If a prospect is publicly engaging with the right thought leader, the right keyword, or the right topic - they've already self-identified as someone who cares about your category. The hard work of education is done. Your job is to show up at the right moment with a relevant offer.
Why this signal beats almost everything
A LinkedIn like, comment, or repost is a public, time-stamped signal of interest. Unlike static firmographic filters, it tells you who's currently engaged with the topic - not just who looks like they should be.
Audiences active on LinkedIn also reply at roughly 2x the rate of cold prospects who never post. You're combining intent (they engaged with relevant content) with reachability (they're active on the platform).
How we run it
1. Identify the right thought leaders
Pick 5-15 industry creators, operators, and thought leaders whose audiences overlap heavily with your ICP. The best targets are people who post consistently about the problem you solve - not influencers who just happen to have your buyers in their audience.
2. Capture engagement
We use Trigify and Jungler to monitor posts continuously and pull the LinkedIn profile of every person who likes, comments, or reposts. We also pull the post URL and the engagement type so we can use them in copy later.
3. Add the connection layer
On top of post engagement, we scrape the thought leader's network and recent connections. People who follow or recently connected with a thought leader signal the same intent - just one layer up the funnel.
4. Route everything into Clay
All signals flow into Clay where we normalise LinkedIn URLs, company domains, engagement type, source post, and the thought leader they engaged with. Clay becomes the single source of truth before any outreach happens.
5. Enrich and qualify
We run company-level enrichment (industry, size, geography, funding) and contact-level enrichment (role, seniority, department). Then we use AI in Clay to score each lead against ICP fit.
6. Tier and route
- Tier 1 - C-level, perfect ICP fit. Slack alert + multichannel outreach via HeyReach and Instantly with a personalised opener tied to the exact post they engaged with.
- Tier 2 - Strong fit, mid-seniority. Automated multichannel sequence with the engagement signal in line one.
- Tier 3 - Lower fit. Email-only nurture sequence at scale.
Copy that converts on this signal
The opener references the specific post or thought leader they engaged with. Generic personalisation ("I saw your post about X") gets ignored. Real signal-tied context gets read.
"Saw you commented on [Thought Leader]'s post about [topic]. Curious how you're approaching [related problem] right now?"
Short. Specific. No pitch in line one. Curiosity-driven. The post they engaged with is the proof you bothered to look.
Tools we use
Trigify and Jungler for engagement scraping. LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Findymail for connection data. Clay for orchestration and enrichment. HeyReach for LinkedIn outreach. Instantly for email. Slack for alerts on Tier 1 leads.
What to watch for
- Don't pick thought leaders whose audience is mostly other vendors. Always exclude competitors and employees from the final list.
- Engagement decays fast. Reach out within 7 days of the engagement or the relevance is gone.
- Avoid "I saw your comment" if the comment was 14 days ago. Use the post itself or the topic as the hook instead.