Use Competitor Reactions to spot warm leads your competitors are already engaging with on LinkedIn. When a competitor’s sales reps, founders, or customer-facing team members like or comment on someone’s post, that person can be identified as a new lead in your pipeline with signal context and enriched contact data.
By the end of this tutorial, you’ll know how to create a Competitor Reactions signal agent, define its targeting rules, control daily identification volume, and automatically route matched leads into tasks or campaigns.
Why this matters
This workflow helps you act on buyer intent earlier. Instead of waiting for prospects to raise their hand, you can identify people your competitors are already paying attention to and reach out with timely, relevant messaging.
It’s especially useful for sales and growth teams that want a competitive timing advantage and stronger personalization in outbound campaigns.
Before you start
You should already know how to access Signal agents in lemlist.
You should have the LinkedIn company page URL of the competitor you want to monitor.
You should already know which campaign or task workflow you want to use once new leads are detected.
What Competitor Reactions does
Signal level: Contact — each matched engager becomes a separate lead
Billing: 50 credits per identified signal
Daily volume: Controlled with the identification limit slider
Output data: Post URL, engagement type, post content, enriched contact data, and company info
Personalization: 18 campaign variables with the
signalCompetitorReactions*prefix are available across touchpointsExports and automations: Signal data is available in the side panel, webhooks, and CSV exports
Keep in mind: each Signal Agent supports one competitor LinkedIn company URL. If you want to monitor multiple competitors, create one agent per competitor. You can also exclude up to 50 company URLs to remove irrelevant results.
Phase 1: Start a new signal agent
Go to Signal agents, then click Create signal agent. This opens the guided setup flow where you’ll choose the signal type and configure how leads should be processed.
In the Signal to detect step, open Social activity and select Competitor reactions. This tells lemlist to monitor reactions on LinkedIn content instead of other signal categories like company growth or people moves.
Phase 2: Configure the competitor you want to monitor
Give your agent a clear name so your team can recognize what it tracks.
In LinkedIn company URLs, paste the competitor’s LinkedIn company page URL. If needed, use Add company URLs to add the entry to the list.
This step defines the company page whose team reactions will be monitored. A specific, well-named agent makes reporting and routing much easier later.
Best practice: create separate agents for your top competitors instead of grouping them together. This gives you cleaner reporting, easier exclusions, and better campaign personalization.
Phase 3: Define the scope and lead quality rules
Choose whether the agent should search across All segments or a narrower audience.
Open Filter criteria to refine which contacts should be identified, and open Exclusion criteria to remove unwanted matches. This is where you narrow results to the prospects that matter most to your team.
Inside these criteria sections, you can configure the main rules for this signal, including:
Engagement type: likes, comments, or both
Time window: how recent the reactions should be
Minimum engagement threshold: to focus on stronger activity
Segment filters: personas, locations, industries, and company sizes
Exclusions: specific companies or job titles you don’t want in results
This is the most strategic part of the setup. Broader criteria increase volume, while tighter criteria improve lead relevance and make personalization easier.
Phase 4: Set your daily identification limit
In Identification limit, use the slider or preset values to define the maximum number of signals identified per day.
This setting helps you control both lead flow and credit usage. Since each identified signal costs 50 credits, setting a daily cap is the easiest way to balance volume with budget.
Phase 5: Choose how new signals should be processed
Once the agent finds matching leads, you can decide what happens next. The two most common options are task creation and campaign enrollment.
Option A: Auto-create tasks
Select Auto-create tasks.
Then configure the task details, including task type, owner type, fallback owner, priority, title, and instructions. This is a good option when your team wants to review each lead before outreach begins.
Choose this route if you want reps to manually inspect the signal context before taking action.
Option B: Auto-push leads into a campaign
Select Auto-push to campaign.
Then choose the destination campaign and define how to handle contacts already linked to existing signals or already present in another campaign. This is the best option when you want fast, automated follow-up.
This setup works especially well for multichannel sequences that use signal-based personalization variables in email or LinkedIn steps.
Phase 6: Review and deploy the agent
In the Summary step, review the selected signal type, competitor URL, billing estimate, processing method, and scope.
When everything looks correct, click Deploy agent.
Reviewing the summary is important because it confirms both your targeting logic and your downstream workflow before credits start being used.
Practical example
Let’s say you sell sales software and want to monitor a direct competitor’s LinkedIn page. You create a Competitor Reactions agent for that company, filter for decision-makers in SaaS, and auto-push matched leads into a campaign.
Your outreach can then reference the context naturally, using variables from the signal. For example, you might mention that the lead recently posted about a topic relevant to your offer, then tailor your message around that discussion.
Try this setup:
Monitor one high-priority competitor
Filter for your core ICP by industry, location, and company size
Exclude partners, customers, and irrelevant job titles
Start with a modest daily cap
Push leads into a campaign that uses
signalCompetitorReactions*variables
Troubleshooting and common pitfalls
Issue: I’m not seeing enough leads
Root cause: Your filters may be too narrow, or the competitor doesn’t generate enough visible reaction activity.
Broaden your segment filters
Allow both likes and comments instead of one engagement type
Increase the time window if available in your criteria settings
Issue: I’m seeing irrelevant leads
Root cause: Your scope is too broad or exclusions are missing.
Add persona, industry, location, or company-size filters
Exclude companies you don’t want in your pipeline
Exclude job titles outside your target audience
Issue: I want to monitor several competitors
Root cause: This signal supports one competitor LinkedIn company URL per agent.
Create one agent per competitor
Name each agent clearly so you can manage them easily
Route each competitor into a different campaign if you want separate messaging
Issue: My team wants to review leads before outreach starts
Root cause: Auto-push to campaign may be too aggressive for your workflow.
Use Auto-create tasks instead
Add clear instructions for reps to review the signal context first
Use fallback owners so no lead is left unassigned
Issue: Credit usage is higher than expected
Root cause: The daily identification cap may be too high for your current budget.
Lower the identification limit
Tighten your filters to improve result quality
Review summary and billing details before deploying new agents
Related strategy note
Competitor Reactions complements Competitor Connections. Connections helps you track new LinkedIn connections, while Reactions helps you track content engagement. Using both gives you a broader view of which prospects your competitors are actively nurturing.