedIn outreach?  Or maybe you're starting to question if another tool can deliver better results for your LinkedIn lead generation? LinkedIn automation has come a long way, and today, we don’t have just 1 Dripify alternative but many more. 

And guess what? They all come with distinct features, integrations, and pricing models to suit different preferences.

Curious to know more about these tools? We've compared the top 9 Dripify competitors to help you find the ideal match.

But first, let’s:

• Learn more about Dripify and its features.
• Discover the pros and cons of using Dripify.
• Go through user reviews and pricing details.

What is Dripify?

As per their official website, Dripify is a:

"LinkedIn autopilot that works while you sleep."

In other words, it's a LinkedIn automation tool that helps users manage their lead generation and outreach with automation. 

Dripify connects to free and Premium LinkedIn accounts and enables you to create search or CSV-based drip campaigns to automatically:

• Send invites to connect
• Message your leads
• Send free inMails
• View leads’ profiles
• Follow them
• Endorse their skills
• Like their content

Moreover, the tool allows you to personalize messages with over 15 variables to give your outreach a more human feel.

Beyond outreach, Dripify also serves as a lead extraction tool. It scrapes your leads’ data from LinkedIn, including their:

• Full name
• Company
• Position
• Number of connections
• Email
• Phone number
• Website URL

All this information can be compiled into a CSV file that you can download at your convenience.

Dripify also has you covered if you want to collaborate with your team. Namely, you can invite team members directly from the tool, assign them roles, set permissions, and track their performance. Important metrics like conversion rates are displayed on the Analytics page, giving you a bird's-eye view of how everyone performs.

There’s also the integrated inbox that lets you reply to all your LinkedIn messages straight from the platform. Plus, it lets you mark important conversations for easy access later and even add notes to your leads’ profiles to keep everything organized.

Not to mention, Dripify supports over 1000 integrations via Zapier webhooks, making it incredibly flexible for any workflow.

Who is Dripify for?

Although anyone can use Dripify, the tool is primarily aimed at:

• Business owners
• Sales teams
• Marketing agencies
• Recruiters

For business owners, it’s primarily a time-saving tool that takes over the grunt work associated with prospecting, lead generation, and outreach. As a result, it frees up valuable time, which they can use to focus on scaling their operations.

In the meantime, sales teams typically use Dripify to automate lead-generation campaigns and track team performance. The platform's analytics dashboard is especially useful here because it helps refine strategies on the go.

Since Dripify supports multiple LinkedIn accounts, it’s a good option for marketing agencies that are managing multiple clients.

As for recruiters, they can use the software to scale their talent acquisition. Want to fill the open roles faster? Dripify automates the entire process, allowing them to focus on finding the perfect match.

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Is Dripify allowed on LinkedIn?

Generally speaking, LinkedIn is against automation. But that doesn't mean all tools are created equal. 

That said, there are 3 types of LinkedIn automation tools you’ll come across:

• Cloud-based tools
• Desktop apps
• Chrome extensions

Dripify falls under the cloud-based category, which is considered the safest. And since it does, the chances of getting your LinkedIn account restricted when using it are a lot lower compared to when using, say, Chrome extensions.

However, the question is, is it as perfect as it seems, or are you better off with a Dripify alternative?

Dripify cons

While good in many aspects, Dripify is far from perfect. The biggest limitation? It supports just 1 channel: LinkedIn.

Many sales outreach tools nowadays (and outreach tools in general) offer the ability to reach leads across multiple platforms. Why is this valuable, though? Because with support for multichannel outreach, you can reach prospects where they’re most active.

Say someone you’re targeting isn’t active on LinkedIn. Dripify can still send them a connection request, but what good is it if they never see it? If you could send them an email, however—which they’re likely to check—the chances of getting a response would be much higher.

