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

If LinkedIn prospecting and lead generation are a part of your job, you’ve probably heard of Dux-Soup. This tool helps you find and engage with your target audience in real-time and on autopilot.

However, there’s a lot of discussion about whether it’s effective enough for SDRs, marketers, and recruiters. So we wondered, is there a better alternative? Our research says it all and in it you’ll find: 👇

• What Dux-Soup has to offer users
• How much does a Dux-Soup subscription cost?
• Is using Dux-Soup really safe?
• How to cancel Dux-Soup
• And the best Dux-Soup alternatives (shown in short below)

Let’s get into each one.

Dux-Soup or alternatives?

As a lead engagement software, Dux-Soup helps sales teams, recruiter specialists, and outbound marketers find LinkedIn prospects, reach them, and close deals faster. Think of it as your professional networking assistant. With this tool, you can streamline workflows and save time on manual tasks, so you can focus on transitioning prospects to clients.

These tasks include:

• Scanning your target audience’s LinkedIn accounts
• Sending connection requests, InMails, and regular LinkedIn messages
• Auto-endorse leads’ profiles. 

G2 score: 4.3 ⭐ Capterra score: 4.0 ⭐

Dux-Soup also offers a simple drip outreach campaign option where you can send messages and follow-ups in one simple sequence. You can add up to 12 messages in the campaign and set delays between them. That’s cool, but… they don’t really follow your leads’ behaviour, which is useful for a higher reply rate and we’ll show you why that’s important later on.

As for multichannel outreach, Dux‑Soup doesn't directly send emails, but effectively finds and extracts business emails of your 2nd and 3rd degree connections with required Dux-Soup points. However, you can enable email outreach via third-party tools, using Zapier/Integromat to handle the sending process. It might be extra work, but it’s doable.

It also offers auto-pausing on replies and performance tracking through its Funnel Flow dashboard. With CRM integrations, cloud-based automation (with the right pricing plan), Dux-Soup can help streamline prospecting.

One important thing to note: Dux-Soup is a Chrome extension, but it also offers a Cloud edition with additional payment. But why is this an issue?

Chrome extension disadvantages

Here’s why Chrome extensions might not be the best idea for automated outreach. First of all, Chrome extensions are unsafe since they automatically inject code into LinkedIn. Now, LinkedIn isn’t a fan of automation tools, and you might risk getting your LinkedIn profile restricted if you decide to use a Chrome extension.

Second, Chrome extensions don’t offer an advanced reporting system or an integrated inbox. Lastly, Chrome extensions won’t work unless your PC or laptop is on. This means the software can’t be set to run in the background, which is a significant disadvantage if you’re conducting large-volume outreach or seeking to save time on manual work.

Dux-Soup might be a Chrome extension, but you can upgrade your plan and pay extra for a Cloud edition that can help avoid the concerns we’ve just listed. Speaking of pricing, let’s review what Dux-Soup has to offer. 👇

Dux-Soup pricing

Dux-Soup offers three pricing plans and sub-plans, depending on your team size and the features you need.

Keep in mind that Team plans are only charged annually and use a tiered pricing model.

Team plans are seat-based and ideal for in-house teams, offering shared campaign tools and centralized license management, with volume discounts starting at 11+ seats. For agencies, the Cloud-based plans have flexible, metered billing and multi-account management from a single dashboard, with minimum seat requirements starting at 5 for Cloud, 10 for Turbo, and 30 for Pro.

Besides the listed plans, you can always opt for their 14-day free trial, which includes full Turbo features, with no credit card info needed, so you can check it out.

But what if you need multichannel outreach and all other key features in one tool, with no setup hassle, no extra cost for features, and with maximum safety? Let’s show you what other tools are out there.

7 best Dux-Soup alternatives

Dux-Soup is a beginner-friendly LinkedIn automation tool with very limited features. But if you really want to step up your outreach game and protect your LinkedIn profile, let’s review what’s out there as a better alternative. After thorough research, we present our seven suggestions. 👇

1. Skylead - Best for smart multichannel outreach

G2 score: 4.5 ⭐ Capterra score: 4.8 ⭐

Hi, that’s us!

Skylead is a multichannel sales engagement tool that helps sales teams, recruiters, marketers, and founders streamline their outreach tasks. It’s not like we’re praising Skylead for no reason, but it really is the best alternative to Dux-Soup on the market. Let’s back this statement with facts.

First, Skylead is a cloud-based solution. With Skylead, you get to manage multiple accounts and an integrated Smart inbox to see all your conversations with leads from both platforms.

When it comes to integrations, Skylead integrates with any other app via API, Zapier, or Integromat. You can integrate with your favorite CRM, like Pipedrive or Hubspot, to streamline workflows even further. Sounds amazing, right? Well, we’re just getting started. Let’s cover other amazing Skylead features.

Smart sequences

Unlike Dux-Soup's simple outreach campaigns, Skylead has its first-to-market, all-star feature: Smart Sequences. Skylead’s Smart Sequences combine multichannel outreach with drip logic and if/else conditions. This lets you automate smart lead-nurturing workflows that adapt based on lead responses, boosting reply rates and freeing up hours of manual work.

Here’s another advantage. Dux-Soup limits your drip campaign to a maximum of 12 messages. With Skylead, you can send an unlimited number of messages and perform other actions in your sequence. 

You can monitor and optimize your campaigns with advanced analytics and reporting for each step and action in a sequence. Here’s what you get:

• Graph metrics for a visual representation of the ratio between actions
• Table view for spotting trends that happen during specific days
• Sequence steps view to examine steps in detail

Oh, and you can also A/B test each part of the message and see which one works best for your audience. ✨ 

Unlimited email automation

While Dux-Soup specializes in LinkedIn outreach alone, Skylead gives you more - unlimited email automation, so you're not restricted by daily sending limits. How do we do this? Well, you can connect an unlimited number of email accounts. Skylead then auto-rotates them, which helps with the sending limitations and boosts deliverability.

Infinite email warm-up

Another unlimited feature in question - infinite email warm-up. You get to warm up email accounts at no extra cost and with no limits. Your inbox stays healthy no matter how many accounts you connect, so you can focus on outreach without worrying about your deliverability.

Email discovery & verification 

While Dux-Soup has an email discovery feature, there’s no word of verification, which might result in a high bounce rate and a damaged domain. 

Email discovery & verification in Skylead helps you reach leads even when their email isn’t listed. That way, you avoid bounces, protect your sender reputation, and keep your outreach running smoothly, no manual work needed. And most importantly, without breaking your outreach flow.

One more thing - unlike Dux-Soup, Skylead doesn’t charge extra for this feature, so you can find and verify as many emails as you’d like at no additional cost. 

Hyper-personalized images & GIFs

Did you know that you can increase the response rate by adding a personalized image or GIF? With Skylead, you can add hyper-personalized images and GIFs to your messages. Think prospect names, company logos, or profile pics baked right into the visuals. It’s a simple way to stand out in a crowded inbox and boost replies without extra design work.

And the best part? This is a native feature, which means there’s no hidden, extra cost for the advanced personalization options in Skylead, so this is great if you’re looking at the cost vs features ratio. 🤩

Pricing

There’s also an annual payment option, so you can check out our pricing page for more info. Also, keep in mind that, unlike other tools from this list, Skylead doesn’t limit the number of features you can use.

You can learn everything about the tool and its functionalities from different videos and article tutorials, along with sequence and message templates, to get inspired.

Last but not least, Skylead has an all-star customer support team that’s ready to help anyone with any setup or question you might have, with their amazing 7-second reply time. 🏆

2. Zopto - Best for social selling and free tutorials

G2 score: 4.4 ⭐ Capterra score: 4.3 ⭐

Zopto is a cloud-based LinkedIn automation platform designed for sales teams, recruiters, and agencies that need to scale outreach, just like you. It works 24/7 and supports LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator accounts.

Pros

Zopto’s main strength lies in multi-channel campaigns. You can automate LinkedIn actions like connection requests and messages, and combine them with email and even Twitter outreach, which is unique. This way, you keep your prospects engaged across platforms.

The tool includes a GPT-4-powered AI assistant (Zhoo) that helps you write outreach copy and manages replies, which is great for high-volume campaigns. You also get advanced targeting filters, CRM integrations, and reporting dashboards.

Cons

However, Zopto is more expensive and offers fewer features at entry level. Multichannel outreach is for higher tiers only. It lacks an inbox where you can manage all conversations in one place with limited personalization. Also, there are usability issues with a complex UI, so setting up campaigns means more manual output and slower outreach. 

Pricing

Zopto doesn’t offer a free version, so you won’t have a chance to test the fit. Here are the plans which vary in feature density depending on the chosen plan:

Basic: $197

Pro: $297

Agency & Enterprise Basic: $156

Agency & Enterprise Pro: $237

Whichever plan you choose, onboarding support is included. However, keep in mind that higher tiers offer more advanced automation, analytics, and team collab features, so you’d have to spend more to get the features you need.

