The B2B outbound, LinkedIn outreach, and AI personalization vocabulary you actually need. 25 clear, opinionated definitions — updated as the platform changes.
A
ABM (Account-Based Marketing)
ABM treats individual target accounts as a market of one. Coordinated sales + marketing + customer success motion against a curated list of high-value accounts.
Acceptance Rate
Acceptance rate is the percentage of LinkedIn connection requests that get accepted. The first-stage conversion in any LinkedIn outreach funnel.
Account Warm-Up
Warm-up is the deliberate ramp of a new (or recently dormant) LinkedIn account's activity over several weeks before running outreach. Skipping warm-up is the most common cause of account restrictions.
AE (Account Executive)
An Account Executive (AE) owns the deal cycle: discovery, demo, scoping, negotiation, close. AEs work the meetings SDRs and BDRs hand them.
B
BDR (Business Development Representative)
A Business Development Representative (BDR) typically handles inbound lead qualification — separating raw form fills from real buying signals.
Buyer Intent
Buyer intent data is third-party signal that a company is researching the problem your product solves — searching for keywords, downloading whitepapers, attending webinars.
C
Cadence (Sequence)
A cadence (also called a sequence) is the scripted series of touches across channels and time that runs against every prospect in a campaign — Day 1 LinkedIn invite, Day 3 email, Day 5 follow-up, etc.
Cold Outreach
Cold outreach is contacting a prospect with no prior relationship. Email, LinkedIn, phone, SMS — any channel where the recipient doesn't recognize the sender.
Connection Request
A connection request is the message you send to add someone to your LinkedIn network. With or without a note, it's the most common B2B outbound channel on LinkedIn.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
A CRM is the system of record for your customer and prospect relationships. HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive — same job: a database of people and the stages they're in.
D
Datacenter Proxy
A datacenter proxy routes traffic through a server in a data center (AWS, Google Cloud, OVH, Hetzner). Cheap, fast, and easy to detect — the wrong choice for LinkedIn automation.
Dwell Time
Dwell time is how long a user lingers on a LinkedIn post or profile. The LinkedIn algorithm uses dwell time as a quality signal — long dwell = good content, short dwell = scroll fodder.
I
ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is the firmographic, technographic, and behavioral fingerprint of the customer most likely to buy, pay, and stay.
InMail
InMail is LinkedIn's paid messaging product — message any LinkedIn user without first being connected. Sales Navigator and Recruiter seats include monthly InMail credits.
L
LinkedIn Restriction
A LinkedIn restriction is the platform's way of pausing or limiting an account flagged for suspected abuse. Ranges from a soft warning to a permanent ban.
M
Multi-Channel Outreach
Multi-channel outreach reaches a prospect through multiple coordinated channels — LinkedIn, email, phone, WhatsApp — across a sequence rather than blasting one channel.
O
Open Profile
Open Profile is a Premium-only setting that lets any LinkedIn member message that user without using an InMail credit. A free message channel hidden in plain sight.
Open Rate
Open rate is the percentage of sent emails that get opened. Once the canonical email metric — increasingly unreliable since Apple Mail's 2021 privacy changes silently "open" most emails for most users.
P
Personalization at Scale
Personalization at scale is the use of automation and AI to make every outbound message feel hand-written, even when sending hundreds per week. The difference between batch-and-blast and high-reply outbound.
R
Reply Rate
Reply rate is the percentage of outbound messages that get any reply (positive, neutral, or negative). The cleanest single metric for outreach quality.
Residential Proxy (Home IP)
A residential proxy is an internet connection routed through a real home broadband IP — the same IP a normal user has when browsing from their living room. The opposite of a datacenter proxy.
S
Sales Navigator
Sales Navigator is LinkedIn's premium prospecting product. Advanced filters, lead lists, account intelligence, InMail credits — the workhorse for B2B outbound.
SDR (Sales Development Representative)
A Sales Development Representative (SDR) is the outbound role responsible for sourcing new pipeline — the cold-to-meeting motion. SDRs hand qualified meetings to Account Executives.
SSI (Social Selling Index)
Social Selling Index (SSI) is LinkedIn's 0–100 score of your professional brand, prospect-finding, engagement, and relationship-building. Higher SSI = better algorithmic reach and softer rate limits.
T
Trigger Event
A trigger event is a real-world signal that a prospect is more likely to buy right now — funding round, leadership change, product launch, hiring spike, technology migration.