That said, here are some other areas where Dripify falls short that may warrant looking for an alternative solution:

• No paid InMails – You can use the tool to send free inMails only.
• No email finding or verification – While it scrapes LinkedIn data, the software can’t find or verify your leads' emails.
• Lacks A/B testing – Although you can create multiple campaigns and compare their results, Dripify doesn’t have real in-campaign A/B testing.
• Limited personalization options – There’s no support for advanced personalization, like using images or GIFs in your messages, which can make them feel more engaging.
• No one-on-one onboarding– Their customer support team is available 24/7. Nonetheless, Dripify doesn’t offer personalized onboarding. This can be a drawback for users who prefer more hands-on help when getting started.

So, if you find any of these functionalities essential, Dripify may not be the most ideal option.

But a Dripify alternative just might!

What do Dripify reviews say?

During our research, we came across both positive and negative Dripify reviews.

As for the positives, a lot of users appreciate the software’s ease of use and the effectiveness of its automation features. 

For instance, Jong Chan C., a Venture Manager, said:

‘’I tried Dripify, which revolutionized my LinkedIn outreach strategy with its rich features and automation.’’

Conversely, some users have pointed out areas where Dripify could improve.

Although he mentioned how intuitive the tool is, Zach E. mentioned that it:

‘’Would be great if they had the ability to use the paid InMail credits through campaigns.’’

Meanwhile, Laurens V. noted that: 

‘’Inbox is a bit slow in updating. Not super easy to see where your converted leads come from.’’

Dripify pricing

Dripify offers 3 distinct pricing plans:

If you opt to pay for the annual subscription, you’ll get a 35% discount.

As for the differences, with the Basic plan, you can run 1 drip campaign at a time. Meanwhile, Pro & Advance plans let you run as many as you want.

That said, if you're managing multiple campaigns or clients, the Pro or Advanced plan may be better suited. 

Or another Dripify alternative, that is.

9 Dripify competitors to help you find a perfect alternative

Dripify is a solid LinkedIn automation tool, but it's not the only player in the game. With that in mind, we’ve rounded up 9 Dripify competitors that prove superior. 

Let’s break them down one by one to help you find your ideal Dripify alternative!

Dripify alternative #1: Skylead

Why, yes. That’s us! 😊

Skylead is your ultimate LinkedIn automation and cold email software. 

It’s designed to help sales teams, marketers, founders, agency owners, and recruiters scale their outreach while saving +11 hours a week.

It’s an All-In-One platform that offers every tool you need in one package—and at a single price.

That said, our Skylead is a combination of a:

• LinkedIn prospecting tool
• LinkedIn automation tool
• Cold email software
• Email finder & verifier

Unlike Dripify, Skyleads supports multichannel outreach. This means you can use it to connect with leads on LinkedIn AND via email, courtesy of our first-to-market Smart sequences.

Speaking of email outreach, Skylead lets you send tens of thousands of emails a month at no extra cost. How? It allows you to connect unlimited email accounts and auto-rotates between them when sending emails, all while protecting your domain.

Thanks to our partnership with an email warm-up tool, InboxFlare, you also get to warm up infinite mailboxes to keep your emails away from spam.

Moreover, with its cloud-based infrastructure and 3-layer protection, the tool makes sure your activity is safe from LinkedIn restrictions. 

But how exactly does Skylead ensure account safety?

It does so by:

• Assigning a unique IP address from your local region to your account so all LinkedIn actions appear natural.
• Micking how real people interact with LinkedIn—viewing profiles, clicking buttons, and adding random delays between actions.
• Warming up your LinkedIn account by gradually increasing the limits of your LinkedIn activity.

Skylead also supports A/B testing, helping you fine-tune your campaigns by testing the impact of different message variations and subject lines. 

Personalization-wise, there are different message variables for you to try alongside our native image & GIF personalization.

And, with the Smart Inbox, you can keep all your conversations—whether from LinkedIn or email—in one place, making it easy to track, label, and manage responses.

Finally, if you need to integrate Skylead with another tool, you can do so. The tool can connect to any CRM or software via Zapier webhooks or API.

Exciting, right?

Now, let’s cover the features that make Skylead truly shine in greater detail!

LinkedIn & email automation

Let’s be honest: LinkedIn alone isn’t enough.

That’s why Skylead combines both LinkedIn and email automation, giving you the flexibility to reach your audience through the channel that works best for them.