3. SalesRobot - Best for AI-driven LinkedIn automation

G2 score: 4.4 ⭐ Capterra score: 4.3 ⭐

SalesRobot is a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool for safe and scalable outreach. It runs in the cloud 24/7, so you don’t need to keep your device on, and it works with both LinkedIn Premium and Sales Navigator accounts.

Pros

SalesRobot’s key advantage is how simple it is to use. You can automate LinkedIn actions like profile visits, connection requests, and follow-ups with customizable delays and daily limits that mimic human behavior. It also supports email outreach, which you can manage alongside LinkedIn messages from a single inbox, but you’d have to pay extra for each email account you connect.

There’s also built-in AI to help you write better outreach messages and A/B test what works. You can also integrate with CRMs via Zapier or webhooks, and track performance across all your campaigns through a clean and simple dashboard.

Cons

However, it’s not as feature-rich: no built-in email finder & verifier, unlimited email account hosting, or image & GIF personalization, so you’d need to pay for add-ons. Reporting is relatively basic, and if you need in-depth analytics or agency-level dashboards, you won’t find what you need because of these workflow management limitations. Some users also report occasional bugs and slower customer support on lower-tier plans.

Pricing

SalesRobot offers a 14-day free trial and keeps pricing simple with monthly billing:

• Basic plan: $59/month - Limited daily quotas, 1 active campaign
• Advanced plan: $79/month - Unlimited campaigns, A/B testing, smart inbox, integrations
• Professional plan: $99/month - Adds team management and more outreach controls
• Email automation add-on: $15/email account

All plans are pay-as-you-go, and most users will get the full value starting from the Advanced plan, where the multichannel approach and inbox features are unlocked.

4. Dripify - Best for solo users & small teams

G2 score: 4.5 ⭐ Capterra score: 4.7 ⭐

Dripify is a cloud-based LinkedIn automation platform built for sales teams, recruiters, agencies, and solo users who want to automate outreach without keeping their device on. It works with both LinkedIn Premium and Sales Navigator accounts.

Pros

Dripify’s main appeal is the campaign builder, which lets you create multichannel sequences with delays, conditional steps, and personalization variables. It includes a unified inbox for managing replies, basic analytics, and team collaboration tools like lead routing and performance tracking.

Cons

However, deeper personalization features like image/GIF variables or AI-generated copy are missing. The interface is easy to navigate, but reporting is very limited unless you’re on a higher plan.

Pricing

Pricing per user:

• Basic: 1 drip multichannel campaign, limited daily quotas
• Pro: Unlimited campaigns, smart inbox, A/B testing, CRM export, Zapier/webhooks
• Advanced: Adds team management, activity controls, and account manager
• Enterprise: Tailored for larger teams with API access and custom onboarding

Each plan includes a 7-day free trial with no credit card details needed. Most users start with the Pro plan to unlock the full feature set, so if you decide to go with Dripify, we recommend spending extra to unlock some key features or choose a tool that has it all.

5. Lemlist - Best for email personalization

G2 score: 4.4 ⭐ Capterra score: 4.6 ⭐

Lemlist is a cloud-based outreach platform designed for running personalized, multichannel campaigns. It supports email, LinkedIn (via Chrome extension), and even call steps.

Pros

Lemlist stands out for its personalization features. You can add dynamic text, images, and custom variables to your messages, making them feel less like templates and more like real outreach. It also includes built-in email warm-up (Lemwarm), deliverability tools, and a smart inbox for handling replies across all channels.

Cons

However, the LinkedIn automation part runs through a Chrome extension, which we’ve learned isn’t a good idea, so you’ll need to keep your browser and device on + your account safety might be affected. Also, some key features like multichannel sequences and advanced automation are unlocked only in higher-tier plans. 

Note that reporting can feel limited for power users, and email/lead credits may run out quickly.

Pricing

Pricing (per user, monthly vs. annual):

• Free: $0/month - Lead finder access with limited credits (100 emails/month or 25 phone numbers)
• Email Pro: – $69/monthly or $55/month billed annually - Email-only campaigns with warm-up, deliverability tools, email finder, and CRM integrations
• Multichannel Expert: $99/monthly or $79/month billed annually - Adds LinkedIn steps, call tasks, multi-sender email accounts, unified inbox, and team collaboration tools
• Enterprise: Custom pricing - For larger teams that SSO, custom onboarding, user roles, and priority support

All paid plans come with a 14-day free trial and access to Lemlist’s deliverability and personalization features, so you can test it out before making your decision.

6. Meet Alfred - Best for multi-platform outreach

G2 score: 3.3 ⭐ Capterra score: -

Meet Alfred is a cloud-based sales engagement and LinkedIn automation tool and if you want to run personalized, multichannel outreach, this is the tool you might be looking for. It works 24/7 without needing your browser open (for email and Twitter). However, for LinkedIn you’ll need to install a Chrome extension, which is a possible flaw and a safety concern. 

Pros

With Meet Alfred you can automate LinkedIn profile visits, connection requests, follow-ups, post engagement campaigns, and InMails. You can also layer in email and Twitter messages, and even schedule LinkedIn posts from one centralized dashboard.

The platform includes a built-in LinkedIn CRM to manage and tag leads, a smart inbox that shows all channel replies, and AI-personalization to help tailor outreach. Plus, a dedicated cloud infrastructure with safety precautions, such as a dedicated IP address. 

Cons

On the downside, key multichannel features and full Sales Navigator support only come in higher-tier plans, so you’d have to pay more to get full access. Plus, not having all feature available right away might put away certain users, as there’s need for extra manual setup.

Pricing

Pricing (per user, monthly-annual billing):

1. Free plan - $0/month ($0 annual)

• 1 active campaign, LinkedIn automation, limited lead finder usage 

2. Basic plan - $59/month or $29/month billed annually (~50% off)

• 3 active campaigns, basic LinkedIn CRM, smart inbox, templates, automated greetings, custom tags 

3. Pro plan - $99/month or $49/month billed annually (~50% off)

• Unlimited campaigns, Sales Navigator support, email & Twitter automation, group/event outreach, InMails, content scheduling, Zapier/webhook integration, advanced CRM, data export 

4. Teams plan - $79/user/month or $39/user/month annually (minimum 3 users)

• All Pro features + team inbox, role settings, volume pricing, white-label options, and account manager support for larger teams 

All paid plans include a 7-day free trial and no credit card required, so you can test MeetAlfred and see if it’s the right fit for your business.

7. Salesflow - Best for first-time users

G2 score: 4.3 ⭐ Capterra score: 4.1 ⭐

SalesFlow is a cloud-based LinkedIn and email automation tool built for sales teams, agencies, and growing startups. It runs 24/7, supports LinkedIn Premium and Sales Navigator, and helps you handle multichannel outreach without lifting a finger once it’s set up.

Pros

The platform automates LinkedIn actions like connection requests, follow-ups, InMails, and even lets you run email sequences alongside them. It’s designed to mimic human behavior, so you get the scale of automation without setting off LinkedIn’s alarms. You also get a smart inbox to manage replies and templates to save time on follow-ups.

It’s pretty flexible, too. You can import leads from CSVs or Sales Navigator, track performance through campaign analytics, and integrate with your tools via Zapier. If you’re doing group or event outreach, that’s covered, too.

Cons

Now for the trade-offs: the UI can feel a bit clunky at times, with an outdated interface, and while the analytics are solid, they’re not as deep as some larger platforms. Also, inbox management is a bit basic if you’re working with a team.

Pricing

Pricing (per user):

• Single user: $99/month or $79/month billed annually

Includes up to 400 invites, 800 InMails, 2,000 follow-ups/month, multichannel outreach, real-time analytics, and integrations.

• Teams plan: Custom pricing

Adds shared inbox, lead blacklisting, team management, and support from a customer success manager.

• Agency plan: Custom pricing

White-label dashboard, admin controls, global client views, dedicated IPs, and API access.

You can test it out with a 7-day free trial, no credit card needed. If you're running outreach at scale and want a mix of automation and safety, SalesFlow is a solid pick.

How to cancel Dux-Soup?

So, you’ve seen what’s out there, and now you’re thinking you might want to try something new. But first, you need to cancel your Dux-Soup subscription and link your accounts to another software.

Here’s a short step-by-step on how to do it. 👇

1. To cancel your subscription, log into your account here: https://app.dux-soup.com/web/profile. Then go to the Manage Account & Subscription.

2. The second step is to click on your subscription.

3. Lastly, click on the Cancel subscription plan and you’re done.

Which tool to choose?

