The truth? Most LinkedIn outreach feels like unsolicited messaging. When you receive generic messages from people you’ve never interacted with, it’s easy to ignore them. In our customer conversations, we hear that cold InMails often lead to acceptance rates around 15–20%.
You can raise acceptance and reply rates by warming prospects first, often without increasing volume. At PhantomBuster, we’ve seen how adding just a touch of warmth to your outreach can transform cold prospects into meaningful connections, and connections into paying customers.
Nathan Guillaumin, PhantomBuster Product Expert:“I’ve been helping users launch flows with social warming actions and noticing a big switch in results—from 10% acceptance rates to up to 50% because you’ve sufficiently warmed up your leads during some days or weeks where they’ve seen your name and profile.”
Cold outreach: Why it struggles
Cold outreach isn’t inherently bad. It’s fast, scalable, and still fills pipelines. But there are common mistakes that make cold prospects tune out:
- Generic messages that feel copy-pasted.
- No prior connection or engagement.
- Leading with a sales pitch instead of value.
- No mutual connections or references to shared context.
Cold outreach typically feels like a stranger showing up uninvited. In a digital world where attention is scarce, prospects are more selective about who they let into their networks, often preferring existing connections.
Warm outreach: Why it works
Warm outreach changes the order: engage first, ask second. It builds on prior contact, mutual connections, or light engagement before the ask. Instead of a cold message, you create the impression of an established connection.
Warm outreach often includes:
- Engaging with a recent LinkedIn post.
- Referencing a mutual connection.
- Sending warm emails that follow from a webinar, lead magnet, or online community.
- Crafting a personalized message with an opening line tied to a pain point or previously shown interest.
This isn’t about tricking prospects. It’s about respectful, compliant engagement: add value first, personalize, and keep actions to a human pace.
Social warming on LinkedIn: A practical PhantomBuster outreach strategy
LinkedIn is a top channel for sales outreach, but it’s crowded. Sales professionals, recruiters, and marketers all compete for attention. Social warming helps you get noticed by the right prospects.
Here’s the integrated PhantomBuster workflow our community uses to build warm outreach sequences that raise acceptance and reply rates while reducing manual work:
Step 1: Identify your target audience
- First, you need to know who your ideal customers are. Use PhantomBuster’s LinkedIn Search Export automation to extract Sales Navigator results into a Google Sheet or your CRM.
- The automation sends the list directly to a Google Sheet, then tag your top prospects for the next step.
Step 2: Show interest with light touches
- Visit their LinkedIn profile: They’ll see you in their “Who viewed your profile” list.
- Engage with their content: A thoughtful like or a relevant comment on a recent post shows you’re paying attention.
- Follow them: This keeps you visible in their feed and shows genuine interest.
💡 Pro Tip: Keep the message concise. Even a short “Congrats on the new position!” works. Use PhantomBuster’s AI Enricher to suggest a relevant opener from their recent activity.
Step 3: Personalize your outreach
This is where you really stand out. Use PhantomBuster’s LinkedIn Activity Extractor automation to collect recent posts and comments.
Then reference it in your opening line. For example:
“I saw your recent post about scaling SaaS sales, great insight!”
This simple step makes your message personal, not just another cold, generic pitch.
Step 4: Send the connection request
- After a couple of light touches, use PhantomBuster’s LinkedIn Network Booster automation to send a connection request with a short note.
- Avoid common mistakes like generic “I’d like to connect.” Instead, tie it back to your previous engagement:
“I enjoyed your post on [topic], would love to connect.”
Step 5: Follow up naturally
- Once they accept, don’t immediately jump into a sales pitch.
- Trigger a follow-up in the same workflow. Use chatGPT to personalize a helpful resource or case study based on their recent activity (data you can export from PhantomBuster into a csv).
- This is how you turn a cold prospect into a warm lead and a simple connection into a potential client.
Safe limits and best practices
Many sales professionals ask us how to automate responsibly while staying compliant with LinkedIn’s guidelines. LinkedIn doesn’t publish official limits, but we recommend following responsible automation principles.
Here’s how to keep your outreach safe and effective:
- Start small and ramp gradually: Begin with low volumes and increase slowly over weeks, not days.
- Space actions throughout the day: Randomize timing to mimic human behavior.
