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

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.

Types and subtypes of sales outreach tools

Generally speaking, sales outreach software can be:

• Cloud-based, existing entirely on the Web and running without reliance on Internet connectivity or power. Such software allows you to manage multiple LinkedIn accounts and/or email accounts and conversations, as it typically comes with an integrated inbox. This is also the safest type of outreach tool for sales. Namely, cloud-based tools assign their users a dedicated IP address to shield their online activity. Additionally, they frequently mimic human behavior and randomize the delay between different outreach activities. As a result, they are hard to detect and thus work to keep your LinkedIn or, say, email account restriction-free.

• Chrome extensions. They lack a dedicated IP address and require your browser to be on to function. Moreover, these extensions, if used for LinkedIn prospecting or outreach, automatically inject code into the platform. In doing so, they make it apparent that you're using automation, which could lead to getting your LinkedIn account restricted.

• Desktop apps require downloading and can only operate while your computer is on. They don't offer dedicated IP addresses, support multiple accounts, or run in the background. However, they are generally safer than extensions because they don't inject code into LinkedIn.

Depending on the type of outreach they are used for, we also have:

Benefits of using outreach tools for sales

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

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

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

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

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

26 Best sales outreach tools

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

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

That’s us! Hi! 🙂

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

Pros

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

• LinkedIn automation
• Unlimited email automation
• Email discovery & verification
• Image & GIF personalization

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

Speaking of email outreach, Skylead lets you connect unlimited email accounts at no extra cost. Moreover, the software supports inbox rotation, which means that you can send tens of thousands of emails per month with it.

Skylead also consolidates all your communications into one smart inbox, allowing you to manage LinkedIn messages, inMails, and emails 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 increased our response rate by 63%!

Skylead can pull prospects from LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter accounts, making LinkedIn lead generation a breeze.

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

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

How safe is Skylead?

Very! In fact, one of the greatest things about Skylead, in our opinion, is its 3-layer protection. The software protects its users from experiencing LinkedIn account restrictions by:

• Being human-like,
• Randomizing delays between actions,
• Assigning a dedicated IP address.

Skylead also comes with a handy email discovery & verification feature that ensures deliverability, thus reducing bounce rates. Using it, you don't have to worry about the safety of your domain! Skylead will provide you only with a list of double-verified email addresses that actually exist. Not to mention, it boasts one of the highest, if not the highest, email finder probability rates compared to other sales outreach tools on the market.

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.

Also, at the moment, there isn't an option to build a campaign from LinkedIn group members. Nevertheless, you can always use a workaround to target these individuals, and it involves LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters. Just select the desired group from the filters, copy the search result URL, and paste it into Skylead. Et voilà!

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.

Pricing

Skylead offers an all-in-one solution priced at $100 per seat a month. However, if you’re interested in white-labeling the software, contact the sales team for pricing details.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.8 (17)
• Product Hunt: 4.9 (57)

#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. Compared to Skylead, the tool allows for the creation of campaigns from LinkedIn group members. 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. 

The software also doesn't support sending paid inMails, making it somewhat limited, in our opinion.

Finally, the tool cannot discover and verify email addresses unless publicly available on someone's LinkedIn profile. This makes it an incomplete tool for seamless email outreach.

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)

#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.

Furthermore, while we were successful in adding LinkedIn inMails to our campaigns, we were saddened to find that Zopto only supports sending free inMails.

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 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 (65)

#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.

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 last thing we didn’t like is that we needed to pay per email account, 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

• Email Starter: $39/mo per 1 email account
• Email Pro: $69/mo per 3 email accounts
• Multichannel Expert: $99/mo per 5 email accounts
• Outreach Scale: $159/mo per 15 email accounts

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (375)

#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 finding and verifying emails 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. However, keep in mind that these are simple campaigns without any conditions, unlike the smart sequences you’d find with Skylead.

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 simple sequences from scratch or have Reply’s Jason AI generate them for you. Reply also lets you track your campaign performance step-by-step.

The tool supports integrations via Zapier but 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 finding and verifying email addresses. While this may seem like a pro, it's not particularly useful, especially when enriching emails 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

• Free
• Starter: $59/mo per user / 1 mailbox
• Professional: $99/mo per user / 5 mailboxes
• Ultimate: $139/mo per user / 15 mailboxes
• Reply Unlimited: Contact sales

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (96)

#6 Snov.io - Best for email enrichment

Snov.io is a cloud-based email outreach tool. However, it comes with two Chrome extensions: a LinkedIn prospect finder and an online email finder.

Pros

While testing Snov.io, we've concluded that its email finder and 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, 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 drip 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 also 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.

Furthermore, we couldn't get the most out of our outreach with it simply because we were limited to emails only.

Alas, 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 5x 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: $30/mo per seat
• Pro: $75 / $142 / $277 / $554/mo per seat
• Managed Service: Starting at $3,999/mo per seat

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (207)

#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 single campaign.

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 2 multichannel campaigns running simultaneously. Plus, these campaigns, despite involving LinkedIn and email actions, don’t include smart sequences. 

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

• Personal: $99/mo per seat / 1 LinkedIn & 1 email account
• Growth: $219/mo per seat / 3 LinkedIn & 3 email accounts
• Pro: $339/mo per seat / 5 LinkedIn & 5 email accounts
• Custom: Contact sales

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (148)

#8 Waalaxy - Best tool for beginners to multichannel outreach

Waalaxy is a cloud-based software 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.

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 a few pre-built options. 

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

It also lacks a native email enrichment feature.

Finally, the free version of the tool uses a Chrome extension. 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

• Free
• Advanced: €112/mo per seat
• Business: €160/mo per seat

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (207)

#9 Instantly - Best for straightforward email outreach

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

Pros

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

Moreover, Instantly 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 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

Sending & Warmup Plans

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

Leads Plans

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

Rating

• G2: 4.9 (2,066)

#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?

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

• Free: $0
• Starter: $20/mo per seat
• Professional: $100/mo per seat
• Enterprise: $150/mo per seat

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (452)

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

Dripify is a cloud-based tool for LinkedIn outreach designed to help sales teams close more deals.

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 or CSV files.

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

To us, multichannel outreach is the best type of outreach. However, seeing as Dripify supports only LinkedIn automation, it’s clear that, in contrast to Skylead, it isn’t a complete sales outreach tool. 

In addition to lacking email automation capabilities, Dripify doesn’t come with an email finder and verifier. Furthermore, you can’t bring your A-game to personalization with it since no image personalization feature is there.

At the same time, Dripify doesn’t support campaign creation from LinkedIn posts or Sales Navigator lead lists. 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. In his opinion, the tool's only con is its inability to launch multichannel campaigns.

Pricing

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

Rating

• Capterra: 4.7 (230)

#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, so we couldn’t create multichannel sequences. Also, this tool doesn’t support LinkedIn Premium and 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

• Essentials: Available upon contact
• 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 $75 for the essentials version up to $125 for the premium plan.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (213)

#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 two 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)

#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: €34/mo / 3 email accounts
• Growth: €104/mo / 10 email accounts
• Business: €349/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 (614)

#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
• Email Outreach: $59/mo per user
• Sales Engagement: $99/mo per user

Rating

• Capterra: 4.7 (108)

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

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

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

Rating

• Capterra: 4.7 (131)

#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, and email tracking, 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 

• Cold Emailing Plans: From $36/month for the Outreach Starter to $299/month for the Outreach Scale Plus per account.
• B2B Lead Finder Plans (emails only): From $47/month for the Lead Starter to $299/month for the Lead Scale Plus per account.
• B2B Lead Finder Plans (emails + phone numbers): From $79/month for the Lead Starter to $599/month for the Lead Scale Plus per account.
• Agency Plans: From $99/month for the Agency Starter to $899/month for the Agency Scale Plus per account.

Saleshandy’s email verification add-on will cost you an extra $60 for 30,000 recipients.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (125)

#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 verify your leads’ emails and lets you A/B test up to five 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

• Prospects: From $15/mo per account
• Cold Email: From $29/mo per account
• Agency: From $56/mo per agency

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (32)

#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 lead 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
• Email: $99/mo per user
• Email + Phone: $199/mo per user

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (20)

#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)

#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

The greatest thing about Lusha is its 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!

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
• Pro: $49/mo per seat
• Premium: $79/mo per seat
• Scale: Contact sales

Rating

• Capterra: 4.1 (360)

#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. It also doesn’t support campaign creation from Recruiter search, nor does it support sending paid inMails.

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

• Individual: $59/mo per user
• Business: $99/mo per user
• Agency: Contact sales (includes 10 users)

Rating

• Capterra: 2.8 (13)

#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. 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)

#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. The slight downside is that it doesn't allow him to select the number of leads to export.

Pricing

Rating

• Capterra: 4.9 (13)

#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

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 (14)

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

Pros

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 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)

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! 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!

When talking to prospects, sales reps know that the art of selling revolves around many skills. However, the most important one, hands down, is objection handling.

Prospects might give you many reasons why they don’t need your product/service, from “it’s too expensive,” “I don’t have time,” to “I’m happy with your competitor.” Ouch! We know–it might hurt, but your job is to overcome these obstacles.

But how to turn a “no” into a “yes”? To teach you how to do it, we are drawing from years of our own sales experience to show you:

• Types of objection handling
• A 7-step guide to master handling in sales
• Top 17 objection-handling situations with winning rebuttal examples

What is objection handling in sales?

Objection handling is the process of addressing concerns or doubts raised by a prospect. It uses empathetic listening and other communication techniques to provide solutions or reassurance, with the goal of maintaining a positive relationship and moving closer to a more successful outcome or sale.

Objections may come up for various reasons:

• Poor LinkedIn prospecting 
• Failing to find your Ideal customer profile or Buyer Persona from LinkedIn lead generation. 

Of course, it could be none of the above. You could have done everything right, yet objections may pop up to create very common outreach obstacles like:

• Inadequate price
• Lack of authority
• Competitors

Why is objection handling important?

Imagine a world where no objection is handled - there would be no deals or revenue at the first mention of a problem or concern. It’s important for salespeople to address these objections properly so the prospect will move through the sales pipeline and convert. But why do objections show up in the first place?

An objection usually appears because there is not enough trust. It’s important to build trust by addressing your prospects’ issues on time, which helps nurture your relationship with them. This can ultimately lead to multiple sales in the future.

Our best advice is not to avoid objections but to use them as a tool to build a stronger relationship with your prospect. You can regularly check up on your prospects' sales journey and find out if there’s any doubt to address by asking questions such as:

• Do you have any concerns about X?
• Is there anything you are worried about regarding X and why?
• Is there any obstacle that would be a deal-breaker and would stop you from using [product/service]?

Types of sales objections

Before we get into the how let’s go over the three common types of objections sales reps encounter on a daily basis in outreach. 👇

Solution-oriented sales objection

When the prospect has a problem, and your product/service can solve the problem, but they’re unsure whether to go for it or not, that is called a solution sales objection type. Andrea, our Head of Sales, says that this is the most common type of objection, and in this case, your job is to persuade the prospect that your product/service is the perfect solution for them.

No-problem sales objection

Next, we have the so-called “no-problem” sales objection type. In this situation, the prospect doesn’t perceive the problem as a big deal–in fact, it doesn’t concern him as much. This is a situation where you have to create a sense of urgency and subtly present your product/service as the only solution.

How did this happen? Well, our Account executive, Pavle, says that this objective type might pop up when you show the prospect all features and benefits immediately or without actively listening to what they see as a more important issue. 

Problem-oriented sales objection

The hardest one to overcome is the problem-oriented sales objection—the case where the prospect has legitimate issues and doesn’t see how your product/service solves them. 

If this is the case, we advise you to first determine if your product can actually help. If it doesn’t, it’s better to be honest with the prospect. This way, you’re actually building a positive relationship that might turn into a good recommendation or a potential future collaboration. However, if it does help, make sure to offer your product and depict it as the logical solution to their pain point.

7 steps to overcome sales objections

Now, let’s look at the tested and trialed steps our sales team always uses when addressing doubts and objections with prospects. 👇

1. Actively listen to prospects

Our Andrea says that to be a successful salesperson, you must learn how to listen rather than reply. Active listening can be described as the most important skill a salesperson should have. 

Most of the sales processes nowadays happen remotely and online, so salespeople don’t have the luxury of reading into body language or even tone of voice. The only thing they have is their digital written replies, which is why listening carefully can improve your relationship with the prospect and ultimately lead to a conversion.

2. Repeat what you hear

Since there’s usually no physical interaction between you and your prospect, it’s important that you phrase your questions and answers in a way that replaces a specific reassuring tone of voice and microexpressions on your face. So, when a prospect voices an objection, make sure to repeat it back to them for two reasons:

1. To make sure you understand their issue correctly which can help you change their mind later.
2. To make them feel valued and heard by you, which builds trust further.

3. Validate concerns

This step comes after you’re sure you understand your prospect’s worries. From this point, you can continue building trust with them by empathizing and showing them you understand their viewpoint. By validating their concerns, you can lead them to the part where you unobtrusively introduce your product/service as a proper solution.

This is how validating concerns looks like in real life:

I understand that implementing a new tool can lead to a rocky adaptation period. Luckily, our all-star support team is here to help ease the transition and get you to operate as before but better.

4. Ask open-ended follow-up questions

When an objection comes in front of your potential sale, your main job is to keep the conversation going. To keep them engaged, be sure to ask follow-up questions. However, you should avoid questions that can be answered with “no” or “yes”. 

Instead, focus on open-ended questions that allow your lead to keep communicating their thoughts and worries so you can address them as soon as possible. The more information they give you, the more material you will have to turn the objection around into a sale.

Can you walk me through some of the challenges you're currently facing in managing your {{process/Task}} and how you see the perfect solution to improving your situation?

5. Use social proof

When in doubt, use social proof to change your prospect’s mind. The best way to persuade them is to showcase a customer story, case study, or data addressing their pain points.

Here’s an example of a case where your social proof addresses their objection or pain point:

6. Give them time to think before your next follow-up

In objection handling, there will be situations where your prospect will ask you to give them some time and space to think about their options or to restart the conversation in the future. Your job here is to give them enough time and space but not too much. If you leave them for too long, they might lose track of you and your product/service, and this is why a follow-up that restarts the conversation is an absolute must!

So, be sure to set a time that isn’t too far in the future, and make sure to let your prospect know that you will answer any questions and discuss any news regarding your product/service.

7. Address objections before the prospect does

Ultimately, a good salesperson is the one who can predict and cover potential objections and worries before the prospect mentions them. If you’re working in a certain field and with prospects from a certain industry, you most likely are already familiar with the type of worries that might come up, so it’s good to sew in subtle objection-handling cues into your sales pitch.

Top 17 objection-handling situations with rebuttal examples

Now that we’ve covered why it’s important, the types of objections out there, and our 7-step guide on how to handle and overcome objections, it’s time to look at the 17 most common objections. Our superstar sales team came together to tell us all about the reasons they had to work around over the years. Let’s begin handling objections. ⬇️

#1 I already have a solution

This one is the most common objection, and it usually involves your direct or indirect competitor. The way to work around this is to find your prospect’s pain point that their current solutions don't solve. Depending on how the prospect ends the sentence, your response may vary, so let’s see all the potential scenarios.

Rebuttal examples

Tease out why they think the solution is good for them, and gather the pain points based on which you can book a meeting. If their feature is really better, leverage the one your product has and think it’s better for the prospect’s business.

Tease pain points to continue the conversion. Pausing may imply that they are not satisfied with something. Then it’s your job to figure out which part the competitor isn’t covering so you can sweep in and solve the problem.

Needless to say this is the best answer you can get, as the prospect immediately pointed out the pain point. Ask more questions, empathize with them, and then underline the value of your product/service to move the conversion process forward.

#2 I am not the right person

From Becc Holland’s experience, the CEO and founder at Flip the Script, sometimes, in cold outreach, you will talk to people who are not the decision-makers. From our experience, if you build a good initial relationship with them, they could point you to, or even connect you with the decision-maker, so don’t dismiss them right away!

Rebuttal examples

Make sure to listen or read carefully if they are indeed the right person or not.

If they are but say they aren’t just to chase you away, structure your objection handling response like this:

After you ask for consent to pitch and they give it to you, pitch a unique selling point and value proposition to try to close the deal or schedule a demo call. 

In case they're not the right person, structure your response like this:

If you find the decision maker, you can always reference the person you spoke with first. If you don't succeed, you can reach back to the first person and ask for additional advice or to point you to the right person.

However, if you can’t reach the decision-maker, reach back to the first person and give them an update. Be honest, admit you might have made a mistake, and ask for advice again. The first person will probably want to make things right and reach the decision-maker themselves.

#3 I don’t have time

As an SDR, your job is to prove to your prospects that you are worth their time. For example, by using short sentences you’re showing you respect their time. You will also catch their attention by showcasing the experience of similar people, and then ask for a fragment of their time to pitch or aim to schedule a call for another time. 

Rebuttal examples

With this question, you are providing the value and solution right away and showing you are respecting their time. They may or may not have the time right now, but you teased enough to schedule a call another time and soon. Ask them again if they have that 5 minutes right now, or if they do not, when you should schedule a short call.

With this statement, you get the chance to pitch right away, so try to be as brief as possible, and finish by asking for another call.

#4 The budget is a little tight at the moment

Price objections are the type of sales objections you want to hear, as it shows the prospect thought of buying your product/service, but had to reconsider because of the price. These prospects usually need a little nudge value-wise and they’ll convert.

Rebuttal example

If the answer is yes, you have the opportunity to offer a discount code to push them towards the closing process. If not, ask more questions to find out the real reason, then leverage it to remove it with personalized value.

#5 You are more expensive than your competitors

Similar to the previous one, this objection has the money issue involved, but with an added spicy competitor comment. Try to stay calm as this is solvable 90% of the time. You overturn this by showing how they can win with your product as opposed to losing with the cheaper alternative.

Rebuttal example

The moment you start justifying the price, you’re bargaining with the prospect. Rather than addressing the price issue alone, our Andrea says that you should link the price to the higher value that your product offers. If they still don’t understand, then they probably do not match your Ideal Customer Profile.

#6 I need to check with the boss, or my boss doesn’t like this product, but I do

Sometimes, the person you are pitching to will not have the authority to make final decisions. However, you should not lose interest in pitching to this person, as they might be the ones who will use the product in the end. If you make a good impression, they might pitch it to their boss, and the conversation and the conversion will continue.

Rebuttal examples

Andrea says that you shouldn’t never allow anyone else to deliver your sales pitch to the decision-maker. Instead, aim to schedule a call with them to provide value. Be careful not to make the person not in charge feel inferior, though. So, instead offer them help and support in the pitching process. If they don’t want to schedule the call, offer to send the necessary info.

Give them the exact metric of the value your product offers so that the person can use that as leverage to schedule a call with their boss.

#7 Reach out to me next month/year

Sometimes the prospects will be busy with their heavy workloads. In this situation, you should approach by explaining that you understand. Also, highlight the fact that your product/service can actually help them and improve their work experience.

Rebuttal example

Reassure them that this is not a buying conversation. You just want to show them how valuable your product is and what it can do for them right away.

#8 Send info over the email

This is a common objection when cold calling or after a demo. In most cases, this means that the prospect has already made up their mind. By asking you to send more information, they hope to cut the conversation short. Don’t let that get to you. 👇

Rebuttal example

Agree to send the information, but not before asking questions about their business to understand their pain point better.

#9 I’m not interested in your offer

Ouch! This objection is also a pretty common one, but again, you should not let it throw you off your game. You should ask yourself this: How are they not interested if they didn’t even hear your offer? The truth is that this objection usually means that they are busy. Turn it to your advantage by restructuring your introduction to focus on the expertise.

Rebuttal example

Try to keep the conversation going, just so you can demonstrate expertise using their pain point. This way, your prospect can see that you have relevant experience to back up your claims and that you know your worth. A true objection handling win! 💪

#10 Pitching back

This is an objection that became pretty common nowadays. It’s when B2B companies pitch you back, usually on demo calls. Translation? They are not interested in your product/service - they are just using the chance to show you their own. The audacity, right?

There is nothing wrong with presenting your solution, but if they only agree to the call to pitch you back, that’s just sneaky.

Rebuttal example

Proposing a collaboration will definitely catch them off guard, and there is a chance that their decision-maker will see the value you offer.

#11 Your product doesn't have {{feature}}, and we need it.

This objection could be a tricky one, but try to suggest an alternative solution used alongside yours. In case this need is a must for them and your product can’t solve it, then your prospect might not be the one for you. Before you write them off, try this 👇

Rebuttal example

#12 We're happy with the way things are now.

Sometimes, this could be the case. But that doesn’t mean you should believe them right away. Ask more questions to get into potential problems they might be facing. If the answer is still no, move on. ⏭️

Rebuttal example

#13 Your product is too complicated.

In this case, make sure to ask questions and find out if a specific feature or the entire product is too complicated for them. In both cases, you should clarify any concern they might have and add that your customer support team will, by utilizing inbound call center software and other channels like chat, help them set everything up smoothly if they choose to buy. 

Rebuttal example

#14 I don't see what your product could do for me.

This objection usually means there’s some information that needs to be presented. So, your job here is to confirm their goals and pain points, and then explain how your product/service fixes these issues for them.

Rebuttal example

#15 {{Painpoint}} isn't important right now.

In this case, there might be two reasons the prospect is stating the objective. First, they might want to let you down easy, or you need to ask more questions to find out why this isn’t important right now, so you can explain why it’s a great time to rethink their priorities. Try to create a sense of urgency and work from there.

Rebuttal example

#16 I'm happy with {{competitor}}.

What do you do if the prospects say they’re happy? You don’t buy it! First you find out why they are content with the way your competition works for them. Second, try to identify potential weak points and subtly underline how your product solves them.

Rebuttal example

#17 We need to use that budget somewhere else.

If this objection shows up, your main goal should be to make them believe that the budget should be redirected, or rather, invested toward your product/service. This is where social proof comes in as your best friend, so don’t be afraid to throw around some numbers.

Rebuttal example

Frequently asked questions - FAQ

How do you tailor objection handling strategies for different industries or sectors?