And the best part? It all happens in one seamless outreach flow, thanks to our Smart sequences.

Smart sequences are algorithms that combine different LinkedIn and email actions with if/else conditions. Actions in the sequence unfold according to your prospects’ behavior with the goal of finding the fastest path to them.

These are the actions and conditions you can add to a Smart sequence.

As mentioned, Smart sequences react to the way your prospects’ behave. And they do it in real-time.

Here’s one Smart sequence.

In this example, when Skylead finds someone's email, it sends them an email followed by a follow-up. If it can't find their email, it sends a connection request instead. 

If they accept the invite, the next step is sending them a message. But if they don’t, the tool automatically sends an InMail.

Of course, this is just one scenario. You can create a Smart sequence any way you like to cover an infinite number of them.

Or, feel free to replicate any of our tried-and-tested Smart sequence templates for guaranteed results!

Email finder & verifier

So, you’ve set up your perfect Smart sequence and have your LinkedIn outreach covered. 

But what if you also want to reach your prospects via email and you’re missing their contact details? 

That’s where our email discovery and verification feature comes in to save the day. Add it as a step while creating your outreach campaign, and the tool will provide you with double-verified emails.

But why is our email finder and verifier so powerful? Because it reduces bounce rates and increases the chances of your messages being actually seen. Moreover, unlike other tools that rely on risky Chrome extensions to find emails, we use a safer, more reliable method. Combine that with our market-leading email verification accuracy, and you’ve got a winning solution.

Not to mention, this functionality is built right into the platform. So, yes, it doesn’t rely on third-party tools, as is the case with some other tools that offer it.

Image & GIF personalization

Your leads are more likely to pay attention to—and remember—messages that stand out visually.

And what better way to ensure that than with our very own image and GIF personalization feature?

Instead of sending a plain message, add an image to it. Then, use our built-in editor to enrich it with your prospect's name, company logo, or another detail that feels like it was created just for them. The same goes for GIFs.

Choose to use it, and you’ll see an increase in response rate of 63% or more.

Who knows? You may even beat this result!

Smart inbox

No more bouncing between platforms to keep track of messages, emails, or LinkedIn inMails. Everything is right here, in Skylead’s Smart inbox.

What sets our Smart Inbox apart, however, is its labeling feature. You can label chats to monitor your leads’ journey, track conversions, and even measure ROI. 

That said, feel free to create custom ones that fit seamlessly into your workflow. Whether you want to categorize based on lead status, priority, or custom tags, the flexibility is all yours.

Advanced reporting

Do you feel like digging deeper into your outreach campaigns to see what’s working and what needs tweaking? The Reports page has got you covered!

Here, you can analyze your campaigns in:

1. Graph view  – This view helps you quickly spot oscillations to assess your campaigns at a glance.
2. Table view – The table format makes it easy to observe how your metrics fluctuate day by day, giving you insights into which days perform best.
3. Step-by-step view – This is especially useful for A/B testing, as it shows precisely how recipients engage at each stage of your sequence.

Skylead also lets you export these reports in 2 different formats: CSV and PDF. You can download them to share results with your team or keep track of your progress over time.

What do Skylead reviews say?

If you think we’re biased—with Skylead being ours and all—look at all the glowing reviews that we’ve got!

For example, Ian B. said we have:

‘’Full, rich features combined with a logical interface and 24-hour customer care. Easy to set up and manage. This platform has important features others are missing.’’

Tony B. has also praised us, our customer success team in particular. He said:

‘’Customer service is fantastic, response time is excellent, I have sent thorough screenshots when I have hit a snag, and they are all over it. This has saved me a huge amount of time, and there is no way that I could ever connect with 60 new people a day without this automation.’’

Skylead pricing

Skylead is the only Dripify alternative that comes with a single pricing plan.

For just $100 a month per seat, you’re getting a one-stop-shop tool for your outreach.

No confusing tiers, no hidden fees—just one price for all the tools you need to supercharge your outreach.

And what more could you ask for?