We’ve listed the research, we gave you options, and told you what to look out for. So, let’s recap. Your tool should:

• Be cloud-based (avoid Chrome extensions)
• Have an intuitive interface
• Support multichannel outreach
• Have as many native features as possible (avoid add-ons as they add costs)
• Support hyper-personalization
• Have a solid cost vs features ratio (so you know you’re getting your money’s worth)
• Give you good integration options (if you want to connect with other tools)

If you want to make an informed decision, your ideal tool should at least have all these bullets checked. The rest is up to you.

And if you liked what Skylead has to offer, feel free to contact our support team via chat. They’ll be more than happy to meet you and help. Or if you already made up your mind, dive right in and try Skylead yourself by starting a 7-day Free trial.

Most interactions on LinkedIn go silent after the first touch. The lead accepts your connection request, maybe replies once, and then… nothing. However, a LinkedIn follow up message can change the entire course of your cold outreach. When written the right way, it can reopen the conversation, remind the person why they connected with you in the first place, and even move things toward a reply, a meeting, and ultimately, a closed deal.

Unfortunately, the line between a good and a bad follow-up message is thin. And if you get it wrong, you risk losing the lead for good.

Over the years, we’ve tested hundreds of follow-up messages across sales, marketing, and recruiting. Some flopped. Others got 50%+ more replies. So, we documented what worked (and what didn’t) to help you get it right from the start.

And now, we’re sharing our proven LinkedIn follow up message formula along with templates you can copy, paste, and personalize in seconds!

Let’s get started!

What is a LinkedIn follow up message?

A LinkedIn follow up message is a message sent after an initial interaction on the platform, such as a connection request, conversation, meeting, or job application. Its goal is to re-engage the recipient, provide additional context or value, and encourage a reply or next step.

Why LinkedIn follow up messages matter?

Did you know that only 2% of deals are made after the initial contact? That means that, if you’re not following up on LinkedIn - or failing to send a follow-up email after no response, for that matter - you’re seriously hurting your chances of closing.

And while a better chance of closing deals should be reason enough, there are other benefits that make LinkedIn follow-ups a must-have in any outreach strategy.

They lead to stronger connections

If I had a nickel for every time someone wrote me a ''Thank you for connecting on LinkedIn'' message and then disappeared, I’d have enough to cover the LinkedIn Premium cost for most of my connections.

Jokes aside, a follow-up message is what gives the conversation a reason to continue and reinforces your LinkedIn lead generation efforts. It shows that you actually have something to discuss, rather than simply expanding your network.

They help you stand out professionally

The majority of people don’t follow up. And out of those who do, nearly half, 44% to be precise, give up after the first try, either because they’re afraid of being perceived as 'pushy' or because they simply don’t want to bother. So, when you do follow up and do it well, you immediately stand out. It shows you’re proactive, consistent, and not just sending out messages for the sake of it.

They increase response rates

Most LinkedIn cold messages get ignored, not necessarily because leads aren’t interested - it could just be bad timing. The follow-up gives them a second chance to respond, and you a chance to add more context or value. Especially if the timing wasn’t great the first time around, this can be the nudge that gets you the reply.

They help you build credibility in the leads' eyes

When you follow up in a non-intrusive way, you demonstrate professionalism and signal that you’re actually invested in the conversation. Add a bit of personalization or relevance, and it can position you as someone who’s worth responding to.

They keep conversations alive for future opportunities

Not every lead is ready to act now, which doesn’t mean they won’t be in a week, a month, or a quarter. That said, a LinkedIn follow up message helps you stay on their radar until they are ready to move forward. It keeps the connection warm, shows you’re patient, and makes it easier to pick up right from where you left off.

When to send a LinkedIn follow up message?

The best time to send a LinkedIn follow up message is usually between 2 and 5 business days after your last touchpoint. This gives the other person enough time to see and process your message.

But truth be told, the timing of your message depends on the situation. That said, here are some of the most common scenarios and when to send a LinkedIn follow up for each:

1. After a connection request is accepted - Follow up within 1–2 days. This is your chance to start the conversation while your name is still fresh in their inbox.
2. After they reply once but go quiet - In this case, wait 3–5 days before sending a follow-up that references their reply.
3. After they view your profile or message but don’t respond - Follow up after 2–3 days. However, make sure to keep it low-pressure and relevant.
4. After a meeting, call, or interview - Send your follow-up within 24 hours, all while focusing on the next steps or main takeaways.
5. After no response at all - If your first message was ignored, follow up after 3–5 business days. Try a different angle or include something useful to increase your chances of getting a reply.
6. When something relevant happens - If you have a good reason to reach out again, for example, you have a resource you’d like to share, an update, or you’re reacting to something they posted, use that to reengage naturally. In these cases, follow up within a day or 2 of noticing or posting the update to keep the message timely.

How to write an effective LinkedIn follow up message? [Step-by-step formula]

No message is truly perfect. However, after testing hundreds of follow-ups, we’ve found a golden formula that consistently gets replies:

Hook → Context → Value → CTA

This structure helps your message stay relevant no matter the scenario, keeps things conversational, and, most importantly, guides the lead toward a clear next step.

Now, let’s dissect it and see how you can apply it to your LinkedIn follow up messages in real life.

1. Hook

This is your opener, a.k.a the first sentence that gets them to keep reading. It can be a brief callback to your last interaction, a personal touch, or even a subtle observation. Either way, the goal is to make it feel like a continuation of the previous message.

Examples:

• Just circling back here in case my last message got buried.
• Saw your recent post on [topic] - it’s spot on! 

2. Context

Now explain who you are and why you’re reaching out. This part is especially important if some time has passed or if your first message didn’t get a reply. The idea is to reestablish the reason for the message without repeating yourself.

Examples:

• We connected last week after I came across your profile while researching [industry/topic].
• I previously mentioned how [your product/service] helps [job title] streamline [process].

3. Value

This is where you give them a reason to care. Share something useful, relevant, or interesting, for example, a case study, a whitepaper, an article, etc. Just make sure it ties into their role, goals, or pain points.

Examples:

• Just published a short guide on [topic] that might be helpful for what you’re working on.
• We helped a similar company reduce [X] by [Y]% - happy to explain how.
• Thought this update might be relevant based on what you shared last time.

4. CTA (Call to Action)

Close with a soft ask. Nothing aggressive, though. A clear, logical next step that makes it easy to say yes.

Examples:

• Open to a quick chat sometime this week?
• Would it make sense to connect for 15 minutes?
• Let me know if this is worth exploring. I’m happy to share more.

LinkedIn follow up message templates for every scenario

So, you’ve got a framework for writing effective LinkedIn follow up messages to follow along.

Still, we get it. Writing messages from scratch just about every time can be a pain. 

If time is of the essence and you’d rather have something ready-made, the following templates, which we've put together for different scenarios, are for you. Simply copy, paste, and tweak them to match specific prospects.

1. LinkedIn follow up message after connecting

Response rate: 24%

Hi {{firstName}},

Thanks for accepting the connection!

I came across your profile while looking into {{industry/topic}}, and your work at {{company}} stood out.

If you're ever open to chatting about {{sharedInterest}}, I'd be happy to stay in touch - no pressure at all.

Real-life example:

2. LinkedIn follow up message after a networking event or meeting

Response rate: 41%

Hi {{firstName}},

It was great meeting you at {{eventName}}! I really enjoyed our chat about {{topic}}.

You mentioned {{specificDetail}}, and I’ve actually come across something that might be helpful.

Would you be open to reconnecting sometime next week? I’d love to keep the conversation going.

Real-life example:

3. LinkedIn follow up message after a sales call or demo

Response rate: 38%

Hey {{firstName}},

Thanks again for the call yesterday. It was great learning more about what you’re working on at {{company}}.

As promised, here’s the {{resource/demoFollowUp}} we discussed. I’ve also included a brief overview of how we can support {{specificGoal}}.

Let me know if you’d like to book a follow-up or need anything else from my side.

Real-life example:

4. LinkedIn follow up message to a client

Response rate: 29%

Hey {{firstName}},

Just touching base to see how everything’s going.

Last time we spoke, you mentioned {{painPoint/projectUpdate}}, so I wanted to check in and see if you need anything from me.

If it makes sense, we can hop on a quick call to review where things stand.

Real-life example:

5. LinkedIn follow up message to a candidate

Response rate: 45%

Hi {{firstName}},

Hope you're doing well!

I enjoyed our conversation about the {{jobTitle}} position and wanted to follow up to see if you had any questions since we last spoke.

If you’re still interested, we’d be happy to talk about the next steps or anything else you need.

Real-life example:

6. LinkedIn follow up message after sending an application or resume

Response rate: 12%

Hi {{firstName}},

Just following up on the application I submitted for the {{jobTitle}} role at {{company}}.