Tailoring objection handling strategies to different industries or sectors requires an understanding of the unique challenges and needs of each market. For instance, objection handling in the tech industry often involves addressing concerns about integration and compatibility with existing systems, whereas in healthcare, the focus might be on compliance and patient privacy. Sales reps should research industry-specific pain points and prepare tailored responses that resonate with their audience.

Can objection handling techniques be applied to digital sales channels, like social media or email marketing, and if so, how?

When it comes to digital sales channels like social media or email marketing, objection handling techniques need to be adapted for the medium. Since direct interaction is limited, sales reps can use targeted content to preemptively address common objections. For example, FAQs, customer testimonials, and detailed product information can help overcome objections before they are even raised. Engaging with comments or inquiries promptly and thoughtfully on social media can also mirror the empathetic listening aspect of objection handling in a more public forum.

How do you measure the effectiveness of your objection handling efforts?

Measuring the effectiveness of objection handling efforts involves tracking sales metrics such as conversion rates, the number of objections encountered versus those successfully addressed, and customer feedback. Sales teams can conduct regular reviews of sales calls and meetings to identify patterns in objections and assess how well they are being handled. Customer feedback, through surveys or follow-up conversations, can provide valuable insights into whether objections were adequately addressed. Over time, this data can inform training and strategy adjustments to improve objection handling and, consequently, sales outcomes.

Ready to handle these objections with ease?

We know the answer: Yes, you are! With the knowledge we’ve gathered, you can up your sales game and handle objections like a pro. If you face an objection that gives you sales nightmares, you can always come back to this blog for inspiration on how to handle it. 

Remember to collect all information and to approach each objection handling situation like you’re there to help them. That’s the only way you can build a solid relationship with your prospects. 🤝

So, before we let you go outreach away, we think you should also give Skylead a try and automate the outreach process while you’re at it. You’ll save lots of time, which you can use to build and nurture strong relationships with prospects. 
The best thing about it is you can sign up for a 7-day free trial and check how the tool works with your own eyes. You won’t regret it, plus those objections will be easier to handle now that the tool is handling half of your workload. 👀

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are outreach sequences and how do they work?

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

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

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

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

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

How to create the best outreach sequences?

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

Here are key steps of this process:

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

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

Automate your outreach sequences

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

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

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

• Email finder & verifier - Helps you find your leads’ double-verified business emails without breaking the outreach flow, at no extra cost, and with no 3rd party tools.
• Image & GIF personalization - Adds an extra visual touch to your outreach, making each message tailored to your leads’ interests and personal information. Plus, it increases the response rate.
• A/B testing - You can test up to 5 variants of copy to determine which approach works best for which leads. 

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

Skylead Smart sequences

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

2. Second, choose a lead source. This is where Skylead pulls all your gathered leads from.

3. Third, adjust your campaign settings and hit the “Create sequence” button.

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

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

5 Types of sequence messages with examples

1. Educating Messages

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

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

LinkedIn connection request

Hi {{firstName}},

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

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

You can:

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

2. {{benefit}}

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

Until then, best spells!

Email message

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

Hi {{firstName}},

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

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

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

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

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

Curious? Let’s talk so you can:

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

What’s your choice?

Cheers!

2. Messages that build interest

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

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

LinkedIn connection request

Hi {{firstName}},

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

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

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

Email message

Subject: Art Meets {{challenge}} 🎨

Hi {{firstName}},

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

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

How about a quick chat to sketch out possibilities?

3. Competitor analysis messages

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

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

LinkedIn InMail message

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

Hi {{firstName}},

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interested in outpacing {{competitorName}}? 

Let's discuss actionable insights in a brief call.

Email message

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

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

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

Proposition:

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

{{fWhat you offer - task 1}}

{{fWhat you offer - task 2}}

And this is precisely what we can help you with!

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

4. Follow-up messages

If your prospect didn’t respond to your first message, all you need is a follow-up after no response. A follow-up is a crucial part of an outreach sequence, and it’s necessary in order to give your prospect a gentle reminder of your existence and to lead them further down the buyer’s journey.

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

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

LinkedIn message

Hi {{firstName}},

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

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

Looking forward to your response.

Email message

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

Hi {{firstName}},

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

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

Eager to see your ascent!

5. Re-engagement messages

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

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

LinkedIn message

Hi {{firstName}},

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

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

Looking forward to reconnecting!

Email message

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

Hi {{firstName}},

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

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

Best outreach sequence examples

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To see template messages, click here.

2. Target specific group members

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

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

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

To see template messages, click here.

3. Approach people who checked out your website

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

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

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

To see template messages, click here.

4. Educational sequence with a focus on email

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

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

• 63% acceptance rate
• 41% response rate

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

Outreach sequences: Best practices

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

Use a multichannel approach

What if we told you that 58% of people check their emails first thing, and 14% check social media? This statistic just proves that using two or more communication channels is a must in outreach. We’ve said it once and will say it again: the multichannel approach is the best way to go for higher response rates and faster overall results.

Automate outreach

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

Add a catchy subject line

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

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

Personalization

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

Keep it short

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

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

Relevant value proposition

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

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

Include social proof

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

Call-to-action (CTA)

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

From our experience, a good CTA should be:

• simple
• straightforward
• clear

Determine the timeframe of the sequence

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

A/B testing for optimization

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

Frequently asked questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ready to put these best outreach sequences to use?

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

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

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

Want to know what people think of your sales efforts? Why not put it to the test? Or better yet, split test!

We all know that in sales, results are everything. When creating email copy, call-to-action prompts, or sales email subject lines, hitting just the right combination of words is what will ultimately determine your end results. But how can you know what your audience finds more appealing? Split testing, a.k.a. A/B testing, is the answer!

We’ve been in sales for more than 5 years, and we’ve done A/B tests more than we can count or remember. From this experience, knowledge was born, and thus, we present a split testing guide that will help you get the desired results and make informed decisions about your next sales move. If not done right, split testing can give misleading results. So, if you feel stuck on the A/B testing puzzle and you work in sales, in this article, you will find:

• Benefits and advantages of split testing
• How to split test 
• What to split test
• Split testing process
• Split testing best practices.

Grab your pens, and let’s get to work! 🖊️

What is split testing in sales?

By definition, split testing, commonly referred to as A/B testing, is a method where different versions of content are simultaneously sent to a split audience with the goal of identifying the most effective one that prompts desired actions.

This approach is crucial for tasks such as writing sales copy, sending invites to connect on Linkedin, testing follow-up strategies, and more, as it helps with data-driven decisions, all while saving money, time, and potential leads.

Split testing in sales compares two versions of a sales asset to determine which one brings more results, boosting conversions and sales results. In outreach, you can A/B test your approach on all communication channels. Apart from that, you can even test different elements to determine what approach works best for lead generation and prospecting.

Why should you Split test?

1. Split testing is a simple analysis.

One of the best things about split testing is its simplicity. It is easy and straightforward, and if done correctly, an A/B test can significantly improve your sales efforts. Also, using the right tool can help save more time by partially automating the process to get even better results, but more on that later in this blog. 

2. A/B testing is multifunctional.

Almost anything can be A/B tested. For example, in Skylead, our LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software, you can test up to five variations of:

• LinkedIn connection messages
• InMails
• Emails
• Messages 

What's more, you can test smaller factors within these messages, such as message copy, subject lines, body, signature, links, or call-to-actions. 

Note: From our experience, we can advise you not to test everything at once. Why? Because you won’t be able to determine what influenced the results. It’s better to test one element at a time. Plus, be sure to continuously refine and retest the successful options.

3. You can increase conversion rates.

By A/B testing different elements of a certain campaign or website, sales reps can see what works best when the goal is converting leads into customers. Testing multiple approaches and choosing the most effective one can lead to higher conversion rates and a better lead generation strategy.

4. You can make data-driven decision-making.

Why wonder and guess when you can know for sure? Split testing provides the kind of data-driven certainty that helps with making informed decisions because numbers don’t lie.

5. Your leads will have a better user experience.

If we use the split testing data to better understand our target audience, you can easily give your leads what they want, strengthening relationships and making their experiences more user-friendly and enjoyable. A/B testing ultimately leads to customer loyalty, further boosting your brand’s reputation, thus bringing more customers your way.

6. It is cost-effective.

In sales, optimization is everything, and split testing is a pretty cost-effective way to gather more useful data about your sales or marketing approach. The math is simple: you get to use A/B testing to figure out if the changes work for you or not before making any larger investments. In the long run, split testing saves a lot of time and funds.

Now that you know why you should split test, here’s a list of some things you can test out. 👇

What can you A/B test?

In sales, there’s a variety of elements to optimize performance and increase conversions. Here’s a complete list:

1. Email outreach (subject line, body, CTA)
2. LinkedIn outreach (connection request, LinkedIn message, InMail - subject line, message, personalization)
3. Pricing strategies (different pricing models or discount offers)
4. Product presentations and demos (presentation style, product demonstration tactics)
5. Value propositions (different phrasings, product presentation, service's value propositions)
6. Offer bundling (product or service bundle combinations)
7. Social proof and testimonials
8. Upselling and cross-selling techniques.

How to do split testing

Split testing sounds pretty good right now, doesn’t it? Want to use it right away? Here’s how to do it, step-by-step 👇

Split testing - 6 general steps

1. Identify goals

Conversion goals are the most important metric to look at when planning to split test. It should be enough to help you determine if the variation (or option B) is better than the original. These goals can be link clicks, call bookings, or product purchases.

2. Collect data

Some outreach tools often give insight into what areas you can and should optimize. This allows you to gather data faster and figure out where you can improve.

3. Determine what part of outreach you wish to A/B test

By looking at metrics, you can easily find parts of your sales process that should be A/B tested. For example, a bad open rate often implies a poorly written subject line. To get started, choose a metric, find an element that causes it, and test it. 

4. Create test variations

When split testing, you can use specialized software to make the desired changes to any element you wish to test out. This might be creating a different version of your LinkedIn invite to connect message copy, a different email subject line, or something entirely different. 

5. Split your sample audience

Once you’ve created one or multiple variations of the test, you should split the audience sample in half (or more, if there are more variants) and decide which will see variant A and which will see variant B (or more) of your split testing experiment. Some tools, such as Skylead, usually do it for you randomly and equally to ensure a fair comparison result.

6. Run, analyze, and optimize

Once the split test is running, your only assignment is to track and measure the results of each version you’ve created. You can, of course, use tools to track conversion rates and overall engagement metrics, so you can study them later on and optimize away.

The final step of split testing is analyzing the results of your experiment. Now it’s up to you to make a decision about which version to adopt. Easy as 1, 2, 3. 💥

How to split test different parts of the sales process

Sales reps who are involved in outreach use A/B testing to find out whether their outreach efforts are being recognized by prospects or not. You can use these tests for multiple parts of your sales process. This could include anything from testing sales emails and subject lines, product presentations, and demos to follow-up strategies and customer segmentation. Let’s review some of them in detail. 👇

Split testing outreach 

Email outreach 

Nowadays, outreach has mostly shifted to the digital world, which means email outreach is the star of almost every sales show or at least a significant part of it. ⭐

If we use email as our starting point for split testing, we could test multiple elements of our cold email. For example, if outreach isn’t giving enough results, like open rates, we should use split testing to try out different variants of our subject line. If there are not enough link clicks, we should think about testing the CTA that leads to that link or the email body, etc.

So, to recap, in email outreach, we can test 👇

1. Subject lines - Creating a catchy subject line is what makes or breaks your open rates. A/B testing is the perfect way to determine what works for your sample audience or not. When testing subject lines, make sure that you’re testing just that and not any other element. Skylead lets you test up to 5 different variants at once.

2. Email body - If your subject line is attention-grabbing, but people aren’t really responding to your email as you want them to, the thing you should split-test is the email body. Use the same subject line and the same CTA, but switch things up with the content and figure out what tone works best for your target group. You can experiment with different lengths, the use of emojis, writing styles, etc.

3. CTAs - Your audience responds to clear instructions, so the call to action should be, as Andrea, our Head of Sales, would say, the last thing they read and the first thing they do. If you believe that the CTA is the problem with your sales emails, you should write a couple of variants and test only the CTA element to know what works best for your niche audience.

4. Personalization (Image & GIF) - Nowadays, people won’t focus solely on text. But if you add visual elements, that’s a different story. In fact, we’ve tested it out thoroughly and learned that adding personalized images, GIFs, and even videos to your email outreach can boost the response rates significantly - up to 63%! If you know this element works well in cold outreach, you should A/B test what works best for which audience segment. 

LinkedIn outreach 

Over the past few years in sales, prospecting has shifted to the digital world, and what better place to find potential prospects than LinkedIn - a professional social media platform with over 1 billion users and 63 million decision-makers? If you narrow down your audience to a smaller sample, you can use split testing to determine what social selling techniques work best for your LinkedIn outreach efforts.

With the help of LinkedIn automation tools, you can make the A/B testing process much easier. Plus, if the tool has great metrics tracking, your analysis, and the ultimate decision will be clear. And now, here are all the elements you can split test when it comes to LinkedIn. 👇

1. Connection requests - This is your opener on LinkedIn, and it should be short enough to keep their attention but also significant enough to inspire an immediate reply. Hitting just the right note could be challenging, especially with cold outreach. This is where split testing comes in handy, as it can easily determine what your opening approach should be. You can experiment with sending blank invites to connect, personalized or generic. You can even try outreach templates if you’re new to the A/B testing game and use them as a starting point. 

2. LinkedIn messages - Once you’ve established a connection with your prospect, your follow-up message game on LinkedIn should keep their attention throughout the conversation and inspire them to take action. It could be anything from booking a meeting, a demo, a call, or clicking on a link. Experiment with the tone, length, and emojis; again, make sure not to change everything at once.

3. InMails - When it comes to the people that are seemingly out of your reach on LinkedIn (meaning they’re not a 2nd or 3rd connection) InMail messages are there to help establish that connection. Out of network doesn’t mean out of reach. But sure enough, if a complete stranger approaches you or, in this case, sends an InMail message out of the blue, you’re bound to wonder why this person is contacting me. Sure enough, split testing is here to help you determine what subject line or message works best for these types of connection attempts.

4. Personalization - As for email outreach, using personalization on LinkedIn, where everyone is busy and their inboxes are flooded with all kinds of demands (especially in the case of decision-makers), can be what sets you apart from your competitors. Using images, GIFs, and videos can warm up prospects and turn them into customers in no time! We know, we’ve done the tests ourselves! Again, you can use Skylead to test which visual elements make your target audience more responsive to your sales pitch.

Now that you know what and where to split test, the question is what tool you should use. We’ve been dropping hints all along, but yes, you can use Skylead, a LinkedIn automation and cold email outreach software that offers an A/B testing feature. You can use it to test different elements of your email and LinkedIn outreach. 

1. To get started, create your outreach campaign. 👇
2. 
   

2. Name your campaign.

3. Then select your lead source or where Skylead will pull the leads from.

4. Adjust your campaign settings and hit the “Create Sequence” button. ⚙️

This is how you create your Smart Sequence - an algorithm that allows you to combine if/else conditions with different actions. This way, Skylead will follow the outreach flow you create and find the fastest route to your prospect.

Here’s an example of a multichannel Smart sequence in Skylead 👇

Then, let’s say you want to A/B test your email subject lines. Click the email message step and add two subject line variations with the same email message by clicking the Test B button. Remember, you can add up to 5 variants of the subject line in Skylead.

Lastly, once your campaign is done, go to the reports page, scroll down to your sequence steps, and check the results. Et voilà! Here is your winning subject line. 

Here’s an overview of all the things you can split-test with Skylead. ⬇️

Note: With Skylead, you can combine LinkedIn and email outreach for multichannel messaging and personalization. 

Other outreach elements you can split test

1. Pricing strategies 

You can use A/B testing to find out which pricing model works best for your target audience. You can even go one step further and experiment with discount offers and find out what leads to more sales and higher revenue.

2. Product presentations and demos

As a salesperson, you should always switch up the style or content of your product demonstration. You can use split testing to find the most compelling way to showcase your product’s value to prospects, which will ultimately lead to more conversions and better overall results. 

3. Value propositions

You can easily see how your target audience reacts to different phrasing and product presentations or service value prepositions. Just split them into two groups and let the A/B testing begin!

4. Offer bundling

Sometimes, offering just the right combination of products or services can lead to a potential prospect turning into a satisfied customer. The right bundle can significantly affect and increase sales.

5. Social proof and testimonials 

You can use A/B testing and its magic to see how changing the way customer testimonials are presented influences the trust and buying decisions of your prospects. 

6. Upselling and cross-selling techniques

You can use split testing to experiment with different upselling methods or cross-selling techniques. Maybe there’s a better offer you can make for your prospects that will make them more responsive to your sales pitch.

6 Split testing best practices

Before we let you go to split test your sales efforts, we need to point out some best practices we’ve tried ourselves thoroughly while A/B testing and from our own sales actions. ⏬

1. Test one element at a time

We’ve said it before, and we will say it again. Testing too many elements at a time will give misleading results. If you, for example, change the CTA and the email body at once, you won’t get clear results on which change your audience reacted to. We know there’s a lot to test, but your priority should be determining what might be the weakest part of your approach and starting there.

Testing one element at a time ensures reliable results. Plus, there’s really no rush. Once you start optimizing, you’ll make significant changes one A/B test at a time, and the results will be inevitable.

Note: From our A/B testing experience, we advise you to test both (or more) variants simultaneously.

2. Determine the test time frame

Many salespeople make the mistake of not giving the split test enough time to produce valid results. If you give up too early, again, the results you get will be inconsistent and might be misleading.

So, remember, give the A/B test enough time to produce useful data and give valid results. After that, you can make data-driven decisions and be certain that the changes you’ve made are valid. Give your A/B test 2-6 weeks to give results, depending on the sales cycle and industry. 

3. Test time delays

Not testing different times in between messages can also have an impact on the data. Make sure to create different scenarios and time frames because they can affect the response/conversion rates significantly.

4. Ask for feedback from real users

Split testing will produce a lot of useful data because numbers don’t lie. But these numbers won’t help you understand why certain actions were taken. This is why you should communicate with your users and get real feedback from them using a survey or a poll. Surely enough, this information can help with future optimization and understanding your audience better.

5. Use tools to test and analyze your data

A/B testing can and should be done with the help of automation tools. Why do anything manually in this day and age if you don’t have to? Tools like Skylead can help with A/B testing and give you accurate analytics that you can interpret easily and make your decisions based on real-time data. 

6. Test and optimize frequently

You should look at split testing as an ongoing process. It should be done often and well. When in sales, it’s important to constantly improve. For constant better results, frequent optimization is key.

6 Split Testing Mistakes

Not focusing on the right area

You can run tests on almost all elements of your sales approach, but if your focus is in the wrong place, you’re just wasting time and resources for nothing. You need to look at things from your prospect’s perspective and determine what could be the issue. Some metrics can help you understand where the issue may be (open rates, response rates, bounce rates, etc.)

Testing without a hypothesis

Testing random elements will only waste your time. Make sure to test with a clear intent and purpose. A well-defined hypothesis means a structured split test and gives you the ability to better understand the outcome, making reading results significantly easier. Here’s how to establish a good A/B testing hypothesis:

1. Spot the problem - Make sure to look at your problem areas. Ask yourself, “Why aren’t people reacting the way I want them to?.” Pick one element at a time, like the subject line or the CTA. Once you’ve spotted the problematic element, you can move on to the solution. 
2. Propose a solution - Now think about “How can I fix the problem?” It could be a different subject line or CTA. Maybe a new demo video for your sales pitch? Whatever it may be, you can test multiple options thanks to split testing. This way, you’ll know what drives desired actions, and you can learn for your future approach. 
3. Create the hypothesis - Once you’ve established what needs to be changed and how you have your hypothesis. A clear hypothesis will help you split test with more success.

Stopping the split test too early

If you get impatient and stop the split testing too early, you might get distorted results based on temporary fluctuations. You can spot solid patterns based on true user behavior only after a certain period of time. 

However, running tests for too long can also alter A/B testing results. If external factors change, such as seasons or market trends and conditions, these results can be useless. Make sure to split test for the appropriate amount of time, not too short and not too long. Give your test group enough time to form patterns, and then move along from there with changes that fit your results.

Running complex tests

When we say complex, we mean testing with no clear intent and all over the place. If you find that your email isn’t getting enough responses but has a high open rate, for example, we can determine that the subject line is leading prospects to open your email, but if they’re not responding, it could be either the CTA or the email body.

Therefore, you don’t switch up the body and the CTA at the same time - you choose one of the two elements and test different variants for a sufficient amount of time. When the results come in, and you figure out that it wasn’t the email body, for example, only then do you split test the call to action. Complexity in A/B testing won’t bring clear results, so make sure to keep it simple.

Not considering external factors

It could be a huge mistake to ignore external factors when looking at a split test. A lot of things can influence your prospects: holidays, current market conditions, trends, or even changes with competitor tools/products or services. Make sure to include all of these factors before you interpret the results. You don’t want to jump to incorrect conclusions.

Ignoring the results

In some cases, it won’t be easy to believe split testing results. But why? Sometimes, clear A/B testing results don’t align with sales rep expectations. This is where you need to put your ego and beliefs aside and trust the data. If your split test was done right, there’s no need to ignore the results. It will only do you and your business harm. 

Frequently asked questions

How does one calculate the statistical significance of A/B testing results to ensure that the outcomes are reliable and not due to random chance?

To calculate the statistical significance of A/B testing results, one typically uses a statistical test. For example, these tests can be the chi-square test for categorical data. Or, it can be the t-test for numerical data comparing the performance metrics of both variants to see if the difference is greater than what could be expected by chance.

What are the common pitfalls to avoid when interpreting the results of split testing? What about the cases with close outcomes between variants?

Common pitfalls in interpreting split testing results include not running the test long enough to gather sufficient data. Secondly, ignoring external factors that may influence results (like seasonality). Thirdly, making changes based on results that are not statistically significant.

Can split testing be effectively applied to other aspects of sales and digital marketing, such as outreach, social media content and advertising strategies, and if so, how?

Yes, split testing can be effectively applied to other aspects of digital marketing and sales, such as social media content, outreach messages and advertising strategies. By testing different messaging, posting times, and formats, marketers and salespeople optimize their strategies for better engagement, higher conversion rates, and more effective sales tactics.

Ready to put your sales efforts to the test?