Dripify vs. Skylead

Dripify alternative #2: Expandi

Expandi is a cloud-based Dripify alternative.

Much like Skylead, it comes with Smart sequences that allow you to automate multichannel campaigns. 

Thanks to them, you can send automated LinkedIn connection requests, messages, and free inMails. The tool can also perform additional automatic actions, which include auto-liking posts and endorsing skills.

But it’s not all rainbows and sunshine.

Although Expandi technically allows users to enrich outreach messages with personalized images and GIFs, this feature isn’t natively built into the platform. Instead, it’s integrated through a third-party tool called Hyperise and costs an additional $69 a month.

Furthermore, if you need to verify emails or find contact information outside of LinkedIn, don’t count on Expandi to help. It doesn’t offer this functionality.

Another limitation is that Expandi doesn’t support sending paid inMails. So, if reaching out to LinkedIn users outside your network through this method is essential to your strategy, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Or rely on free inMails only.

Expandi pricing

Dripify vs. Expandi

Dripify alternative #3: Dux-Soup

Dux-Soup is another LinkedIn automation tool on our list. 

Originally a Chrome extension, it’s now available as a cloud-based solution, but only if you opt for their highest-tier plan.

With Dux-Soup, you can automate actions like:

• Follows
• Profile views
• Connection requests
• Messages to 1st-degree connections
• Free & paid inMails
• Endorsements

You can combine these into simple drip campaigns that stop when your prospects respond. Plus, you can customize time delays between actions to make your outreach appear more natural.

Dux-Soup offers real-time performance tracking so you can keep an eye on your campaign results. It integrates directly with Pipedrive and HubSpot, and you can connect it to other CRMs through Zapier webhooks.

However, the tool has some limitations. It doesn’t support email outreach, so your outreach efforts are restricted to LinkedIn.

And, if you’re not on their highest-tier plan, you’ll have to rely on the Chrome extension, which comes with its own risks. Not only does it run the risk of getting your LinkedIn account flagged, but it also only works while your browser is open, limiting how hands-free your campaigns can be.

Dux-Soup pricing

Dripify vs. Dux-Soup

Dripify alternative #4: Meet Alfred

Meet Alfred is a cloud-based Dripify alternative that takes multichannel outreach up a notch.

It supports outreach across LinkedIn, email, and X (formerly Twitter). But here’s the catch: you’ll need to be on the Pro or Teams plan to access all those channels. The Basic plan leaves you to work with LinkedIn alone.

With Meet Alfred, you can build campaigns with unlimited steps, including:

• Profile views
• Connection requests
• Follow-up messages
• inMails
• Emails
• X DMs

To keep things looking natural, you can also set delays between actions.

When it comes to personalization, the tool offers message variables and templates to save you time crafting messages.

While you can connect your Instagram and Facebook accounts, you won’t be able to run outreach campaigns on those platforms. Instead, you can use them to schedule posts and manage content.

Another limitation is that Smart sequences aren’t available. 

Paid inMails are also not supported, just like in Dripify and Expandi.

Lastly, Meet Alfred has an integrated inbox, but it only shows LinkedIn messages. If you need to check your DMs or emails, you'll have to do that manually.

Meet Alfred pricing

Dripify vs. Meet Alfred

Dripify alternative #5: Waalaxy

Waalaxy is a cloud-based solution that’s great if you’re just getting started with LinkedIn outreach.

It supports multichannel outreach, combining both LinkedIn and email, so you can connect with your prospects on the platforms they prefer. 

Setting up campaigns is easy. You can build them from:

• LinkedIn search URLs
• Sales Navigator lead lists
• CSV files

With message variables and A/B testing, Waalaxy lets you personalize and fine-tune your outreach to see which versions get the best responses. 

Plus, if you need help crafting those messages, the platform has an AI writing assistant. It could potentially replace ChatGPT for sales and marketing copywriting.

But, as with any tool, there are a few limitations.

One of the biggest downsides is that you can’t create outreach sequences from scratch. Instead, you’ll have to work within pre-made templates, which can feel restrictive if you want more control over your campaigns.

