Are you looking to scale your LinkedIn lead generation efforts but want to spend fewer hours navigating the platform every day?
This guide is for you.
We'll show you the best LinkedIn automation tools out there that you can use to automate your workflow, engage with your target audience at scale, and personalize your outreach. We'll also look at rules to be aware of and best practices to follow to ensure your LinkedIn outreach efforts get you results.
We've broken the tool suggestions into sections to help you find the most relevant software for your needs.
Let's dive into the guide.
What Is LinkedIn Automation?
LinkedIn automation can be an excellent tool for automating LinkedIn activities that you would generally do manually. This means that the technology automates the tasks on your behalf, such as sending connection requests to potential customers, follow-up messages, or LinkedIn InMails.
LinkedIn marketing tools are available that work alongside LinkedIn to automate your lead-generation activities. For example, some tools will connect with your account and let you connect with a list of ideal customers automatically — saving you hours doing it manually.
Others will find a way to match a LinkedIn user's profile with a verified email address.
Some will endorse your connections for skills to get prospects to notice you.
They all use slightly different methods.
Is LinkedIn Automation Against the Rules?
The first thing you should know about most forms of LinkedIn automation is that using a third-party tool will likely violate LinkedIn's Terms of Service.
Using LinkedIn automation is inherently risky. If your account activity is deemed suspicious, you'll receive a temporary ban and, if you continue, a permanent ban (and it's notoriously hard to get a banned LinkedIn account re-activated).
However, LinkedIn is slowly responding to the increasing need for automation and third-party tools.
The platform now allows leveraging third-party software for productivity reasons. This, however, requires informing LinkedIn upfront that you want to partner with them.
Note: This feature is being gradually rolled out and is currently available only to some LinkedIn members.
Thus, if you can't access this feature yet, limit your daily activity (profile views, connection requests, bulk messages, and endorsements) to a low number to stay safe.
In addition, the LinkedIn automation landscape changes quickly, so before using any of these tools, research to ensure they're still safe to use.
Why Use a LinkedIn Automation Tool?
Marketers often overlook LinkedIn as a way to generate business leads.
But out of all the social media platforms, it's by far the most straightforward one from which to generate leads. It's responsible for more than 80% of B2B leads via social media.
If you put in the effort, you can get results.
1. LinkedIn Automation Tools Save You Time
Doing everything manually will leave you with no time for anything else.
Streamlining the most time-consuming activities can save time and resources for other types of campaigns. You can save between five to ten hours each week using LinkedIn automation tools.
2. You Get In-Depth Reporting
When manually handling LinkedIn tasks, you must also handle all the reporting. LinkedIn automation tools do all the work for you, meaning they will gather and analyze all the data and metrics you need on your behalf.
3. Personalize Your Outreach Messaging
With LinkedIn automation tools, you can create personalized messages at scale. You can create custom template messages to help you get in touch with leads naturally.
In addition, by adding an extra personalized touch, such as personalized images, emojis, or GIFs, you can increase your response rates.
4. Test and Find Out What Works
You can test your outreach efforts depending on the LinkedIn tool you choose. You can find out what's working in terms of:
Message sequences
Subject lines
InMails
Follow-up messages
Then, implement the winner and see how good your outreach efforts are in the future.
5. Focus on Building a Strong Relationship with Your Audience
With these tools, you're able to divert your attention elsewhere. This could mean spending more time building a relationship with prospective clients. You can:
Talk with your audience.
Personalize your messages
Sell your product on social
Best LinkedIn Automation Tools
Now that you know more about how a LinkedIn automation tool could benefit you, we’ll dive into the best options. We found that QuickMail, Prospect Maximizer, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Zopto, Linked Helper 2, We-Connect, and Alfred are the best LinkedIn automation tools.