We sure are! As we’ve determined, A/B testing is a powerful tool, and if used right, it can significantly improve your sales efforts. You can easily find the weakest link in your outreach through analytics and use split testing to determine what works better. This way, you can continuously optimize your approach to get solid results each time. 🔎

Let’s recap.

Automating the process is also a must, in which case you need to use just the right tools. Let Skylead assist you in your outreach optimization. You can register for a free trial and discover all the benefits of LinkedIn and email automation with our A/B testing option, of course. Let the testing begin! 🏃

A well-crafted LinkedIn connection message can make a busy decision-maker click Accept to yours and leave pending the other 50+ connection requests they received that day on the platform. 

With over 65 million decision-makers, LinkedIn is THE #1 professional social network that made it possible for the entire world to connect business-wise. 

However, while it’s true that, today, you can find anyone you need on the platform, the volume of messages certain professionals get on a daily basis is so high that you need to find a way to stand out from the crowd to get their attention. 

To understand how important connections are on LinkedIn, bear in mind that 98% of sales representatives with more than 5,000 LinkedIn connections mostly surpass their selling quotas.

The maximum size of your network on LinkedIn is limited to 30,000 connections, so you want to use that number to connect with LinkedIn members relevant to your business (and you want to do so before your competitors, so… ⬇️ )

In this blog, we will: 

• Answer some of the most common questions about LinkedIn connection requests;
• And give 25 proven LinkedIn connection message examples with up to a 78% acceptance rate to use right away.

How to send a connection request on LinkedIn?

To connect with a LinkedIn member from the search result, click on the Connect button in the top right corner of the member’s LinkedIn profile section. 

OR

Open the LinkedIn member’s profile. Click Connect. 

How to cancel a pending LinkedIn connection request?

Not a lot of people monitor their pending LinkedIn connection requests, which is wrong because the integrity of their LinkedIn profile could get damaged. Essentially, good pending-request hygiene can save you from LinkedIn jail and improve your acceptance rate on the platform. 

That’s why, we wrote a complete guide on How to cancel your LinkedIn invite, and, above all, explained in detail:

• Why do you need to cancel your LinkedIn invite;
• What you need to know about the cancellation process;
• How to cancel LinkedIn invitations that are pending for a long time;
• Why your LinkedIn invites aren’t getting accepted;
• How to create engaging invitations that will increase your acceptance rate.

Skylead users have the benefit that you can set up Skylead to withdraw pending requests to safeguard their LinkedIn profiles and allow them to send invites to connect to other people relevant to their business. 

In the meantime, if you just wish to cancel a pending LinkedIn connection request,  first click My Network on your LinkedIn profile home page. 

Choose Manage or See all.

Choose Sent and the Withdraw option that’s next to the LinkedIn member’s name.

If you cancel a LinkedIn connection request, you won’t be able to send it again to the same member for the following 3 weeks. 

How to message someone on LinkedIn who is not a connection?

There are 3 types of connections on LinkedIn, and here is how to message every one of them.  

• 1st-degree connections are LinkedIn users who are already part of your network. Reach out to them via regular LinkedIn messages using some of these LinkedIn sales message templates.
  
• 2nd-degree connections are LinkedIn members who are connected with your 1st-degree connections but not with you. Send them a LinkedIn connection message first, followed by a Thank you message on LinkedIn once they accept. 
  
• 3rd-degree connections are LinkedIn members connected with your 2nd-degree connections. The platform encourages to reach out to these members via LinkedIn InMail first ( ➡️ here are LinkedIn InMail templates with a 25% reply rate formula tested by our Head of Sales, Andrea) 

How to write a connection message on LinkedIn [5 best practices]

So, as mentioned above, it takes only a few people to deny your LinkedIn connection request and click I don’t know this person for you to be flagged on LinkedIn. 

So, we decided to share 5 guidelines followed by our sales team when writing a LinkedIn connection message. 

Look for common ground.

Mentioning any common ground turned out to be a positive practice. It could be a community you both belong to, a shared interest, a school, an industry, or even the same point of view on a specific topic.

Stay professional. 

Reach out to other members in a professional manner. Avoid making personal references or giving compliments that are not business-related or argued.

Personalize your LinkedIn connection messages.

Addressing your lead by name is a must. Then, any other detail that you can mention, such as - the company name, the exact job title, set of skills, or job description, shows that you did your research. The more you know about your lead, the higher the chances of getting accepted on LinkedIn and turning that lead into your customer.

No generic nor irrelevant LinkedIn connection messages.

Even a blank LinkedIn connection request is better than I’d like to add you to my network.

Also, it’s hard for a pharmaceutical sales representative to be interested to read your article on SEO. Know who you are talking to.

Avoid selling straight out the gate.

Even if they need and like your product or service, no one will purchase anything without any additional info, chat, or call.

25 LinkedIn connection message examples [Up to 78% acceptance rate]

Tailor-making a LinkedIn connection message to each lead might seem a bit time-consuming, but it doesn’t have to be (not if you’re using Skyleaaaad 😂 ). 

Jokes aside (or not!), the results of sending personalized LinkedIn connection messages are pretty rewarding. 

Once you get used to the principles of writing in a compelling, LinkedIn-friendly way, your LinkedIn outreach will become a much more enjoyable experience. 

Until then, use the LinkedIn connection message examples below that our team and users tested to grow their networks with relevant prospects. 

Mention a mutual connection

Template

Hello {{firstName}},

I noticed that you are connected with {{mutualConnection}}.

{{mutualConnection}} and I worked together at {{company}}. I really loved {{whatYouLovedAboutMutualConnection}}.

I see that we are both in the {{industry}} industry and would love to have you in my network. 

Example

OR 

Template

Hello {{firstName}},

{{mutualConnection}} pointed me your way for B2B lead generation services – would love to connect.

Example

Reaching out to a candidate (as a recruiter)

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

It seems that you’ve been a great addition to your team at {{company}}. Way to go! 

I would like to talk to you about a business opportunity. 

But even if you’re not interested, it would be great to have you as part of my network!

Example

OR 

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

I am reaching out to you for your vast experience as a {{occupation}}.

{{company}} is currently searching for a {{position}}.

If this sounds interesting to you, let’s connect. 

Example 

Reaching out to a recruiter (as a job seeker) 

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

I saw that you are a recruiter at {{company}}.

I am a {{occupation}} with {{number}} years of experience in the {{industry}} industry, currently seeking new opportunities.

I’d like to connect and chat to see if my background fits any of your openings. 

Example 

OR 

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

I see that you’re the recruiter in charge of the {{occupation}} position at {{company}}. 

I am very interested in applying but would like to ask you a few questions first. 

Let’s connect. 

Example 

Intro to a collaboration proposal

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

I am a long admirer of your work. 

I followed your advice regarding {{topic}} that you shared {{where}}. {{achievedResult}}.

Thank you once again! 

Would love to connect! 

Example 

Connect with a member of the community

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

Your post in {{mutualCommunity}} was quite insightful. 

I particularly liked the part where you said {{quote}}. 

I would like to discuss it further with you. Let’s connect. 

Example 

OR 

Template

Hello {{firstName}}, 

I saw that you are also a member of {{mutualGroup}}.

I would love to connect with you since we both work in the {{industry}} industry.

Example 

Approach an event attendee

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

It was great speaking to you at the {{eventName}} {{when}}. 

What you do at {{currentCompany}} sounded fascinating and it totally inspired me! 

I’d definitely like to stay up-to-date with your work.

Thank you in advance for connecting!

Example 

OR

Template 

Hey {{firstName}},

I saw you at the {{eventName}} but I didn’t get the chance to approach you and introduce myself. How did you like the {{eventName}}? Would love to connect here and stay in touch! 

Example 

Reach out to a LinkedIn event attendee

Template 

Hello {{firstName}}, 

I saw that you too attended the {{eventName}} LinkedIn event. 

Learning {{what}} was particularly useful for my business. 

Anyways, I would love to connect and exchange feedback on the event. 

Example 

Reach out to an author of a LinkedIn article or post

Template 

Hi {{firstName}},

I came across your LinkedIn article on {{topic}}. 

I really resonated with your thoughts on {{topic}}.

I’d love to keep in touch and learn more about your work. 

Example 

Break the ice using industry humor or a joke

Here are 35+ industry jokes that you could use in your LinkedIn connection requests as an icebreaker.

Template 

Hi {{firstName}},

How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? 

Just one - but the light bulb has to really want to change.

Jokes aside, I would love to connect!

Example 

OR (something as silly as this) 

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

I noticed we both breathe oxygen. 

Sounds like a perfect fit to me, let’s connect! 

Example 

Connect with a former colleague 

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

Remember me?

We used to work together at {{company}} back in {{year}}.

Let’s connect and catch up, I would love to hear how it is going at {{currentCompany}}! 

Example 

OR 

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

It was such a pleasure working with you at {{company}} back in {{year}}. 

Let’s connect! I would like to hear what you’ve been up to professionally since. 

Example 

Reach out to a colleague 

If a company is big, knowing everyone you’re working with is hard. 

However, connecting with colleagues is a good practice for expanding your network on LinkedIn. 

Remember that they also might have some interesting connections, and you never know who they could introduce you to. 

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

Good news travels fast! I heard about you {{achievement}}. Great job! 

Anyways, I am {{yourName}} from the {{department}} team and would love to connect! 

Example 

Connect with former alumni

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

I see that we graduated from the same university. Go {{school’sSportsTeam}}! 🙂

I would like to connect and learn more about your experience at {{company}}. 

I myself majored in {{major}} and currently work in the {{industry}} industry. 

Example 

Reach out to members who reacted to your or someone else’s LinkedIn post

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

I saw that you are also a fan of {{name}}’s content and just wanted to connect with you. 

Example 

OR

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

I saw that you also liked {{Name}}’s post on {{topic}}. I am a big fan of his/her work. 

His/her advice worked well for me!  

Anyways, I would love to connect and maybe even discuss it further. 

Example 

Connect with a member who asked a question in the post comment

Template 

Hi {{firstName}},

I saw that you commented on {{name}}’s post about {{topic}} and asked {{question}}. 

I would like to connect and share some resources with you that could be helpful. 

Example 

Reach out to members suggested by LinkedIn

The People also viewed feature displays a list of LinkedIn members that the platform’s algorithm found important for your LinkedIn experience, whether you are using it for networking, job search, or lead generation. 

Use this template to reach out to them. 

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

Your profile came as suggested through the People also viewed section, so I was curious and checked it out. I saw that we’re both in the {{industry}} industry, so I thought we connect and exchange experiences. 

Example 

OR 

Template 

Hello, {{firstName}}

LinkedIn suggested your profile several times now, so I was curious and checked it out. I saw that we’re both {{occupation}}, so I thought it would be good to connect with professionals from the industry. Let’s exchange experiences:) 

Example 

Start with a genuine compliment 

Template 

Hi {{firstName}}

I have been following your work for some time now, and I must admit your career path in the {{industry}} industry impressed me. I would love to connect with you and ask you a few questions about your beginnings in the field. 

Example 

LinkedIn Connection Message: FAQ

How can one effectively track and measure the success rate of these LinkedIn connection message templates, especially in terms of resulting in meaningful professional relationships or business opportunities?

To effectively track the success of LinkedIn connection message templates, monitor acceptance rates and follow-up interactions. Analyzing these metrics can provide insights into which templates foster meaningful connections and opportunities. Adjust strategies based on this data for improved outcomes.

What are the best practices for following up on a connection request if there's no response initially, without coming across as too persistent or spammy?

Following up on a LinkedIn connection request requires a delicate balance. If there's no initial response, a polite and concise reminder after a reasonable period can be appropriate. Avoid being overly persistent; one InMail or email follow-up is generally considered tactful to maintain professionalism without seeming spammy.

How do you politely ask for a connection on LinkedIn? 

Asking to connect with someone on LinkedIn has become as common as asking or giving your business card to someone. Many professionals include links to their profiles in the paper or QR code business cards or in the signature section of their emails. 

Should I send a message with a connection request on LinkedIn? 

Adding a message with a connection request on LinkedIn is generally considered good practice that increases your acceptance rate. However, sending a blank request rather than a generic message is better if you decide not to use a personalized approach. Check out our examples above.

What message to write with a connection request on LinkedIn? 

Mentioning something that you have in common with the person you are trying to connect with is generally considered good practice that increases your chances of getting accepted. However, there are many other LinkedIn connection request messages that you can use. Check out our examples to get inspired. 

How do I send a cold connection request on LinkedIn? 

The cold connection request is not “as cold” as it seems if you follow the golden rule of connecting to people relevant to your business or with whom you have something in common. Therefore, the best way to connect on LinkedIn is by mentioning something relevant to both of you. 

Did someone reject my connection request on LinkedIn? 

You can ignore someone’s connection request on LinkedIn by clicking “Ignore” instead of “Accept” or by ignoring it and letting it pend. LinkedIn does not notify the sender when their connection request has been declined. Also, LinkedIn automatically deletes pending connection requests after 6 months. 

What happens when you ignore a connection request on LinkedIn? 

To decline someone’s connection request, just click “Ignore”. LinkedIn will not notify the member of their request being declined, but they can send you another connection request. If you literally ignore the request and leave it pending, LinkedIn will automatically delete it after 6 months. 

Do LinkedIn requests expire? 

Yes, LinkedIn requests expire. All pending LinkedIn connection requests will be automatically deleted after 6 months. After that, the member whose request has been deleted can ask for another connection again. 

Can people see withdrawn LinkedIn requests? 

Your recipient won’t be notified if you withdraw your connection request on LinkedIn. To do that, go to My Network > Manage (top right corner) >  Sent > Withdraw. If the LinkedIn member already accepted your invitation to connect, they can be removed as a connection. 

How do you know if someone accepted your LinkedIn request? 

You will get a notification when someone accepts your connection request. To set up notifications, go to Settings & Privacy > Notifications > Connecting with others > Invitations to connect. Or, go to My Network > Connections (top left corner) > Recently added > See the list of recently added connections or search them by name.

How many content writers does it take to change a lightbulb?

Doesn’t matter, the head of marketing will change it anyway. 

Jokes aside, the answer is - none. Because content writers don’t like to change anything. 

Plus, the light bulbs don’t really change, they’re replaced. 

I’ll stop now. 

Ok, maybe your first thought was not to add me to your LinkedIn network after reading my cringe jokes, but you would be surprised how well people react to humor in outreach. So, if you ever wondered what the best way to expand your network is or how to outreach the leads you found via prospecting on LinkedIn, then industry-related jokes in your Connection Request Messages, LinkedIn InMails, or LinkedIn Messages are definitely top of the list. 

A good industry-related joke not only helps your acceptance and response rates, but also creates a positive first impression between the two. I personally tend to use them in my Connection Request Messages, but they can be a great conversation starter in messages for LinkedIn lead generation as well. 

Since I know how hard it is to find industry-related jokes, I decided to do a little research for you and put them all in one place. This way I want to make using humor to expand your network on LinkedIn a little bit less time-consuming and to encourage you to get bold and creative in your outreach. 

Expand your network: How to use humor in outreach? 

As mentioned before, a good joke finds its place anywhere you want. Use it to connect with other LinkedIn members, to start a conversation, or to make a hook for a potential business proposal in an InMail. 

There are multiple ways to use an industry-related joke in your outreach.

Example #1

Use the joke as the opener when networking on LinkedIn.

Example #2

Use the joke as the opener, but add a personal note to it.

Example #3

Make the joke part of your hyper-personalized message to expand your network on LinkedIn.

Here is the list of jokes for:

• Sales representatives;
• Marketers;
• Managers;
• Developers;
• Customer Support Specialists;

that you can use right away or combine them in your outreach. 

Dos and Don’ts when using humor to expand your network

DOS 

• Do the research before you choose the joke that you want to use. Consider each person’s unique cultural background and personal story. You want it to be relevant to the person you are talking to. 
• Make sure that the joke is not offensive or maybe on the edge of being offensive. 
• Have in mind that you are reaching people whose sense of humor you don’t know. A joke that is funny to you might not be to them. So don’t take things too personally in case they don’t take the direction that you wanted. However, people usually react well to humor. 
• Do get to the punchline fast. Be short. 
• Do laugh at yourself when you get a chance. Telling a joke that you made up from your personal experience always works. It makes you more human and approachable, and people generally love to work with people who don’t have a problem laughing at themselves. 

DON’TS

• Don’t force a joke where it doesn’t belong. 
• Don’t use jokes that talk bad about someone or call someone out, even if it’s their/your competition. It is not only rude and pathetic but unprofessional and it doesn’t make you look good at all. 
• Avoid jokes that have to do with current hot-topics, that are political, or have to do with anyone’s sexual or religious orientation. No one wants to hear that or have those kind of people in their professional (or personal, for that matter) network.
• Don’t overdo it. Know when to stop. If someone answers back with a joke or a funny punchline, make sure that you know when joking about the same topic becomes too much.

Jokes for salespeople 

Expand your network on LinkedIn by incorporating these sales jokes in your LinkedIn Connection Request Messages, Messages, or InMails.

Sales Joke #1 

Always trust a glue salesman.

They tend to stick to their word. 

Sales Joke #2

How do salespeople traditionally greet each other? 

Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m better than you. 

Sales Joke #3

What did the horrible buyer say to the salesperson who had a 24h deadline? 

Give me another week to think about it. 

Sales Joke #4

What salesman has the slickest line?

A hair grease salesman.

Sales Joke #5

How many salespeople does it take to change a light bulb?

None. You don't need a new light bulb - you need to upgrade your socket to the newest version. 

Jokes for marketers

Expand your network on LinkedIn by incorporating these marketing jokes in your LinkedIn Connection Request Messages, Messages or LinkedIn InMails.

Marketing Joke #1

How did Yoda get his first lead?

He used the SalesForce. 

Marketing Joke #2

What is the safest place to hide a body? 

The second page of Google.

Marketing Joke #3

Why did the marketing couple break up?

They weren’t on the same landing page. 

OR 

Lack of engagement

Marketing Joke #4 

How many marketers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

None – they’ve automated it.

Marketing Joke #5 

Why don’t marketer’s like trampolines?

They’re scared of high bounce rates.

Marketing Joke #6

How do SEO experts celebrate improved search rankings?

SERP-rise parties.

Marketing Joke #7

Why do digital marketers love to shop at Whole Foods?

They have a lot of organic content.

Marketing Joke #8 

What’s a marketer’s favorite drink?

Brand-y.

Marketing Joke #9 

What’s a pirate’s favorite type of content?

A webinAAARRRR!

Marketing Joke #10

What does the SEO professional see when they see twins?

Duplicated content.

Marketing Joke #11

Why do SEO experts love driving during peak hours?

They appreciate the traffic.

Marketing Joke #12

An SEO copywriter walks into a bar, bars, tavern, pub, pubs, public house, Irish, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor.

Jokes for managers

Expand your network on LinkedIn by incorporating these management jokes in your LinkedIn Connection Request Messages, Messages, or InMails.

Management Joke #1 

What is the hardest part of being a product manager? 

Explaining what you do to your parents and friends. 

Management Joke #2

How many managers does it take to change a light bulb?

A roomful - they have to hold a meeting to discuss all the ramifications of the change.

Management Joke #3

Don’t stand around doing nothing. 

People will think you’re the manager. 

Management Joke #4

How many project managers does it take to change a lightbulb? 

None, they are all still discussing the best way to do it.

Management Joke #5 

A product manager walks into a bar. 

It isn't what he expected so he immediately blames development for no reason.

Jokes for developers 

Expand your network on LinkedIn by incorporating these software engineer jokes in youConnection Request Messages, Messages, or InMails.

Developer Joke #1

Why did the front-end developer buy the flat under his?

He always wanted a sub-domain.

Developer Joke #2

A developer’s wife asks him - Would you go to the store and pick up a loaf of bread? And if they have eggs, get a dozen.

The developer returns home with 12 loaves of bread. They had eggs, he explained. 

Developer Joke #3

Why do programmers always mix up Christmas and Halloween?

Because Dec 25 is Oct 31.

Developer Joke #4

If doctors were like software engineers, they would say things like “Have you tried killing yourself and being reborn?”

Developer Joke #5

A developer is a tool that transforms caffeine into code. 

Developer Joke #6

Give a man a program, frustrate him for a day. 

Teach a man to program, frustrate him for a lifetime.

Developer Joke #7

Software undergoes beta testing shortly before it’s released. 

Beta is Latin for 'still doesn’t work’. 

Developer Joke #8 

What do you call a software wizard that installs applications?

The Wizard of OS.

Developer Joke #9

What's the difference between a junior software engineer and a senior software engineer?

A senior software engineer writes wrong code faster.

Jokes for customer support specialists 

Expand your network on LinkedIn by incorporating these CSS jokes in your LinkedIn Connection Request Messages, Messages or InMails.

CSS Joke #1 

Evil queens are just Disney princesses who worked in Customer Support too long. 

CSS Joke #2

Those who say “there is no such thing as a stupid question” obviously never worked in Customer Care. 

CSS Joke #3

Anyone who ever said that “the customer is always right” has never worked in Tech Customer Support. 

CSS Joke #4

Customer Service is like…

If you understand English, press 1.

If you do not understand English, press 2.

Frequently asked questions

How effective are humorous templates across various industries, especially in more conservative fields?

Humorous templates' effectiveness varies across industries. In conservative fields, they may be less appropriate. Tailoring the humor to suit the industry's tone can improve reception.

What are the best practices for personalizing jokes to ensure they resonate well with specific audiences or sectors?

Personalizing humor involves understanding the recipient's background, industry norms, and possibly their company culture to ensure the joke aligns with their professional environment.

Are there examples of negative reactions or feedback to consider when using humor in professional outreach?

Negative reactions to humor in professional outreach are possible, especially if the humor is misinterpreted or deemed unprofessional. It's crucial to balance humor with professionalism and consider the potential for diverse interpretations.

Summary 

Jokes that you use in your outreach or in real life quickly impact your personal brand image and reputation, for good or bad. Ideally, whoever you talk to shares your sense of humor and can understand a light-hearted critique of the industry. 

As mentioned above, here we’ve listed jokes that you can use right away for:

• Sales representatives;
• Marketers;
• Managers;
• Developers;
• Customer Support Specialists.

Be bold in your outreach. It will for sure pay off. 

