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Effective contact management is essential for a CRM to either remain functional or devolve into chaos. Attio and HighLevel are key players in this space.
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're not just losing visibility—you risk losing deals to teams that prioritize their relationships.
Folk and Clarify both position themselves as modern, relationship-first CRMs. Clarify specializes in transforming unstructured interactions into organized records, while Folk offers teams a flexible, social-selling-friendly workspace for tracking contacts, signals, and pipelines all in one place.
This comparison will explore how each CRM facilitates genuine social selling workflows, helping you determine which one aligns best with your team's approach to building and nurturing relationships.
Why is a social selling CRM essential in 2026?
Most B2B deals don’t originate from cold emails or demo requests but from LinkedIn comments, reposts, DMs, or even quiet profile visits. If your CRM cannot capture these signals and connect them to real people and pipelines, your team is navigating blindly while competitors cultivate relationships in plain sight.
A social selling CRM provides a centralized platform to transform these interactions into structured, actionable insights: identifying who engaged, their origin, their interests, and their proximity to making a purchase. Rather than viewing LinkedIn as a mere “nice-to-have awareness,” it becomes 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 and convert them into follow-ups
✔️ Track which prospects are familiar with you through content versus outbound efforts, allowing for tailored messaging
✔️ Map relationships across accounts, champions, and influencers—beyond just a list of contacts
✔️ Report on deals influenced by social activity instead of attributing all credit to last-click channels
What is Attio?
Attio is a modern, customizable CRM designed as a collaborative workspace where teams can seamlessly centralize contacts, companies, and deals into one dynamic database. By integrating with Gmail and Microsoft 365, it automatically syncs emails and calendar events, ensuring every communication is organized on the relevant contact or opportunity timeline. Additionally, users can send emails directly from their connected inboxes within Attio, utilize templates, and monitor engagement—all without leaving the CRM.
What is HighLevel?
HighLevel is a comprehensive marketing and sales platform primarily targeted at agencies. It consolidates funnels, email, SMS, automation, and CRM into a single environment that agencies can either resell or manage for their clients. While its extensive features are powerful, the interface and initial setup may feel overwhelming for some users.
Feature comparison of Attio and HighLevel
Profile Enrichment & Lead Insights
Attio lacks a built-in inbox or calendar plugin; instead, it utilizes Zapier’s Email by Zapier or Pipedream to seamlessly capture both inbound and outbound emails, integrating them into Attio’s contact timelines. You easily set up triggers like “New Email Received” or “Send Email” and map fields such as subject, body, and attachments to the corresponding Attio properties.
On the other hand, HighLevel does not enrich contacts using social media. It relies on form captures, manual entry, or API-based integrations.
Social Listening & Real-Time Alerts
Attio utilizes Zapier or Pipedream to capture email and calendar events, meaning the sync frequency is contingent upon your automation platform's plan.
HighLevel does not offer a social listening feature, and its real-time alerts are restricted to email/SMS replies and incoming form messages.
Social Selling: Which channels?
Unfortunately, Attio does not offer a native mail-merge or campaign module, so you will need to use an automation tool like Zapier.
HighLevel facilitates inbound and outbound messaging through WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram DM; however, it does not support LinkedIn or Twitter.
In‑Context Messaging with Templates & Sequences
Regrettably, Attio lacks a native mail-merge or campaign module, necessitating a subscription to an automation tool like Zapier.
While sequences can be utilized through SMS and email, they are not available on social platforms, and in-browser automation or messaging templates are not supported.
Activity & Engagement Tracking
Attio lacks built-in open or click tracking; instead, email events are integrated through Zapier or Pipedream triggers. This setup requires you to establish your own pixel and webhook workflows to monitor opens and clicks, linking them back to contacts. Although this approach offers maximum flexibility, it comes at the cost of a user-friendly analytics dashboard; you'll need to create custom reports using your automation platform or BI tool.
In contrast, HighLevel tracks emails, SMS, calls, and web chats, but does not log interactions with social posts or profile activities.
folk CRM: The Best CRM for Social Selling!
folk CRM is a contemporary social selling CRM that transforms social selling into a streamlined, repeatable process. It quickly captures contacts, maintains conversation context, and minimizes manual tasks with enrichment and smart fields, ensuring timely follow-ups.
Designed for LinkedIn-driven outreach, folk enables teams to consolidate leads from various sources, arrange them within customized pipelines, and monitor every touchpoint in one unified location. Automatic contact enrichment fills in information gaps, deduplication keeps the database tidy, and shared notes and tags facilitate warm introductions and easy access to relationship history across the team.
For effective daily social selling, folk fosters consistent practice: segment leads, tailor outreach, set reminders, log interactions, and advance opportunities through a pipeline while preserving the personal touch that ultimately seals deals.
Conclusion
In summary, Attio excels in creating a customizable collaborative workspace, while HighLevel offers a comprehensive marketing platform tailored for agencies, albeit with a complex interface. However, for teams focusing on email integration, automation, and seamless social selling, folk stands out as the premier choice. With its streamlined processes, automatic contact enrichment, and dedicated tools for LinkedIn-driven outreach, folk ensures that every interaction is meaningful and leads to timely follow-ups, making social selling not just effective, but predictable.
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