Signal guide
LinkedIn outreach to competitor engagers: who's worth a message
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Short answer
Is it worth messaging people who engage with a competitor's LinkedIn posts?
Some of them. An engager list is a good place to look, but much of it is the competitor's own staff, partners and agencies, people at other vendors, recruiters and job seekers. Keep the decision-makers who fit your customer, count comments above likes, and write about the post's topic without telling them you watched them click.
From a like to a buying signal
| What they did | What it usually means | Worth a message? |
|---|---|---|
| Liked a competitor's company post | ||
| Liked a competitor's company post | Could be a customer, a staff member's friend, a partner or someone job hunting. A like on its own says little. | Only alongside another signal, or if they fit perfectly |
| Generic praise in the comments within minutes | ||
| Generic praise in the comments within minutes | Often an engagement pod or an AI. Richard van der Blom says about 80% of the comments he gets in the first five minutes are AI-written. | Rarely |
| Engaged with an influencer's post about your category | ||
| Engaged with an influencer's post about your category | Interest in the topic, from a crowd with fewer of the poster's own staff and job seekers in it. | Yes, if they fit |
| A comment asking a question or describing a problem | ||
| A comment asking a question or describing a problem | They're thinking about it now, and they've told you what about. | Yes, about that problem |
| Engaging with two or more competitors | ||
| Engaging with two or more competitors | Probably comparing options. | Yes |
| Complaining about a competitor | ||
| Complaining about a competitor | Open to switching, and annoyed. | Yes, without piling on |
What the numbers say, and who published them
The best-documented campaign comes from an agency called Repify, written up by HeyReach, which sells LinkedIn automation. It went after decision-makers engaging with a client's direct competitors. Of 254 people, 38% accepted the connection, 25% replied, 15 booked calls in a week and six became clients. A Trigify campaign aimed at engagers on a creator's posts reported a 54% reply rate, and HeyReach, to its credit, added: "That was one campaign, so please don't go promising your boss 54% next quarter." Its typical campaign gets about 22%.
For comparison, Lavender's benchmark of 231,818 cold emails puts the average reply rate at 3.4%. So engager outreach looks several times better than cold, in single campaigns run by people who sell the method. Valley, another vendor, put it well: "Treat vendor numbers as vendor numbers, including ours." I'd plan on better than cold and not on any particular number.
Most of the list is noise
Look at who reacts to a software company's posts. Its own staff, and their friends. Its agency, partners and resellers. People at its competitors, keeping an eye on things. Recruiters and job seekers, especially on posts about hiring. Students. And a growing number of accounts that comment on everything. Nobody has published a credible split. One vendor claims 84% of LinkedIn engagement is noise without saying how it counted, so I wouldn't repeat the number, but anyone who has worked through an engager list by hand will recognise the problem.
The comments are getting harder to read, too. Pangram Labs, which sells AI detection, found about 30% of short LinkedIn posts and 41% of long ones were AI-written. LinkedIn said in August 2025 that it may limit the visibility of comments made through automation tools, and stepped up action against engagement pods in February 2026. So a generic "Great insights!" two minutes after posting is weaker evidence than a plain like from someone whose title fits.
One change works in your favour. Van der Blom, who studies LinkedIn reach, says posts now reach about 60% fewer people than two years ago, as the feed has shifted from who you know to what you're interested in. Fewer people see a niche post, but more of them care about its topic. Engager lists are smaller than they were, and a little more relevant.
Sorting the list
- Take out anyone who works at the company that posted, its partners and its agencies.
- Take out recruiters, job seekers, students and anyone at another competitor.
- Discount generic comments that landed in the first few minutes. Read what people actually said.
- Check the rest against your buyer: title, company size, industry. A perfect title at the wrong-sized company is still a no.
- Then look for a second signal. Richard Purcell of MoxieGTM described a lead who was a VP, followed the competitor's company page, followed its CEO and had recently engaged with the CEO's posts. That lead replied within two hours and booked a meeting the next day.
What to say
Use the post's topic as your reason, not their click as your evidence. Josh Braun has argued that openers like "saw" and "noticed" are so overused they now trip people's mental spam filters. "I saw you liked Acme's post on forecasting" tells someone they're on a list someone built from watching them. It also names your competitor in your first line.