And for the end: 

How many marketers does it take to generate 10 times more leads in less time? 

None, they use Skylead. 

At first mention, cold outreach tends to have a bad reputation. 

It's no wonder, as no one likes unsolicited emails, LinkedIn messages, or calls. 

However, real cold outreach is not useless or annoying. On the contrary, it helps your and your clients' businesses grow and builds strong, lucrative, and long-lasting relationships. 

It starts with thoroughly researching the ICP and Buyer Persona, defining a precise outreach strategy, writing sales messages and follow-ups in advance, predicting objections and preparing for objection handling, and much more.  

That's why, in this blog, we will dive into a detailed explanation of:

• What cold outreach is;
• How sales, marketing, and recruiting can benefit from it;
• Best practices for successful cold outreach;
• And will give you a list of resources with ready-to-use cold sales message templates. 

What is cold outreach? 

Cold Outreach is a form of outbound marketing. It implies contacting prospects with whom you had no prior relationship and introducing them to your product/service. It can be conducted via LinkedIn, email (cold emailing), phone (cold calling), or by combining these channels (multichannel outreach). 

Companies with a business-to-business work model mainly use cold outreach. For optimal results, each cold outreach campaign should be based on a well-thought-out outreach strategy. This strategy should aligns with the company's needs, goals, and possibilities. 

Cold outreach VS warm outreach 

Cold outreach, as mentioned above, implies reaching out to prospects with whom you had no prior relationship and who most likely have little or no awareness of your product/service. 

On the other hand, warm outreach implies contacting prospects who know about your product/service and have expressed interest in it. The communication channels can be the same as cold outreach strategies - via LinkedIn, email, call, or combining several communication channels. However, the approach is, of course, different. 

Cold outreach strategies in marketing, sales, and recruiting 

Cold outreach is a form of outbound marketing and sales. It is a traditional form of marketing in which a company initiates contact with a potential customer. 

Since cold outreach is mainly implemented by companies with a B2B work model, these potential clients are other companies that could benefit from their products/services the most. 

The most common forms of outbound marketing are:

• cold outreach (cold emailing, cold calling, cold messaging on LinkedIn),
• billboards,
• events,
• advertising through TV or radio,
• print,
• online,
• in-person contact, etc. 

This chapter will discuss the role of cold emailing, cold calling, and cold messaging on LinkedIn as a cold outreach strategy in sales, marketing, and recruiting. 

Cold outreach strategy in marketing 

Network with industry peers 

LinkedIn networking with industry peers positively impacts the exposure of your business. Furthermore, it brings meaningful connections, and provides additional insights into different marketing trends and practices. 

What once was reserved for in-person business events only today is happening on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social media platform aimed at building B2B relationships that gathers over 810 million professionals worldwide. In other words, it allows you to find and network with all your industry peers from all over the world in one place. 

Connect with thought leaders and influencers

Word of mouth is the best marketing tool, especially from industry experts. 

LinkedIn is also an excellent place to connect with thought-leaders and influencers. This way you can talk about your product/service reach your target audience through their content or mention. 

Also, you can get in touch with their followers through the Sales Navigator filter Connections Of. Or, use a LinkedIn automation tool, such as Skylead, to scrape LinkedIn members who reacted to specific posts and reach out to them.

Invite top speakers to participate at your event 

Whether a startup or an established business, having high-profile speakers at your event (webinars, in-person conferences, seminars, etc.) puts your company in the spotlight. It is an excellent way to gather people from your industry and potential customers in one place. 

Additionally, top-level speakers usually have a broad audience and many followers on social media. As a result, they could attract professionals from an industry branch you didn't consider initially. This gives you a significant insight into the direction your business can take.

Submit your content to be published on external resources / Generate backlinks for your website 

Create cold outreach campaigns to get in touch with platforms or other brands that could go hand-in-hand with yours.(obviously, skip your competitors!). In return, be open to hosting their content or exchanging backlinks. 

Having your content published or backlinked on other places rather than just on your gives your brand significant exposure, whether a startup or an established business. Furthermore, it places you and your team members as field experts. 

Send out press releases 

A new software release, reaching a business milestone, announcing a new product/service, or anything worth mentioning should be publicly announced. Use cold outreach to get in touch with online magazines relevant to your industry and get extra publicity. 

Cold outreach strategy in sales 

Simply put, sales represents the group of activities that lead to exchanging goods or services for money or other assets. 

Not long ago, the entire sales process, from lead generation to the pitch, was reserved for face-to-face contact. Then, unsolicited calls to prospects without prior contact, known as cold calling, became a crucial part of sales teams' cold outreach strategies. This way, teams managed to reach geographically more distant clients. 

Today, with the internet becoming available to almost everyone, sales reps are using more and more social media networks to understand their customers and to reach out to them. However, the social selling process is far more complicated than that.

There are over 63 million decision-makers on LinkedIn. You can now offer your product/service to the entire world, but so can everyone else. That's how social selling was born. It is a sales and marketing strategy that prioritizes relationship building with potential clients and makes the act of selling its consequence rather than a goal. Social selling has many processes, but it usually starts with cold outreach. 

Cold outreach strategy in recruiting 

Due to the global talent shortage, recruiters must develop an employer branding strategy to present their company in the labor market and a cold outreach strategy to approach ideal candidates and attract them to work for their company. 

Furthermore, LinkedIn developed a series of platforms designed to help recruiters find the most qualified candidates for their companies - LinkedIn Recruiter.

What is cold email outreach? 

Cold email outreach is an outbound prospecting technique that uses email to approach prospects to establish professional relationships and sell your product. Therefore, a cold email is any unsolicited email sent to someone who knows nothing or very little about your product with the goal of selling it. 

B2B Cold email response rates 

A generally accepted average cold email open rate is 21.33%, while an average response rate is 1% to 5%. 

As you may see, the difference between an open rate and a reply rate is significant. The email open rate depends on your email subject line and your reply rate of how good you are at writing sales messages and follow-up emails after no response.

One of the many benefits of using Skylead, a LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software, is the possibility to find and verify your prospects' email addresses. The verification process is critical, as it ensures higher deliverability (chances of your cold email landing directly in your prospect's inbox instead of spam) and safeguards your domain from restrictions. 

Furthermore, every day Skylead team strives to educate our users and beyond on sales and anything sales-related, how to put our tips, tricks, and templates for better open and reply rates, and finally, conversion rates into good use through our tool. You can find sales email templates and LinkedIn templates in our resources or subscribe to our newsletter for the latest industry and software updates and ready-to-use sales templates. 

Cold outreach on LinkedIn 

LinkedIn is a social media platform that, besides connecting professionals from around the world, gives you significant insights into your prospects' needs, desires, and pain points through their LinkedIn profiles. 

Unlike other social media focusing on people's private lives or B2C communication, LinkedIn is majorly oriented towards the B2B business model. 

It offers detailed insights into your ideal customers, such as your prospect's name, company name, contact information (email, website, phone number), professional communities they like, and content with which they engage. 

Despite LinkedIn being majorly mentioned as a platform for salespeople, sales teams, and marketers, it's important to highlight that it's pretty valuable for recruiters and people looking for new job opportunities. 

When fishing for the best talent to join your company, the process is the same as social selling. On the other hand, potential employees rely on LinkedIn before applying to a position that might interest them. They can draw conclusions from the company's employer branding campaigns, growth insights, etc., just like sales reps and marketers do for their potential clients. 

What is multichannel cold outreach?

Multichannel cold outreach implies combining channels of communication, usually LinkedIn outreach, email outreach, and cold calling to get prospects to engage in the process of social selling. It can also be performed through your multichannel contact center.

Multichannel outreach is the most effective approach for starting a conversation with your ideal prospects because you are creating more than one touchpoint with your prospects and, at the same time identifying their preferred channel of communication for further conversations. 

Benefits of cold outreach

• Cold outreach is cost-effective. You don't need a specific budget to invest in ads, event planning, advertising, etc. 
• It's scalable. If you use automation tools, hyper-personalized cold emails and follow-ups can reach thousands of people in a few clicks. 
• You can include personalized images, gifs, and videos to make your cold emails or LinkedIn messages more attractive. 
• You can reach potential clients and industry peers from all over the world. Cold outreach allows you to expand your business and networking efforts outside a specific geographic area.
• Consequently, cold outreach offers broader brand exposure. Cold emails and cold LinkedIn outreach can reach anyone on the globe. Additionally, LinkedIn provides specific features to promote your business through its feed, online events, sponsored InMails, communities, etc. 

Cold outreach: Best practices

Understand your prospects' needs 

LinkedIn is a gold mine of qualified prospects and information on those prospects. So, check out:

• the content your prospects share or like,
• the communities they participate in,
• their professional and educational background,
• and their interests.

You can learn all of this by visiting their LinkedIn profile. 

Personalize 

Once you've understood your prospects' affinities, needs, and goals, it's time to put this information into practice. Personalizing your outreach goes far beyond calling your prospects by their names. Some successful sales reps import CSV files (with email lists or LinkedIn URLs) into automation tools. They also personalize entire paragraphs to each prospect for the best results.  

For example, let’s say you have an email list of your ideal prospects. Create a column where you write a personalized intro for each of them where the rest of the sales message copy stays the same for every prospect.

Once you upload this .csv file to Skylead, the column “intro” will automatically turn into a variable {{intro}}. Use it like this. 

Each prospect will receive a combination of the personalized intro as in the csv file with the rest of the message. 

Address the pain points 

Your best pitch lies in proving that your product/service solves your prospects' pain points most quickly and directly. Make that clear in your sales messages, from the intro to CTA. 

Connect on a human level

However, addressing the pain points doesn't mean selling repeatedly. Keep in mind that your prospects are humans and that you should always try to connect on a human level. Sales reps who genuinely show that they care and want to help their potential customers improve their businesses have higher conversion rates. 

Build relationships before selling 

As part of social selling, cold outreach is all about building relationships with prospects. People are more likely to buy products from people they trust and with whom they feel comfortable opening up. 

Don't quit - follow up 

Don't give up after the first try. Decision-makers to whom you're trying to get are busy. They receive numerous LinkedIn connection requests and cold emails and, believe it or not, often forget to reply. So sending a follow-up email is always a good choice. 

Qualify your prospects  

Qualifying a prospect means determining whether or not someone interested in your product/service is a good fit for it. Therefore, a qualified prospect is a potential client whose pain points your product/service solves in the most direct way. By qualifying your prospects, you will have higher customer lifetime value while lowering churn rates. 

A/B test your cold outreach

One cold outreach template won't fit all prospects. That's why it's smart to A/B test message templates of all kinds. A/B test is a randomized experimentation process where two or more versions are sent to different target users simultaneously to determine which one makes results and influences the desirable business action. It's the only way to know what really works for your target prospects. 

For example, in this case, we tested 3 different copies of Invite to connect on LinkedIn to see which one would have the highest acceptance rate and/or reply rate. 

Here’s how you see the results of A/B testing in Skylead. You also have instant insight into the messages you were testing. 

Automate your cold outreach

It's 2025, and we're far past manual outreach. LinkedIn automation tools progressed and are now an indispensable part of any sales, marketing, and recruiting process. Skylead, for example, optimizes your time by finding the fastest way to your prospects, makes sure your cold emails land directly in your prospect's inbox, which affects your deliverability, gives you real-time reports and campaign status, and supports all sorts of integrations with CRMs (i.e., Hubspot, Salesflare, Zoho) newsletter tools, databases, etc. through Zapier and API. 

What is a good cold email 

A good cold email must show that the sender has thoroughly researched the recipient (prospect) and their company to understand their needs, desires, and pain points. Furthermore, it also includes a concrete and straight-to-the-point explanation of how your product/service can help improve a specific aspect of their business. 

The characteristics of a "good cold email" are the same for recruiters and candidates writing to hiring managers to search for job opportunities. 

For example, if you're a recruiter reaching out to the ideal candidate, you should show that you've researched that person and why you consider them the right fit for the position. The "spray and pray" approach doesn't work, not it makes your company look good. 

The same goes another way around. If you're a candidate searching for an opportunity, make sure you've done thorough research on a specific company's product/service. Even if you're an expert in your field, the hiring manager is less likely to consider you if they notice you don't particularly care about the company itself and that you just go and apply for random jobs. 

Cold outreach email template 

Now, let's look at some proven cold email formulas (and cold email templates) that increase your reply rates and generate results. 

The most basic structure of cold emails, whether a first email or a follow-up, consists of an email subject line, email body copy, call-to-action (CTA), and email signature. 

As mentioned above, the email open rate majorly depends on your email subject line. Your response rates depend on how well you researched your recipients, hence, how relevant your offer is to their company. Also, if you included links or hyperlinked words, ensure the anchor words are attractive enough (but not misleading) to improve your click-through rate. 

Here are some cold email formulas/templates.

The BAB (Before - After - Bridge) formula

Before - a paragraph on your prospect's pain point. 

After - what your prospect's business looks like with a solution you're offering. 

Bridge - how your prospect can get there. 

The PAS (Problem - Agitate - Solve) formula

The PAS formula is also known as "a pessimistic version of BAB". However, it works equally well in different situations. You have to evaluate which principle works better for you and your prospects, or you can always AB test them. 

Problem - open your cold email with the problem your prospect's facing. 

Agitate - emphasize the problem until it "hurts".

Solve - offer a solution to your prospect's problem.

The SSS (Star - Story - Success) formula 

Star - introduce the main character, that should be either your prospect or someone with whom your prospect can identify.

Story - tell a story about your character in which they face the same problem your prospect does.

Success - share how your character got out of the problem and offer the same solution to your prospect.

The ACCA (Awareness - Comprehension - Conviction - Action) formula 

Awareness - show your prospect that you know what their pain point is.

Comprehension - explain how this pain point affects them, and tell them you have a solution.

Conviction - create a desire for the solution.

Action - call-to-action (CTA).  

The AIDA (Attention - Interest - Desire - Action) formula 

Attention — Grab the prospect's attention.

Interest — Make it personal to engage their interest.

Desire — Build desire for what you're offering.

Action — Ask for a response.

Also, remember to check out our ready-to-use follow-up email after no response templates, as well as the most common email mistakes and the most effective email calls-to-action (CTAs) for higher response and conversion rates. 

Best cold email outreach subject line 

Whether a first or a follow-up email, your email subject line is crucial for your open rates. 

Subject lines should be compelling but not misleading. If you used tricks to get your email opened, and the subject line doesn't reflect the email body, don't expect your prospect to reply. People generally get angry when misled and are less likely to open your follow-up emails, too.  

Here are email subject line guidelines, best practices, and over 107 subject line examples that you can use immediately or draw inspiration from. 

LinkedIn outreach templates 

In simple words, LinkedIn outreach implies using the platform to connect and nurture professional relationships with the goal of selling your product/service to those members that would benefit from it the most.

For this purpose, LinkedIn offers different types of messaging, such as connection requests for better acceptance rates, regular messages for members of your network, LinkedIn InMails for busy decision-makers, and 3rd-degree connections. 

From this point of view, LinkedIn outreach is different from cold email outreach for classifying members based on your connection level, whereas you can send a cold email to pretty much anyone whose email address you have. However, LinkedIn as a platform offers other benefits, such as networking opportunities, significant insights into your prospect's professional achievements, pain points, and professional aspirations, etc. 

You will find over 30 ready-to-use LinkedIn outreach templates in our resources LinkedIn connection message templates, sales messages for starting sales conversations, and LinkedIn InMails examples. 

LinkedIn outreach automation 

Skylead is a LinkedIn automation tool and cold email outreach software that, thanks to its smart algorithms that make decisions based on your prospect's behavior, automates time-consuming sales processes and gets to your prospects in the fastest and most direct way possible. 

By automating your LinkedIn outreach, you are optimizing your time and saving resources while still getting the most out of your LinkedIn prospecting process. In addition, it is perfectly safe and supports integrations through API and Zapier with CRMs, newsletter tools, database software, calendar booking tools, etc. 

Skylead allows you to automate only LinkedIn outreach, make only cold email campaigns, or combine everything into multichannel outreach for the best results. It also has its email finder that, at the same time, verifies each prospect's email address to increase deliverability and prevent harming your email domain. 

Skylead’s Smart Sequences work on the “if/else” principle meaning that they act based on your lead’s behavior. The picture below shows what multichannel outreach looks like but you can always opt to make a Smart Sequence that focuses on one channel only (LinkedIn or email). 

Also, it has a proven boost mode feature that helps you bypass LinkedIn limits and connect with more prospects in less time. 

Frequently asked questions 

How does cold outreach automation compare to manual outreach in terms of effectiveness and personalization?

Cold outreach automation can scale efforts and maintain consistency while keeping a deeper level of personalization, potentially increasing effectiveness by making recipients feel uniquely considered. While manual outreach can be personalized as well, automation is a preferred option because it saves so much time. 

What are the ethical considerations or potential drawbacks of using cold outreach strategies, especially regarding unsolicited messages?

Ethical considerations in cold outreach include respecting privacy, avoiding spam, and ensuring messages provide value. Misuse can lead to negative brand perception and legal issues.

Can the effectiveness of cold outreach vary significantly between industries, and if so, how should strategies be adapted for different sectors?

Effectiveness of cold outreach can indeed vary across industries. Sectors with high digital engagement may respond better. Tailoring strategies to industry-specific preferences and pain points is crucial for relevance and effectiveness.

Is cold outreach effective? 

If done right, cold outreach is a powerful prospecting tactic used by many salespeople for its high ROI, the possibility to reach potential clients from all over the world, and the ability to build long-lasting business relationships. 

Why is cold outreach important? 

Cold outreach can help you gain broader brand awareness and reach potential customers from all over the world. Furthermore, it's cost-effective and can be used for sales, marketing, recruiting, and job searches. 

How do you conduct a cold outreach? 

• Identify prospects more likely to convert.
• Consider using multichannel outreach to identify their preferred means of communication.
• Prepare your LinkedIn and/or email strategy in advance.
• Prepare your LinkedIn sales messages and/or cold sales emails in advance. 
• Personalize. 
• Follow up. 

Is cold email legal? 

You will not get into trouble if you use your prospects' business email addresses for cold email campaigns. 

Can you cold email B2B? 

Yes, B2B companies' sales teams use cold email outreach and LinkedIn outreach more often to accomplish their sales goals. 

What is cold outreach in marketing? 

Cold outreach in marketing is a form of outbound marketing that implies contacting prospects who could turn into your potential clients but don't know about your brand and have no previous experience with it. It could be done through email marketing, LinkedIn outreach, and cold calling. 

What is cold lead generation? 

Cold leads (referred to as "top of the funnel" leads) are those who are most likely not familiar with your product/service and haven't expressed interest in it. Cold lead generation is the process of gaining cold leads' attention, usually through LinkedIn (LinkedIn lead generation), cold emailing, and cold calling.

What is the difference between cold calling and prospecting? 

Prospecting is the process of identifying and building relationships with potential customers who probably don't know about your product and haven't shown interest in it so far. Cold calling is one of the prospecting techniques which includes reaching out to potential customers via phone. 

Is it better to cold call or email first? 

It majorly depends on your sales outreach strategy. However, some outreach experts find cold emailing less invasive and advise starting by reaching out to your ideal customers in written form (cold emailing and/or LinkedIn outreach). 

How long should a cold outreach email be? 

Generally, shorter cold sales emails of around 50-200 words have higher response rates. However, the most important aspect of cold emails is that they are personalized and highly relevant to the recipients. Also, their subject lines must be catchy while reflecting the emails' topic.

If you send a connection request to someone but fail to follow up with something as simple as Thank you for connecting on LinkedIn, you will almost certainly be forgotten about in a matter of hours. Maybe even seconds.  

It doesn’t mean that your professional experience and what you do matter less. It’s just, that we are being bombarded with so much content, social media interaction, and trivial, everyday things, all of which easily draw our attention away from anything that doesn’t capture instant interest. 

That’s why sending an original and well-timed Thank you for connecting on LinkedIn and using its benefits later. In many cases, this practice turned out to improve your visibility, and therefore crucial for further communication and even collaboration. 

We’ve put together this blog with keeping in mind all of this. Hence, here are:

• The elements of a good LinkedIn Thank you for connecting message,
• How to spend less time on LinkedIn but build more meaningful relationships,
• 12 templates on how to thank someone for connecting on LinkedIn without just sending Thanks for connecting and stay remembered in the long run.

What makes a good Thank you for connecting message on LinkedIn? [4 Best practices]

Keep it short 

And sweet. No need to write War and Peace. It’s enough to thank them for accepting your invite and to expand on what you wrote in your LinkedIn connection request message (‘cause you didn’t just send a blank note, did you?).

We’ll elaborate on what to write after that simple Thank you for connecting contained in pretty much every message and how to personalize it to strengthen your business relationship.  

Don’t try to sell 

Ohhhh, this is a big no-no. The only thing worse than trying to sell when thanking someone for connecting in a LinkedIn message is doing so in a connection request. Use this occasion to start a conversation that later can lead to sales instead. Check out the ‘Templates section’ below to get inspired. 

Make it about the lead 

Don’t introduce yourself in a conventional way - ‘Hi, my name is…’ and then talk exclusively about your business and professional successes. Don’t force your product or your services. Instead, shift your attention to asking meaningful questions about your lead, and get off to the right start. You’ll have plenty of time to sell. And successfully. 

Focus on the value

Following up on the previously said, show your lead that they can benefit from you in some way. If that transition doesn’t come smoothly, you can speak about how you can mutually benefit from each other. Show them what problems and challenges you can potentially solve and they will, if nothing else, for sure appreciate the effort.

Thank you for connecting on LinkedIn: 12 Templates 

Sure, today we have Chat GPT, and you might think that it could give you all the answers on how to thank someone for connecting on LinkedIn. 

We are not against AI, we actually encourage everyone to use ChatGPT for sales (we’ve put prompt examples too!). So, copy & paste our templates, or use them as prompts to make Chat GPT inspired in the right direction. 

However, we will share some of the best-performing LinkedIn Thank you for connecting messages that our Head of Sales, Andrea, uses in her everyday communication for more effective LinkedIn lead generation. 

Hopefully, these will get you inspired to include this kind of practice in your LinkedIn lead generation routine.  

After connecting with members you don’t know personally

Option #1 to send a Thank you message on LinkedIn

Example

Hey Sonia,

Thank you for accepting my invitation.