- Personalize every step: Avoid mass messaging. Quality beats quantity.
- Vary your actions: Mix profile visits, likes, comments, and connection requests.
- Prioritize relevance over volume: Target the right prospects, not the most prospects.
- Stop immediately if you see warning signals: LinkedIn will notify you if something looks off.
The key is to keep actions to a human pace, randomize timing, and focus on quality over quantity. Start small, increase gradually, and stop immediately if you see warning signals.
Nathan Guillaumin, PhantomBuster Product Expert:“When you launch automations, try always to be way lower than the limits—stay at 100 instead of 150 (if this is the limit). It will help you on the long run not to be flagged by LinkedIn.”
Real-world results
Our customers report consistently higher response rates when switching from cold to warm outreach. Teams who engage first often see better acceptance rates and more meaningful conversations.
Common outcomes include:
- Higher acceptance rates: Warming prospects before connecting leads to more accepted requests.
- More replies referencing prior engagement: “Thanks for liking my post,” or “I saw your comment the other day.”
- Better engagement on follow-ups: Potential leads are more open to personalized communication.
We leverage PhantomBuster to strategically build and cultivate relationships with targeted personas for our B2B influencers. The platform enables us to precisely identify prospects by their LinkedIn job titles and roles, and then create personalized connection requests at scale. Our results speak volumes—acceptance rates that are 5-10x higher than other approaches. – Patrick Spencer, VP at Kiteworks“
PhantomBuster links search, engagement, AI enrichment, and connection requests in one workflow, so your invite lands after meaningful interactions.
Warm outreach in practice: The 3-step funnel
Here’s how to structure your next LinkedIn campaign using PhantomBuster’s integrated workflow:
- Engage with a recent post (like, comment, follow).
- Visit their profile to appear in their notifications.
- Send a personalized connection request with a short, specific message.
This three-step process is a strong foundation, especially when you automate the heavy lifting with PhantomBuster and personalize each step.
FAQs
What is social warming?
Social warming builds familiarity before the ask: engage with a post, visit the profile, then send a short, specific connection note. Think of it as a digital handshake. Instead of appearing as a stranger, you establish a connection to warm up the prospect, so when your request arrives, your name rings a bell.
What is the difference between warm outreach and cold outreach?
Cold outreach involves contacting prospects with no prior connection, like cold emails, cold calls, or generic LinkedIn messages. Warm outreach builds familiarity first by engaging with LinkedIn content, referencing mutual connections, or providing value. Warm outreach typically achieves higher response rates and better conversion rates.
How long should I warm up a prospect before sending a connection request?
Most sales professionals in our community engage once or twice (like, comment, profile visit) before sending a request, which can significantly improve acceptance rates. The goal is to establish trust without dragging the process out for weeks.
Can warm outreach be automated?
Yes. PhantomBuster’s pre-built automations can visit profiles, like or comment responsibly, and personalize messages at scale with AI Enricher, all in one workflow. The key is to keep actions safe, human-like, and authentic.
Is warm outreach only for LinkedIn?
Not at all. The same principles apply across social media platforms and email. For example, a warm email might follow a webinar signup or interaction in an online community. The key is prior contact and personalized communication.
What are common mistakes to avoid in warm outreach?
- Using generic messages even after warming up.
- Jumping straight into a sales pitch instead of providing value.
- Automating at an inhuman pace.
- Forgetting to follow up. Nurturing relationships requires consistency.
Final thoughts: Warm beats cold most of the time
Outreach is no longer just about scale. It’s about relationship building and addressing pain points. Cold emails and cold calls have their place, but without personalization and context, they convert far less often.
Warm outreach combines the reach of digital communication with the familiarity of existing relationships, resulting in higher response rates, better engagement, and ultimately, more paying customers.
Whether you’re a recruiter sourcing candidates, a SaaS company building a sales pipeline, or a marketer nurturing relationships on social media platforms, warm outreach is the smarter path.
With PhantomBuster’s sales prospecting automation platform, you can chain pre-built automations—LinkedIn Search Export, LinkedIn Activity Extractor, AI Enricher, and Network Booster—to warm prospects, personalize messages, and increase acceptance and reply rates.
👉 Ready to warm up your LinkedIn outreach? Start your free trial of PhantomBuster today.