LinkedIn Automation Tool | Advanced Features and Benefits | Rating |
---|---|---|
1. QuickMail | With QuickMail, you can run omnichannel outreach campaigns, send LinkedIn connection requests, and reach out with LinkedIn messages to prospects you’ve connected with. | G2 - 4.6/5 |
2. Prospect Maximizer | This feature-rich tool lets you run outreach campaigns from as many LinkedIn accounts as needed, making it perfect for teams. | G2 - 4.7/5 |
3. LinkedIn Sales Navigator | Increases the limits of InMail messages, includes CRM integration, and has advanced search options. | G2 - 4.3/5 |
4. Zopto | Automate your lead generation process and includes live dashboard with data and insights | G2 - 4.4/5 |
5. Linked Helper 2 | Automatically connecting with people outside your network and auto-responding to messages. | G2 - 4.5/5 |
6. We-Connect | A dedicated IP, inbuilt randomization, and usage limits prevent your automation from looking like bot activity. | G2 - 4.6/5 |
7. Alfred | There’s a built-in LinkedIn search feature to define your ICP and start sourcing prospects that match it. | G2 - 4.5/5 |
8. Salesflow | They can source prospects, schedule outreach campaigns, and track important insights, such as response rate. | G2 - 4.3/5 |
9. OctopusCRM | A tool that automates connection requests to 2nd and 3rd-level connections, message in bulk, and send follow-ups automatically. | G2 - 4.4/5 |
10. Expandi | Helps to manage multiple accounts with low-risk since you get a dedicated IP, randomized delays between actions, activity limits, and an account warm-up. | G2 - 4.1/5 |
11. LeadConnect | Standard LinkedIn automation tool that can do automated messages, follow up at scale, connect with prospects, and track responses. | G2 - 3.4/5 |
12. TexAu | Contains many automation workflows that let you connect multiple tools and apps. | G2 - 4.3/5 |
13. Crystal | A handy tool that analyzes your leads' LinkedIn profiles and shows you actionable details on how to communicate with them. | G2 - 4.6/5 |
1. QuickMail
Simplify your LinkedIn communications and easily run omnichannel outreach campaigns.
QuickMail is a powerful outreach tool that helps you quickly grow your LinkedIn connections and streamline communications.
It simplifies common tasks from your daily workflows, making connecting with prospects across multiple channels faster and easier.
LinkedIn Tasks are a critical connection point many successful teams leverage to improve their outreach. QuickMail enables you to add these tasks to your omnichannel campaigns with minimal effort while staying within LinkedIn's limits.
With QuickMail, you can easily scale your efforts by adding additional inboxes to existing campaigns. This allows you to increase your daily sending limit without risking your deliverability.
Some standout features of QuickMail include sending connection requests and reaching out to prospects through LinkedIn messages automatically.
Key Features:
Connection request campaign steps with custom messages
LinkedIn message campaign steps
Profile visit campaign steps (users can see who has viewed their profile)
Unified reply handling and unlimited team members
Pricing: Starts at $49/month. Get started with a free 14-day trial today!
2. Prospect Maximizer
Run LinkedIn outreach campaigns and track activity across multiple accounts.
This feature-rich tool lets you run outreach campaigns from as many LinkedIn accounts as possible, making it perfect for teams. It's a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool rather than a Chrome extension, so it can run even when you're not actively prospecting on LinkedIn.
You can use it to create entire message sequences for a predefined list of prospects, auto-connect, skill endorsements, and more.
It's a B2B sales tool designed for agencies and teams with multiple sales reps, and it'll connect to your favourite tools thanks to a Zapier integration.
Features:
Dynamic usage, thanks to cloud-based software
Great at targeting users and business owners based on their activity
ROI calculator offers deeper insights into strategic planning
Pricing: Starts at $199 per month
3. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Protect your account and get extra prospecting features.
Before we discuss any more LinkedIn automation tools, we suggest investing in a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account. This is an essential element of any successful LinkedIn outreach campaign.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator increases the limits of in-mail messages for your account to make your outreach to B2B companies more effective.
First, If you're using any LinkedIn automation tool, you should have a Sales Navigator account.