I don’t believe we met in person.

As someone open to networking and building new business relationships, I just wanted to greet you, check in with you regarding the challenges you are facing, and see how we both might benefit from this connection.

Have a great day!

Template 

Hey {{firstName}},

Thank you for accepting my invitation.

I don’t believe we met in person.

As someone open to networking and building new business relationships, I just wanted to greet you, check in with you regarding the challenges you are facing, and see how we both might benefit from this connection. 

Have a great day! 

Option #2 to send a Thank you message on LinkedIn

If you want to make an extra effort, which usually pays off, create a personalized Image or GIF to thank someone for connecting on LinkedIn. It could improve your response rate by over 20% (word! We’ve tested it out!) 

Skylead’s native Image & GIF personalization is available to all our users, at no additional cost, and without ever leaving the software dashboard. 

The example below was used as a Thank you message which was part of the sequence Target specific group members. 

The sequence scored 53% in acceptance rate, 27% in reply rate, and 73% in open rate.

After connecting with members you met an event 

Example 

Hey Johnny,

Thank you for accepting my invitation.

Once again, it was a pleasure chatting with you at ‘Entrepreneurs Roundtable: The 411 on SEO and Google Analytics - What’s working now?’.

I would really like to continue the conversation we had at the event regarding the SEO tactics your company used to improve its blog ranking from the 3rd page of Google to the top 3 rated in the sales industry. So much to say so little time!

Let’s chat here or schedule a call, let’s say next Thursday around 2 pm.

How does that sound?

Template 

Hey {{firstName}},

Thank you for accepting my invitation.

Once again, it was a pleasure chatting with you at {{eventName}}. 

I would really like to continue the conversation we had at the event regarding {{topic}}. So much to say so little time! 

Let’s chat here or schedule a call, let’s say {{day&time}}. 

How does that sound? 

After connecting with someone you have a mutual connection with 

Example  

Hello Jamie,

In the spirit of networking, I would like to hear more about you and also introduce myself.

You are the Head of Sales at FlyProject, aren't you?

I know several people from there, do you know Matthew Stone?

Btw, thanks for connecting with me!

Template 

Hello Jamie, 

In the spirit of networking, I would like to hear more about you and also introduce myself. 

You are {{occupation}} at {{company}}, aren't you? I know several people from there, do you know {{mutualConnection’sFullName}}? 

Btw, thanks for connecting with me!

If you wish to offer help to your new connections 

Example  

Hello Josh,

Thanks for accepting my invitation.

I am delighted to connect with you.

I would like you to let me know if there’s anything I can do to assist you with. It would be my pleasure!

Have a fabulous day!

Template

Hello {{firstName}},

Thanks for accepting my invitation. I am delighted to connect with you. 

I would like you to let me know if there’s anything I can do to assist you with. It would be my pleasure!

Have a fabulous day! 

Providing value for your connections as a way to thank someone for connecting on LinkedIn

Example 

Hello Mark,

It’s great to be part of your network!

As I mentioned earlier, I recently wrote a blog that might help you with the problem you expressed in the ‘Startup Specialists’ Group.

I actually had the same issue with developing internal processes since we were growing pretty fast as a startup. This experience inspired me to write a series of blogs on the topic. Maybe it will help you figure out where to start.

Let me know if there is anything else I can help you with.

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

It’s great to be part of your network! 

As I mentioned earlier, I recently wrote a blog that might help you with the problem you expressed in {{groupName}}. I actually had the same issue with {{issue}}. This experience inspired me to write a series of blogs on the topic. Maybe it will help you figure out where to start. 

Let me know if there is anything else I can help you with. 

Introduce them to someone from your network to thank them for connecting on LinkedIn

Example 

Hey Steve,

Thanks for connecting on LinkedIn. I would like to know more about you and your business. If there’s anything I can help you with or introduce you to someone in my network, please let me know.

Kind Regards,

Jim

Template

Hey {{firstName}},

Thanks for connecting on LinkedIn. I would like to know more about you and your business. If there’s anything I can help you with or introduce you to someone in my network, please let me know. 

Kind Regards, 

{{yourName}}

Show genuine interest in your lead’s work  

Example 

Hi Selena,

Thank you for accepting my invitation. I am looking forward to learning more about your business expertise.

Please have a look at my connections and if there is someone you would like to be introduced to I am happy to make the connection. I am here to make meaningful connections because I deeply believe in networking!

Thanks again for your acceptance, and if you have any questions for me, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Best regards!

Template 

Hi {{firstName}},

Thank you for accepting my invitation. I am looking forward to learning more about your business expertise. 

Please have a look at my connections and if there is someone you would like to be introduced to I am happy to make the connection. 

I am here to make meaningful connections because I deeply believe in networking! Thanks again for your acceptance, and if you have any questions for me, please don’t hesitate to reach out. 

Best regards!

After connecting with someone whose content you read 

Example 

Hey Michelle,

I am so glad to be part of your network! Thank you for accepting my invitation.

As mentioned in my previous message, your last post on the importance of employee branding really resonated with me, especially the part where you say that ‘employee branding is not only about the people who already work at your company, but also about the professionals that apply for jobs and their recruiting experience”. It really made me revise the entire recruitment process.

Again, thanks for accepting my invite to connect, and I really hope we’ll have the chance to chat in the future.

Have a great day!

Template 

Hey {{firstName}},

I am so glad to be part of your network! Thank you for accepting my invitation. 

As mentioned in my previous message, your last post on {{postTopic}} really resonated with me, especially the part {{quoteParagraphThatResonated}}. It really made me revise {{whichPartOfYourBusiness}}.

Again, thanks for accepting my invite to connect, and I really hope we’ll have the chance to chat in the future. 

Have a great day! 

Use email to thank them for connecting on LinkedIn

In some cases, email conversation is more in line with your business outreach strategy or it’s your lead’s preferred channel of communication. For the sake of higher engagement and response rates, you can thank them for connecting on LinkedIn via email. Additionally, email outreach can be beneficial for starting sales-oriented conversations. 

Example

Hello Mark,

I just wanted to thank you for accepting my LinkedIn Connection Request here as well in case you prefer email communication.

Anyways, I love the question you recently posted in the Digital Marketers group regarding the optimal content posting schedule to draw traffic to your website. I actually wrote an article covering that topic in particular, I’ll just leave you a link here.

However, if you need a more personalized and thorough insight, we can schedule a call and meet up, let’s say next Wednesday at 3pm. How does that sound?

Thank you once again for accepting my Connection Request on LinkedIn.

Best,

Matt

Template

Hello {{firstName}},

I just wanted to thank you for accepting my LinkedIn Connection Request here as well in case you prefer email communication. 

{{yourSalesPitch}}

Thank you once again for accepting my Connection Request on LinkedIn. 

Best,

{{yourName}}

‘Break the ice’ by congratulating them on their success in the LinkedIn Thank you for connecting message

Example

Hey Sharlane,

Thanks for accepting my Connection Request!

Once again, congratulations on your promotion to the Head of Growth at Jumbos. I am always excited to see professionals with such enviable backgrounds progress and hold decision-making positions.

Let’s keep in touch.

Template 

Hey {{firstName}},

Thanks for accepting my Connection Request! 

Once again, congratulations on your promotion to {{occupation}} at {{company}}. I am always excited to see professionals with such enviable backgrounds progress and hold decision-making positions. 

Let’s keep in touch. 

Show genuine interest in a shared experience

Example 

Hey Marissa, 

Thanks for connecting! 

Btw, I noticed you also worked at Johnsons & Parker. I spent a couple of years there too, it was probably one of the best work experiences I’ve had. 

What about you, did you like it? 

Anyway, glad to be in your network!

Template

Hey {{firstName}},

Thanks for connecting! 

{{ReferenceToASharedExperience}}

Anyway, glad to be in your network!

Hyper-personalize your Thank you for connecting messages at scale [and more]

Skylead is a LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software that allows you to combine LinkedIn automation, unlimited Email automation, Email verification & discovery, and Image & GIF personalization into Smart sequences to help you save time, resources, and money while booking 3x more meetings than before. 

Also, at the same time, you can hyper-personalize your outreach at scale thanks to Skylead’s native and custom placeholders. It is just one of many ways our SDR, Pavle, does it to increase her reply rates. 

So, how does Andrea apply all of the above to send Thank you for connecting on LinkedIn to start a sales-oriented conversation?

Let’s say, you’ve done your research on LinkedIn, and you have a CSV file containing (at least) your leads’ LinkedIn URLs. At first, this LinkedIn lead generation technique can seem like a lot of manual work but it pays off. Also, Skylead is there to take care of the outreach automation, which will for sure recuperate (and earn you) lots of time! 

So, once you’ve added leads in a Google Sheets file, add a column named ‘thankyou’ (aside from regular columns such as name, surname, LinkedIn profile URL, business email, or similar). 

Your ‘thankyou’ column should contain a personalized paragraph for each lead. This way, you can insert the personalized paragraph that is different for each lead into a message outline that is, on the other hand, the same for all leads. 

This is what your message will look like in Skylead, as part of the Smart sequence.

And this is how your user would see this message on LinkedIn. 

Summary

Sending a thoughtful Thank you for connecting on LinkedIn not only demonstrates your appreciation for becoming part of someone’s network but also becomes a strategic step. 

Now, imagine enhancing this strategy even further with Skylead, our cutting-edge outreach tool, which you can try for 7 days for FREE starting today!  

Our support team will help you at any step of the way, and make sure you use Skylead to its fullest potential to elevate your networking game, amplify your engagement, and turn connections into valuable opportunities!

LinkedIn private mode or LinkedIn incognito mode is a LinkedIn feature that allows you to browse other people’s LinkedIn profiles without sharing any or some of your LinkedIn profile information with the owners of the profiles you’ve viewed. 

As you may already know (or not?), every time you visit someone’s profile, LinkedIn notifies the profile’s owner via the Who’s Viewed Your Profile feature, providing an opportunity to check you out on LinkedIn.  

So, suppose you don’t want people whose profiles you’re viewing to know you took a sneak peek at their professional activities. 

In that case, the platform allows you to go incognito partially (LinkedIn semi-private mode) or completely (LinkedIn private mode). 

LinkedIn incognito mode is available to ALL members, independent of their LinkedIn subscription type. 

Therefore, continue reading if you wish to know the following: 

• What LinkedIn private mode is;
• How to make your LinkedIn private;
• Ways to customize your private mode on LinkedIn;
• How to know if someone else viewed your profile in the incognito mode;
• A few lesser-known hacks on LinkedIn private mode, and much more. 

Ready? 

Let’s get started! 

[Mission Impossible Theme Song Playing]

What is a LinkedIn private mode? 

LinkedIn private mode or LinkedIn incognito mode is a LinkedIn feature that allows you to browse other people’s LinkedIn profiles without sharing any or some of your LinkedIn profile information with the owners of the profiles you’ve browsed. 

There are 3 visibility modes on LinkedIn according to the platform’s Visibility settings: 

• LinkedIn public mode (or ‘Name and headline’) shows your picture, full name, headline, geographical location, and industry to people whose profiles you’ve viewed.
  
  
  
• Semi-private mode shows specific profile information, such as - either only the company you work at or your job position and the company you work at.
  
  
  
• (Full) private mode doesn’t show any profile information. 

Do I have to pay for LinkedIn incognito mode?

LinkedIn private mode is available to ALL LinkedIn subscribers free of charge. 

However, if you have a free (basic) LinkedIn plan, switching to private or semi-private mode will turn off the Who’s viewed your profile feature and erase your viewer history. 

We’ve tested it ourselves, and we can confirm you will lose all previously collected data and can only see who's viewed your profile after switching to one of the private modes on LinkedIn.  

Once you turn off the LinkedIn incognito mode, the feature Who’s viewed your profile will be back in a maximum of 24 hours and will show only those members who viewed your profile after turning off the private mode. 

Also, you won’t be able to retrieve information on who’s viewed your profile during the time spent in private mode on LinkedIn. 

On the other hand, all other users on paid LinkedIn plans such as - LinkedIn Careers or Business, any Sales Navigator plan, and any Recruiter plan will still be able to see these analytics and statistics despite keeping their profiles in private mode. 

Furthermore, no LinkedIn plan subscriber, free or paid, can ever know the profile information of members browsing in private or semi-private modes on LinkedIn. Also, no LinkedIn plan subscriber can block or prevent other members from viewing in private or semi-private mode.  

How do I view profiles in private mode on LinkedIn?

Here are 2 ways to switch from browsing in public to browsing in private mode on LinkedIn, whether you’re accessing your profile on a desktop or mobile. 

Private Mode on Desktop

Click the Me icon in the top right corner, then choose Settings & Privacy. 

Then, choose Visibility on the left toolbar and click on Profile viewing options.

Finally, choose among the 3 visibility modes.

Private mode on mobile

Open your LinkedIn app, and click on your picture in the upper left corner. 

Then, choose Settings. 

Click Visibility. 

Then, choose Profile viewing options. 

Choose in which mode you wish to browse other members on LinkedIn. 

How do I customize my public mode on LinkedIn? 

If you decide to browse in public mode on LinkedIn, you can still determine what information to make available to members not part of your network. 

As you may already know, LinkedIn profiles rank on Google (and other search engines) based on the keywords used on your LinkedIn profile, such as name, profession, LinkedIn URL, LinkedIn headline, summary, etc. 

Therefore, this option is advantageous if you don't want everyone to access your LinkedIn profile or wish to keep specific information to your 1st-degree connections only.

Go to Settings & Privacy.

Go to Visibility, and then choose Edit public profile. 

Scroll down the right sidebar and move the toggle buttons depending on what parts of your profile you wish to make available to anyone on LinkedIn and which ones should be reserved for your 1st-degree connections only. 

How do I know if someone viewed my LinkedIn in private mode? 

LinkedIn subscribers get a notification each time someone views their profile. 

If a member views your profile in semi-private or private mode on LinkedIn, it will appear in your notifications just like other alerts here (picture below).

If you click on See all views right below the notification, it will take you to the Who’s viewed my profile LinkedIn page with the list of all viewers in the past 90 days, statistics, and additional filters. 

Here are a few examples of what a notification regarding members browsing in semi-private mode on LinkedIn looks like. 

Here are a few examples of what a notification about members browsing in private mode on LinkedIn looks like. 

As you may have noticed, there’s a Search button next to members viewing your profile in semi-private mode. 

Clicking on it will take you to LinkedIn search results of all people who work in that company and have LinkedIn profiles. 

However, Recruiter subscribers don’t have the Who’s viewed your profile feature on their Recruiter pages. They must go to their LinkedIn profiles to check these types of notifications. 

Sales Navigator subscribers will not see these notifications in the All alerts section because this is a purposely focused section that notifies about saved leads, saved accounts, and unsaved leads from saved accounts. 

Sales Navigator subscribers can click on the profile picture in the top right corner of their Sales Navigator home page and choose Who’s viewed your profile. 

This action will take them to the LinkedIn statistics page. 

When should I use LinkedIn private mode? 

From our experience, it’s better not to keep your profile in private mode when browsing on LinkedIn. 

Why? 

By viewing other people’s profiles, you are showing some kind of interest - whether for LinkedIn lead generation, finding ideal candidates for a company position, expanding your network, showing an interest in a job opening by viewing the hiring manager’s profile, etc. 

Also, viewing someone's profile on LinkedIn can help you connect with them faster and even bypass LinkedIn weekly invitation limits.

However, there are a few scenarios in which keeping your profile in LinkedIn incognito mode makes sense. 

#1 You’re researching your competitors. 

This one is pretty straightforward. 

If you want to see what your competitors are up to, what they are posting on LinkedIn, or to scrape their network, you should keep your profile in private mode. 

However, it’s not just competitors. 

You may wish to check something on your former employer’s profile, former or current customer, or anyone else to whom you don’t want to reveal your profile information.

#2 You still need to optimize your profile.

Here, you have 2 scenarios. 

Scenario 1 implies you wish to browse relatively random profiles to identify good practices to optimize your profile. 

These members are not necessarily the ones you wish to connect with on LinkedIn or relevant to your business, but they've done an excellent job earning the all-star status.

Scenario 2 implies you wish to browse people who are relevant to why you joined LinkedIn, but you don’t want them to know because your profile is still not optimized. 

If they check you out, they might lose interest or ignore your LinkedIn connection request because incomplete profiles on LinkedIn seem scammy. 

#3 You’re a recruiter shortlisting candidates. 

If you don't want all potential candidates to think they are being considered for a job opening at your company, you can view their profiles using LinkedIn incognito mode. 

That way, you will avoid people not matching the requirements approaching you on LinkedIn and not get someone's hopes up. 

LinkedIn Incognito Mode FAQ

Is private mode on LinkedIn really private? 

Yes, LinkedIn private mode is really private. The platform cares about keeping its members' privacy, and there is no way to see members' profile information browsing in private mode on LinkedIn. Also, no member can block or prevent other members from viewing in private mode. 

Should I be private or public on LinkedIn? 

Staying private or going public on LinkedIn will depend majorly on your goal on the platform. It’s better not to keep your profile in incognito mode because showing interest in other members’ profiles can help you connect with them and even bypass LinkedIn weekly connection limits. 

LinkedIn private mode vs. private profile on LinkedIn

LinkedIn private mode or LinkedIn incognito mode lets you browse other LinkedIn members' profiles anonymously. On the other hand, when you set your LinkedIn profile to 'private profile status, ' it means no one can find you on the platform or in any search results (e.g., Google search results).  

How do I stay private on LinkedIn (private profile status)? 

To switch your profile to private profile status and not even appear in the platform’s search results at all, go to Settings & Privacy > Visibility > Edit your public profile > Your profile’s public visibility (push the toggle button to the left in the right rail). 

Does LinkedIn show who viewed your profile? 

Yes, LinkedIn notifies members who have viewed their profiles. However, if you set your profile to browse in incognito mode, members whose profiles you’ve viewed won’t be able to see your profile information partially or at all, depending on the visibility mode of your choice.

Do I have to pay for LinkedIn private mode? 

No, LinkedIn’s semi-private and private modes are FREE of charge and available to all members. However, when free LinkedIn members switch to private mode, they lose access to the Who’s viewed my profile in the past 90 days feature, unlike paid LinkedIn members who can still see these statistics. 

Why would someone use private mode on LinkedIn? 

Reasons to use private mode are infinite, but members usually browse LinkedIn in incognito mode if they are researching their competitors, checking out former or current customers or employers, shortlisting candidates for open positions, or don't feel their LinkedIn profiles are optimized enough to reveal their identity.

Who can see my private LinkedIn profile? 

A private profile on LinkedIn means that you've set your entire profile to 'private profile status' and that it won't appear in LinkedIn or any other search results (e.g., Google search results). If your LinkedIn is set to private, no one can find your profile on the platform or online. 

Can people see if I viewed their LinkedIn? 

Unless you are browsing in semi-private or private mode on LinkedIn, other LinkedIn members will get notified once you’ve viewed their profile and can check out your LinkedIn profile to see who you are. 

Can LinkedIn Pro see private viewers? 

LinkedIn cares very much about keeping the privacy of those members who browse in semi-private or private mode on LinkedIn, and there is no way to see their profile information, no matter what LinkedIn subscription plan you have. Also, you cannot prevent anyone from browsing your profile in incognito mode. 

What is the disadvantage of private mode on LinkedIn? 

If you have a free LinkedIn plan and switch to private mode, it will turn off the Who's viewed your profile feature and erase your viewer history. You will lose all previously collected data and can only see who's viewed your profile after switching to incognito mode. 

Why do people browse in private mode on LinkedIn? 

People usually use the private mode on LinkedIn to research their competitors, check out former or current customers, former employers or employees, shortlist candidates for open positions, or simply because their LinkedIn profiles are incomplete and they don’t want to reveal their identity yet. 

Can to hide your profile on LinkedIn? 

You can either choose to browse in semi-private or private mode on LinkedIn, or you can switch your profile to private profile status and not even appear in the platform or other search engines' search results at all.

How can I view someone on LinkedIn without them knowing? 

You can view someone’s profile on LinkedIn without them knowing by browsing in semi-private or private mode on LinkedIn. To turn one of these 2 modes on, go to Settings & Privacy > Visibility > Profile viewing options > Choose between Private profile characteristics (semi-private) and Private mode (fully private). 

To Sum Up

While it's true that LinkedIn's private mode offers privacy, it can also compromise the transparency vital for building trust and credibility — the core of LinkedIn's purpose. 

Balancing privacy and transparency is crucial for maximizing LinkedIn's effectiveness in lead generation. And, speaking of maximizing LinkedIn, test out Skylead for 7 days for free, and see how you can leverage the power of both LinkedIn and email to reach relevant leads faster. 

Is outreach part of your day-to-day tasks? Are you a part of sales, marketing, customer success, recruiting, or business development teams? Yes? Then, let us introduce you to outreach automation.

Using outreach automation might help streamline your workflow and get you to the desired results, fast. You can use outreach automation for:

• Lead generation
• Segmenting your audience
• Sending personalized messages and emails
• Automating follow-up sequences 
• Creating drip campaigns
• Using multiple communication channels
• Collecting data and tracking progress

Sounds like a game-changer, doesn’t it? Cutting hours on manual tasks and improving overall outreach efficiency is what we had in mind when creating Skylead. In fact, we didn’t just create a tool and give it to our users - we are using it ourselves. To back this claim, we should tell you that we used our mighty tool to boost our user base from 2,500 to 10,000 in 9 months alone!

That being said, we created this article to help you understand the fundamentals of outreach automation. You will learn how to leverage outreach automation to your benefit, reach goals faster, and book 3x the meetings. Moreover, we’ll show you the use cases, the success stories of our users, and the benefits experienced. 

So, without further ado, let’s begin introducing you to your latest industry game changer - outreach automation. ⭐️

What is outreach automation?

Outreach automation uses software tools to streamline reaching out to potential leads, customers, or any target audience. You can automate parts of your outreach, such as sending personalized messages and follow-ups on multiple channels, analyzing your outreach results, and optimizing campaigns.

In business-to-business communication (B2B), it is common to come across automated outreach campaigns. Many companies rely on outreach automation due to the large number of cold messages and follow-ups required in outreach to streamline the process and carry out the demanding numbers, especially those working in sales and marketing. In fact, sales professionals claim that automation saves more than 2 hours on manual tasks per day.

