){kind=small}
Are you looking to scale your LinkedIn lead generation efforts but don't want to spend 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 up 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.
There are LinkedIn marketing tools 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 the need to spend 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).
To stay safe, you need to limit your daily activity (profile views, connection requests, bulk messages, and endorsements) to a low number.
In addition, the LinkedIn automation landscape changes quickly, so before using any of these tools, do your research to make sure 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 to generate leads from. 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 is going to leave you with no time for anything else.
By streamlining the most time consuming activities, you can save your time and resources for other types of campaigns. You can likely save yourself between five to ten hours each week by using LinkedIn automation tools.
2. You Get In-Depth Reporting
When it comes to handling LinkedIn tasks manually, you also have to handle all of the reporting. LinkedIn automation tools do all the work for you, meaning it 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 that can help you get in touch with leads naturally.
In addition, by adding an extra personalized touch, such as personalized images, emojis, or GIFs, you may be able to increase your response rates.
4. Test and Find Out What Works
Depending on the LinkedIn tool you choose, you may be able to test your outreach efforts. 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 available. Overall, we found that QuickMail, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Zopto are the best LinkedIn automation tools around.
| LinkedIn Automation Tool | Advanced Features and Benefits | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1. QuickMail | - Run omnichannel outreach campaigns - Send LinkedIn connection requests - Reach out with LinkedIn messages to prospects you’ve connected with | G2 - 4.6/5 |
| 2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator | - Increases the limits of InMail messages - CRM integration - Advanced search options | G2 - 4.3/5 |
| 3. Zopto | - Automate your lead generation process - Includes live dashboard with data and insights | G2 - 4.5/5 |
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 it faster and easier to connect with prospects across multiple channels.
LinkedIn Tasks are a critical connection point that 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 with QuickMail include sending connection requests and reaching out to prospects through LinkedIn messages automatically.
Range of 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.
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 InMail messages for your account to make your outreach to B2B companies more effective.
First things 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 adds 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 is generating 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
3. 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 you’re ready, you can start searching 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.
As well as that, you can A/B test your campaigns, integrate it 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
4. 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 comes with convenient features, such as automatically connecting with people outside your network, auto-responding to messages, and auto-responding to messages. It helps you manage it all in a built-in CRM.
All data that you collect with LinkedHelper can be exported into a simple CSV file, which can help you build targeted lists of new leads to use in your cold email campaigns.
It's designed specifically for LinkedIn, and it's ideal if you're planning 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
5. We-Connect
LinkedIn outreach platform designed to keep your account safe
We-Connect offers a safe way to generate leads by providing you with 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
6. 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
7. 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 so you can 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. Salesflow 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
8. 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 you need to, making it perfect for teams. It's a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool rather than a Chrome extension or similar, so it can run even when you're not actively prospecting on LinkedIn.
You can use it to create entire message sequences to a predefined list of prospects, auto-connect, skill endorsements, and much more.
It's a B2B sales tool designed for agencies and teams with multiple sales reps, and it'll connect to your favorite 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
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 that you can link campaigns together so that you can run people through different automation sequences. For example, you could connect with someone, then add them to an introduction message campaign where you introduce yourself and follow up on autopilot.
There’s an integration with Zapier, so you can connect OctopusCRM to a variety of 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 with 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 have the ability to build target lists inside Expandi, create outreach campaigns with merge tags for personalization, and 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 at once. You'll also get access to detailed analytics to see how many people are accepting connection requests, replying to messages, and engaging with you on LinkedIn.
There are also A/B testing features, which are handy if you want to run multiple campaigns to test different value propositions and audiences.
Features:
Safety-first approach with features that replicate human behavior
Send and manage outreach campaigns
List building features for prospects
Manage multiple accounts
Pricing: $99 per month
11. LeadConnect
LinkedIn automation with a 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 and 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 if you're already using it for your CRM, it's a solid option. Whenever prospects connect with you or reply to messages, the activity will be logged in HubSpot so your sales team can keep track of 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’ll need to 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 more than 120 ‘recipes,' which are automation workflows that let you connect multiple tools and apps together. 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 likeQuickMail.
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 things like the tone you should use, what type of pitch is compelling to them, and even whether they appreciate small talk or not.
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, and you'll boost 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, as well as being able to find them for individual profiles you’re visiting during your prospecting.
The emails themselves aren't scraped from LinkedIn. Skrapp cross-references your prospects' names 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
SalesQL is another great choice. Part of the appeal comes from its generous free plan, which lets you find 100 emails per month on LinkedIn.