Sales Navigator will help keep your account from being suspended and enable you access to plenty of features such as advanced search, free InMails, and a CRM integration to LinkedIn.
You can set up alerts, add notes to prospect accounts, and get suggestions for targeting based on your existing prospect lists.
You'll also get reports on your usage and activity to help you see how effectively your activity generates results and conversion rates.
Features:
Advanced searching for new leads
Lead recommendations from LinkedIn
CRM integration available
Pricing: Pricing plans start at $79.99 per month
4. Zopto
Scale up your outreach and generate conversations at scale.
Zopto is an advanced tool that automates lead generation on LinkedIn. It offers a quick and easy way to start automating your outreach.
Zopto takes two minutes to set up. Once ready, you can search for new customers using LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator filters.
Once you've chosen your filters, you can build campaigns that include sending InMail messages in bulk, outreach, sequential messaging, and connection invites at scale.
In addition, you can A/B test your campaigns, integrate them with your CRM via Zapier, and see advanced reporting on your metrics.
Features:
Automates your lead generation process
Helps get you your ideal audience outside of your network or industry
Includes live dashboard with detailed information and stats
Pricing: Pricing options start at $155 per month
5. Linked Helper 2
Encourage endorsements from prospects to increase credibility and conversions.
Linked Helper does what it says – helps you with LinkedIn outreach automation. It has convenient features, such as automatically connecting with people outside your network and auto-responding to messages. It helps you manage it all in a built-in CRM.
All data you collect with LinkedHelper can be exported into a simple CSV file, which can help you build targeted lists of new leads for your cold email campaigns.
It's explicitly designed for LinkedIn, and it's ideal if you plan on using it for your lead-generation campaigns or history of contacts. You can use it with a free LinkedIn account, but we recommend buying a Sales Navigator subscription first.
Features:
Automated endorsements to encourage your detailed list of contacts to endorse you back
An automated mailing system that helps personalize communications
A powerful list manager that helps you build lead-generation funnels for a hyper-targeted audience
Pricing: $15 for a 1-month license
6. We-Connect
LinkedIn outreach platform designed to keep your account safe
We-Connect offers a safe way to generate leads by providing a dedicated IP, inbuilt randomization, and usage limits to prevent your automation from looking like bot activity.
It has five types of marketing automation campaigns you can run. Invite new connections, Message 1st connections, endorse first-degree contacts and more, auto follow, and automate profile visiting.
Single and multi-step campaigns are easy to set up and run, and with the Smart Reply feature, responses can be seen and handled in one place.
We-Connect has an API and Zapier integration, so you can connect it with your CRM and use your LinkedIn activity alongside your other sales data.
Features:
Safe and secure, cloud-based tool
Great user experience with a powerful dashboard for multiple campaigns
Easy to analyze reporting metrics and handle activity in one place
Pricing: Starts at $49 per month
7. Alfred
Quickly identify and send outreach campaigns to prospects.
Alfred enables you to manage your LinkedIn search and outreach from one place. There’s a built-in LinkedIn search feature, so you can define your ICP and start sourcing prospects that match it.
Once you’ve built a list, you can run automated multi-step sequences that include endorsements, InMails, and even send emails.
Integration with other tools is straightforward, with a connection to your GSuite account and other social platforms.
Alfred also has a purpose-built LinkedIn CRM, so you can easily manage your leads and make lead generation easier.
Features:
Powerful features that can help with every step of your lead-generation process
Built-in CRM for easy lead management
Straightforward integration with other tools
Pricing: Pricing tiers start at $49 per month
8. Salesflow
Find prospects, schedule your LinkedIn outreach, and see live insights into your performance.
Salesflow is a LinkedIn automation tool designed for agencies and sales teams. It's feature-rich, allowing you to source prospects on LinkedIn, schedule outreach campaigns with multiple regular messages, and track your key insights and advanced metrics, such as response rate, in real-time.