I’m excited about the opportunity and think my background in {{skill/industry}} could be a great fit.

Let me know if there’s anything else I can send your way - happy to chat if helpful.

Real-life example:

7. LinkedIn follow up message after an interview

Response rate: 35%

Hey {{firstName}},

Thanks again for the thoughtful conversation earlier! It was great learning more about the team and the direction you're headed.

I’ve been thinking more about what we discussed, especially around {{topic}}, and I’m even more excited about the opportunity.

Let me know if you need anything else from me in the meantime!

Real-life example:

8. LinkedIn follow up message after no response

Response rate: 11%

Hi {{firstName}},

Just circling back in case my last message got buried.

If now’s not the right time, that’s totally fine - I just didn’t want to disappear if {{topic/value}} is still relevant on your end.

Happy to revisit later if that works better for you.

Real-life example:

Do’s and Don’ts of LinkedIn follow up messages

Before you send that follow up message on LinkedIn, let’s make sure it’s actually worth replying to. These do’s and don’ts will help you strike the right tone, all while staying professional.

Do personalize every message

If your follow-up could be sent to 50 other people without changing a word, it’s time for a rewrite.

This is where a quick LinkedIn profile scroll can save the day, as it should help you find something you can actually reference in the message for a more personalized outreach. While at it, pay special attention to your lead’s:

• LinkedIn headline, 
• LinkedIn summary, 
• Work experience,
• Recent posts,
• Activity.

Use that info to show you’ve done your homework and make it clear that they are not just another name on your prospecting list.

Do use a positive & professional tone

Your tone sets the stage for how your message will be perceived. Too friendly, and it might feel unprofessional. Too formal, and it might feel cold or automated. 

What you want to do is aim for that middle ground: approachable, clear, and respectful. For example, rather than saying ''Following up as per my previous message'' say, ‘’Just wanted to follow up in case you missed my last message.’’

The takeaway? Sound like someone you’d respond to. It’s really THAT simple.

Do be clear and brief

The average human attention span is just 8.25 seconds. So if your message takes a paragraph to get to the point, I hate to break it to you, but it’s probably not getting read. 

To counter that, keep it brief. Say what you need to say, minus the fluff. One idea, one ask, one next step. That’s all you need.

Do stay patient and considerate

You’re not the only message in your lead’s inbox. People get busy, distracted, or just need a minute before replying, and that’s okay. Following up is a great sales tactic. Following up too soon or too often? Not so much. Give it a few days before nudging, and always assume good intent. You’re building a relationship, after all, not closing a support ticket. A little patience goes a long way in how you’re perceived.

Don’t be pushy or impersonal

“Hey, just circling back again - can we schedule something for tomorrow at 2 PM?”

If this is your second message and you’ve never actually spoken to the person, that’s not a follow-up. It’s a calendar ambush.

Pushy messages or recycled templates won’t do you any favors, especially when you’re still building the relationship. You’re not trying to close the deal in one go. You’re trying to keep the conversation going. Big difference.

Instead, be human. Add context, show interest, and write something that doesn’t make the other person feel like lead #47 in your queue.

Don’t make assumptions about a lack of response

''Guess you’re not interested...''

''Not sure if you’re ignoring me or just busy.''

Please don’t.

Just because someone hasn’t replied yet doesn’t mean they’ve ghosted you. People get busy. They forget. They read your message on mobile and mean to respond later. It happens.

Assuming the worst makes you look impatient. Or worse, passive-aggressive.

Don’t use all caps or excessive punctuation

YOU DON’T NEED TO SHOUT!!! Seriously.

All caps and extra punctuation might grab attention, but not in a good way. It can come off as aggressive, spammy, and a little too much.

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Advanced LinkedIn follow up message tips to stand out even further

Sending LinkedIn follow-ups that ''check the boxes'' isn’t enough, especially when inboxes are packed and attention spans are short. These tips are here to help you go the extra step, stay top-of-mind, and get more replies without sounding like a bot.

A/B test your follow-up messages

Does a short, direct follow-up get more replies than one with a bit more context? Only one way to find out - A/B testing.

Truth be told, not every message will work for each lead, meaning you’ll need to experiment with different ones. Your best bet is to A/B test element by element: hooks, CTAs, even the message length. Keep an eye on the results, and over time, you’ll spot patterns that can help you write better LinkedIn follow up messages.

Use LinkedIn features other than messaging

If your follow-ups are getting ignored, stop relying only on messages. LinkedIn gives you other ways to reengage.

For example, you could:

• Comment on their post
• View their profile
• Tag them in a relevant post (only if it’s connected to something you talked about or they shared)
• Share their content with a quick note

These touchpoints can warm up a cold lead or set the stage for your next message, without making you look desperate.

Track & optimize your follow-up performance

You could have the best targeted outreach strategy there is, but if you’re not keeping tabs on how your follow up messages are performing, all of that is in vain.

To start with, create a simple system to track your messages and note:

• Who you messaged
• When you sent the follow-up
• What version of the message you used
• Whether they replied

After 20–30 messages, review the outcomes. Which got replies? Were they shorter? More personalized? Did they include a resource or a specific CTA? From there, double down on what’s working and adjust what isn’t.

Is it okay to follow up on another channel if LinkedIn isn’t working?

Absolutely!

If your message gets buried or ignored, it doesn’t mean the opportunity is lost; it just means it’s time to take the multichannel outreach route and reach out to your leads via email.

But let’s be honest… doing this manually? Not ideal.

That’s why we built Skylead—a multichannel sales engagement tool and cold email software designed to help sales teams, marketers, lead gen agencies, and recruiters save 11+ hours a week on outreach.

With Skylead, you can go beyond LinkedIn and take full advantage of unlimited email outreach. Just connect as many mailboxes as you want, and the tool will auto-rotate through them, letting you send tens of thousands of emails a month at no extra cost.

And don’t worry about deliverability. Thanks to our partnership with an email warm up tool, InboxFlare, you also get infinite email warm-up functionality, so your messages land exactly where they’re supposed to: in the primary inbox.

No emails for your leads? No problem! Skylead can discover and verify emails on the go, without disrupting your outreach flow.

Of course, none of this would be possible without Smart sequences—our signature feature that uses if/else conditions and multichannel steps to move your outreach forward based on your lead’s behavior. This way, you reach the right person, at the right time, on the right channel.

Need personalization? We’ve got that too. Skylead lets you:

• Personalize images and GIFs with your lead’s logo, photo, name, and/or custom text
• Use native or custom variables for a message that feels truly 1-on-1
• A/B test your messaging to see what actually resonates

In short, you get a complete, behavior-driven follow-up system that helps you reach more leads in less time.

Frequently asked questions

Should you send a follow-up message on LinkedIn?

Yes. Following up is an important part of any outreach strategy. It helps re-engage the recipient, increases the likelihood of a response, and demonstrates persistence and professionalism.

How do you politely follow up on LinkedIn?

Maintain a respectful and friendly tone. Acknowledge the previous message, provide a brief reminder of the context, and suggest a simple next step. Avoid sounding impatient or overly persistent.

How to send a follow up message after no response on LinkedIn?

Wait approximately 3–5 business days before following up. Consider offering new context, a resource, or a question that adds value to the conversation and encourages a response.

How many follow-ups should you send before moving on?

Generally, it is advisable to send up to 2 or 3 LinkedIn follow up messages. If there is no engagement after that, it may be best to pause or explore alternative channels for communication.

What to do if you don’t get a response after multiple attempts?

Change your approach. Engage with the person’s content, explore a different channel such as email, or revisit the lead at a later time when the timing may be more appropriate.

How do you know if your follow-up strategy is working?

Track metrics such as reply rates, profile views after sending a message, and the number of conversations that progress to the next step (e.g., meeting booked, reply received). Over time, these indicators will help you identify what types of messages and timing yield the best results.

Can I use LinkedIn voice or video messages for follow-ups?

Yes, using LinkedIn voice or video messages can help your follow-ups stand out and feel more personal. These formats are especially useful in relationship-based outreach, such as sales or recruiting. However, they should be used thoughtfully: keep them brief, relevant, and professional to maintain the recipient’s attention and respect their time.

Replies go to those who follow up

The first message might get you noticed. But it’s often the LinkedIn follow up message that will get you a reply. Because conversations rarely move forward unless someone nudges them. And when done right, that someone can be you.

So, go ahead: follow up. Most people won’t. You’ll stand out just by showing up again.

And if you want to spend less time chasing leads and more time closing them, Skylead can help. We’ll give you the tools to engage leads across multiple channels, personalize every touchpoint, and automate your outreach without losing the human touch.

Start your 7-day free trial and see the difference for yourself!

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

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

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

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

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

Sales outreach tools overview

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

Updated on 14.5.2025.

What are sales outreach tools?