We can’t talk about B2B outreach and not mention outbound email marketing and outbound sales. It is similar to cold calling, as you craft cold email campaigns to contact potential prospects and send unrequested cold emails. In fact, outbound marketing is an integral part of many industries, where large audiences are getting reached daily, thus creating the perfect setting for automation tools.

The same goes for business-to-consumer (B2C) oriented industries. No middle person is required, yet automation tools are necessary. Numbers show that companies that use automation software to craft elaborate targeted outreach campaigns get twice as many leads and 58% more conversions than those who send out email blasts.

Good news, marketing folks, too! Direct-to-consumer (D2C) is also favorable for automation. Almost all social media activity can be automated nowadays, saving up to 6 hours per day! Spending funds on marketing automation will provide a jump of 77% in conversions! Not bad, right?

What are the benefits of outreach automation?

If you’re still unconvinced to automate your outreach, we can tell you that both we and our users experienced these benefits firsthand. Here are some of the main benefits of automated outreach and incorporating an automation tool into your workflow:

• Time-saving (the right automation tool can help save up to 11+ hours per week on manual work - that’s 6 days a month! 😱)
• Ensures accuracy
• Increases effectiveness
• Scalable (automation tools can help scale your business - this especially applies to sales and marketing)
• Provides consistent engagement with prospects
• Allows for mass personalization (by using variables and other visual elements - images, GIFs, videos, etc.)
• Decreases the chances of errors (if done correctly, automation tools can help in avoiding human error)

Use cases for outreach automation

Thanks to outreach automation, we’ve seen many industries experience significant business development, sales, and marketing among the first. Customer support can also benefit from automating certain parts of their workflow, ensuring customer success. Recruiters can choose a niche, narrow their search, and get to the desired talent in no time.

Now that we know who, let’s look into the specifics and explore when and where we think it’s best to use automated outreach on a real-life example and through our tool - Skylead. 👇

Prospecting

Before you go into outreach, you need to find your audience first, and you can do that with prospecting. The good news is that prospecting tools can help with automation by:

1. Identifying potential leads by custom criteria
2. Sourcing and verifying prospect information
3. Organizing prospect data

You can do prospecting in multiple ways:

• Social media (e.g., prospecting on LinkedIn)
• Networking - virtually or in-person)
• Lead magnets - relevant content such as blogs, case studies, newsletters, etc. that resonate with your target audience (inbound marketing techniques)

Once you acquire quality leads via LinkedIn search filters or putting their names, emails, and LinkedIn URLs in a CSV file, you can then pull them into Skylead as a lead source, which could be one of the following types:

• LinkedIn search URL 
• Sales navigator search URL
• Recruiter search URL
• Imported list of leads from a CSV file
• People who’ve liked a post on LinkedIn
• Imported Sales navigator leads list
• Recruiter talent pool
• Recruiter pipeline

Pro tip: You can use our Email discovery and verification feature to find prospects’ emails and incorporate multiple channels into your outreach.

Lead generation & lead nurturing

After prospecting, we get to lead generation and lead nurturing. Once you acquire qualified prospects, you can start the warm-up and build your future relationships until conversion. Skylead can help with all those processes, even with lead management. This is how you do it with Skylead. 👇 

Linkedin outreach automation

As the biggest professional social media network, with over 950 million users worldwide, LinkedIn is a safe bet for outreach. But how to automate LinkedIn outreach, you may ask?

Some call them LinkedIn automation tools, and some call them LinkedIn bots, but the premise is the same: these tools can help speed up and streamline LinkedIn outreach.

Here are the actions and conditions you can combine and automate in Skylead, thanks to our Smart sequence builder.

Once you combine these actions and conditions, you get a Smart sequence - an algorithm with different outreach scenarios that Skylead will execute according to your leads' behavior. Here’s an image example:

And the best thing about our LinkedIn automation? Once you set it up properly, it does all the work for you! But that’s not everything…

Cold emailing

Hoping to secure new clients? Don’t have an existing relationship with them, or are they not responding to your LinkedIn outreach? Send a cold email or use an email template and start the conversation! Sending cold emails is an integral part of cold email outreach and email marketing. But where does automation fit into all of this? Well, everywhere. Use these tools to:

• Find prospects’ email addresses
• Send cold messages and drip campaigns
• A/B test your email copy for better open and response rates
• Monitor your performance with real-time data and detailed analytics

This is where Skylead comes in. Use unlimited email automation and combine it with LinkedIn automation to create multichannel Smart sequences. Here’s an example of such a sequence, which can be used for outreach, lead nurturing, content and event promotion, etc:

Follow-up

Salespeople are well aware that follow-ups are an absolute necessity when it comes to outreach and closing deals. What if we told you that 70% of salespeople stop after the first sales email? Our experiences show that the first follow-up increases response rates by 43%, and the last follow-up, the so-called breakup email, receives a staggering 53% response rate!

As you can tell, devising an outreach strategy that involves follow-up emails after no response to the first outreach attempt and adding a sales engagement platform to the mix increases your chances of efficiency and success. Use Skylead to automate follow-up sequences and take over once they respond!

Customer retention

If you’re in marketing, and your goal is to keep your customers hooked to your product and nurture relationships easily, this is where marketing automation comes in. For successful customer retention, use Skylead to automate sending emails and LinkedIn messages with special discounts, gifts, promotions, and useful resources.

Event marketing

Have an event you want to promote? Is it a webinar or any kind of happening? Event marketing simply calls for automation. You can use Skylead to create a webinar promo campaign and send invitations automatically, reaching out to your guest list in just a couple of clicks.

When not to use outreach automation

There are only some rare cases where outreach automation isn’t going to work. It is a bad idea to overuse the tool and reach out to more people than is allowed. LinkedIn imposes certain limitations that block excessive use and could potentially lead to your account ending up in LinkedIn jail. The email account’s health could also be damaged, so be careful.

The second case where automation loses its function is the opposite case when you need to send just a couple of messages or don’t use much outreach as a part of your work. Automation isn't efficient enough if you’re planning just one touchpoint with your prospects, so it’s better to do all this manually.

Note: You need an average of 5 touchpoints with a prospect to get a response. We generally don’t advise aiming for just one touchpoint, as that outreach strategy isn’t effective.

Different types of outreach automation tools

LinkedIn automation tools 

We’ve mentioned LinkedIn outreach automation, and LinkedIn outreach tools are here to help create outreach campaigns that reach out to a larger number of people in less time. These tools can streamline any LinkedIn action you'd have to do manually to reach out to prospects.

Here are some examples of LinkedIn automation tools:

1. Skylead - As we’ve shown you earlier, Skylead is a LinkedIn automation and cold email software. Our cloud-based tool is here to simplify outreach and let users (individuals or companies) streamline their outreach process. 

Our LinkedIn automation solution helps you automate LinkedIn actions. Plus, by using Image & GIF personalization, you can personalize all messages in a follow-up sequence, not just the first. 

Finally, our first-to-market Smart sequences help combine LinkedIn with unlimited email automation and let you use multichannel outreach in its full glory. This way, you can reach your prospects one way or the other.

2. LinkedHelper 2 - Here’s another example. A desktop automation tool that focuses on lead generation and LinkedIn automation. LinkedHelper also has an internal customer relationship management (CRM), so there’s no need to integrate with any other tool. However, if you’re looking for email automation along with LinkedIn, you would need to use another tool and pay extra for this solution.

3. MeetAlfred - This cloud-based tool’s main focus is social selling on LinkedIn. It has a native CRM, so there’s no need for another tool integration. Besides LinkedIn, it supports email automation as well. However, you cannot create multichannel outreach in one sequence, as it does not support Smart sequences.

Email outreach tools

Email outreach is one of the oldest types of outreach out there. Whether inbound or outbound, we’ve come to an era that allows us to focus less on manual tasks and more on building solid relationships with prospects. Email outreach tools are here to:

1. Automate email outreach campaigns
2. Send personalized emails
3. Track all relevant email metrics (open rates, response rates, click-through rates, etc.)
4. Manage follow-up email sequences

Here are some examples of email automation tools:

1. Outreach.io - This is a sales execution platform that covers the entire sales process. It integrates with Hubspot, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Gmail. This integration allows sending personalized emails, automating different tasks, and tracking overall engagement.
2. Mailchimp - This email automation platform offers audience segmentation, generative AI content features, and thorough analytics. While it could be what you’re looking for, Mailchimp does not provide other outreach channels, potentially slowing down your outreach.
3. Salesloft - Salesloft is a revenue workflow platform with an email automation feature, an internal CRM, and sales pipeline software.

Note: While all these tools have unique features that add up to the email automation solution, they do not offer other outreach channels. You can use Skylead for email and LinkedIn outreach, doubling the chances of a response. Multichannel outreach in one tool? Well…

CRM integration tools 

These tools are designed to add more value to your existing automation tool. Your outreach automation tools integrated with your CRM system are powerful workflow enhancements used to keep track of all your leads and interactions in one place.

Here are some examples of CRM integration tools:

1. Hubspot - Hubspot helps you seamlessly connect your data, teams, and prospects in one place. It’s a sublime CRM platform created to scale with your business.
2. Salesforce - This cloud-based CRM makes it easy for companies to find, nurture, and analyze prospects. Salesforce keeps all of your data in one place, no matter the source.
3. Zapier - Zapier is a powerful tool made to help end users integrate web applications they use. It’s a time-saving tool that cuts hours of manual work and automates workflows.

Note: Skylead integrates with most 3rd party tools. If you need to integrate your CRM with Skylead, you can do so easily by creating webhooks or using API.

Personalization tools

Tools that add a special visual touch to your outreach messages help you personalize your outreach at scale. Your messages will be more engaging and relevant to prospects, prompting them to hit reply faster.

Here are some examples of personalization tools:

1. Personyze - This tool offers a personalized experience with your prospects at any touchpoint. You can send personalized, targeted emails and get a higher response rate.
2. Nifty Images - This tool allows for sending customizable images, charts, and other visuals. They also support ESP merge tags, along with 100+ templates.  
3. Hyperise - Hyperise is a tool that supports image personalization. The main feature, called the dynamic Image editor, allows for 16 personalization points.

Note: You might think how amazing these tools are, but you know what? If you’re already using an automation tool and don’t want to pay extra for another, you can use Skylead. We have a native Image & GIF personalization feature, so there’s no need to add it externally.
Note: Before creating this feature, we tested adding images &GIFs to LinkedIn and email outreach messages, and we’ve managed to increase the response rate to 63%.

Best practices for outreach automation

Segment your audience

Before you begin your outreach endeavors, be sure to dedicate time to audience segmentation. By segmenting your audience, you amp up the efficiency and effectiveness of outreach in general. In fact, this step can affect your outreach efforts later on.

Segmentation begins once you define your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer personas. By segmenting your audience well, you can easily personalize the pain points of each segment. Remember: the better the segment and targeting, the better the outreach results.

Personalize your messages

Skylead spent months testing and adapting text & image personalization in cold outreach. Our conclusion might not come as such a shock, but people will respond more to personalized content. In fact, our response rates jumped to 63% in total after numerous test campaigns. You can use this information to further personalize your approach. 

Here are some elements you can add:

• Images
• Dynamic text
• GIFs
• Videos
• Variables (with Skylead, you can use variables for First name, Last Name, Current Company, Years in current company, occupation, etc. You can even set up your own custom variables and use them with each new message you craft in a campaign.

Note: Our sales team tested our personalized outreach sequences, and the results show that the response rate increased from the industry standard of 8.5% to a staggering 35%.

Finally, these are the benefits we underline when it comes to personalization:

1. Targeted communication - If you know your niche, you can personalize and tailor your messages to a specific group. Your content should be more engaging and relevant to the target audience.
2. Increased engagement - It’s a chain reaction. If you segment well, your personalization is on point. Therefore, your response rates are up.
3. Improved analytics - Personalization makes tracking results more accurate. You can easily spot which step isn’t working and continue optimizing as you go.
4. Brand loyalty - Once your audience gets a sense of your brand and that they can trust you, brand loyalty begins. We can conclude that proper personalization leads to brand loyalty and trust. 

Use a variety of channels

Ever heard of multichannel outreach? Using more than one channel is crucial in outreach since it gives you another opportunity for a touchpoint with prospects. In fact, if you’re reaching out with email and the prospect isn’t responding, you can use LinkedIn as another communication tool and vice versa. This is why Skylead combines both LinkedIn and email automation, thus maximizing the chances of a response.

Track your results

Looking at data is always a big part of a successful outreach strategy. By tracking your results constantly and testing each outreach attempt, you will get to higher outreach numbers faster. Skylead offers an A/B testing feature, allowing you to test different types of approaches with prospects. This way, you’ll figure out quickly which part of outreach to keep and what needs to be optimized. 

Use safe tools

If we know that LinkedIn doesn’t support the use of automation tools, we have to be sure we are using the safest option out there. We can find multiple types of tools which ultimately determine their safety:

1. Chrome extensions (you have to install them + these tools insert a code into LinkedIn, which makes them detectable)
2. Desktop apps (doesn’t work when your PC is off)
3. Cloud-based tools (they have a dedicated IP address + cloud storage, + the software runs even when your PC is off)

Firstly, many tools are browser-based, yet they are not the safest option because LinkedIn can detect their activity. This could possibly send you to LinkedIn jail - getting your LinkedIn account restricted or permanently banned if LinkedIn’s algorithms spot suspicious behavior. Secondly, desktop apps are inefficient and have the same safety issues as browser-based tools. 

Finally, you should opt for a cloud-based solution like Skylead, which is undetectable thanks to the dedicated IP address and the human-like behavior algorithm. Cloud-based tools also allow you to connect multiple accounts and have an integrated inbox with all messages from all communication channels in one convenient place.

Common mistakes to avoid in outreach automation

Sending too many messages

Following up is one thing, but spamming prospects with messages without giving them the proper amount of time to respond is another. That’s one of the biggest mistakes of outreach. Sending regular updates is fine, but make sure not to overwhelm them. Otherwise, you might end up on the spam list.

The adequate wait period in between messages should be anywhere from 2-5 business days before you contact your prospects again. If we know that LinkedIn limits our activity on the platform, as they allow you to send only 100-120 messages per week, it’s better to send them to different people rather than just one.

Not following up

Our Head of Sales, Andrea, says that it usually takes her 4-5 touchpoints before she gets a response from a lead. Therefore, persistence is key. Although sending a follow-up email after no response can be challenging, if all the previous steps were done correctly, there’s no reason for your prospect not to hit reply. 

Each follow-up keeps prospects engaged and with your product/service on their mind. If you space follow-ups correctly, with a 2-5 day gap between them, each follow-up should bring more value and a higher reply rate. In fact, our testing suggests that the last follow-up - breakup email received a 53% response rate.

Using spammy tactics

When reaching out, you should avoid using anything that might be perceived as spam to avoid getting your account restricted and email flagged. That includes:

• Using all-caps subject lines
• Excessive use of exclamation points
• Overuse of emojis
• Irrelevant links
• Typos in subject lines and email body

Using too many tools 

We’ve already tapped into this a bit before, but some tools offer only a partial solution for your outreach demands. Avoid using tools that need a large number of add-ons. Instead, opt for all-in-one solutions like Skylead that cover the majority of your outreach needs for the price of one.

Case studies

Theory is one thing, but what about real-life examples? We are not one of those big promises types of people, so below are two case studies that show just how efficient automation tools can be. But not just any automation tool. Skylead. Our users are our best advocates. See for yourself 👇

Case study 1: How 10x Millennial went from booking 20 to 80 calls per week using outreach automation

Company type: Marketing and lead generation agency

Use case: Sales, marketing

Our first success story is 10x Millenial, which used Skylead to automate certain parts of its business. By using Skylead, Michael Gonzalez, the founder of the company, was able to offer lead gen services to companies and clients through automated email outreach. LinkedIn was an added bonus that the company hadn’t used for outreach before.

They got to book around 80 calls per week and roughly 320 calls per month! The biggest deal they closed using our tool for their client was worth $40K.

Favorites: Smart sequences, Smart inbox, and Support team.

Case study 2: How NewPoort generated 45% of its business using automation

Company type: Lead generation agency

Use case: Sales and recruiting lead generation

The second success story we’re reviewing is from Toine Boelens, the founder of NewPoort. His business model relies on helping recruitment agencies and other companies create and manage LinkedIn outreach campaigns. LinkedIn automation is what helped him generate new clients for his clients, and with it, he usually gets 5 to 10 qualified responses per day and takes it from there. 

He underlines that arranging 100 meetings for his clients in 4 months is his biggest success story since incorporating Skylead into his business model. In the beginning, our tool helped Toine generate 40-50% of his business.

Favorites: Suggested sequence templates, Smart inbox, Smart sequences, sending InMails in LinkedIn outreach.

Frequently asked questions

How do different industries adapt outreach automation tools to fit their unique business models and customer interaction strategies?

Different industries tailor outreach automation tools by identifying customer interaction patterns unique to their sector, integrating these tools with industry-specific CRM systems, and customizing communication templates to align with the professional tone and language preferred by their target audience.

What specific metrics or KPIs should businesses focus on to accurately measure the success of their outreach automation efforts?

Businesses should focus on metrics such as response rates, conversion rates from lead to customer, engagement levels (like open and click-through rates), and ROI from automated outreach campaigns to measure the effectiveness of their outreach automation efforts accurately.

How does the implementation of outreach automation impact the roles and responsibilities of sales and marketing teams within a company?

Implementing outreach automation can streamline the workload of sales, recruiter and marketing teams, allowing them to focus on strategy and personalized engagement with high-priority leads. It often leads to a redefinition of roles towards more analytical and strategic tasks rather than manual outreach processes.

How do you automate emails for outreach?

Outreach emails can be automated with the use of automation tools. These tools can automate cold emails, entire follow-up message sequences, and drip campaigns. Some can even find and verify emails of prospects without the need for email lists.

Why do companies use outreach?

Outreach is used to promote products and services to individuals or other businesses, increase brand awareness, and build customer loyalty with the goal of selling those products/services. By using outreach, you can attract new customers and clients faster and build brand authority. 

What is outreach sales automation?

Sales automation tools are designed to save time on manual tasks like sales outreach, email campaigns, and data collection by automating parts or the entire process. These tools enhance the sales cycle by streamlining repetitive tasks, thus giving sales reps more time to focus on building and nurturing lead relationships.

Ready to automate your outreach?

Incorporating automation resources into your outreach is the key to streamlining workflows, and boosting in-house productivity, not to mention overall results.

To jog your memory, with automation tools, we can:

1. Save time on manual tasks
2. Use additional outreach channels
3. Automate parts of the sales pipeline (prospecting, lead generation, and lead nurturing)
4. Focus more on building solid relationships with leads
5. Easily monitor and optimize campaigns by using detailed analytics

And what should you keep in mind when looking for this wonderful tool? Here’s a rundown:

• It should be cloud-based (for your account health and safety)
• Possible multichannel outreach (for better outreach results)
• An all-in-one solution (without the need for add-ons and extra costs)

So, where do you begin? With Skylead, of course! 🤩

Here’s a demo video to give you an idea of what our tool looks like, and if you’re sure about automating your outreach right, then do not hesitate to test Skylead today and enjoy the beauty of an outreach that thinks and works for you!

Did you know that LinkedIn lead generation is one of the most vital activities for the sales departments of B2B companies?

“Why?” you ask.

Well, because LinkedIn is the #1 social media for generating leads. Its lead conversion rates are 3x higher than any other major social media platform. Moreover, LinkedIn alone generates 80% of B2B leads coming from all social media channels a company uses.

We can go on with the metrics, but you get the gist. LinkedIn is one of the best social media platforms for generating tons of qualified leads that convert successfully.

Sadly, many people do not take advantage of this social media platform. Or they do not have the desired results using LinkedIn lead generation and just give up. 

So, in this complete guide, we will walk you through everything you need to know about LinkedIn lead generation. To be more precise, you will learn: 

• What is LinkedIn lead generation;
• How to generate qualified leads on LinkedIn whether you are a marketer or a sales person;
• What you need to do before you even think about a LinkedIn lead generation;  
• Top intent-based strategies to make your LinkedIn lead generation flow in with results and shorten the buying cycle;
• What are the best LinkedIn lead generation tools are;
• How to perform outreach after you generated high-quality leads;
• Answers to most frequently asked questions about LinkedIn lead generation.

What Is LinkedIn Lead Generation?

LinkedIn lead generation represents activities associated with identifying, gathering, and warming up potential clients on LinkedIn. Sales and marketing teams do so by using ads, forms, various tools, strategies, and outreach to generate qualified leads. It is an ongoing process that creates steady income for all B2B companies.

Why LinkedIn?

With the competitive market, generating high-quality leads has become somewhat of a challenge for B2B companies. Thus everyone needed to step up their lead generation efforts to stay relevant in the market.

That is where LinkedIn comes in. With 875 million members from 200+ countries, this #1 social media for professionals became a goldmine for B2B marketers and sales executives. 

Due to a large pool of professionals, 4 out of 5 LinkedIn users drive certain business decisions. Hence this audience has 2x buying power of the average web audience. Therefore, LinkedIn has been recognized as a perfect place where companies can find ideal leads and offer a solution to their problems. 

To make it easier for you to find the perfect lead, LinkedIn provides insights such as job titles, company they work in and its size, content they like and more. Moreover, this social media platform offers many ways sales and marketing teams can use to acquire qualified leads. So we will talk about all of them today.

How To Generate Leads From LinkedIn?

To generate high-quality leads on LinkedIn you need to perform different sales and marketing activities, leverage performance data, and improve. These activities include but are not limited to defining target audience, outreach, creating or sharing gated content, communicating benefits, and lead nurturing. 

Depending on whether you are a salesperson or B2B marketer these activities may vary but do have the same goal. So let’s break them down and check out what is the main focus for each professional.

LinkedIn Marketing For Lead Generation

LinkedIn marketing is a form of digital marketing where B2B marketers use LinkedIn to promote businesses, share content and generate leads. In most cases, marketing managers use LinkedIn to provide value and raise awareness through posting educational or gated content on the company page, thus generating more leads.