Also, the email discovery and verification feature isn’t natively built into Waalaxy. It relies on a third-party integration with Dropcontact, which adds extra cost. 

Speaking of extra costs, Waalaxy’s inbox feature—which consolidates your messages—requires an additional payment.

Finally, while Waalaxy does offer a free version, it runs as a Chrome extension. As with other extensions, this can potentially put your LinkedIn account at risk. So, be cautious if using the free plan.

Waalaxy pricing

Waalaxy charges an extra $44 a month for LinkedIn inbox. 

Also, if you need additional email finder credits, you can purchase them. However, expect to pay another $0.01 for each email address found.

Dripify vs. Waalaxy

Dripify alternative #6: Apollo

Apollo is a multichannel sales engagement platform that’s primarily cloud-based.

Its multichannel sequences—Playbooks—let you mix emails, LinkedIn actions, and calls into a single workflow. However, the Playbooks aren’t "smart," meaning they won’t adjust automatically based on your prospect’s responses like Skylead’s Smart sequences do.

On the bright side, Apollo integrates with tools like PipeDrive, HubSpot, and Slack.

It comes with A/B testing to help you optimize your campaigns. Moreover, if you’re ever stuck on how to write a message, Apollo’s built-in AI assistant is there to help.

Apollo also gives you access to its internal lead database of over 275 million contacts. But, fair warning—some users have found the lead quality to be a bit inconsistent.

Another downside is that Apollo scrapes new leads from LinkedIn using a Chrome extension, which isn’t ideal. Using it can be risky and might put your LinkedIn account in jeopardy.

Apollo pricing

Dripify vs. Apollo

Dripify alternative #7: HubSpot Sales Hub

HubSpot Sales Hub is a cloud-based platform built with sales professionals in mind.

With it, you can connect up to 200 mailboxes (100 on a lower-tier plan) and send up to 1,000 emails daily (500 on a lower plan). Plus, the platform lets you create up to 5,000 sequences, albeit not smart, that include automated emails and follow-ups—ideal for scaling your outreach.

While HubSpot offers multichannel capabilities, they’re somewhat limited. You can add cold calling and LinkedIn outreach to your sequences. Unfortunately, both of these are manual steps. So, if you're looking for fully automated multichannel sequences, this might feel a bit restrictive.

When it comes to LinkedIn, HubSpot only supports connection requests and inMails. Not to mention, you’ll need a Sales Navigator subscription to access those features. While HubSpot does offer a relatively high limit on connected mailboxes, it’s still a bit limiting. Skylead, however, gives you the freedom to connect an unlimited number of email accounts.

HubSpot Sales Hub pricing

Dripify vs. HubSpot Sales Hub

Dripify alternative #8: Salesrobot

Salesrobot is a cloud-based LinkedIn and email automation tool that uses a Chrome extension to execute tasks.

It allows you to pull prospects from:

• CSV files 
• Sales Navigator search URL
• LinkedIn search URL
• LinkedIn groups
• LinkedIn events
• Post comments

When it comes to LinkedIn actions, Salesrobot goes the extra mile. You can automatically:

• Like your prospect’s most recent post
• Leave an automated comment
• Follow them
• Send a connection request
• Endorse their skills

The tool supports 2-way integrations with all CRMs and outreach tools through webhooks. Not to mention, there are direct integrations with popular platforms like Salesforce, Pipedrive, and HubSpot. 

Its mini CRM, equipped with smart reply detection, lets you handle everything in one place. Here, you can reply to messages, tag positive leads, and apply advanced filters to keep your outreach organized.

Downsides-wise, Salesrobot only supports free inMails, so if you need paid inMails, you’re out of luck.

It also can’t find prospects’ or verify leads’ emails unless they’re publicly available.

Lastly, since it uses a Chrome extension for executing tasks, it can potentially lead to LinkedIn account restrictions. Therefore, it isn’t a perfect Dripify alternative.