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

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

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

Benefits of using outreach tools for sales

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

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

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

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

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

26 Best sales outreach tools

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

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

That’s us! Hi! 🙂

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

Pros

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

• Multichannel outreach
• Unlimited email automation
• Email discovery & verification
• Image & GIF personalization
• Email warm-up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…making it even easier to collaborate globally.

Cons

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

What others said about Skylead

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

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

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

Pricing

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

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

Rating

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

Skylead overview

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

#2 Expandi - Best for automated LinkedIn profile engagement

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

Pros

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

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

Cons

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

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

What others said about Expandi

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

Pricing

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

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (31)

Skylead vs. Expandi

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

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

Pros

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

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

Cons

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

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

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

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

What others said about Zopto

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

Pricing

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

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (66)

Skylead vs. Zopto

#4 Lemlist - Best for ensuring email deliverability

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

Pros

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

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

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

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

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

Cons

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

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

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

What others said about Lemlist

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

Pricing

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

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

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

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

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (388)

Skylead vs. Lemlist

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

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

Pros

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

When it comes to automated actions, it can:

• Send emails
• Like recent posts (LinkedIn)

Meanwhile, actions like:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cons

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

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

What others said about Reply

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

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

Pricing

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

Reply also charges extra for its add-ons:

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

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (96)

Skylead vs. Reply

#6 Snov.io - Best for email enrichment

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

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

Pros

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

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

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

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

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

Cons

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

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

What others said about Snov.io

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

Pricing

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

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (215)

Skylead vs. Snov.io

#7 Closely - Best sales outreach tool for campaign tracking

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

Pros

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

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

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

Cons

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

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

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

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

What others said about Closely

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

Pricing

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

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

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (155)

Skylead vs. Closely

#8 Waalaxy - Best tool for beginners to multichannel outreach

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

Pros

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

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

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

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

Cons

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

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

Finally, the tool connects via a Chrome extension to your LinkedIn account. Naturally, we don’t recommend using it if you want to keep your LinkedIn account restriction-free.

What others said about Waalaxy

Shekh Riazul I. swears Waalaxy's UI is extremely easy to use and navigate. Nonetheless, the software sometimes has a hard time detecting the account. He also frequently has to wait for the Dashboard to load.

Pricing

• Pro: $43/mo per seat
• Advanced: $88/mo per seat
• Business: $131/mo per seat
• Elite: $538/mo per seat
• Enterprise: Custom

Waalaxy also charges $34/month for access to the LinkedIn inbox.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (252)

Skylead vs. Waalaxy

#9 Instantly - Best for straightforward email outreach

Instantly is a cloud-based software for email outreach at scale.

But it actually offers more than that. Namely, it comes with a built-in B2B lead database of over 160 million contacts and a lightweight CRM that includes a Unibox, where you can manage conversations across all your connected inboxes.

Pros

Instantly allows you to connect unlimited email accounts and supports inbox rotation, like Skylead, which helps safeguard and protect your domain.

Moreover, it features an unlimited email warm-up function to guarantee email deliverability. The tool also enables you to personalize your emails with variables and schedule them as needed.

We couldn’t help but notice how straightforward Instantly.ai is. And if you aren’t interested in leveraging LinkedIn outreach, this might just be one of the best tools.

Cons

Instantly isn't designed for multichannel outreach.

Why, yes, the tool can verify email addresses. However, verification credits aren’t part of the subscription plan. As such, they incur an additional cost.

What others said about Instantly

James O. states that Instantly helped him increase his outreach at a low price compared to other sales tools. However, he thinks the software is a bit limited in terms of salesflow customization, and we agree.

Pricing

Instantly has 3 different pricing categories depending on the solutions offered. This means that, if you want to access their full suite, you’ll need to subscribe to each category separately.

Sending & Warmup plans (for email warm-up and outreach):

• Growth: $37/mo per seat
• Hypergrowth: $97/mo per seat
• Light Speed: $358/mo per seat

Leads plans (grant access to the B2B lead database):

• Growth Leads: $47/mo per seat
• Supersonic Leads: $97/mo per seat
• Hyperleads: $197/mo per seat
• Light Speed: $492/mo per seat

CRM plans:

• Growth CRM: $47/mo per seat
• Hyper CRM: $97/mo per seat

Rating

• G2: 4.8 (3,668)

Skylead vs. Instantly

#10 HubSpot Sales Hub - Best for building personalized email sequences

HubSpot Sales Hub is HubSpot’s powerful, cloud-based outreach solution for sales teams.

Pros

The tool is great for building personalized email sequences. With it, you can automate emails and follow-ups. However, you can also set reminders to send emails or inMails manually, make calls, or send invites to connect on LinkedIn.

In addition, the software lets you run multiple A/B tests on your email sequences.

Cons

Building multichannel campaigns with HubSpot Sales Hub isn’t possible at this time.

At the same time, this isn’t a complete sales outreach software. You could use it if you’re a complete novice to outreach. But why not subscribe to Skylead and integrate it with HubSpot instead?

Hungry for multichannel sales tactics, Smart sequence blueprints, and tried-and-tested outreach templates you can use alongside Skylead and HubSpot? Grab the free Sales Playbook packed with the exact recipes we used to grow our user base from 2,500 to 10,000+ in just 9 months!

What others said about HubSpot Sales Hub

Fernando P. finds HubSpot's interface and customer support great. He loves having all leads and customer journeys under one system. Still, he notes the tool could be improved with AI so as to provide more valuable insights.

Pricing

HubSpot Sales Hub divides its plans into 2 categories based on company size:

For individuals & small teams

• Sales Hub Starter: Starts at €15/mo per seat
• Starter Customer Platform: Starts at €15/mo per seat
• Sales Hub Professional: Starts at €90/mo per seat

For businesses & enterprises

• Sales Hub Professional: Starts at €90/mo per seat
• Sales Hub Enterprise: Starts at €150/mo per seat

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (481)

Skylead vs. HubSpot Sales Hub

#11 Dripify - Best sales outreach tool for its ability to integrate with various software

Originally a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool, Dripify has since evolved into a full-blown multichannel sales outreach platform by adding the email channel into the mix.

Pros

Dripify is a great tool for anyone interested in social selling on LinkedIn. 

The software can connect to LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter Lite accounts. It can extract leads from LinkedIn search URLs, LinkedIn events, LinkedIn groups, CSV files, or your network.

It now also supports email outreach, making it a more well-rounded solution. What’s more, you can find and verify email addresses directly inside the platform without the need for external tools.

Its notable feature is drip campaigns, which rely on a sequence of different actions, conditions, and delays. It’s also praised for its ability to integrate with numerous software thanks to webhooks.

Cons

While Dripify now supports multichannel outreach, in contrast to Skylead, it’s still missing some important features. For one, it doesn’t offer A/B testing, which limits your ability to experiment with different subject lines and message/email copy.

Furthermore, you can’t bring your A-game to personalization with it since no image personalization feature is there.

At the same time, the tool doesn’t support campaign creation from LinkedIn posts or Sales Navigator lead lists, as some Dripify alternatives do. And while you can automate it to send free inMails, the same doesn’t apply to paid ones.

Finally, Dripify’s team doesn’t provide one-on-one onboarding, so you’re left to figure out the tool’s functionalities on your own.

What others said about Dripify

Don F. believes Dripify is a solid communication platform for keeping in touch with LinkedIn connections.

Pricing

• Basic: $59/mo per user
• Pro: $79/mo per user
• Advanced: $99/mo per user
• Enterprise: Custom

Rating

• Capterra: 4.7 (475)

Skylead vs. Dripify

#12 SalesLoft - Best sales outreach solution for building and managing pipelines

SalesLoft isn’t your typical sales outreach tool. It’s a cloud-based sales engagement platform.

Pros

The platform combines multiple tools that help salespeople increase and manage pipelines. As such, it goes beyond outreach. Nevertheless, SalesLoft's cadences (campaigns, if you will) that combine email, phone, and Sales Navigator steps make it one of the best sales outreach tools. 

We have found the tool’s email tracking, analytics, and A/B testing a boon! We were also happy to find out that the software comes with nifty email templates that can be customized for added personalization. There’s also an option to save new ones!

Cons

The tool only integrates with Sales Navigator, no LinkedIn Premium and/or Recruiter accounts.

Furthermore, unlike Skylead, Salesloft lacks Smart sequences. Consequently, its users are unable to maximize touchpoints with leads, resulting in less personalized outreach flows and lost opportunities for lead generation.

What others said about SalesLoft

James W. is absolutely sold on the customer support that the SalesLoft team provides. However, he admits the platform can become slow.  

Many people have also mentioned that the SalesLoft dialer isn’t up to par. Additionally, they've pointed out that the tool is quite expensive.

