Outreach glossary
Definitions and practical decisions for audience research, messaging, account operations, and campaign measurement.
59 of 59 terms
0-9
- 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree connections
- LinkedIn's distance labels: 1st = connected to you, 2nd = connected to your connections, 3rd = beyond that. Each degree changes what outreach is possible and how warm it lands.
A
- AI SDR
- Software that performs sales-development tasks such as prospect research, drafting, outreach, and follow-up. The scope of automation and human review varies by product and workflow.
- AI slop
- Low-effort AI-generated content and outreach: template mail with a first-name merge, generic flattery, obviously machine-written notes. LinkedIn now lets users flag it with a dedicated report option.
- Acceptance rate
- The proportion of connection requests accepted within a stated cohort and observation window. Always name the denominator and allow time for pending invitations to mature.
- Account restriction
- A limitation LinkedIn places on an account or one of its features. Its scope, duration, and recovery requirements depend on the account's restriction notice.
- Agent desk
- A workflow in which AI assistants coordinate research, qualification, drafting, and outreach tasks under an operator's direction.
- Agent-native
- Software designed to be operated by an AI agent through typed tools, rather than by a human through a dashboard: the interface is the protocol, not the UI.
- Approval gate
- A hard checkpoint in an automated flow where execution stops until a human decides: distinct from a notification, which informs without stopping anything.
- Approval queue
- A holding area for drafts awaiting review before execution. It is distinct from a sending queue, where authorized work is waiting to run.
B
- Ban rate
- A measure of account restrictions over a stated observation window. Specify whether it counts affected accounts or restriction incidents, and disclose the denominator.
- Behavioral detection
- The use of activity patterns to identify possible abuse or unauthorized automation. LinkedIn does not publish a complete account-scoring formula.
- Buying signal
- An observable event suggesting a company or person may be in-market: hiring for relevant roles, raising funding, adopting adjacent tooling, or engaging with the problem space publicly.
C
- Cadence
- The rhythm of an outreach sequence: how many touches, over how many days, on which channels. Cold LinkedIn cadences typically run 3–5 touches across two weeks.
- Cloud automation vs. browser extension
- The two architectures of LinkedIn automation: tools that run in managed cloud sessions versus tools that inject into your own browser. In 2026's enforcement climate, the distinction is the first safety question.
- Cold outreach
- Contacting people who don't know you yet: on LinkedIn, by invite, message, or InMail. Still alive in 2026, but only the researched kind survives inbox saturation.
- Company collision rule
- An outreach coordination policy that limits overlapping contact with the same company, for example by assigning one sender during a chosen period.
- Connection graph
- Your accumulated LinkedIn network as an asset: the connections, their connections, and the warm paths between you and anyone you'd want to reach.
- Connection request note
- The optional personalized message attached to a LinkedIn invitation. Character limits and note allowances depend on the account and LinkedIn's current rules.
D
- Dedicated IP / session
- Running each LinkedIn account through its own stable cloud session and IP address, rather than shared pools: so the account's 'location' looks consistent and unshared.
- Do-not-contact list
- The explicit registry of people and companies your outreach must never touch: customers, partners, competitors, investors, people who said stop, and anyone who'd make a screenshot expensive.
- Dogfooding
- Using your own product to run your own operation: in outbound tooling, selling the tool with campaigns the tool itself sends.
E
- Enrichment
- Filling in the facts about a person or company that the original list didn't carry: role, seniority, funding, headcount growth, verified email: from data providers or research.
- Envelope response
- A consistent structured reply shape from every tool call: success flag, data, a one-line summary, notable signals, and durable learnings: so an agent always knows what happened and what deserves attention.
F
- Follow-up sequence
- The planned messages after the first touch: classically an invite, an acceptance-gated opener, then two or three spaced follow-ups over 10–14 days.
- Founding cohort
- A product's first committed users, recruited with preferential terms: early access, locked pricing: in exchange for feedback, tolerance, and honest usage data.
G
- GTM engineer
- The role that treats go-to-market as an engineering problem: building sourcing pipelines, enrichment flows, and outbound systems from tools and agents instead of running plays by hand.
H
- Hiring signal
- Open roles as market intelligence: a company hiring SDRs is investing in outbound; one hiring RevOps is systematizing; one hiring for a pain your product removes is a warm door.
- Human-in-the-loop
- System design where a person approves consequential actions before they execute. In LinkedIn outreach it means a human yes before any invitation, message or InMail reaches a real inbox, with the account's reputation on the line for every send.
I
- Ideal customer profile (ICP)
- The written definition of who you sell to: role, company size, industry, geography, and the exclusions: precise enough that a list can be filtered against it mechanically.