In other words, marketers use LinkedIn to:

• Provide value through posting educational and engaging content on the company’s LinkedIn page;
• Raise awareness about the product/service by creating and sharing case studies or specialized landing pages;
• Grow following and increase engagement with target audience;
• Create gated content and share it on LinkedIn with benefits and call-to-action for the said content;
• Optimize LinkedIn page and content for SEO;
• Host and share an online event ( webinars, hangouts, etc).

As a part of their marketing strategy, some content marketers even become influencers or thought leaders themselves. This way, digital marketing managers can expand their network and have an additional channel to share their content. 

The previously-mentioned activities are heavily based on organic content marketing. However, as a part of LinkedIn marketing, you can get paid traffic, engagement or generate leads by publishing sponsored content, aka ad campaigns.

LinkedIn Ads

Digital marketers often publish sponsored content through the LinkedIn campaign manager as part of lead generation efforts. They do so by specifying their target audience with certain demographics or other parameters and presenting them with the purposeful ad they create. 

For example, they can create an ad campaign with a call-to-action button to visit a landing page with gated content. The target audience then goes to a landing page and leaves contact information. 

For those who don’t know, gated content is digital material, such as educational videos, ebooks, or other documents that request users to fill out a contact form before they can download or access them. This is one of the classic ways marketers use to generate leads. 

Therefore, to get their lead gen forms to a wider audience and gather potential customers for their sales team, digital marketers can opt-in for sponsored content on LinkedIn as a part of their marketing strategy.

What does this mean in terms of activities? Well, marketers can use LinkedIn campaign manager to:

• Raise awareness about their business or product;
• Boost content engagement; 
• Launch lead generation campaign (LinkedIn lead gen forms or landing page promotion);
• Or message your potential customer directly through ads.

They say a visual is worth more than a thousand words, so here is how sharing gated content or launching a lead generation campaign works in real life.

Even though LinkedIn ads are a part of overall LinkedIn marketing, they are not mandatory for LinkedIn lead generation, as you can do certain things organically. However, they can be immensely beneficial if you wish to go all in.

That said, here is what all LinkedIn marketing activities would look like in a funnel.

Using LinkedIn Outreach For Lead Generation

LinkedIn outreach signifies contacting and warming up potential customers on LinkedIn. It is the next step in the lead generation process, once salespeople finish with LinkedIn prospecting or after the marketing team acquires contact information through gated content. LinkedIn is the preferred social media for outreach due to communication simplicity.

Salespeople can outreach two types of leads to generate and qualify them: inbound or outbound leads. Inbound leads are the ones who have already interacted with your company (e.g. gave their information due to lead generation strategy or contacted via chat). On the other hand, sales professionals outreach outbound leads by themselves after finding them via prospecting.

Outreach on LinkedIn is definitely a long and separate subject on its own. However, there are definitely a couple of main principles we must mention for the sake of this article.

LinkedIn Outreach Principles

Firstly, LinkedIn outreach is the main part of the social selling strategy. In other words, it focuses on building relationships, offering a solution to problems, and nurturing leads throughout the buying journey.  

For example, you will usually find sales professionals starting the conversation on LinkedIn by asking about the lead's workflow. Or they will offer educational content or case studies long before they pitch their product or service.

Secondly, LinkedIn outreach is about quality, not quantity. So make sure to find and outreach the right people according to your ICP or Buyer Persona.

Lastly, as marketing can retarget website visitors, salespeople can use retargeting of their own. To clarify, they can reach out to people they already had contact with in some shape or form and didn’t convert. The outreach message can be a simple follow up to catch up after a while or a full product update, depending on where they left off the conversation. 

With that in mind, here is a funnel with all the activities that sales people go through regarding LinkedIn lead generation.

If you do not have time to do the above-mentioned activities, you can always hire a LinkedIn lead generation agency to do it for you. However, if you wish to do it yourself, stay tuned as we will show you tips, tricks and strategies on how to do it right. 

What Do You Need to Do Before LinkedIn Lead Generation?

As previously stated, LinkedIn lead generation is undoubtedly the main focus for B2B companies. However, you can’t just dive right into LinkedIn lead generation without first establishing the basics.

If you do, you will generate a miserable number of leads and not the good ones either. The reason for such an outcome is poor LinkedIn lead generation basic steps, strategy, targeting, and outreach method. Luckily we will cover everything below.

Are you ready? We will start with what you need to do first. 

Create Highly Converting LinkedIn Profile

Before you start any LinkedIn lead generation activity, you must improve your LinkedIn profile and optimize it for conversions. If you do it thoroughly, it will stand out from other profiles and attract more people to visit it.

For example, your LinkedIn URL optimized for SEO and the LinkedIn headline created to boost LinkedIn lead generation will get you more profile views. Even a profile and LinkedIn cover photo can get you 14x more profile views. More visits will result in a lot more connection requests and engagements. 

Let’s take a look at this way. What profile photo captures your attention first in the following example?

We would guess that your answer is the lady with the orange background.

The reason she captured your attention is the fact that she implemented steps that more than 80% of LinkedIn users don’t. 

People are more prone to send you a connection request if they like your profile. Furthermore, they will accept your requests frequently. Thus, your success in generating new leads, acquiring new users, and even selling will increase significantly.

Marketers, this goes for the company’s LinkedIn page, as well. Set the high-quality logo as your profile picture, add a high-quality cover photo that mirrors your branding, and import as much info as possible. Lastly, don’t forget to optimize your LinkedIn public URL for SEO, as LinkedIn users and search engines will use it to find your page.

So, to stand our case, optimizing your profile will improve the conversion rate. Thus, it is one of the most important first steps to successful LinkedIn lead generation.

Define Your ICP And Buyer Persona For LinkedIn Lead Generation

Ideal Customer Profile and Buyer Persona are complementary documents that define your perfect customer and their company. In other words, they contain lead specification variables such as job title, the industry they work in, company size, or location. 

You should create your ICP and Buyer Persona based on your current customer data. This way, these documents will contain what type of lead: 

• Has the shortest buying cycle;
• Keeps high retention rate and LTV; 
• Refer your product elsewhere.

If you do not define your ICP and Buyer Persona, you won’t be able to: 

• Prepare your LinkedIn lead generation outreach message that converts; 
• Generate high-quality leads;
• Or create thought-leadership content to appeal to your ideal potential customers. 

In other words, you can’t do all these things because you don’t know who you are doing it for, to begin with. So be sure to define both to make your LinkedIn lead generation strategies more effective.

Become A Thought Leader

Here is an interesting fact for you. Did you know that many decision-makers, 54% of them to be more precise, claim they spend 1+ hour per week reading and reviewing thought-leadership content? 

Being someone others follow to discover more about their position-related news is one of the essential activities of LinkedIn lead generation. Keep in mind that being a thought leader is a continuous process. Once you get started with it, you need to be consistent to grow your network.

The best hook for any thought leader is offering valuable and actionable content to your network. Moreover, you will have better engagement if you add proof of success, for example, the exact results you achieved.

By offering a lot of valuable content, you’re earning people’s trust and building the image of an expert in your field. This will help you gain influence status in your market and get tons of leads through your posts. 

Whatsmore, you will connect with people on a much deeper level by being proactive and initiating different conversations based on your content.

How To Become Thought Leader?

Provide people with actionable steps to implement in their business. In addition, these steps should demonstrate your experience in improving your own or someone else’s business. Or, you could share stories about tools and strategies you used to get incredible results. 

To clarify the previously stated, let’s go through an example.

Why did this post work?

Firstly, the opening line promises a lot and entices readers to discover more about the story.

Secondly, the author showcases the astonishing results and what they could bring to anyone who follows the same steps.

Thirdly, by explaining how the content they share helped his company, the author provides the direct benefit and why people should read the document.

Lastly, they include an alluring CTA so people continue engaging with the post. Moreover, said CTA plays the main role in increasing this post’s tremendous reach (98,910 people).

How?

Well, this post uses the LinkedIn algorithm to its fullest potential. To clarify, when you publish a post, this is what the LinkedIn algorithm does:

• First, it shows your post to a small group of people called a test group;
• Secondly, if the test group engages with your post, LinkedIn starts showing your post to all your 1st-degree connections and their friends;
• Lastly, if the 2nd or 3rd-degree connections engage with it, it will appear in their network too.

That’s how the wider audience can see this post and engage with it. 

What the author asks of people who want to see the guide, in this case, is to first engage with the post by commenting on it. 

That’s why the post became viral. And not only did the post become viral, but it paved the way for network expansion and lead generation. All that from the post alone. Wow! 

Build Your Network And Relationships On LinkedIn

Being a thought leader is all nice and fun. However, you won’t get far unless you use this social media for what it truly is for: building a network and nurturing real relationships with other members. 

There is no workaround for this one. The only way to build a relationship with your network is to reach out and start a conversation with them (read between the lines - LinkedIn outreach). Talk about their work experience, and what they find most challenging or exchange tips. You can also have a digital coffee with them.

That said, establish a habit of finding new people to interact with each day. After all, from honest and good relationships, great customers are born. And that is Social Selling for you folks.

Create A Personalization Spreadsheet

Speaking of Social Selling, you should know that its backbone is actually personalization in communication. Nobody would want to talk to you if you appeared generic or dishonest. Thus, if you wish to do LinkedIn lead generation right, you need to first hyper-personalize your communication on this social media.

So, when you start generating leads on LinkedIn, you need to research what that person is all about so you can start a genuine conversation. The one thing that will help you keep organized in this detective work is a lead personalization spreadsheet. It is a simple yet effective document where you will gather everything about your leads, such as: 

• First and last name; 
• LinkedIn profile URL;
• Company name.
• The topic of the content they published;
• What stood out for you the most from the particular post;
• School they went to;
• Field of study;
• Jobs they posted;
• The technology they use;
• Company growth information;
• Personalized message intro (the message you can create based on above mentioned);

Keep in mind that this spreadsheet functions as an actionable document you can use in your LinkedIn lead generation efforts. Don’t worry. We will explain how it actually becomes actionable, so stay tuned.  

Understand Buying Signals When Doing LinkedIn Lead Generation

If we needed to label the urgency of what you should do before LinkedIn lead generation, this would be Very Urgent on our list. Why? Because marketing and sales change their approaches rapidly. So you must keep up with these changes to stay relevant in the market. 

To be more precise, you need to be aware of this change called buying signals. It is the activity that leads perform to indicate buying intention for a specific product or a service. Or a buying signal can be an event that has taken place within the company that changed the company’s needs. 

For example, a prospect can post about a service explaining their good or bad experience and demonstrate their (dis)satisfaction.

Content marketers and sales are already using buying signals to generate high-quality leads with specific intent because it is a way to faster and better conversion. Consequently, LinkedIn is no exception. 

For example, marketing may notice a buying signal if visitors from LinkedIn go to several pages and end up on a pricing page in one session. Marketing then can post sponsored content on LinkedIn, retargeting those who ended up on a pricing page with another highly-converting landing page.

The sales team, on the other hand, can notice a person liking a case study they shared. After checking if the person has interacted with the business in some other way, they will outreach them on LinkedIn to connect or follow up on the said topic. 

That is what is happening in sales and marketing at the moment. People are figuring out holistic high-intent and signal-based approaches, and you should be one of them. So if you plan to work on LinkedIn lead generation, first learn to detect these signals on LinkedIn and use them to their fullest potential.

Top LinkedIn Lead Generation Strategies To Generate More Leads in 2025

Do not worry if you are still unsure of buying intent and how to create your strategy based on it. We’ve got your back. Some of the LinkedIn lead generation strategies listed below will give you an idea of how to do the prospecting on LinkedIn to detect these signals, find them, influence them, and reach out to your leads at just the right moment. 

1. Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator Search For Lead Generation

LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a platform for sales executives, is a the first method for B2B lead generation. 

Apart from the leads they get from marketers, who use LinkedIn lead gen forms, sales executives can generate their own leads using Sales Navigator’s extensive list of filters.

Sales Navigator offers Lead filters to search for your Buyer Persona and Account filters if you wish to find your ICP.

However, amidst all the filters, we wish to highlight one in particular that every sales expert in SaaS or BaaS companies would like to see - the Technology used filter. This filter allows you to find people who use software similar to yours or even your competitor's products and reach out to them.

Simply go to your Sales Navigator Account filters and find Technology Used or search by keyword.

Once you do, go to that company page and find the decision-maker and reach out to them. 

You can also send them gated content that will act like a LinkedIn lead gen form for your marketing team. They can use it to target the leads with other beneficial content. Whatsmore, you will raise awareness and establish contact with them without pushing them to buy, but rather pulling them towards your company. 

2. Search According To Your ICP Or Buyer Persona

One of the well-established ways for B2B lead generation is to use the LinkedIn search filters to their fullest. 

Dear sales teams, this is where your ICP and Buyer Persona come into play. If you read our guides, then you already know that each piece of information in these documents should be actionable.

Set the filters according to the documents using either LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator accounts to narrow your search. Once you do, copy the search URL. You are going to need it soon.

Trust us. By combining LinkedIn lead generation with your ICP or Buyer Persona, you will notice far better results than before since your leads will be more qualified.

3. Use LinkedIn InMail Templates For Lead Generation

LinkedIn InMails are direct and private messages you send or receive from a LinkedIn account that is not in your network.

InMails is a nifty feature for salespeople to use if they cannot get a hold of the lead using other methods (e.g. by sending a connection request). To clarify, once you send an InMail, the person will receive a notification as they would for regular messages.

If you are unsure what type of message to write to generate leads and get additional contact information via InMail, stop by our other blog and check out 13 LinkedIn InMail examples with a 25% response rate formula.

4. Job Posting Search

If a company publishes a job post, it usually means that they: 

• Got funding for the department;
• Something is not right in the current process;
• Or a person from the team is leaving for some reason.

Whatever happened here, this is your chance to investigate and detect the buying signal. 

In other words, this LinkedIn lead generation strategy focuses on job vacancy search, adding companies to a spreadsheet, and then finding decision-makers and reaching out to them. 

Here is how you can generate leads by discovering specific job posts. For example, let’s say your company outsources sales specialists. To find these job posts, simply type that keyword in the LinkedIn search field. For example, you can search for a Sales Manager and use all filters to get as close to your ICP as possible. 

Once you find the desired company, go to their LinkedIn page and search for decision-makers within those companies. Lastly, write them down in your Personalization Spreadsheet so your outreach can later be more effective.

5. Team Up Sales And Marketing Efforts For Ultimate LinkedIn Lead Generation

We cannot talk about LinkedIn lead generation and miss mentioning the marketing and sales synergy. Today people research services of interest first before contacting sales or support. Thus, it became essential for marketers to cater to these research needs by creating content and working alongside the sales department to generate leads with personalized sponsored content.

On the other hand, salespeople are responsible for inbound contact and outbound activities. They do this through thought leadership, prospecting, and personal contact once the lead lands in the funnel.

Here is an example of how sales and marketing activities should be in synergy.

Thus, one of the main LinkedIn lead generation strategies should be aligning their activities on LinkedIn too. In other words, marketing and sales should:

• Communicate the same benefits and messaging;
• Create gated content;
• Serve personalized content on LinkedIn;
• Address immediate pain points and buying signals. 

It is essential to align your sales and marketing teams since they are equally valuable. In other words, if the sales team targets the leads using buying signals, marketing should do the same as one of their activities. For example, if sales send the leads to a book-a-demo page, marketing can create a LinkedIn lead generation ad to target people who visited the demo page but didn’t convert. 

Note: To reach the ultimate results using lead generation, the best-case practice is to extend your lead research beyond LinkedIn. In other words, discover other places to find B2B sales leads according to buying signals and trace them back to LinkedIn for outreach.

6. Check For Buying Impulses By Searching LinkedIn Hashtags

LinkedIn offers many holistic ways to generate leads. Thus, searching for the leads who shared their pain points or someone who wasn’t satisfied with your competitors via hashtags is one way to do it. 

This strategy is perfect for zeroing in on the leads based on buying signals. However, it might need some time as it requires manual work.

All you need to do is type your competitor’s name to find dissatisfied customers, search for the hashtag. Or explore hashtags to find a person who asked for advice on their pain point. 

Once you do, write down everything you discover in your personalization spreadsheet. This way, you will gather all the information you need to personalize the message for the outreach.

7. Combing Through LinkedIn Groups 

You can also find the leads by searching through LinkedIn groups - the themed places for professionals of all caliber to share their thoughts and experiences or ask questions about the group topic in one place. 

Unfortunately, post-engagement-wise, LinkedIn groups are dead. However, that doesn’t mean that your leads aren’t there or their content. In other words, these groups still hold a place for LinkedIn accounts that joined the group in the first place. So go ahead and find the groups your Buyer Persona would be in. Join those groups and leverage them for LinkedIn lead generation by reaching out to its members or finding a post that demonstrates buying signal or intent.

For example, if your target group is marketers, you can search the group by keyword and find your ideal leads.

From there, you can invite them to connect with you by writing a message such as this:

Hey Aanya,

I’ve seen your interesting posts on the right partnership in digital marketing in the Software/Technology group. So I’m reaching out in hope to connect with you on that topic.

8. LinkedIn Lead Generation Strategy That Includes Targeting Posts 

One way to jump over gatekeepers and reach decision-makers directly is to find content that appeals to them. Let’s take a look at the following post, for example.

If you click the reactions or comments, you will for sure find some decision-makers out there.

This is a valuable LinkedIn lead generation strategy, as you will have the perfect conversation starter once you outreach the decision-maker. For example, your conversation starter, based on the previous example, could be:

Hey Tomer,

I noticed you liked Gary Vaynerchuk’s post on making decisions easier by watching consumer behavior, being customer-centric, and putting in the hours. I wanted to ask you how you make decisions in your company. Are there any obstacles and challenges in what Gary mentioned? Let’s connect on this.

Furthermore, you can check the post reactions a dissatisfied customer wrote on your competitor and generate the people who agreed with their opinion. The possibilities are endless.

9. Generate Leads From Event Attendees List

If you wish to research your leads’ buying signals, you need to start thinking about what LinkedIn events your ideal audience attends. Whatsmore, you can find them all in one place. Attending an event of this kind gives you valuable insight into their problems and needs. 

To target event attendees, you need to first search for the events. Then, choose the event and click the Attend button. 

Next, click the Attendees button and check for the list.

Once the event is live, be sure to write down all the questions, concerns, or comments your leads have so you can personalize your outreach later on.

10. Referral Program For LinkedIn Lead Generation

LinkedIn’s main benefit is networking. So why shouldn’t you use this benefit for LinkedIn lead generation?

The key here is to connect with your customers and offer them an incentive to refer your service to people who might be interested in using it. In other words, you can create a referral program for your current customers. 

Here is an example of how the LinkedIn lead generation referral program works. First, you can offer a 20% discount for 1 month to your customer for every LinkedIn user who comes to your demo. If they find three people, that’s a 20% discount for 3 months. 

What happens, in this case, is that if the recommended leads convert, they can branch out and find other leads for you to contact and convert. 

This referral program acts as word-of-mouth and a passive LinkedIn lead generation. You get leads with the buying signal, and your clients become your advocates. In return, they receive an incentive. Win-Win.

11. Generate Leads From Your LinkedIn Post

Posting content on LinkedIn as a thought leader is the most beneficial way of attracting the leads you wish. The type of content you post is your decision and creative liberty. However, for LinkedIn lead generation purposes, be sure to post in a way to appeal to high-quality leads in a unique and personalized way. 

Once you see the reactions piling in, you can gather the LinkedIn profiles in one place, and outreach them manually or use the LinkedIn automation and Email software to do it for you. But we will talk about this soon.

12. Gated Posts As LinkedIn Lead Generation Strategy

Another thing you can do for LinkedIn lead generation that includes posts is to create a piece intended for acquiring new B2B leads. 

To clarify, B2B marketers publish lead generation campaigns to boost their overall lead generation efforts. The type of sponsored content they publish the most are gated content and LinkedIn lead gen forms with call to action.

Similarly, salespeople can share gated content with their network. The catch is to write about the benefits of said content within your post. At the end of your post, you can share a landing page that leads to a form. Or you can ask the network to leave a comment on your post for two reasons:

• To appeal to LinkedIn’s algorithm and get more eyes on your post (more engagement leads to more impressions);
• And to have a reason to contact the leads directly and keep the conversation going (or use a lead generation tool to do the outreach for you).

Here is an example. Do you remember the post example from the How to become a thought leader section? Yes, that was gated content designed specifically for starting a conversation with new leads who are already interested in seeing the valuable content. What’s best is that they are the ones who initiated the contact. Thus social selling can go upright from here on now.

To post about gated content for LinkedIn, you can share any valuable piece your marketing team prepared for you. Or you can write one from your experience – the choice is yours. However, keep in mind that this content needs to showcase good results as proof, be industry-specific, and aim to cater to your prospects’ pain points. 

Just try it, and you will see why this strategy is one of the best for B2B lead generation. 

13. Linkedin Lead Generation Forms (Lead Gen Forms)

LinkedIn lead gen forms are a type of LinkedIn ad where the leads need to fill in a form to access the promoted material. It is similar to gated content on the website. However, the only difference is that LinkedIn alone hosts the lead gen form.

Once the lead clicks on the call to action, LinkedIn prefills the form, making it easier for leads to submit the information. You can then easily access the leads list, download it, and import it into the preferred automation tool. Or send it to your sales team. 🙂

LinkedIn charges this type of ad by cost per lead. In other words, you pay once the lead fills out the form. However, it can get quite expensive. It all depends on the industry and other parameters, but the projection for 2023 is that the average cost per lead on LinkedIn will be $75. 

In addition, please keep in mind that not all LinkedIn lead generation ads need to have a LinkedIn lead gen form. They can be a single image or a video that leads to another landing page with the form. So let’s talk about them.

14. LinkedIn Lead Generation Ads

As we previously stated, LinkedIn ads are powerful thus, they are one of the best strategies marketers can apply. However, many shy away from launching the ads due to their complexity at first glance.

However, marketing teams, to be fair, LinkedIn lead generation ads are not for a scare. They are just a tad more expensive. 🙂 

So here is how to launch any other type of lead generation ads in 7 simple steps.

7 Steps To Create LinkedIn Lead Generation Ad

Go to the Work section and navigate to the Advertise button.

Next, if you already have your account set up, choose your account and click the Create button and choose Campaign.