Salesrobot pricing

Dripify vs. Salesrobot

Dripify alternative #9: Lemlist

Lemlist is a cloud-based platform primarily designed for email outreach. However, with the higher-tier subscription, it expands to multichannel outreach, specifically supporting LinkedIn outreach and cold calling.

On LinkedIn, Lemlist can automatically:

• Visit leads' profiles, 
• Send them connection invites, 
• Send messages. 

If you want to perform additional actions on LinkedIn (and make calls) using Lemlist, you can. However, you’ll have to do it manually once the tool reminds you to.

Nonetheless, this is somewhat compensated for with the ability to add conditions to your sequences. These make it possible to cover several different outreach scenarios.

When it comes to the key Lemlist feature, we must mention the so-called Lemwarm, its email warm-up. Using email warm-up tools like Lemwarm, you can boost your email deliverability and keep emails from landing in the spam folder.

But where does Lemlist fall short?

For starters, its email finder and verifier, albeit useful, is quite limited. Even on the highest subscription, you're capped at finding and verifying up to 1,000 emails only. You can purchase more of these, but this will cost you extra.

Likewise, connecting up to 15 mailboxes is restricted to the top-tier plan. Not to mention, this is quite far from the unlimited number of mailboxes Skylead lets you add.

Finally, while Lemlist is cloud-based, its reliance on a Chrome extension for LinkedIn prospecting is concerning. So, if you're focused on keeping your LinkedIn account safe, this might be a dealbreaker that pushes you toward a different Dripify alternative.

Lemlist pricing

Need more email verification credits? You can get an additional 20 for $1.

Dripify vs. Lemlist

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

1. What does Dripify do?

Dripify is a LinkedIn automation tool that streamlines outreach, lead generation, and prospecting. It automates tasks like sending connection requests, messages, and free inMails while also helping personalize messages with 15+ variables. Moreover, Dripify extracts lead information from LinkedIn and offers detailed analytics for managing campaigns and tracking performance.

2. Does Dripify offer a free trial?

Yes, Dripify offers a free trial, allowing potential users to explore the platform and its features before committing to a paid plan.

3. How long is Dripify free trial?

Dripify’s free trial lasts for 7 days.

Find your ideal Dripify alternative

We’ve gone through all the Dripify alternatives on the list. Now, it’s time to choose the one to level up your outreach.

As you make your decision, keep in mind—the right tool should save you time, streamline your workflow, and deliver real, measurable results.

Skylead checks all these boxes!

With multichannel outreach, Smart sequences, powerful personalization, and built-in analytics, it gives you everything you need—all in one platform.

Ready to supercharge your outreach, save +11 hours a week, and drive more conversions?

Give our 7-day free trial a chance and discover a smarter, more efficient way to connect with leads.

Spread the word about your product or service to as many people as you can, and you’ll surely get someone to buy it. That may be true, but think about how much time and resources you’d spend in the process. Precision matters in outreach as much as it does in everything else in business and life. And that’s what targeted outreach is all about.

Targeted outreach helps you connect with people and businesses that need your product or service only—the same ones that can increase your return on investment (ROI) and conversion rates.

The question is, how do you make it work for you?

That said, in this blog, we’ll be covering:

• What targeted outreach is,
• Who and how can benefit from it,
• How to plan and execute a targeted outreach campaign,
• Actionable strategies and best practices for targeted outreach,
• Common challenges you may encounter.

As a bonus, you'll get message templates to immediately transform your outreach strategy from a shot in the dark to a laser-focused one.

Off we go!

What is targeted outreach?

Targeted outreach is a type of outreach that focuses on engaging specific, predefined groups or individuals. It implies delivering tailored messages, resources, or services that align closely with the needs, interests, and behaviors of these targeted audiences. 

While traditional outreach employs a broad, one-size-fits-all strategy, targeted outreach is more nuanced. Namely, it uses detailed data and insights to not only identify the target audience but also understand them. In contrast to traditional outreach, which relies on mass communication channels and broad demographic information, targeted outreach is all about relevancy and personalization.

Benefits of targeted outreach

Blasting your message to everyone and anyone might get you a few bites. However, targeting your outreach is a much smarter, more efficient way to connect with leads. It's a tactic sales professionals, marketing specialists, and B2B founders, in particular, stand to gain a lot from.