There's a two-way Zapier integration to send information to your CRM or update your Salesflow campaigns based on actions happening in your CRM.
We can't verify the accuracy of the statement, but they say there's a near-zero percent ban rate using the tool as it mimics real activity patterns. Sales flow has been around for several years now, so that's a good sign — if its customers were getting banned, it wouldn't be around anymore.
If you run a lead generation agency, Salesflow also offers white-label options that you can use for your clients.
Features:
Use merge tags in your outreach templates to personalize every touchpoint.
Manage campaigns for multiple clients and white-label the tool.
Smart algorithms to mimic human-like activity
Pricing: Tool pricing starts at $99 per month
9. OctopusCRM
A complete LinkedIn CRM and automation system
OctopusCRM is an all-in-one solution that lets you manage your outbound sales campaigns, view reports, and automate your LinkedIn outreach.
You can send automated connection requests to 2nd and 3rd-level connections, message in bulk actions, and send follow-ups automatically.
One nice feature is linking campaigns to run people through different automation sequences. For example, you could connect with someone and then add them to an introductory message campaign where you introduce yourself and follow up on autopilot.
There's an integration with Zapier, so you can connect OctopusCRM to various other tools to speed up your LinkedIn marketing efforts.
Features:
Automate messaging and connection requests for actual customer relationships
Create complex workflows by linking sequences.
CRM included a data dashboard with detailed performance metrics
Connects with Zapier to export data
Pricing: Starts at $9.99 per month
10. Expandi
Automation software with safety features and detailed campaign analytics
Expandi is a LinkedIn automation tool designed to keep your account from being suspended.
There's a variety of modest features like having your own dedicated IP, randomized delays between actions, activity limits, and an account warm-up feature to make everything look as human as possible.
In addition, you can build target lists inside Expandi, create outreach campaigns with merge tags for personalization, and create a smart inbox to help you track replies and action items.
You can manage multiple accounts from your dashboard, so it's perfect for agencies or sales teams running multiple campaign creations simultaneously. You'll also get access to detailed analytics to see how many people accept connection requests, reply to messages, and engage with you on LinkedIn.
There are also A/B testing features, which are handy for running multiple campaigns to test different value propositions and audiences.
Features:
Safety-first approach with features that replicate human behaviour
Send and manage outreach campaigns
List building features for prospects
Manage multiple accounts
Pricing: $99 per month
11. LeadConnect
LinkedIn automation made for HubSpot users
LeadConnect is one of the more straightforward LinkedIn automation and outreach tools.
All the usual features you'd expect from an automated lead generation tool are here. You can send automated messages, follow up at scale, connect with prospects, and track responses.
One of the main value propositions is that you can sync prospect data with HubSpot, so it's a solid option if you already use it for your CRM. Whenever prospects connect with you or reply to messages, the activity will be logged in HubSpot so your sales team can track it.
You can also add people to a no-contact list to avoid engaging with the same people as other customer support team members.
The main downside is that you must leave your browser running if you want LeadConnect to run.
Features:
Automated connection requests, follow-up messages, reply detection
Personalization of messages
Easy to integrate with HubSpot for data and lead management
Add leads to a no-contact list.
Pricing: Starts at $22.95 per month
12. TexAu
Automate a variety of tasks with workflows designed for automated lead generation.
TexAu is a growth automation platform that can help you scale your LinkedIn outreach and prospecting efforts.
The platform has over 120 recipe automation workflows that let you connect multiple tools and apps. You can stitch workflows together into highly complex but effective systems to engage with prospects and grow your pipeline at scale.
For example, you can scrape members of a LinkedIn group, find their business email addresses, and save those to a Google Sheet. From there, you could build a workflow with Zapier that uploads your prospect list to a cold email tool like QuickMail.
Features:
Plenty of automation for target profiles, including auto-endorse, like, comment, or message
Easy integration with other platforms you may be using to collect customer data
Pre-built workflows that you can get quickly put to work
Pricing: Starts at $29 per month
13. Crystal
Predict the personality types of your leads to enhance your approach.