- InMail
- LinkedIn's paid direct message to people outside your network, included with Premium and Sales Navigator plans. InMails don't consume your weekly invitation quota.
- Intent data
- Third-party behavioral data suggesting an account is researching a category: content consumption, review-site activity, search patterns: sold by providers as buying-readiness scores.
- Invitation withdrawal
- Cancelling a sent connection request. LinkedIn blocks re-inviting the same person for up to three weeks after withdrawal: so it's cleanup, not a retry button.
L
- Lead group
- A saved, deduplicated audience of people or companies managed together: the unit outbound actually operates on, distinct from a search result you haven't reviewed yet.
- Lead scoring
- Ranking prospects by fit and timing so effort flows to the likeliest buyers: anything from a P1–P4 bucket system to a weighted model over ICP fit and signals.
- LinkedIn CSV export
- The data files outbound tools produce (and LinkedIn itself offers for your connections): the portable memory of who you know and who you've touched. The migration currency of the category.
- LinkedIn jail
- Informal operator language for a LinkedIn account restriction. The actual notice determines which features are blocked and what recovery steps are available.
M
- Merge variables
- Placeholders like {firstName} and {company} that a sequencer fills per recipient. The technology behind 'Hi {firstName}, I saw {company} is growing!': and behind most of what gets reported as slop.
- Model Context Protocol (MCP)
- The open standard (launched November 2024) that lets AI agents call external systems through typed tools: the USB port between models like Claude and the software that does things.
- Multi-seat orchestration
- Running outreach across several LinkedIn accounts as one coordinated operation: shared suppression, collision rules, per-seat pacing, and a unified inbox.
- Multichannel outreach
- Coordinating touches across LinkedIn, email, and sometimes phone in one sequence: meeting the prospect where they actually answer.
N
- Nurture
- Staying usefully present with people who aren't ready yet: engaging their posts, sharing something relevant occasionally: without pitching on a timer.
O
- Open Profile
- A Premium setting that lets anyone on LinkedIn message the person for free, without a connection or an InMail credit.
P
- Pending invites
- Connection requests you've sent that haven't been accepted or declined. A large pending pile is both a targeting report card and a quiet risk factor.
- Personalization
- Making a message specific to its recipient. In 2026 the word covers two opposite things: merge-variable insertion (template personalization) and research-based writing (actual personalization).
- Positive reply rate
- The share of messages that get an interested response: not just any answer. The metric that actually correlates with pipeline, since 'no thanks' is also a reply.
Q
- Queued vs. sent
- The distinction dashboards blur: queued means the system plans to send; sent means it actually left. Reporting queued as sent is how tools fake momentum.
R
- Randomized delays
- Varying the gaps between automated actions so activity doesn't tick like a metronome. Fixed intervals are the oldest automation signature there is.
- Reply rate
- The proportion of a defined outreach cohort that produces an inbound response. State the denominator, time window, and attribution rule when reporting it.
S
- Sales Navigator
- LinkedIn's paid prospecting product with advanced search, lead lists, alerts, and related sales features. Pricing depends on plan, region, and billing frequency.
- Seat
- One LinkedIn account under management: the operational and billing unit of outbound. A seat carries its own limits, ramp state, history, and risk.
- Signal-based outreach
- Prospecting triggered by something that just happened: a job change, funding round, hiring spree, or a post the prospect wrote: instead of working a static list top to bottom.
- Social Selling Index (SSI)
- LinkedIn's 0–100 score of how actively and credibly you use the platform, across four pillars: professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships.
- Suppression list
- A maintained set of people or companies excluded from outreach, based on opt-outs, prior contact, customer status, or another explicit policy.
U
- Unified inbox
- One place to read and answer LinkedIn conversations from every connected seat, with filters by seat, campaign, and tag: instead of logging in and out of accounts all day.
V
- Value proposition
- The one-sentence answer to 'why should this specific person care, now?': the claim your outreach makes, which the rest of the message exists to make credible.
W
- Warm path
- A route to a prospect through something you already share: a mutual connection, common employer or school, a customer in common, or a thread you both engaged in.
- Warm-up ramp
- A gradual increase in outreach capacity for a new or dormant seat. The schedule depends on the account's configured limits and recorded ramp state.
- Weekly invitation limit
- LinkedIn's limit on sending invitations. It applies to Basic and Premium accounts; the account's current notice governs any restriction or wait.
- Working-hours pacing
- Restricting scheduled activity to configured work windows and a stated timezone. In LinkedBoost, the reviewed sending gate uses the seat's timezone.