But the question is, what?

Firstly, one of the primary benefits of targeted outreach is superior LinkedIn lead generation and that on other platforms. 

When you are precise about who you’re targeting and why, the results are higher-quality leads. Moreover, when you aren’t wasting your time chasing irrelevant prospects, you can afford to spend more time nurturing those more likely to convert.

Then, there’s better brand awareness and recognition. 

When messages are tailored to resonate with specific audiences, they are more likely to be noticed and remembered. This relevance makes the outreach more effective and also helps in building a stronger connection with prospects. Over time, this leads to increased brand loyalty but also a more substantial presence in the market.

However, increased conversion rates and a higher return on investment (ROI) are perhaps the most compelling benefits of targeted outreach. 

Targeted campaigns are more likely to generate returns, as the goal of this strategy is to minimize wasting efforts on uninterested parties. This fact alone is precisely why targeted outreach strategies are some of the most cost-effective sales and marketing strategies.

How to plan your targeted outreach campaign

Looking to jump on the targeted outreach wagon?

Congrats! That said, let’s see how you can prepare and launch one such campaign.

Targeted outreach preparation

1. Define your target audience

The first and arguably most important step in planning your targeted outreach campaign is defining your target audience. After all, without knowing who you're talking to, your message is likely to miss the mark. 

So, how do you pinpoint your ideal audience?

Start by identifying your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). 

Your ICP represents the type of company or individual who would most benefit from your product or service.

To define it, consider factors like:

• Industry
• Company size
• Location
• Challenges they face

For example, if you're offering a software solution for project management, your ICP might be mid-sized tech companies in urban areas that struggle with team collaboration.

Once you've nailed down your ICP, it's time to refine it further by creating detailed Buyer Personas.

A Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer in your ideal company. You define it based on market research and real data about your existing customers. 

This should include:

• Demographic details—age, gender, education
• Professional information—job title, responsibilities, goals
• Behavioral insights—pain points, decision-making process, preferred communication channels

Combine your ICP with detailed Buyer Personas, and you’ll have a crystal-clear picture of who you should target. Doing so will allow you to tailor your outreach messages accordingly, making them more relevant and compelling to those who receive them.

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2. Conduct online research

Now that you know who you should be targeting, it's time to find leads and understand their pain points. 

This is where online research comes in handy, with LinkedIn being one of the most valuable tools available.

For most of your research, you’ll rely on LinkedIn search filters to identify key prospects and gather insights. 

However, if you are subscribed to Sales Navigator, you might be better off using it for this part of the process.

Why? Because Sales Navigator filters include a total of 34 Lead filters, 16 Account filters, and a Keyword filter.

Arvind Rongala, CEO of Edstellar—a one-stop instructor-led corporate training and coaching solution—explained that Sales Navigator played a big role in the company’s targeted outreach. It helped them define their target audience, which would later result in a 30% increase in lead generation, a 25% rise in sales, and a significant improvement in customer retention.

He mentioned that:

‘’Tools like Google Analytics and LinkedIn Sales Navigator provided valuable insights into the demographics, interests, and behavior of our potential clients.’’

Now, as for researching leads, what you want to do first is use the search bar and filters to look up companies that fit your ICP. Once you have a list of potential companies, explore their LinkedIn pages to gather information about them, check their recent updates, and learn about their company culture.

Then, look for decision-makers within these companies. 

Pay attention to their:

• Job titles
• Responsibilities
• Career history
• Posts they published

These can help you understand their roles within the company, but also how your product/service can solve their problems.

Another good place to find and research leads is LinkedIn’s collaborative articles. Think of these as "knowledge topics" filled with real answers submitted by the LinkedIn community. 

Check if any of your potential leads have contributed to them. If they have, fish for information regarding:

• The topics they are discussing,
• Pain points and interests they have potentially mentioned.

Once done with LinkedIn prospecting, compile the info you gathered into one centralized document. 

And if you’ve found your leads through filtered searches, hold onto the URLs. You might need them later.

