Outreach channels

Capability Reviewed · not yet fact-checked

At a glance

Summary

Reply runs LinkedIn as an automated channel inside sequences. Nine automatic step types cover the network-building ladder — view a profile, like recent posts, follow, endorse skills, send a connection request, then message, InMail, voice message, or AI voice message — with per-account safety limits that randomize daily volume to look natural. Connection acceptance is tracked as a status you can filter and branch on, and five action types can also be sent directly from a contact card without any sequence.

Problems it solves

• LinkedIn touches executed on time, at safe volume, without a person clicking through profiles
• Multichannel sequences where LinkedIn warms up or follows up on email — see Run multichannel outreach
• Knowing who accepted a connection request, and routing them differently when they did
• Voice outreach at scale through AI-generated voice messages in your own voice profile

What Reply can do

• Automate nine LinkedIn step types: Message, Connect, InMail, View Profile, Like Recent Posts, Endorse Skills, Follow Profile, Voice Message, and AI Voice Message
• Enforce per-account safety limits — dynamic daily ranges (default 25–35 for most actions, 35–50 for messages) or a static cap (default 30), adjustable up to 100 per action type
• Skip steps intelligently: Connect is skipped for existing connections, Message for non-connections, InMail for contacts whose privacy settings forbid it — the contact moves to the next step
• Track connection request statuses (Unchecked, Pending, Connected, Not Connected, Connection forbidden, Invalid URL, Revoked) and detect acceptance across all LinkedIn accounts connected to the team
• Send InMail with a subject and body to contacts outside your network via a Sales Navigator subscription, with optional automatic skipping when InMail credits run out, and branch the sequence on InMail status (Accepted, Rejected, Set, Not Set)
• Send 60-second voice messages — uploaded or recorded — and AI voice messages generated from text in a cloned voice profile, with per-account default voices and a team pronunciation dictionary
• A/B test any automatic step with a text body or recording — variants are distributed evenly, with a per-variant breakdown in sequence stats
• Personalize every step with variables and templates; messages support links, pictures, and one attachment up to 3 MB
• Preview every automatic step before launch — the Preview tab renders messages, connection requests, and InMails with variables applied, highlights missing variable values in red, and warns when a message exceeds the character limit after personalization
• Detect the character limit from the connected account's LinkedIn subscription — 300 characters on paid plans such as Sales Navigator and Premium, 200 on free plans — and edit the previewed text in place, including InMail subject lines
• Detect LinkedIn replies to automatic steps, both text and voice, normally within 1–5 minutes, set the contact to Replied, and surface the thread in the Inbox under the LinkedIn channel
• Insert expressive audio tags into an AI voice script with Enhance with AI, then Keep or Undo the result
• Send one-off direct LinkedIn actions (Connection Request, InMail, Message, Voice Message, AI Voice Message) from a contact card without enrolling the contact in a sequence
• Connect LinkedIn accounts three ways — session cookie via the Findy extension, credentials, or a shareable invite link for accounts you do not have direct access to
• Convert Sales Navigator lead links to public profile links automatically when a step runs

What Reply cannot do

• Send automatic messages to contacts who are not 1st-degree connections — include a Connect step first
• Send InMail from Free, Premium, or Recruiter subscriptions — only Sales Navigator is supported, and LinkedIn InMail credits must be available
• Exceed 100 actions per day per action type, or apply a limit change same-day — new limits start the next day
• Resend a revoked connection request to the same person for up to 3 weeks
• A/B test manual LinkedIn tasks — variants apply to automatic steps only
• Guarantee full automation on non-English LinkedIn interfaces — set the LinkedIn site language to English
• Attach files to connection requests, InMail, or voice messages — the attachment button in LinkedIn Preview appears only on automatic Message steps
• Voice a URL naturally in an AI voice message — links do not sound natural read aloud and break the flow, so keep them out of the script

Required inputs

Contacts with valid LinkedIn profile URLs; a connected LinkedIn account assigned to the sequence; message texts or voice recordings per step; for InMail, an active Sales Navigator subscription; for AI voice messages, a voice profile.

Produced outputs

Executed LinkedIn actions with per-contact activity records, connection request statuses you can filter and branch on, background-collected profile data (see Data enrichment), and per-step, per-variant LinkedIn statistics in sequence stats and reports.

