Most prospecting starts from attributes: this job title, at this company size, in this industry. It is a reasonable proxy for interest, but it is only a proxy.
A competitor’s LinkedIn follower list is different. Every person on it took an action that said they care about this category. That is not inferred, it is declared, and it is one of the cleanest targeting signals available in B2B.
Why follower lists are worth the effort
Three things make them unusually good source material.
Self-selected interest. Nobody follows a cold email infrastructure company by accident. Following is a low-effort action, so it is a weaker signal than requesting a demo, but it is a real one and it is verifiable.
Category-educated. These people already understand the problem. You skip the part of the message that explains why the category exists, which is the part that loses most readers.
Competitor-adjacent, not competitor-locked. Following is not buying. A large share are evaluating, using a competitor and unhappy, or simply keeping an eye on the space. All three are addressable.
How to export them
With Company Follower the process is:
- Paste the company’s LinkedIn page URL. Any company page works, a direct competitor, an adjacent vendor, or a category leader in a space next to yours.
- Export the followers. One credit each, with profile data including name, title, company and LinkedIn URL.
- Enrich the ones you keep. Add verified emails through Email Finder or mobile numbers through Phone Finder. Enrich after filtering, not before, there is no point buying an email for someone you will not contact.
The order matters for cost. Export broadly, filter hard, enrich narrowly.
Filtering, which is where the value actually is
A raw follower list is mostly noise. A vendor with 40,000 followers has perhaps 2,000 plausible buyers on that list. The rest are:
- Current and former employees of that company
- Job seekers and students
- Competitors, investors and analysts
- Agencies and consultants adjacent to the space
- People at companies far outside your serviceable market
Filter in this order:
| Step | Filter | Typical reduction |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Remove employees of the company you exported | 5–15% |
| 2 | Seniority and job title match | Large, often 70%+ |
| 3 | Company size and industry inside your ICP | Further 30–50% |
| 4 | Geography you can actually serve | Varies |
| 5 | ICP Score threshold | Keeps the top tier only |
Ending with a few hundred well-matched people from a 40,000-record export is the correct outcome, not a disappointing one. The alternative, emailing all 40,000, is how domains get burned.
Writing to them without being creepy
One rule above all others: never mention that they follow your competitor. It reads as surveillance, it makes the recipient wonder what else you know, and it turns a warm signal into a defensive reaction.
Use the follow as targeting only. What it earns you is permission to skip the basics:
Do write as though they already understand the category. Reference a specific problem within it rather than explaining what the category is. Lead with a point of difference that would matter to someone actively comparing options.
Do not attack the competitor. People who follow a vendor often like them, and criticising a company they chose reflects worse on you than on them.
The best-performing angle is usually a specific, checkable difference, a pricing model, a billing term, a capability gap, stated plainly, without a comparison table in the first email.
Which companies to export
Direct competitors are the obvious choice and often not the best one, because their followers may include a lot of existing customers who are content.
Also worth exporting:
- Adjacent vendors. People following a tool that sits next to yours in the workflow have the problem without having chosen a solution in your category.
- Category leaders you do not compete with directly. Broad category interest, less vendor loyalty.
- Tools your customers commonly use. Technographic fit, expressed as a follow.
- Competitors who recently raised prices or changed terms. Their followers are unusually likely to be looking.
That last one pairs well with signal stacking: a follower of a vendor who just changed their pricing, at a company matching your ICP, is about as warm as cold outreach gets.
The compliance part, briefly
Follower lists are public, but the people on them are still individuals with data rights. Contact on a legitimate-interest basis, keep the message relevant to their professional role, include a clear opt-out, and honour removals immediately. Do not reference how you found them. None of that is onerous, and it is the difference between prospecting and something that will eventually cause you a problem.
Next: the tools that surface other buying signals, or scoring a raw export down to real prospects.
Frequently asked questions
Can you export a company’s LinkedIn followers?
Yes. Follower lists are public information on LinkedIn company pages, and tools built for this can export them along with profile data. Outboundry Company Follower does it at 1 credit per follower.
Why target a competitor’s followers?
Following a vendor is a self-selected signal of category interest. These people have demonstrated they care about the problem your product solves, which puts them well ahead of a cold list matched only on job title and company size.
Is scraping LinkedIn followers allowed?
Exporting publicly visible company page data is common practice in B2B prospecting, but LinkedIn’s terms restrict automated collection and GDPR applies to how you then use personal data. Use a tool that manages collection responsibly, contact people on a legitimate-interest basis with a clear opt-out, and do not reference their follow in the message.
Should I mention that they follow my competitor?
No. It reads as surveillance and it puts the recipient on the defensive immediately. Use the follow as a targeting signal only, and write about the problem the category solves.
How many followers should I export?
Fewer than you can. A mid-size competitor may have tens of thousands of followers, most of whom are employees, students, job seekers and competitors. Filter hard on title, seniority and company size, then score for fit. A few hundred good matches beats ten thousand raw records.