Pricing

• Advanced: Available upon contact
• Premier: Available upon contact

SalesLoft doesn’t publicly disclose its pricing because it’s tailored to each company based on its size and requirements. We’ll respect their decision and won’t say how much we’ve paid during our short time with them. However, the word on the street is that people are paying anywhere from $120 to $165 per account.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.3 (221)

Skylead vs. SalesLoft

#13 Yesware - Best sales software for Gmail & Outlook outreach

Yesware is a sales outreach platform that integrates directly with Gmail & Outlook through a Chrome extension.

Pros

Yesware, like Skylead, allows for:

• Multichannel campaign creation (you can connect your Sales Navigator account to the tool),
• Automated follow-ups in case of no reply,
• Email & attachment tracking (open rate),
• Advanced email performance analysis.

Additionally, it supports:

• Scheduling meetings and calls,
• Setting follow-up reminders.

The platform also has email templates available to personalize as you see fit. We also like how it lets you save your own templates.

Cons

Based on our personal experience with the tool, we can tell you that Yesware doesn't track email deliverability rates.

In addition, its primary focus is email outreach, while LinkedIn outreach takes a backseat. This is clear because the tool only works with Sales Navigator accounts. LinkedIn Basic, Premium, and Recruiter users can’t do much with it—other than automate their cold emailing.

Also, when setting up a multichannel campaign with Yesware, you are limited to 2 Sales Navigator actions: sending a connection request and an InMail. The tool doesn’t perform these actions automatically, either! Instead, it simply alerts you when it's time to complete them manually.

What others said about Yesware

Kim R. believes Yeware is decent, easy-to-use software. She is happy with the customer support provided and likes its real-time reporting and analytics features. Yet, she thinks it’s expensive and not so easy to integrate with other programs. Also, she found some features too complex. 

Pricing

• Free
• Pro: $19/mo per seat
• Premium: $45/mo per seat
• Enterprise: $85/mo per seat
• Custom Plan: Contact sales

Rating

• Capterra: 4.3 (175)

Skylead vs. Yesware

#14 Hunter - Best sales outreach tool for finding and verifying professional emails

Hunter is a well-known cloud-based prospecting, data enrichment, and email lead generation software.

Pros

Hunter is the outreach tool for you if you're a sales professional looking to find verified prospect data — in seconds! In doing so, it boosts email deliverability and protects the sender’s reputation.

With Hunter, we found out that setting up an email outreach campaign is straightforward. Meanwhile, readily available variables help you craft emails that feel highly personal and induce replies.

Finally, Hunter seamlessly fits into your workflow through native integrations with different tools and Google Sheets. Alternatively, you can send over data to a software of choice using Zapier webhooks or API.

Cons

Hunter is strictly an email outreach tool, which means it lacks features for social selling.

Although the tool can find and verify your leads' emails, these features are not integrated into the outreach flow as they are in Skylead. In other words, the tool needs to discover and verify emails first. Only once it returns results can you start an email outreach campaign.

Lastly, the tool can’t extract emails from social media profiles.

What others said about Hunter

Pedro A. believes that Hunter is one of the best sales outreach tools for email scraping. He's noticed a high accuracy in finding and verifying European email addresses. He thinks it'd be great if Hunter made it possible to enrich a person based on their LinkedIn URL, though.

Pricing

• Free: €0
• Starter: €49/mo / 3 email accounts
• Growth: €149/mo / 10 email accounts
• Scale: €299/mo / 20 email accounts
• Enterprise: Contact sales

Each plan comes with a limited number of email verification credits. You can purchase additional credits, but keep in mind that the cost will depend on your subscription plan.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (687)

Skylead vs. Hunter

#15 Mailshake - Best outreach tool for setting up simple drip campaigns

Mailshake is a cloud-based sales engagement platform with a Chrome extension for LinkedIn automation and an AI email writer.

Pros

Mailshake has an intuitive sequence builder that you can use to automate sending cold emails and follow-ups. Unlike other tools, where sequences stop when the prospect responds, Mailshake has the option to continue its campaign even if the lead responds. In other words, other tools like Skylead have an option to manually get leads back to a campaign once they respond. However, if you wish that the sequence just continues despite your leads’ response, you’ll like this option.

You can also use Mailshake to automate profile views on LinkedIn, along with invites to connect and messages.

Clearly, Mailshake supports multichannel outreach, and it even makes it possible to add calls into the mix, courtesy of the built-in dialer. Although, this is a manual task.

Cons

LinkedIn automation, which isn’t even complete, and cold calling are exclusive to the highest-tier subscription.

Additionally, Mailshake automates LinkedIn actions through a Chrome extension, compared to Skylead, which is a cloud-based automation tool. That said, it may not be the safest option for your LinkedIn outreach.

What others said about Mailshake

Engin A. is impressed by how easy this sales outreach platform is to use. He is also satisfied with the onboarding process. However, he says that Mailshake can prove expensive for medium to large teams.

Meanwhile, more than one person has noted you have to be very careful about daily sending limits for email accounts connected to Mailshake, as Gmail tends to flag emails sent in bulk as spam. That’s why Skylead has inbox rotation—a feature that has caused many Mailshake users to turn to Skylead!

Pricing

• Starter: $29/mo per user / 1 mailbox
• Email Outreach: $49/mo per user / 2 mailboxes
• Sales Engagement: $99/mo per user / 10 mailboxes

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (123)

Skylead vs. Mailshake

#16 SalesBlink - Best sales tool for AI-powered email outreach

SalesBlink is a cloud-based sales outreach tool for cold emailing.

Pros

SalesBlink lets you take advantage of its AI, BlinkGPT, to create smart email sequences with follow-ups adjusted to the outcome. It also lets you enrich your emails with variables and personalized images.

What’s more, thanks to the software’s email warm-up feature, your emails are sure to land in your leads’ inboxes, not spam.

Additionally, SalesBlink allows you to connect multiple sender accounts and automatically rotates them while sending emails to ensure you stay within limits.

Finally, the tool makes managing conversations effortless, keeping them all in a unified inbox.

Cons

We found it inconvenient that the tool limits the number of emails you can send depending on your subscription plan. With the highest subscription, you can send up to 100,000 emails. 

However, if you don’t want to pay the highest subscription for this, sales outreach tools like Skylead and Instantly, which allow you to send unlimited emails, may be better suited.

Moreover, while you can add multichannel tasks to your sequences, you have to complete them manually. Therefore, no real multichannel outreach is supported. Email sequences are smart, unfolding based on your prospect’s behavior. Nevertheless, Skylead is superior in this regard as well, as it comes with Smart sequences and support for multiple channels.

What others said about SalesBlink

SalesBlink is Alfred R.'s go-to tool for email outreach, and he proudly talks about it! The absolute best for him is its top-notch AI email assistant, which saves him immense time and optimizes his email management. The only downside he could think of is that you can't add a lot of information when describing a business to the AI, which tells us that the AI feature is not that complete.

Pricing

SalesBlink plans are split into 2 categories:

For Own Business

• Starter: $29 /mo per account
• Growth: $99 /mo per account
• Business: $199 /mo per account

For Lead Generation Agencies

• Agency Starter: $99 /mo / up to 3 clients
• Agency Growth: $199 /mo / up to 10 clients
• Agency Business: $299 /mo / up to 25 clients

Rating

• Capterra: 4.7 (223)

Skylead vs. SalesBlink

#17 Saleshandy - Best outreach tool for A-Z testing

Saleshandy is a cloud-based software for email automation and prospecting.

Pros

The software has an up-to-date pool of over 700 million verified leads that you can search through and include in your outreach. It also has a Chrome extension that finds prospects’ emails on LinkedIn (phone numbers also, but at a higher cost).

Its highlight features, such as simple (not smart) email sequences, email scheduling, email tracking, and email warm-up streamline your cold email outreach, enhance deliverability, and help you generate more leads.

What really caught our attention, though, were the A/Z tests. The software allows users to test up to 26 different subject lines, email bodies, and CTAs.

Cons

Saleshandy doesn't support reaching out to prospects via LinkedIn and channels that aren’t email. While you can identify leads’ emails on this social networking site, be cautious; using its Chrome extension might compromise the safety of your LinkedIn account.

There’s an add-on for email verification, too. However, it costs extra.

What others said about Saleshandy

To Shamim Ahmed A., Saleshandy is one of the best and most affordable sales software for email outreach. He praises its many features, such as unlimited email warm-up, email automation, and analytics. Still, he hopes the warm-up feature will be further improved in the future.

Pricing 

• Email Outreach Plans: From $36/month for the Outreach Starter to $299/month for the Outreach Scale Plus per account.
• B2B Lead Database Plans (emails only): From $29/month for the Lead Starter to $1299/month for the Lead Scale Plus per account.