But more on that in a bit. 😉

Targeted outreach execution

1. Develop your message

Planning your targeted outreach efforts is only part of the process, and it’s the execution that matters.

But before you begin reaching out to your target audience, you need to craft messages that your prospects will find intriguing.

As you do, think about what you want to achieve with them.

Are you looking to book more meetings, invite people to join your community, or simply make an introduction? 

Either way, your goal should be clear from the get-go. This way, you won’t lose focus, and your messaging will remain direct and to the point.

Don’t be afraid to leverage what you learned during research! Instead, use the information about your prospects’ pain points, interests, and company challenges to craft messages that speak directly to them. Generic messages are easy to ignore. However, a tailored message shows that you've done your homework and makes you stand out in their inboxes.

As for the message itself, start it with a strong, engaging opening. This could be a relevant observation, a question, or a compliment. For instance, if you noticed a company update or a recent achievement on their LinkedIn page, feel free to mention it. 

It’s important not to beat around the bush, though.

In fact, aim to deliver your message in a few short paragraphs at most, as busy professionals appreciate brevity. 

Also, make sure to avoid jargon and keep your language clear and straightforward.

Here’s an example of a LinkedIn message that follows through on these practices:

‘’Hi Alex,

I noticed on your LinkedIn that you recently attended the Sales Leadership Forum. I came across a report that explores strategies discussed there, particularly around improving forecast accuracy and reducing sales cycle times.

Would you like me to send it to you? I’d love to hear your thoughts !''

2. Choose the right channels

So, you have your message. Now what?

It’s time to decide on the channel to use for targeted outreach.

Email remains one of the most effective ones, with, according to HubSpot, the email open rate ranging from 25% to 41%. As for the average response rate, some sources indicate it's as low as 1%, whereas others report it to be up to 8%.

Apart from email, most professionals who use LinkedIn for B2B marketing or sales use it to reach out to their leads directly. Besides, the average response rate for LinkedIn messages is much higher. For example, we at Skylead had an average response rate of around 39%.

Beyond email and LinkedIn, social media platforms like Facebook and X can also be effective, depending on your audience.

Even the old-fashioned cold-calling might work on some prospects, although success rates can widely range between industries.

However, that begs the question: What channel should you opt for?

We say multiple ones!

A multichannel approach allows you to reach prospects through various touchpoints and, thus, increases your chances of engagement. 

This way, you have the highest chance of getting through, even if the prospect is more active on one channel over another.

But more on that in the next section.

3. Create a multichannel targeted outreach campaign

The multichannel route is the best one to take for your targeted outreach. That much we’ve established.

But why engage your prospects through several channels manually when you can do it all on autopilot?

Enter email and LinkedIn automation.

LinkedIn automation implies the use of LinkedIn automation tools to automate repetitive tasks on this platform. These typically include sending connection requests, messages, LinkedIn inMails, profile visits and follows all on autopilot.

But since the premise of multichannel outreach is to use, well, multiple channels, using a LinkedIn automation tool isn’t enough.

You need LinkedIn automation AND cold email software—just like our very own Skylead! 

And you know what's great about our tool? You don’t necessarily need to find your leads’ emails yourself. Skylead can discover and double verify emails for you at no additional cost and without breaking your targeted outreach flow or without leads being part of your network.

Now, let’s walk you through the process of creating a targeted outreach campaign involving LinkedIn and email in Skylead.

Firstly, go to your Campaigns page and click ‘’Create new campaign.’’

Next, choose your campaign type, name it, and insert the URL you saved while prospecting. Skylead will use it to extract leads.

You can use:

• LinkedIn search, post, and event URL
• Sales Navigator search and lead list URL
• Recruiter search, Talent Pool, and Pipeline URL

You can also import your leads' information into the software directly. In that case, upload a CSV file with precise leads’ information.

Choose the connection degree based on whether you want to target your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-degree connections, and hit ‘’Next.’’

Your next step is defining campaign settings.

That said, there are 3 types of settings:

• Email
• LinkedIn
• Global