When people ask me what warm outbound is, I usually start by saying:
It’s the middle ground between the spray-and-pray cold outreach that nobody likes and the magical world of inbound leads that come knocking on your door.
Warm outbound is all about reaching out to prospects who already have some awareness of your brand, your content, or maybe even your product, but just haven’t taken that next step yet.
And if there's one thing I've learned in years of tackling various outreach strategies, it’s that warm outbound is one of the most underrated weapons in the B2B sales and marketing toolkit.
It’s not magic. It’s not spam. It’s thoughtful, timely, and - when done right - surprisingly effective.
In this article, I’m going to break down:
- What warm outbound actually is (because trust me, there’s a lot of confusion out there).
- Why it works better than traditional cold outreach?
- How you can build a warm outbound system that actually gets replies, not just opens.
No fluff, no generic tips, just practical strategies, real examples, and a few things I’ve learned the hard way so you don’t have to.
Ready? Let’s go!
What is Warm Outbound?
Warm outbound is a targeted outreach strategy where you engage leads who are already familiar to an extent with your brand, product, or content.
These leads aren’t strangers - maybe they’ve visited your site, downloaded a lead magnet, liked a LinkedIn post, subscribed to your newsletter, or interacted with your team at an event.
The key difference is that you're not reaching out cold; you’re reaching out in context.
Think of it this way: warm outbound is like walking up to someone at a party who’s been nodding to your conversation from across the room.
They may not be in your inner circle yet, but they’re already tuned in, and that makes all the difference.
In practice, warm outbound might look like:
- Following up with someone who downloaded your case study last week.
- Reaching out to a LinkedIn connection who’s been engaging with your posts.
- Emailing someone who started a free trial but never activated it.
- Sending a personalized message to a webinar attendee you haven’t heard from since.
So, simply put, warm outbound means you’re not starting from scratch.
You’re picking up a thread that already exists, which makes the outreach feel more relevant, personal, and less intrusive.
Warm Outbound vs. Cold Outbound: What Are the Differences?
Let’s clear this up because the terms often get tossed around like they’re interchangeable when they’re actually completely different.
Cold outbound is when you reach out to someone who has no clue who you are.
They haven’t engaged with your brand, didn’t ask for your email, and were not expecting to hear from you.
That’s why cold outreach needs to be ultra-targeted and creative while often having lower response rates - it’s a much tougher crowd you’re trying to win over.
Warm outbound, on the other hand, involves people who are already in your orbit. Maybe not ready to buy yet, but aware of you.
Your name rings a bell. You’re not a complete stranger. That tiny shift in awareness can drastically change how your message is received.
To put it bluntly:
- Cold outbound feels like knocking on a stranger’s door.
- Warm outbound feels like following up with someone who waved at you last week.
Which one would you be more likely to respond to?
What Are the Benefits of Warm Outbound?
Warm outbound isn’t just a “nicer” way to do outreach. It’s a smarter one.
Here are a couple of reasons why:
- Higher response rates - When people already recognize your name or company, they’re more likely to open, read, and respond. It’s simple psychology.
- Better personalization opportunities - Because you have context (what your leads read, clicked, watched), you can tailor your message to meet them where they are.
- Shorter sales cycles - These leads are usually further along the buyer’s journey than a cold lead. You’re not educating them from scratch, just nudging them forward.
- Stronger brand perception - Warm outreach shows that you’re paying attention. It feels more helpful than pushy, which builds trust even if they don’t convert right away.
- More efficient use of sales time - Your reps are spending less time explaining who you are and more time focusing on value-driven conversations.
How Can You Implement Warm Outbound in Your Sales Process?
Now that we’ve defined what warm outbound is and why it works, let’s get into the good stuff: how to actually do it.
Implementing warm outbound in your sales process isn’t about adding a random email here and there.
It’s about building a repeatable system that turns passive interest into meaningful conversations without coming across like a sales robot.
Below is the step-by-step playbook I’ve used (and refined) over the years to make warm outbound work in real-world sales teams.
1. Start with the right signals: Identify warm leads
The first step is figuring out who your warm leads actually are.
Not all contacts are equal, and not every action is a buying signal. You're looking for intent + engagement.
Examples of warm signals to look for:
- Downloaded gated content (ebooks, case studies, whitepapers).
- Attended a webinar or event.
- Visited your pricing or product pages multiple times.
- Opened and clicked through your marketing emails.
- Engaged with your social content (especially comments or shares).
- Signed up for a free trial or demo but didn’t convert.
- Asked a question via chatbot or live chat.
- Added items to a cart (for product-led companies) but didn’t complete checkout.
- Replied to or forwarded marketing emails.
Tools like Warmly can help you track these intent signals easily.
Warmly identifies your website visitors - both individual stakeholders and company accounts - and enriches each with detailed B2B and intent data.
This means the platform unearths all the relevant buying signals your website visitors left on-site, including everything I mentioned above, from recurring visits to pricing pages to interacting with your chatbot.
Warmly takes it one step further by picking up intent signals your leads left beyond your owned channels, including:
- Web searches that include keywords relevant to your product.
- Visits to competitors’ websites.
- Social signals (i.e., pulling top industry conversations, lists of accounts posting ot interacting with content relevant to your product, etc.).
As a result, you’ll get a 360-degree view of each lead’s intent, including both first- and third-party warm signals, meaning you’ll be able to discern more precisely which leads are most interested right now.
2. Segment and prioritize based on intent
Warm leads exist on a spectrum.
Someone who downloaded your ebook two months ago is not as hot as someone who just looked at your pricing page twice today.
You want to prioritize based on recency and behavioral intent.