Saleshandy’s email verification add-on will cost you an extra $79 for 25,000 recipients.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (125)

Skylead vs. Saleshandy

#18 Woodpecker - Best sales outreach tool for coming up with email copy quickly

Woodpecker is one of the best cold email software with add-ons that turn it into an all-in-one sales outreach platform.

Pros

Woodpecker is natively an email outreach tool. Nonetheless, it supports creating multichannel campaigns with LinkedIn actions and calls through built-in integrations with Dux-Soup and AirCall.

The platform allows you to connect unlimited email accounts and auto-rotates them to keep email deliverability high.

Woodpecker can also warm up your mailboxes, verify your leads’ emails and also lets you A/B test up to 5 different email variants. 

It even comes with an AI assistant that generates copy for your campaigns. However, as we said previously, we tested out AI-generated copies, and the results weren’t much better than our own. In some cases, the results were even worse.

Cons

Woodpecker relies on 3rd party tools for its multichannel outreach, which incurs additional costs.

Additionally, its email verification probability isn’t as high as Skylead’s or Hunter.io’s.

What others said about Woodpecker

Woodpecker is a standout software in Michael L.'s eyes due to its ease of use and great support. While not as advanced as some other sales outreach tools, he states it fares well in the cold emailing department.

Pricing

• Starter: From $29mo per account
• Growth: From $188/mo per account
• Scale: From $1,354/mo per account
• Max: From $9,999/mo prt account

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (33)

Skylead vs. Woodpecker

#19 Wiza - Best for extracting lead information from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator & Recruiter

Wiza is a Chrome extension that is used to scrape prospect information from LinkedIn.

Pros

Wiza is compatible with LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter accounts. It’s notable for its instant email verification capabilities. At the same time, it allows you to export prospecting lists from LinkedIn to CSV or sync them to your CRM.

On top of extracting verified work and personal emails from LinkedIn, Wiza can also extract work and cell phone numbers that are publicly available on LinkedIn.

FIY, the software will use up your verification credits only if it manages to find valid prospect information.

Cons

We can’t say that Wiza is a real sales outreach tool, even though some categorize it as such. Instead, it’s a prospecting tool that can only inform your outreach strategy.

Also, since this is another Chrome extension on the list that injects code into LinkedIn, it could lead to your banning on the platform.

What others said about Wiza

As per Prerana B., Wiza is convenient, fast, and accurate. She also likes how the tool can scrape leads' information from LinkedIn. On the flip side, she finds it a bit expensive. However, while Prerana praises Wiza for its email discovery and verification capabilities, we’ve found Skylead to have a much higher email enrichment success rate.

Pricing

• Free: $0
• Starter: $49/mo per user
• Email: $99/mo per user
• Email + Phone: $199/mo per user
• Team plan: Starting at $399/mo (annual commitment)

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (20)

Skylead vs. Wiza

#20 GrowMeOrganic - Best sales outreach tool for automating hyper-personalized follow-ups

GrowMeOrganic is a cloud-based outreach solution for cold emailing. It also features a Chrome extension that can extract verified emails and phone numbers from LinkedIn.

Pros

GrowMeOrganic is great for automating cold emails and follow-ups based on your prospects’ behavior. We liked that the tool has a native image personalization feature and can track open, click, reply, and conversion rates.

GrowMeOrganic is compatible with email accounts from all providers.

Cons

Another Chrome extension, another major downside. To preserve your LinkedIn account, you are better off choosing another tool, at least for prospecting and email enrichment.

GrowMeOrganic also lacks support for LinkedIn outreach. As such, it misses out on the opportunities the greatest platform for social selling holds.

Furthermore, we noticed it’s impossible to download a PDF report. Only CSV and XLS exports are available.

What others said about GrowMeOrganic

Raghavendra D. has been using GrowMeOrganic for a while and says it's an excellent tool for sales automation. She finds its LinkedIn and Google My Business email scraper incredibly useful! Nonetheless, she doesn't like that this is a Chrome extension, nor do we. She’d like it better if there were an option to search for leads directly through the platform.

Pricing

• Starter: $49/mo / 1 user
• Growth: $99/mo / 5 users
• Pro: $199/mo / unlimited users

Rating

• Capterra: 4.2 (10)

Skylead vs. GrowMeOrganic

#21 Lusha - Best for prospecting around the Web

Like Wiza, Lusha is primarily a cloud-based prospecting tool, although salespeople can also use it for email outreach.

Pros

Lusha has a handy Chrome extension, which can extract prospects from anywhere. It also has a built-in B2B prospecting tool with filters that can get you up to 1,000 leads in one go.

Furthermore, you don’t have to resort to another software for your outreach; you can automate Lusha to send emails. Rather than relying on your time zone when doing so, the tool, like Skylead, lets you set different time zones for different email sequences. In other words, it reaches out to your leads when the time is right...for them!

To top it off, Lusha added an AI Playlists features, a.k.a. lead lists that automatically update based on your saved filters to keep your pipeline consistently full of new, high-potential contacts.

Cons

Lusha uses a Chrome extension to extract prospects from different sites. If you are prospecting on LinkedIn, it could threaten your account’s existence.

Moreover, this tool is only compatible with Gmail and Outlook accounts. If your email account is with a different provider, you won’t be able to use it for your outreach. Also, you can only connect one email account to Lusha, and it must be the one you used to register on the platform.

Lastly, its built-in database of B2B leads includes 45 million contacts in North America and 21 million in Europe. If your target audience is based on other continents, this may result in missed outreach opportunities.

What others said about Lusha

Ben B. reports that Lusha speeds up his prospecting and lead generation and offers great value for money. The only problem is that the quality of data found could sometimes be better.

Pricing

• Free: $0 / 1 seat
• Pro: Starts from $29.90/mo / 3 seats
• Premium: $69.90/mo / 5 seats
• Scale: Custom

Rating

• Capterra: 4.1 (383)

Skylead vs. Lusha

#22 MeetAlfred - Best sales automation tool for X outreach

MeetAlfred is a cloud-based sales outreach platform designed for LinkedIn, email, and X outreach.

Pros

MeetAlfred is different from other multichannel sales outreach tools in that it also integrates with X (formerly Twitter). As such, you can use it to automate different activities on three fronts: LinkedIn, email & X.

The tool’s campaign builder allows for adding infinite steps — from profile views and invites to connect to follow-up messages, inMails, emails, and X DMs. At the same time, it lets you set up delays between steps and personalize your messages with customizable templates and variables.

We also found it convenient how you can connect the tool to your Facebook and Instagram accounts. Although MeetAlfred can't be used to message prospects on these platforms, you can use it to create and schedule posts.

Cons

Unlike Skylead, MeetAlfred doesn’t have Smart sequences. Consequently, the software’s integrated inbox only shows your LinkedIn/Sales Navigator messages. If your campaign includes emails and DMs, you must manually check for new ones.

What others said about MeetAlfred

Martin P. considers MeetAlfred a perfect sales tool for someone with experience using this type of outreach software. He is fond of its simple interface and lots of customizable templates. Nevertheless, he believes it might be difficult for beginners to use.

Pricing

• Free: $0
• Individual: $59/mo per user
• Business: $99/mo per user
• Team: $79/mo per user

Rating

• Capterra: 2.8 (13)

Skylead vs. MeetAlfred

#23 LeadConnect - Best outreach solution for following up on LinkedIn

LeadConnect is a Chrome extension used for prospecting and outreach on LinkedIn.

Pros

LeadConnect connects to LinkedIn Basic and Sales Navigator accounts and pulls leads’ information from a LinkedIn search or a CSV file. 

This tool lets you send personalized connection requests along with up to 6 automated follow-up messages.

Additionally, thanks to its native integration with HubSpot, pushing leads and conversations to the latter is as simple as a single click.

The tool also works with Findthatlead, Hunter.io, and Anymailfinder to discover your prospects’ email addresses. This is especially handy, as it gives you another channel to contact users who haven’t responded: email.

Cons

You can only use LeadConnect to contact users via LinkedIn. The tool doesn’t support sending inMails and emails, either. 

The platform works only with LinkedIn Basic and Sales Navigator accounts. So, it cannot be used by anyone subscribed to LinkedIn Premium or a Recruiter plan.

With LeadConnect, you can only automate connection requests and LinkedIn messages. This makes it fairly primitive compared to Skylead and its multichannel smart sequences.

Plus, given that LeadConnect is a Chrome extension, it could lead to account restrictions.

What others said about LeadConnect

In Sheryl S.'s opinion, LeadConnect is a great sales outreach platform for growing her LinkedIn network. She also mentions that it's quite easy to use. The only issue is that when there are a lot of prospects to discover, she sometimes has to refresh the URL.

