Yes, you can run outbound campaigns from Claude or ChatGPT, as long as you connect the assistant through MCP to a prospecting tool that searches for companies, finds the contacts, enriches them and sends the sequence; on their own, the two assistants do not send messages to anyone. The workflow has six steps: connect the tool, search for companies, find the contacts, enrich them with an email and a phone number, launch the campaign and follow up on replies. Each step is a request in plain language that the assistant turns into a call to the connected tool, and the whole campaign is built for a defined list of companies and roles.
Can you run outbound campaigns from Claude or ChatGPT?
Outbound from Claude or ChatGPT is a way of prospecting in which a rep asks the AI assistant for target accounts, contacts and a sequence, while a connected prospecting tool does the searching and the sending. The assistant needs that tool: without a connection, Claude or ChatGPT can draft messages and plan a campaign, but it cannot pull companies from LinkedIn or send an invitation.
The connection runs over the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the open standard that lets an assistant call another system's tools. Our guide on what an MCP server is explains how that works; this guide covers what to ask at each step once the tool is connected. Outbound itself, contacting people who have not contacted you first, is covered in our explainer on what outbound means in sales.
What you need before you start
Running outbound from Claude or ChatGPT takes four things:
- An assistant that accepts connectors: according to the Claude Help Center (consulted on 28 October 2026), every Claude plan, from Free through Pro, Max and Team to Enterprise, can use custom connectors built on remote MCP, with Free accounts capped at a single custom connector. In ChatGPT, a custom MCP server is added from the Plugins page, and account and workspace policies apply, according to OpenAI's developer documentation.
- A prospecting tool connected to the assistant: the tool that holds the company search, the contact data, the enrichment and the campaigns, such as HappySales.
- A LinkedIn account: the account the LinkedIn invitations and messages are sent from.
- An ideal customer profile: the industry, company size, location and job titles you sell to, written down before the first search. The first stage of our guide to the prospecting process shows how to define one.
How to run an outbound campaign from Claude or ChatGPT, step by step
An outbound campaign from Claude or ChatGPT follows the order of the prospecting work itself: the assistant needs a list of companies before it can find people, and people with contact details before it can launch a sequence. The six steps below use HappySales as the connected tool, with a sample prompt for each one.
Step 1: Add HappySales as a connector in Claude or ChatGPT
HappySales plugs into Claude or ChatGPT as a connector that authenticates with OAuth 2.1, so the assistant gets access without you copying a password or a token. In a Claude Team organisation, adding a custom connector is reserved for Owners and Primary Owners, the Claude Help Center says; members then link it to their own accounts. To get access to HappySales, contact the HappySales team.
Step 2: Search for companies that match your ideal customer profile
The company search in HappySales runs on LinkedIn's company search and combines single-word keywords, up to 20 locations, up to 20 industries from LinkedIn's list of 434 and LinkedIn's headcount bands. Each search returns as many as 1,000 companies, a cap set by LinkedIn rather than by HappySales, and fills a company list the team can reuse.
For an SDR selling warehouse software to mid-sized logistics companies in the Netherlands:
Find logistics companies with an office in Amsterdam and 51 to 200 employees on LinkedIn, and save them to a list called "Logistics Amsterdam".
When a market holds more than 1,000 companies, split the search by location or by headcount band and run it once per slice. Keywords work best as single words: HappySales does not rely on boolean operators.
To screen the list with your own criteria, HappySales lets you create a custom field, such as "does this company run its own warehouses?", which your AI assistant fills in for each company on the list.
Step 3: Find the right contacts in those companies
HappySales finds people in the companies on a list by exact job title, keywords, function, seniority, location, previous titles, schools, years in the role or a recent job change. A single contact search returns as many as 100 people per company and as many as 10,000 in total; companies without a LinkedIn page are skipped.
For the logistics list from step 2:
In the "Logistics Amsterdam" list, find the Head of Operations or Operations Director at each company and save them to a contact list.
In HappySales, you give every contact one of four statuses yourself: new, qualified, contacted or discarded. Marking someone as qualified is your decision, not a score calculated by the tool.
Step 4: Enrich the contacts with email and phone
HappySales enriches as many as 100 contacts per run through a waterfall over several data providers, and a contact is billed only when an email or a phone number is actually found. Every email comes back labelled deliverable, catch-all or undeliverable, so you can leave undeliverable addresses out of the campaign.
Get the work email and mobile number for the contacts in my "Logistics Amsterdam" contact list.
Paid steps in HappySales work in two stages: the price of the run is calculated first, as a preview, and the run starts afterwards. A daily spending cap per organisation and rate limits stop an agent from spending more than planned. Other routes to a direct dial are covered in our methods for finding a phone number.
Step 5: Launch the LinkedIn and email campaign
A HappySales campaign starts with a LinkedIn invitation, with an optional note, or with a direct message when you are already connected. It continues with 1 to 5 follow-ups after the invitation is accepted, spaced 0 to 30 days apart, and stops on its own when the person replies. Messages can use the contact's name, company and job title as variables.
Create a LinkedIn campaign for my "Logistics Amsterdam" contacts: an invitation with a short note about warehouse planning, then two follow-ups after they accept.
One HappySales sequence can mix LinkedIn steps with email steps, and before every send it checks a blacklist of companies and people, so anyone who asked not to be contacted does not hear from you again.
LinkedIn limits personalised invitations itself. According to the LinkedIn Help Center page "Personalize invitations to connect" (consulted on 28 October 2026), a member can add a personalised message to up to three connection requests per month, each of up to 200 characters, while Premium members can personalise all their invitations. Keep invitation notes under 200 characters so they fit either way.
HappySales spreads each account's sends inside a sending window (time zone, days, hours and a random delay), with daily and hourly limits on invitations and messages, and pauses the campaign if LinkedIn restricts the account.