Crystal is a highly unique tool type. It analyzes your leads' LinkedIn profiles and shows you actionable details on how to communicate with them. You can then use that information to tailor your outreach approach and ensure you're offering value to them.
It’ll show you data on the tone you should use, what type of pitch is compelling to them, and even whether they appreciate small talk.
It'll show personality data on top of LinkedIn, so you can combine it with other tools mentioned here, like DuxSoup, to quickly save notes on prospects to your CRM.
When you reach out, your message to your prospects will be perfectly personalized, boosting your chances of getting a positive reply.
Features:
View personality data for any prospect.
Converts data into insights you can use to tailor your approach
Can coach your sales team to help them adapt their strategies
Browser extension to check personality data across LinkedIn
Pricing: Starts at $49 per month
Best Tools for Finding Emails on LinkedIn
If you’re looking for the most effective and safest tools for finding emails on LinkedIn, consider the companies below.
1. Lusha
Find prospect contact details at scale using a Chrome extension.
Lusha offers an easy-to-use platform for fast LinkedIn lead generation. Once you’ve added the Chrome extension, you can see prospect contact data anywhere online, including on someone’s LinkedIn profile.
Once you find a prospect on LinkedIn, you can use Lusha to automatically save that lead to your CRM and see details about their company, role, and contact information.
Features:
Fast prospecting and easy-to-use
Secures data on harder-to-reach prospects
Easy to integrate with LinkedIn and your CRM as a Chrome extension
Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $99 per month.
2. Skrapp
Find emails from LinkedIn profiles and Sales Navigator searches.
Skrapp has a sales email-finding platform, and as part of their offering, they include a Chrome extension that shows you verified email addresses for your prospects.
You can find them from Sales Navigator searches, and you can also find them for individual profiles you’re visiting during your LinkedIn prospecting.
The emails themselves aren't scraped from LinkedIn. Skrapp cross-references your prospects' and company names with existing contacts in its B2B contact database.
Key features:
Find verified emails for your LinkedIn prospects.
Easily export leads to CSV files.
Tells you if an email can’t be verified
Pricing: Starts at $39 per month
3. Wiza
Build lead lists and extract emails from Sales Navigator searches.
Wiza’s LinkedIn automation software allows you to find emails on LinkedIn from a Sales Navigator search.
After you've defined the type of lead you're looking for, you'll need to run a Sales Navigator search. Then, Wiza will work its magic to find you verified emails for every prospect on the list. You can export your lead list as a CSV or integrate it with your CRM in Salesforce and add the leads there.
You only get charged for valid emails, so it’s a cost-effective tool to start using.
Features:
Find leads on searches or via individual profiles.
Integrates with Salesforce to automatically add leads.
Export leads from LinkedIn to a CSV.
Pricing: Plans from $80 per month
4. Cleverly
Send personalized messages on LinkedIn at scale.
Cleverly offers a done-for-you LinkedIn outreach service, and as part of that, the company includes an automation platform designed to help you identify and connect with your ideal prospects at scale. You can launch several types of campaigns from Cleverly's own dashboard, track results, and see data on reply rates.
It acts as a CRM that lets you snooze conversations, add tags, and set reminders to follow up with leads. Whenever prospects reply to a LinkedIn message, you’ll get an automatic email so you can follow up immediately.
Importantly, it also connects with email-finding tools like Skrapp and FindThatLead. That means you can source emails from LinkedIn profiles and automatically add them to HubSpot. The emails aren't scraped from LinkedIn and are sourced from the email-finding tools' databases.
Features:
Hands-on sales consultancy from LinkedIn B2B experts
Provides copy for your messaging
Data-driven monitoring and email automation features
Connects with email-finding tools to enrich your prospect profiles
Pricing: Starts at $397 per month
5. SalesQL
LinkedIn email finder and outreach CRM platform merged into one