Then, select the goal of the campaign. You can choose among awareness, website visits, engagement, video views, and conversions. If, for example, you wish to promote your LinkedIn group or company’s LinkedIn page, choose the engagement campaign type. Or, if you wish to publish the LinkedIn lead gen form, use the Lead generation under Conversion.

Next, define their target audience. While choosing who you wish to see your LinkedIn ads, you can set parameters such as demographics, job titles, or similar parameters. Or, you can opt-in for retargeting your website visitors via LinkedIn Insight Tag. In both cases, do not forget to set conversions to track metrics.

Then, select ad format and placement (should you wish for LinkedIn to distribute your ad elsewhere). Keep in mind that message type ad acts as LinkedIn InMails, and will be labeled as Sponsored (unlike regular InMails). Moreover, the recipient will receive a notification for a message but won’t be able to respond or follow up with you. They can only interact with your call-to-action button.

Your next step is to select the budget and conversion tracking if needed. 

Create Your Ad

Now the real fun begins. Once you click Next, you will arrive at the ad dashboard. To start, click the Create new ad button.

Lastly, create your message, enter the website URL where your gated content is and define a call-to-action button. Here, you are making sure that the core message resonates with the selected target audience, depending on where they are in the buying journey.

What’s more, keep in mind that this interface differs depending on the ad form you choose. Here is how it should look if you wish to create a LinkedIn lead gen form.

Once you insert the ad details, click Create at the bottom right of the screen, and your ad will be ready. You can then track your metrics and success back in the campaign manager.

LinkedIn Lead Generation Ads Examples

One of the shortest and sweetest ads we’ve seen must be the LinkedIn lead gen form that Hubspot published. It carefully emphasizes benefits - everything one needs to promote their business on Instagram and offers a cheat sheet as an easy solution. Moreover, the LinkedIn lead gen form auto-populates the fields, and the leads need only to click the Submit button.

Next on our list is GetResponse, who asked one of their customers to create a short video.

This ad is a win because of three reasons. Firstly, they used video format, which is the preferred format nowadays. Secondly, their customer gives a testimonial, a live word, and their experience with the product. Lastly, they promote their forever-free account, so it’s easier for the leads to sign up without any obligations.

Last, but not least, we have Atlassian’s webinar promotion.

Not every lead generation ad needs to have a service sign-up as the ultimate goal. Webinar sign-ups work for different buying cycles just as well, and Atlassian recognized it.

What is a win in this situation is not the copy above, nor a visual (though it helps), but the wording “on-demand”. You see, many of us do not have time, or have different schedules. So it makes it harder to fit one webinar by the time it is up live. The phrase “on-demand” makes it easier for leads to sign up, as they can watch the webinar whenever they find the time.

15. Use Sales Navigator’s Buyer Intent Feature For Lead Generation

Lastly, Sales Navigator introduced its Buyer Intent feature. It offers insights into accounts showing the level of interest. Buyer Intent helps sales professionals reach out to the right people and companies at the right time.

How it works is that LinkedIn tracks accounts that interacted with your business on many levels (e.g. if the leads viewed your profile or a company page, accepted your request, etc). It then labels them by the level of interest and recommends them to you. It is a perfect way to generate leads that previously showed some level of interest in your company.

However, keep in mind this feature is only available for Sales Navigator Advance and Advance Plus users. Thus if you have a Sales Navigator Core account, you won’t have this functionality.

Best LinkedIn Lead Generation Tools

LinkedIn lead generation tools are automation tools that streamline your lead generation activities on LinkedIn, help you track metrics, and optimize your efforts for success. In other words, these somewhat done-for-you tools automate the processes, such as prospecting and initial outreach, that you’d otherwise do manually. In addition, they help you with time-consuming tasks, thus saving you time to focus on closing the deal.

What’s more, LinkedIn lead generation tools are data-driven. To clarify, they provide you with precise metrics of your activities and show you how to optimize them for better results.

So what tools and platforms are the best for your LinkedIn lead generation efforts?

Campaign Manager For The LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms Ads

Unlike the Sales Navigator platform created for sales executives, LinkedIn’s campaign manager is a tool created for marketers. It basically allows marketing specialists to publish a different kinds of ads on LinkedIn, 

As we previously mentioned, one of the best ad types is the Lead Generation Form ads. However, they are and will be expensive as they directly generate the leads’ contact info on LinkedIn. 

Thus, you are probably wondering if you can use something less expensive. Yes, you can generate leads on LinkedIn via outreach, which is a cheaper method, even if you use the tool with it.

Sales Navigator For Prospecting

We cannot stop gushing about Sales Navigator simply because it offers many possibilities for sales professionals to streamline prospecting efforts as part of LinkedIn lead generation. In other words, Sales Navigator offers:

• 15 different Account filters to narrow down your search according to your ICP;
• Apply 29 Lead filters to find your Buyer Persona;
• Leveraging the Buyer Intent feature to generate high-intent leads;
• Setting alerts for leads or companies to get a notification if something changes;
• Integration with CRMs (such as Salesforce);
• Creating Leads lists to separate and save different decision-makers profiles.  

And these are just to name a few, as there are many other Sales Navigator features for lead generation. However, be aware that the features you'll have at your disposal entirely depend on the type of Sales Navigator plan you use. Thus, read about all the plans and choose the one that will suit you best. 

So, once you find your ideal leads, you can outreach them directly from Sales Navigator or use the LinkedIn automation tool.

LinkedIn Automation Tools Designed For The Outreach

You could outreach the leads manually. Simply define the personalized message according to the info you gathered about them in the document. Then, outreach them one by one via LinkedIn or email. 

However, I have a question: What would happen if you generate hundreds or even thousands of leads? Would outreach them manually and watch over each step of the outreach process for every lead? 

Well, the good news is you don’t have to. You can use a LinkedIn automation tool to do it for you.

LinkedIn automation tools are software that helps you save time by streamlining the most time-consuming part of the outreach process. 

To clarify, let’s take our very own Skylead, a LinkedIn automation and Cold Email software. With Skylead, you can streamline the process of:

1) Finding your target leads;

2) Building your network to accelerate becoming Thought Leader;

3) Outreaching and establishing the first contact with your leads according to their behavior via Smart Sequences (this is one of the best Skylead’s functionalities);

4) Sending native hyper-personalize messages with variables, Images, and GIFs to increase the response rate;

5) Finding and verifying your leads’ email addresses to multichannel your outreach;

What’s more, you can integrate Skylead with your CRM and send data via Zapier webhooks or by using API. The choice is yours.

That said…

How Should You Approach Outreach After Previously-Mentioned LinkedIn Lead Generation Activities?

Our third and final part of the ultimate guide to LinkedIn lead generation will show you how to leverage a LinkedIn automation tool to streamline your outreach process. Moreover, we will cover how to approach your leads and start converting them seamlessly. 

Let’s go!

Save The Time And Outreach Smart

Here is how you can use Skylead to get the outreach done easily and quickly. Firstly, go to your Skylead dashboard and click the Create new campaign button.

Next, choose the lead source, aka where Skylead will pull your leads from. For the sake of this article and to show you how to use a Personalization Spreadsheet, we will choose to upload a CSV file. In addition, don’t forget to name your campaign.

Be sure to create a new CSV file out of the information you gathered about your leads. The only condition here is to insert a person’s LinkedIn profile and/or email address. If you cannot find the person’s email address, you can use one of these ways to find emails yourself or let Skylead take care of that. 

Skylead provides the following native variables you can use to personalize your messages:

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

In addition, you can insert other information in columns, such as the topic of the article they wrote, and Skylead will recognize them as custom variables. In other words, this column becomes actionable data you will use in your outreach. 

For example, your CSV file can end up looking something like this:

Once you click next, set up your additional campaign settings and when you wish to launch your campaign.

Smart Sequence Creation

Welcome to the Smart Sequence builder page. Here, you need to create an action path that Skylead will follow once you launch the campaign. This action path (Smart Sequence) will observe the leads’ behavior and act accordingly until they respond to your outreach. 

Simply drag and drop actions and use different conditions based on their behavior to maximize getting in touch with your leads.

Do not forget to write personalized messages for an invite to connect, InMail, LinkedIn, or Email message steps. 

The good practice here is to connect with your leads on a deeper level. So, craft your outreach messages to be as genuine as possible. For example, if you wish to send an invite to connect, try one of our invite-to-connect templates with up to a 78% acceptance rate, such as:

Hello {{firstName}},

I’ve noticed you have {{MutualConnectionName}} in your network. I worked with them at {{CompanyName}} a while back. I really loved {{whatYouLovedAboutMutualConnection}}.

That said, I see that we are both in the {{IndustryName}} industry and would love to have you in my network. 

Or, if for example, a lead doesn’t respond, get inspired by our follow up after no response templates and write something thematic like:

Hey {{firstName}},

 I’ve just seen your fantastic LinkedIn post on {{Topic}}. The thing that really resonated with me was {{Quote}}. 
 It would be great to hear more about how your business operates in this regard and also share some of my tips if you’re up for it. 

 What do you say? Would you like to chat about this?

After you define all the steps and messages, you can finalize the process by clicking the Start campaign button and your campaign is ready. Easy peasy.

Frequently asked questions about Linkedin Lead Generation

Oh, what a journey has been so far, hasn’t it? However, we still want to cover everything there is to know about LinkedIn lead generation. Therefore, here are a couple of FaQs to sum up LinkedIn lead generation.

What specific challenges do companies face when implementing these strategies, and how can they overcome them?

Companies may face challenges like creating engaging content and measuring ROI. Overcoming these involves using analytics for insights and continuously refining strategies based on performance data.

How do these lead generation strategies integrate with other marketing tools and platforms for a cohesive campaign?

Integration with other sales and marketing tools can be achieved through CRM systems and marketing automation platforms, ensuring a seamless flow of lead data and consistent messaging across channels.

Can small businesses or solo entrepreneurs effectively implement these strategies on a limited budget, and if so, how?

Small businesses and solo entrepreneurs can effectively use these strategies by focusing on highly targeted outreach and leveraging free or low-cost tools available on LinkedIn for engagement and networking. They can also get a LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software that has an excellent price-to-feature ratio, like Skylead.

Which LinkedIn Ad Format Is The Best For Lead Generation?

The LinkedIn ad format best for lead generation is a Single Image ad because it looks organic with other content you see in the newsfeed. Moreover, if combined with Lead gen form, it can bring amazing results. The next best thing is to promote gated content on your website. 

How Do I Target A Lead On LinkedIn?

You can target leads with your ads by using LinkedIn campaign manager. All you need to do is to define demographics, firmographics, and other parameters of your target audience or choose to retarget your website visitors via LinkedIn Insight Tag. Then create an ad, and publish it.

How Do I Generate B2B Leads On LinkedIn?

You can generate B2B leads on LinkedIn by using any of the strategies mentioned in this article, such as posting gated content, using lead generation form ads, and generating leads from event attendees. Moreover, you can generate leads from job postings, leveraging Sales Navigator’s buying intent feature, and more.

Why Is LinkedIn Best For Lead Generation?

LinkedIn is best for lead generation because it’s the #1 professional network in the world. According to LinkedIn, lead conversion rates are 3x higher than any other social media. Moreover, 4 out of 5 LinkedIn users drive certain business decisions and have 2x buying power of the average web audience. 

Ready To Scale Up Your LinkedIn Lead Generation?

LinkedIn is the #1 place to generate new leads by creating valuable content and reaching out to new connections.

However, before you get started with LinkedIn lead generation, you need to make sure to:

• Create a highly converting LinkedIn profile;
• Define your ICP and Buyer Persona;
• Become a thought leader;
• Build your network and relationship regularly;
• Create a personalization spreadsheet;
• Learn more and understand buying signals.

Once you do, you can apply one or all LinkedIn lead generation strategies to generate leads.

LinkedIn lead generation works best if you combine it with other lead generation methods outside of LinkedIn and then circle back to LinkedIn to outreach them.

However, you don’t have to do the outreach alone. Skylead can help you out with that. So come by, check out Skylead, and start your 7-day Free Trial!

It’s 2025, and LinkedIn is still the most essential and fastest-growing professional network globally. As such, it is full of potential clients, connections, and different growth opportunities. 

It takes only one wrong step to lose the deal of a lifetime or make a wrong impression that could cost you money and your business image. That’s why proper professional etiquette is important for building and maintaining your brand.

To ensure this doesn’t happen to you, we decided to share how to network on LinkedIn and some dos and don’ts from our own experience. 

How to network on LinkedIn

Networking on LinkedIn is a powerful tool for building professional relationships, expanding your career opportunities, and staying updated in your industry. And we, as a company, can vouch for that.

We’ve been in the industry for 5 years, and LinkedIn is our second nature. For example, our CEO, Relja Denic, first started networking on LinkedIn in 2019. Since then, he managed to gain about 25K connections and 22K followers. Not to mention our other crew members. 

That said, here are the actions that will help you understand how to network on LinkedIn.

#1 Connect with people from your area of expertise

To expand your network on LinkedIn, the first choice would be to find people whose occupation is the same or similar to yours. You can exchange tips, tricks, and valuable resources. 

That said, your connection request message can sound something like this:

Hey {{firstName}},

I saw that you are also {{Occupation}} and wanted to connect with you and exchange our experience, tips, and tricks. 😊

#2 Connect with your target audience

One of the best ways to network on LinkedIn and research your market is to ask your target leads yourself. Don’t be afraid of how to network on LinkedIn with them. Simply say you’re exploring their position and current challenges. Like this:

Hey {{firstName}},

I noticed you work as {{Occupation}}. I am currently researching {{Occupation}}’s challenges and pain points, so I was wondering if you’d like to connect and chat about it. 😊 

#3 Attend LinkedIn events and mingle

Another way to network on LinkedIn is to attend LinkedIn events and chat with other attendees. To find a list of attendees, apply for the event yourself by clicking the Attend button.

Then, hit Attendees to get a list of all the people who are attending the event. 

You can then send them a connection request such as this one:

Hey {{firstName}},

I noticed you’re also attending {{eventName}}. I’d love to connect and chat about our experience and the value we get from there! 

Or you can simply send them a message from the Networking tab.

#4 Join LinkedIn groups

LinkedIn groups are considered to have no engagement whatsoever. However, that doesn’t stop you from approaching each member individually and genuinely connecting. That said, join the LinkedIn group that aligns with your and your potential client’s interests and industry. 

Being part of a LinkedIn group whose members are from the same industry as you gives you a chance to learn from other people’s experiences, know what your competitors are up to, and connect with your colleagues. 

On the other hand, being part of a LinkedIn group whose members are your potential clients helps you understand their needs, concerns, and what they expect from certain products or services (that might be the ones you are offering).

In any case, it’s a win-win situation!

Extra tip: You can also target members of a specific LinkedIn group if you upgrade your LinkedIn plan to Sales Navigator. 

That said, to get to the members’ list, hit Show All in the upper right corner.

Then, send them a message explaining why you wish to connect with them. If, for example you joined a group with people from your industry, give this message a go:

Hello {{firstName}}, 

I noticed you are also a member of {{groupName}}. I would love to connect with you since I can see we're both in the {{industry}}.

#5 Create content and engage with people who comment 

If you’re passionate about creating and posting content on LinkedIn, you should know that this can be another form of networking on LinkedIn. For example, a 1st-degree connection can comment on your post. In return, you can like their comment, respond, or message them and continue the conversation.

In addition, if your post reaches your 2nd or 3rd-degree connections and they comment or like a post, send them a connection request. However, be sure that your connection message is not out of context. 

6 dos for networking on LinkedIn 

Personalize invites to connect 

LinkedIn is a place to network, but that doesn’t imply randomly adding anyone you run into. 

It is rather a platform for meaningful business connections and as such it is highly recommended to reach out to people you either know or are interrelated with due to the nature of your industry.

Either way, it is always a good practice to send a personalized Invite to Connect. 

Firstly, if you are reaching out to someone you don’t know, why risk being banned on LinkedIn in case they click on the I don’t know this person option? A certain number of these will get you restricted, you know? 

Secondly, many people on LinkedIn appreciate Invites to Connect with an explanation of why they should connect with you. It doesn’t need to be a full-on sales pitch, but rather an interest or a reference in common. This is why a well-planned LinkedIn prospecting and targeting people attending the same event or those who are members of the same LinkedIn group can work so well to your advantage. 

If you follow one simple tip such as this one, you will significantly increase your success on LinkedIn and stand out from numerous people who don’t consider it at all. 

Complete your LinkedIn profile 

Most people will not reply if your LinkedIn profile is incomplete. Or if they’re nice, they will do it reluctantly. This is because without a profile picture, experience, and LinkedIn summary, nobody can get an entire picture of who you are and what you’re about, and they would think the profile is fake. That said, to keep your integrity, finish up your entire LinkedIn profile.

Respond promptly 

Just like with Emails, responding promptly to your Messages, Invites to Connect, and LinkedIn InMails is a sign of professionalism.

Good etiquette implies replying within 24 h.

Of course, the timeframe within which you answer is equally important to the content and tone of your message. 

Any of the people you are responding to might be your future client, collaborator, or colleague. Make informed decisions and give confirmed information. 

This way you will build the image of a trustworthy, knowledgeable professional with integrity. 

And that’s what we all want, don’t we? 

Introduce people 

Introducing connections to each other creates positive social capital for you.

It shows that you genuinely care about people making meaningful connections that could benefit the industry. 

Furthermore, a highly appreciated gesture of this kind will invoke the law of reciprocity. 

Namely, your connections will most likely return the favor by introducing you to other professionals that are, in their opinion, good for you. 

There is no better way of growing your business network than through positive word of mouth. Remember that the best advertising for business is free. But it takes time to build trusted and loyal connections. 

So, stick to our dos over here. 

Stay top of mind

Your lone presence on LinkedIn is not enough for staying top of mind of your connections. 

• Post quality content. 
• Respond promptly to Messages, Invites to Connect, and InMails.
• Congratulate people on promotions and new jobs in a professional manner, while still showing that you genuinely care. 
• Respond to comments and reactions to your posts and tag people you are replying to. 
• Post authentic responses to the most interesting discussions. 
• Join LinkedIn groups. 

Check your SSI

If you run out of networking ideas, check your LinkedIn Social Selling Index Score. It will show you your overall networking status and what networking area you can improve. 

5 don’ts for networking on LinkedIn 

LinkedIn is NOT Tinder

Avoid adding people just because you like their looks. 

Avoid adding people just because. 

Don’t start messages with “Hello Dear”, give compliments that are not business-related or argued, or send any type of messages with a strong personal note. 

Not only will you be ignored, but you will be marked as a spammer, and most likely earn a reputation as a weirdo. 

News travels fast. 

People will not be eager to connect with you, let alone do any business with you. 

Don’t spam people 

Sending irrelevant, long, impersonal messages that don’t bring anything to any of the sides involved cannot earn you a good reputation. 

It’s like a story of a girl who cried wolf. 

If you keep sending messages that are only spamming other users, once you send something meaningful, nobody will be interested in reading it or answering back. 

Save your Messages and InMails for significant business outreach and communication. 

Your contacts will appreciate hearing from you less but leading insightful conversations regarding your industries or any other business-related topic. 

Don’t post self-serving content 

Whether sharing content or replying to messages or a discussion, make sure to provide value first and foremost. 

The biggest mistake on LinkedIn is the misconception that people care about what you have to say. They only care about finding solutions to their problems or gaining valuable insights into the industry trends and demands. That’s all. 

There is always a way of giving something to your readers while managing to promote your product or services. 

Don’t ignore job proposal & invitations

Even if you are satisfied with your current job, you never know what the future holds. 

Don’t burn bridges. 

Answer to any job or business proposal you might receive. Be polite and professional. 

Firstly, you don’t know if life will take you in that direction. The offered position might not even be in line with your future aspirations. However, have in mind that that company has other departments as well. 

Secondly, the world is small. The Human Resources Manager that contacted you for that particular job might be the Human Resources Manager for another company in no time. And they will remember if you ignored or were impolite when they reached out. 

The same applies to LinkedIn users who write to you regarding business opportunities and collaboration. Maybe you are not interested at the moment, but that’s for sure not the reason not to keep the door open for future contact. 

Don’t talk negative about competitors

Social media can be such a negative space. 

People have had it enough already. 

Not only does everyone want to belong to a positive, proactive, and like-minded community, but posting negatively about your competition is a sign of bad sportsmanship. 

Did you know that when you are talking badly about someone, people who are listening are subconsciously attributing all the negative features to you? 

Treat others with respect just as you would like to be treated.

Also, have in mind that even when you are commenting on behalf of yourself, people might ascribe your opinion to the general attitude of the company you are currently working for. Be careful about it, especially on LinkedIn which is, as we said before, a professional network. 

You are representing your brand, your company, and the industry at the same time. 

Frequently asked questions

How can one measure the effectiveness of their LinkedIn networking efforts beyond the Social Selling Index Score mentioned in the article?

Measuring the effectiveness of LinkedIn networking extends beyond the Social Selling Index Score through the analysis of connection growth rate, the relevance of new connections in your industry, engagement (likes, comments, shares) on your content, and direct feedback from your network, reflecting the value and impact of your networking efforts.

What specific strategies can be used to recover from a negative impression or mistake made while networking on LinkedIn?

Recovering from a negative impression on LinkedIn involves acknowledging the mistake directly if it affected specific individuals, demonstrating professionalism in your response, and consistently sharing valuable content to rebuild your reputation. Engaging positively with the community and offering genuine contributions can gradually restore trust and credibility.

Are there any tools or features within LinkedIn that can help automate or facilitate networking activities without violating LinkedIn's policies on automation and spam?

LinkedIn offers several tools to streamline networking without breaching its policies, such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator for targeted connections and insights, and LinkedIn Learning for improving your skills and offering value to your network. However, you can use LinkedIn automation tools to build your network while respecting LinkedIn’s policies.

Now you know how to network on LinkedIn. Are you ready for it?

Networking, brand engagement, and generating leads on LinkedIn are the activities that are strongest than they have ever been. 

Therefore, LinkedIn is not just your online resume. 

It reflects your entire way of doing business and communicating with your leads and customers. 

Everything that happens on LinkedIn has consequences, positive or negative, that you have to be ready to take responsibility for. 

Since it’s better to be safe than sorry, stick to our tips and you will be just fine.