I like to use a basic framework here:
- High intent – Free trial signups, pricing page views, demo requests that dropped off, recurring visits, researching competitors, etc..
- Medium intent – Webinar attendees, case study downloads, high email engagement, visits to case studies/feature pages.
- Low intent – Light engagement, older content downloads, social interactions.
With Warmly, you can segment leads with more precision, as the platform lets you take into account both intent data and ICP criteria, allowing you to score leads based on:
- How well they fit your ICP profile.
- Their engagement intent levels.
Remember - focus your outbound effort first on high- and medium-intent leads.
You’ll get more traction faster, and it gives your reps the confidence that they’re not chasing dead ends.
3. Personalize your outreach (but don’t overdo it)
This is where a lot of folks either phone it in or spend 30 minutes writing a single email.
Neither approach scales. The trick is lightweight personalization with meaningful relevance.
The best way to ensure you’ll hit that sweet spot is to use cutting-edge technology to help - AI.
Warmly’s Orchestrator is an AI-driven feature that lets you put warm outbound outreach on autopilot.
The Orchestrator picks up hot leads based on the criteria you define (high intent + good ICP match) and includes them in hyper-personalized outreach sequences.
It leverages the data Warmly has on each lead - both intent insights and B2B information - to craft messaging that will resonate with every recipient.
You can choose between LinkedIn or email outreach sequences - whichever you opt for will be tailored to every lead’s past engagement and interactions with your website and their overall intent.
Try it yourself 👇or watch it in action.
For example, if they visited your pricing page, the Orchestrator may shoot an email that looks like this:
Subject: Ideas after your visit to [Product]’s pricing page
Hey [First Name],
Noticed you were checking out our pricing page yesterday, so I figured I’d reach out directly.
We’ve worked with a few companies like [Their Company] to [insert relevant benefit or outcome], and I’d be happy to share what we’ve learned.
Would it make sense to connect for 10–15 minutes this week?
Best,
[Your Name]
Short, to the point, respectful, and, most importantly, personalized to the smallest details.
The best part about the Orchestrator is that it is fully customizable, meaning you can configure everything that matters, including:
- The trigger, i.e., the action that sets the sequence in motion (e.g., visit to your pricing page).
- The visitors it engages with (only those who meet the criteria you specify, such as high intent and good ICP match).
- The maximum number of leads included from each account.
- The frequency at which it runs its campaigns.
As a result, you get a 24/7 present SDR that reaches out to high-intent leads via channels they’re most likely to respond to, when they’re most likely to respond.
4. Use automation - but only where it makes sense
As I explained above, warm outbound can (and should) be partially automated, but don’t turn it into a mindless sequence machine.
The key is scaling thoughtfully, not blasting blindly.
Where automation works well:
- Triggered follow-ups based on behavior (e.g., “3 days after webinar, send this email”).
- Lead scoring and alerts when someone hits a key milestone.
- Reminders to reps when a warm lead is ready for outreach.
With Warmly, you can set up automated lead routing and alerts in addition to Orchestrator’s workflows.
For example, you can set up Slack and/or email alerts that notify your reps when a lead takes an action you qualify as high-intent (e.g., a lead that matches your ICP lands on your pricing page or interacts with a chatbot in a relevant way).
This significantly reduces time to lead, allowing reps to tune into leads’ web sessions in real-time and monitor how they interact with your website.
Moreover, you can set up auto lead routing, meaning that every high-intent lead will be automatically assigned to the most fitting SDR.
Remember, automation works best when you leave room for reps to jump in manually if needed, and Warmly lets you do exactly that.
5. Leverage face-to-face communication when possible
Although chatbots and AI-driven automation can achieve a lot on their own, sometimes your leads need human interaction to make that final step.
That’s why Warmly includes a Live Video Chat option in its offering, as it allows you to hop on a video call with leads while they’re still on your website.
When you go to the “Warm Calls” section of Warmly’s dashboard, you’ll see all the accounts visiting your website right now.
There, you can see all the data Warmly pulls on them and monitor how they interact with your website in real-time.
Once you detect high-intent leads based on your personal scoring system (like the one I gave as an example above), you can initiate a video call straight from Warmly’s dashboard.
This allows you to put a face to your brand, further engage and nurture leads, and, ultimately, close more deals.
Try it out here:
6. Sync your sales and marketing teams
This part often gets overlooked, but it’s essential. Your warm outbound strategy only works if marketing and sales are aligned around:
- What counts as a qualified warm lead
- When a lead is ready for sales outreach
- What messaging is appropriate based on the funnel stage
This is where shared definitions and regular feedback loops come in.
Sales should be telling marketing, “Hey, these MQLs are solid,” or “We need more context in the CRM.”
Marketing, on the other hand, should be surfacing intent data regularly so reps can strike while the lead is warm.
The result?
A well-oiled lead generation machine.
Next Steps: Identify and Convert More Warm Leads with Warmly
Warm outbound is the sweet spot between cold outreach and inbound—a space where timing, context, and intent collide.
Throughout this article, we covered what warm outbound is, why it works, and how to build a strategy that drives conversations and closes deals.
But here’s the thing: to really make it work, you need visibility. You need to know who is showing interest, what they’re engaging with, and when to reach out. That’s where Warmly comes in.
From identifying high-intent leads and prioritizing them based on real-time signals to triggering hyper-personalized outreach with the Orchestrator and hopping on a Live Video Chat while prospects are still on your site, Warmly gives you the complete toolkit to turn passive interest into booked meetings.
Ready to make your outbound smarter?
Sign up for Warmly’s free plan or book a demo and find out what Warmly can do for your pipeline first-hand.
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