Pricing

• Free Forever: $0
• Professional: $ 25.95/mo per account
• Grow: $ 45.95/mo per account
• Ultimate: $ 85.95/mo per account

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (98)

Skylead vs. LeadConnect

#24 Evaboot - Best tool for scraping leads from Sales Navigator

Like Wiza or Lusha, Evaboot is a Chrome extension for Sales Navigator prospecting.

Pros

Evaboot allows users to build lead lists from Sales Navigator in seconds and export them to CSV. 

In addition to scraping leads, the tool can also find and verify professional emails. 

Cons

Evaboot is only compatible with Sales Navigator, rendering it useless for LinkedIn Basic, Premium, or Recruiter subscribers.

Furthermore, this is a Chrome extension that, as you already know, can harm your Sales Navigator account.

We’ve tested the tool and can also tell you that their email discovery feature frequently provides inaccurate information or no information at all.

Lastly, this isn’t an email automation tool or any other type of outreach software. Yes, you can use the information gathered to contact leads. However, you’d need to subscribe to another sales outreach tool to do so.

What others said about Evaboot

Ky K. says Evaboot is easy to use and effective at what it does. However, the slight downside is that it doesn't allow him to select the number of leads to export.

Pricing

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (14)

Skylead vs. Evaboot

#25 Dux-Soup - Best LinkedIn automation tool for sending free and paid inMails

Initially a Chrome extension for LinkedIn automation, Dux-Soup now also offers a cloud-based sales outreach solution.

Pros

Dux-Soup can automate the following LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter actions:

• Endorsements
• Follows
• Profile visits
• Personalized connection requests
• Personalized messages to 1st connections
• inMails (free & paid)

With it, you can mix and match different actions to create unique drip campaigns that stop once your prospects’ respond. 

We like that you can also customize time delays between individual steps and monitor campaign statistics once the campaign is live.

The software natively connects to Pipedrive, Hubspot, and SharpSpring. Nonetheless, you can also connect it to another CRM using Zapier webhooks.

Cons

Dux-Soup has a cloud-based solution for LinkedIn outreach, but it’s only available under their most expensive subscription plan. Those on lower plans have to rely on their Chrome extension for automation, which could compromise their LinkedIn accounts. Not to mention, the tool can only run while the browser is open.

Moreover, the software can’t be used for email outreach or any other type of outreach.

What others said about Dux-Soup

Leilani S. finds that Dux-Soup simplifies prospecting on LinkedIn. Her favorite feature is the X-ray tool, which enables her to discover LinkedIn profiles via Google. However, she notes that the software occasionally disrupts her workflow by randomly refreshing her page.

Pricing

Dux-Soup has 3 different plan categories:

Individual & Team Plans

• Pro Dux: $14.99/mo per seat
• Turbo Dux: $55/mo per seat
• Cloud Dux: $99/mo per seat

Agency Plans

• Pro Dux: from $337.50/mo for 30+ seats
• Turbo Dux: from $412.50/mo for 10+ seats
• Cloud Dux: from $371/mo for 5+ client seats

Rating

• Capterra: 4.0 (16)

Skylead vs. Dux-Soup

#26 Salesloop - Best for expanding your LinkedIn network on autopilot

Salesloop is designed to work with all types of LinkedIn accounts: Basic, Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter.

The software allowed us to build campaigns using LinkedIn search and by uploading lead lists in CSV format. Should you decide on the latter, you can also enrich your messages with custom variables for an added dash of personalization (on top of pre-set ones).

To make campaign tracking easier, Salesloop lets you download CSV reports.

Cons

Currently, the software supports LinkedIn automation only, although email and X (Twitter) integration are supposedly in the works. It also misses out on Smart sequences and, instead, relies on simple campaigns for its automation.

Additionally, Saleloop doesn’t integrate with any CRM natively. We were also disappointed to find out you can’t connect it to other tools via webhooks or API.

Lastly, unlike Skylead, which is one of the best sales outreach tools to support image & GIF personalization, Salesloop doesn’t currently offer this feature.

What others said about Salesloop

Krishan Kant S. is grateful for Salesloop because it improves his productivity and increases business performance. On top of that, it brings about financial benefits. He doesn't think the tool has any flaws.

Pricing

• Solo: $49/mo per 1 user
• Team: $199/mo per 6 users ($39 per user with a minimum of 3; tailored plans for more than 6 users)
• Managed Service: $2,000/mo

Rating

• G2: 3.5 (3)

Skylead vs. Salesloop

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Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Are sales outreach tools the same as CRM?

No. Sales outreach tools are designed to automate the initial contact with potential customers through various channels (e.g., email, LinkedIn, phone). On the other hand, CRM software is all about tracking interactions, managing sales pipelines, and storing information about leads and customers.

Can you use sales outreach tools without a CRM?

You can definitely use sales outreach tools without a CRM, especially if your business is small or just starting to build its sales process. Nonetheless, pairing these tools with a CRM is a smart move as your business grows and interactions with customers increase. This combo ensures a smooth workflow.

How do sales outreach tools ensure data privacy and security?

Sales outreach tools use various methods to safeguard sensitive information. This includes data encryption and compliance with GDPR. Many tools also manage consent and preferences to comply with privacy laws. Furthermore, trustworthy vendors have clear privacy policies and security protocols displayed on their websites.

Select the perfect tool and seal your sales deals easier than ever!

Here's the thing: the sales game has seriously leveled up from the old-school days. Today, we've got a whole arsenal of sales outreach tools at our disposal. Sure, choosing the right one from the bunch can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. But that's what you've got us for! So, if you feel indecisive after all this talk about the top software on the market, choose Skylead. 

Start your 7-day free trial now and close more deals than ever—way faster!

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

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.

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, everything we did was through Skylead. If you want to skip a part of your manual work and launch a high-performing outreach campaign in minutes, feel free to try it 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 sales engagement tool and cold email software, Skylead, to send 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

But what if you could automate your multichannel outreach?

That’s exactly what Skylead does!

This sales engagement tool helps startups and agencies, sales teams, recruiters, marketers, and alike automate lead generation tasks, such as:

• multichannel outreach, 
• finding and verifying business emails without breaking the outreach flow, 
• Warm up your email accounts for the outreach, 
• Personalize your messages at scale,

depending on their leads' behavior. 

To show you just how Skylead follows leads' behavior, check out our blog outreach sequences!

What's more, 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. You can also 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 inside the tool 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!

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

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 sales engagement tool 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.

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 inside the tool!

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!

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

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

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: Sales engagement tool.

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 email warm up 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!

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

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 sales engagement 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 sales engagement tool and cold email software that sales teams can use to:

• Automate lead generation at scale.
• Combine multichannel 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. 

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

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 in our tool 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.

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

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 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 outreach 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
• Chrome extensions
• Desktop apps
• Web browsers.

A cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool store everything online. This also means such software can run even when your PC is off. What’s more, only cloud-based software can have multiple accounts and integrated inboxes. 

Extensions, desktop apps, and web browsers often leads to bulk messaging, which can be risky. They also don’t support managing multiple LinkedIn accounts, and your computer needs to stay on for campaigns to keep running.

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.

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. Drip campaign functionality

Some LinkedIn automation tools help you send messages and follow-ups in form of drip campaigns. However, what you need to look out for are the outreach flows that have if/else conditions feature so you can combine them with other actions. This way, you can let tool follow your leads' behavior and act accordingly.

2. 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, 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.

3. 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.

4. 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!

5. 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.

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.

6. 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. 

7. 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.

8. 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 sales engagement tool. 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.

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 two channels. 

What makes the Smart sequences smart is the if/else condition, which you can use to define how leads react to your outreach, and decide on the next step based on the outcome. Here's one example.

Lastly, you can have as many touchpoints in the Smart sequence as you’d like. 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 found inside the tool.

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 tool from the list.

Unlimited email outreach

Having 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 you can manage all your conversations in one place.

Additionally, with clear icons, labels, and a user-friendly interface, you’ll always know where your prospects responded and their current status.

Email discovery & verification

When we said Skylead is a one-stop solution, we really meant it. 

Along with multichannel outreach, Skylead includes a built-in email discovery and verification feature. You can seamlessly add this step to your Smart sequence, and the tool will discover and double-verify your leads’ emails without interrupting your outreach flow.

In fact, Skylead offers unlimited email discovery and verification. Most tools can only do one or the other. Others might collect publicly available emails, but only if the lead is already in your LinkedIn network. 

Infinite email warm-up

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

Luckily, Skylead has partnered up with an email warm-up tool, 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 picture, company logo, and other information. This means no more wasting time creating endless variations of the same image.

What’s more, Skylead is the only tool on the market that has a native, built-in image and GIF personalization. Other tools may ask you to pay extra for it, but not us!

Pricing

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

This makes it the most cost-effective tool on this list.

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.

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 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. 

Pros