Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
Contact management determines whether a CRM remains effective or devolves into chaos. Pipedrive and Attio
Social selling thrives at the intersection of your CRM and your network. If your tool fails to keep pace with LinkedIn activities, comments, and warm introductions, you not only lose visibility—you risk losing deals to teams that stay connected with their relationships.
folk and Clarify both position themselves as modern, relationship-first CRMs. Clarify emphasizes transforming unstructured interactions into organized records, while folk provides teams with a flexible, social-selling-friendly workspace to monitor contacts, signals, and pipelines all in one place.
This comparison will explore how each CRM supports genuine social selling workflows, enabling you to determine which aligns best with how your team cultivates and nurtures relationships.
Why is a social selling CRM essential in 2026?
Most B2B deals don't initiate with cold emails or demo requests; they begin with a LinkedIn comment, a repost, a direct message, or a silent profile visit. If your CRM can't capture these signals and connect them to real people and pipelines, your team risks operating in the dark while competitors establish relationships openly.
A social selling CRM provides a centralized platform to convert those interactions into structured, actionable insights: who engaged, their source, their interests, and their proximity to a purchase. Rather than viewing LinkedIn as merely “nice-to-have awareness,” it transforms into a measurable, repeatable process within your revenue engine.
With a social selling CRM, your team can:
✔️ Identify buying signals from likes, comments, and profile views, turning them into follow-ups
✔️ Track which prospects know you from content versus outbound efforts, allowing for tailored messaging
✔️ Map relationships across accounts, champions, and influencers—not just contacts in a list
✔️ Report on deals influenced by social activity rather than attributing all credit to last-click channels
What is Pipedrive?
Pipedrive is a sales-centric CRM designed around a visual pipeline, enabling sales reps to track deals from the initial contact to closure. Its email synchronization feature integrates seamlessly with Gmail, Outlook, and other IMAP providers, ensuring that every message is automatically logged to the appropriate contact and deal. With an integrated sales inbox, tracking capabilities, and basic campaign features, teams can manage outreach and pipeline updates in one central location instead of juggling multiple tools.
What is Attio?
Attio is a versatile, data-driven CRM that empowers teams to create custom objects, views, and workflows. It's ideal for organizations seeking complete control over the configuration of relationships and pipelines. However, this flexibility comes with a more complex setup and a steeper learning curve compared to more structured CRMs.
Feature comparison of Pipedrive and Attio
Profile Enrichment & Lead Insights
Pipedrive seamlessly syncs with Gmail and Outlook (with IMAP support for other providers), allowing you to capture every inbound and outbound email linked to the appropriate contact or deal record. Thanks to the Smart Email BCC address option, you can log messages directly from your email client—just add the dynamic BCC, and Pipedrive takes care of the rest. Additionally, the native calendar integration for Google and Microsoft calendars ensures that all your meetings automatically appear on contact timelines, providing you with a comprehensive view of every customer interaction.
Attio enriches your contacts automatically with vital details such as company name, title, social media profiles, and company logos using integrations like Clearbit and Dun & Bradstreet. This keeps your lead database current with minimal manual effort.
Social Listening & Real-Time Alerts
Pipedrive’s email synchronization with Gmail and Outlook operates every few minutes, striking a balance between immediacy and system performance. Both outbound and inbound messages are captured and matched to contacts or deals in under five minutes, minimizing the chances of missing or delayed logs. The IMAP fallback adheres to standard IMAP IDLE protocols for push notifications, ensuring near-instant updates with compatible providers.
In contrast, Attio does not offer real-time alerts or social activity tracking; its primary focus is on email, contact data, and workflow management, rather than live engagement signals.
Social Selling: Which channels?
With Advanced plans and higher, Pipedrive’s Group Emailing feature allows you to select up to 100 contacts from any list to send bulk messages, complete with merge tags and reply tracking. Additionally, the Pipedrive Campaigns add-on provides a dedicated module for crafting email journeys, segmenting audiences, and analyzing open and click rates. Importantly, all replies are automatically linked to the corresponding deal or contact. However, it's worth noting that the Campaigns add-on comes with an extra cost, and its reporting capabilities are more limited compared to standalone email marketing platforms.
In contrast, Attio primarily facilitates outreach through email and Gmail workflows, lacking native support for direct messaging or posting on social media platforms.
In‑Context Messaging with Templates & Sequences
With Advanced plans and higher, Pipedrive’s Group Emailing feature allows you to choose up to 100 contacts from any list to send bulk messages that include merge tags and reply tracking. Additionally, Pipedrive Campaigns (an add-on) offers a specialized module for crafting email journeys, segmenting audiences, and analyzing open and click rates. Notably, all replies are automatically linked to the respective deal or contact. However, it's important to note that the Campaigns add-on comes with an additional cost, and its reporting capabilities are somewhat limited compared to dedicated email marketing platforms.
In contrast, Attio does not support in-context messaging or templated outreach. Instead, communication occurs through Gmail or integrations, rather than natively within the browser.
Activity & Engagement Tracking
Pipedrive offers “Track email opening” and “Track link opening” toggles, allowing you to capture every sent message's opens and clicks, complete with counts and timestamps in the Mail tab. You have the flexibility to enable or disable tracking for each email and can see precisely who clicked which link directly in the deal view. However, it's worth noting that Pipedrive’s reporting is limited to basic open and click rates; it lacks built-in funnel visualization or heat-map insights unless you export the data to a BI tool.
On the other hand, Attio tracks email interactions, call logs, and contact history within the CRM, but it falls short in tracking social media activity or engagement metrics.
folk CRM: The Best CRM for Social Selling!
folk CRM is a cutting-edge social selling CRM designed to streamline your workflow. It quickly captures contacts, maintains conversation context, and minimizes manual tasks through enrichment and smart fields, ensuring timely follow-ups.
Designed for LinkedIn-driven outreach, folk enables teams to consolidate leads from various sources, organize them in tailored pipelines, and monitor every interaction in a single location. Automated contact enrichment fills in missing information, deduplication keeps your database pristine, and shared notes and tags facilitate seamless warm introductions and track relationship history across the team.
For effective daily social selling, folk promotes consistent execution: segment leads, personalize outreach, set reminders, log interactions, and advance opportunities through your pipeline while preserving the human touch that truly secures deals.
Conclusion
In conclusion, while Pipedrive excels in visual pipeline management and email integration, and Attio offers robust customization for data-driven teams, neither fully captures the essence of social selling. folk stands out as the ultimate choice for teams focused on email integration, automation, and sequencing. Its streamlined workflows, automated contact enrichment, and emphasis on relationship context empower teams to effectively engage leads from LinkedIn and beyond. For seamless social selling execution, folk is the clear winner.
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