Compare: "Forecast accuracy seems to be the thing finance teams are arguing about this quarter. Is it the inputs or the process that's hurting more for you?" It's about the same subject, and it reads like a peer with a view rather than a tool with a list. Purcell's example was even simpler, a CFO asking a finance buyer which tools they used to calculate forecasts.
Not everyone agrees. Valley's guide says to reference the post and the specific thing the person reacted to. I think that holds for a comment, which is a public statement and fair to reply to, ideally in the thread before you message. For a like, I'd leave it out. And the Repify campaign above opened by saying it had built a list of people engaging with competitors. That worked because the list was what they were selling.
Doing it by hand
- Pick three to five competitor executives and company pages, and three to five people your buyers actually read.
- Once a week, open each one's last five to ten posts. Read the comments first, then the reactions. Anyone who can see a post can see who reacted to it.
- Sort as above, and log each keeper in a sheet: name, title, company, the post, what they did, what they said and the date.
- Before you message, engage with something they posted, or reply to their comment in the thread.
- Write within a week. Valley suggests 48 hours. Interest in a post doesn't keep for long.
If you're doing this as a founder with a short list, there's more in LinkedIn outreach for SaaS founders. For how long each signal stays useful, see LinkedIn buying signals.
What Bingle does, and what it doesn't
Bingle watches the posts of the competitors and influencers you name and reads who engaged. Comments count for more than likes, and engaging with several competitors counts for more again. It drops people who work at a competitor, people open to work and service providers, and an AI check marks off-topic and job-seeker engagement as noise. What's left is ranked by fit and freshness. The weight of an engagement halves about every two weeks, so a like from last month sits well below one from yesterday.
The writer never mentions the like or the comment. It writes about the topic, in your voice, and every message waits for your OK unless you turn review off. Bingle can only read the posts of the people you point it at, so a competitor that rarely posts gives it little to work with.
Questions
Is it OK to message people who liked a competitor's LinkedIn post?
Yes, if they fit who you sell to. Write about the topic of the post rather than the fact that they liked it, which tells them they're on a list.
Do competitor engagers reply better than cold lists?
In published case studies, yes: around 20% to 30% against roughly 3% for cold email. Every one of those figures comes from a vendor's single campaign, so treat them as direction, not a forecast.
Are comments a better signal than likes?
A comment that asks a question or describes a problem is the strongest engagement signal there is. Generic praise posted within minutes is often automated and can be weaker than a like from someone who fits.
How soon should I reach out?
Within a week, and sooner is better. Bingle halves the weight of an engagement about every two weeks for that reason.
Where the numbers come from
- HeyReach, the Repify competitor-engager campaign. HeyReach sells LinkedIn automation
- HeyReach on Trigify's engager campaign and typical reply rates
- Lavender cold email benchmark, via Woodpecker. 231,818 emails
- Valley, messaging LinkedIn post engagers. 2026. Valley sells LinkedIn outreach
- Teamfluence, the 84% noise claim. no method given
- Richard van der Blom on Creator Science. 2 June 2026
- Pangram Labs study of AI-written posts, via The Register. Pangram sells AI detection
- Social Media Today, LinkedIn limits automated comments. 20 August 2025
- LinkedIn's February 2026 action on engagement pods
- Richard Purcell, How to steal your competitor's LinkedIn followers. MoxieGTM, 7 January 2025
- Josh Braun on "saw" and "noticed" openers
More guides
By who you sell as
- Agencies. Reach a client before the review: new marketing leaders, job ads and funding.
- Recruiters. Win clients from the roles they can't fill, and the people who just started hiring.
- Consultants. The gaps that open an engagement: an empty seat, a new leader, a stalled plan.
- SaaS founders. Your first customers by hand, from the people already talking about your problem.
- MSPs and IT services. Who owns IT at a 50-person company, and the moments they look for help.
By signal
- After a job change. When to write to someone in a new role, and what to say instead of congrats.
- After a funding round. Why the founder is the wrong person to write to the week a round lands.
- Companies hiring. Reading a job ad as a buying signal, and spotting the ones that aren't real.
Which signals fit your buyers?
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