Use Reply when

• You want LinkedIn and email coordinated in one sequence with shared stopping rules
• You need safe daily volumes enforced per account, with randomized ranges rather than a flat robotic count
• You branch outreach on real signals — connection accepted, InMail rejected — instead of blind delays

Do not use Reply when

• Your targets rarely use LinkedIn — run email outreach and calls instead
• You need bulk one-off LinkedIn blasts outside sequences — direct actions send to one contact at a time by design

What you still need to build

• The connection-request and message copy that earns acceptance — automation delivers it, it does not write your positioning (unless you use the AI SDR)
• Your escalation ladder — which soft touches (view, like, follow) precede a request, and when

capability: linkedin_outreach
supported: true
interfaces:
  product_ui: live
  api: live
  mcp: live
  cli: not-verified
required_objects:
  - contact
  - sequence
  - linkedin_account
side_effects:
  - executes_linkedin_actions
  - creates_tasks
  - updates_statistics
human_approval_recommended: true

Limits

• Suggested daily ranges: 25–35 for connections, profile views, post likes, InMails, detections, revoke connections, endorse skills, and follow profile; 35–50 for messages
• Static limit default: 30 per action type; maximum 100 per action type per day; changes take effect the next day
• Message body up to 8,000 symbols; connection request note up to 300 symbols; InMail subject up to 200 characters
• Voice messages up to 60 seconds — 20–40 seconds is the documented target for AI voice; one attachment per message, 3 MB maximum
• LinkedIn Preview reads the note limit from the connected account's subscription: 300 characters on paid LinkedIn plans, 200 on free plans
• LinkedIn reply detection normally completes in 1–5 minutes and covers text and voice replies
• Safety limits cover automatic steps only — manual actions and direct contact-card actions are not counted
• Full table: Limits

FAQ

What happens when a daily LinkedIn limit is reached?

Reply pauses that action type for the rest of the day and notes it in the Sequence → Log tab. Everything resets the next day — no permanent stop, no account flag from Reply's side. See Sequence execution.

How does Reply know a connection request was accepted?

Acceptance detection runs across all LinkedIn accounts connected to the team and matches on the contact's profile URL — the contact does not need to be assigned to the account that accepted. The status updates to Connected, the contact proceeds to the next LinkedIn step, and the accepting account is named in the contact's activity log.

Can I send a LinkedIn action without a sequence?

Yes. From the contact card, choose Send via LinkedIn: Connection Request, InMail, Message, Voice Message, or AI Voice Message. Direct actions do not count toward safety limits and do not touch sequence statistics; replies land in the Inbox like any other conversation.

Where do LinkedIn replies show up?

Reply detects a response to an automatic LinkedIn step — text or voice — normally within 1–5 minutes and assigns the contact the Replied status. Three surfaces show it: the People page filtered on the Replied by LinkedIn property set to True, the contact's Activity tab for the message body, and the Inbox with the channel selector switched from All Channels to LinkedIn.

What does LinkedIn Preview check before a step runs?

The Preview tab, opened while you build the sequence steps, renders each automatic message, connection request, and InMail with variables applied. Missing variable values are highlighted in red, and the character limit is detected from the connected account's LinkedIn subscription — 300 characters on paid plans such as Sales Navigator and Premium, 200 on free plans — so a note that only goes over length after personalization is caught before launch. Text is editable in place, including InMail subject lines. The attachment button appears only on automatic Message steps, because connection requests, InMails, and voice messages cannot carry files.

How do I make an AI voice message sound human?

Write the script the way you speak. The documented guidance: aim for 20–40 seconds within LinkedIn's 60-second ceiling, keep sentences short, use contractions, and add breaks with "…", "–", or a [pause] tag. Spell out symbols and abbreviations — percent, dollars, million, thousand — instead of %, $, m, and k, and leave links out, since they do not read aloud naturally. Inline audio tags such as [laughing], [chuckles], [whisper], [inhales deeply], [exhales sharply], [slowly], and [fast] add expression; one or two per message is the documented ceiling, because overuse sounds unnatural. Enhance with AI inserts those tags for you, with Keep and Undo to accept or discard the result. For company or product names the voice engine keeps mispronouncing, add them to the pronunciation dictionary under Settings → Voices instead of respelling them in every message.

Do I need Sales Navigator?

Only for InMail steps and the Sales-Navigator-based prospect import. Connection requests, messages, views, likes, endorsements, follows, and voice messages work without it. Sending InMail also consumes LinkedIn InMail credits — except to Open Profile members, which are free and still send when credits run out.

Related

• Run multichannel outreach — the full workflow
• Sequence steps · Sequences
• Sequence execution · Reply detection
• Multichannel outreach
• Prospect search — Sales Navigator imports

Build with Reply

• REST API: docs.reply.io — LinkedIn account and sequence endpoints
• MCP: agents.reply.io/mcp — LinkedIn account management and safety-limit operations