Using the SalesQL Chrome extension, you can source email addresses for people in your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-degree connections. On paid plans, you can export contacts into a CSV or CRM, which is perfect if you already use existing tools in your sales tech stack.
If the tool isn't certain an email is valid or verifiable, you'll be notified to ensure you avoid sending emails to non-existent recipients.
There's also a useful contact manager that you can use to manage the contacts you're sourcing emails for, allowing you to sort through them before exporting them into your CRM or outreach tool.
Features:
Generous free plan
Find emails for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-degree connections
Contact manager that acts as a LinkedIn CRM
Pricing: Find 100 contacts for free. Paid plans start at $39 per month
Best Free LinkedIn Automation Tools
If you’re looking free or cost-effective tool, consider these free LinkedIn automation tools.
1. Zapier
Link apps together and save time on boring, repetitive tasks without code
Zapier has a whole variety of use cases, and you’re probably already using it.
While the automation for LinkedIn is slightly limited (due to LinkedIn’s own restrictions), Zapier shines when you use it with other tools recommended in this article.
For example, you can send data from Dux-Soup to Zapier, which can then update your CRM records or add prospects to a cold email campaign.
You can also use Zapier for social selling activities and automate posting new posts from Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, or Mailchimp campaigns to your LinkedIn personal or company profile.
Features:
Send data from LinkedIn to your existing apps, from Excel to Salesforce
Add leads to your CRM from other automation tools
Automate your LinkedIn posting
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans start at $19.99 per month
2. Phantombuster
Create complex lead-generation workflows, scrape data, and automate tasks.
Extracting the data you need to power your lead generation strategies is simple with Phantombuster. It's a no-code LinkedIn automation and data extraction tool and uses ‘phantoms', which are essentially automation smart sequences that scrape data and automate actions on LinkedIn.
It has a variety of workflows that will help in your LinkedIn lead generation efforts, such as auto-connecting with a list of accounts, auto-follow, auto-sending messages, and automatically liking posts.
Your workflows can run 24/7, and you can set limits on how many tasks can run simultaneously to avoid your profile activity generating suspicion.
Features:
Plenty of automated LinkedIn tools, including profile scraping and automated connections
Code-free automation makes it easy for anyone to set up
Data extraction tools can help you build comprehensive prospecting profiles
Automated LinkedIn messaging capabilities
Pricing: Free plan with limits, paid plans start at $69 per month
3. Dux-Soup
Easy LinkedIn lead generation with a Chrome extension
Dux-Soup is one of the more popular LinkedIn automation tools for lead generation. Setting up automated drip campaigns is simple, and their live chat customer support is on offer if you need any help.
It's installed as a Google Chrome extension that you can use while you navigate LinkedIn. You can leave notes and tags on profiles to keep track of prospects that can be exported to your CRM.
Once you've created prospect lists you can use Dux-Soup to connect, message, or InMail prospects automatically.
Features:
Enables personalized and customized auto-messaging and auto-skill endorsements
Easy to run automated LinkedIn drip campaigns until your prospect responds
Prospect profiles are easily downloaded and saved on a CSV file to upload to your CRM
Pricing: Free test plan available, paid plans start at $49 per month
4. ContactOut
Free Chrome Extension to help you find email addresses from LinkedIn profiles
ContactOut is designed for recruiters who need to source candidate emails. Paid plans are available, but you can find up to 50 emails on the free plan, so it's a great place to start.
All you need to do is install the Chrome extension and visit the profile of whoever's email you want to source. Then, click on the extension, and it'll show you your prospect's email address, phone number, and social media profiles.
If you opt to go with a paid plan, you can then export leads into lists inside ContactOut or export them to a spreadsheet or CRM.
Features:
Free Chrome extension
Find emails, phone numbers, and social profiles
Export leads into spreadsheets or other tools
Pricing: 50 free credits, paid plans start at $99 per month
LinkedIn Automation Best Practices to Keep Your Account Safe
If you’re using LinkedIn to grow your pipeline, you’ll need to adhere to some rules to avoid being banned or having your account suspended. Even if you follow these best practices there’s always a risk of having your account banned, so exercise caution when launching campaigns.
Here are some of our recommendations to help keep your account safe:
1. Buy a LinkedIn Sales Navigator Plan
Before starting any outreach campaigns using LinkedIn automation software, you need a Sales Navigator subscription. LinkedIn is less likely to ban you if you pay them, which makes sense.
It's a small cost to avoid having your account suspended and assuming your campaigns are highly targeted, personalized, and generate qualified leads. It's going to deliver positive ROI pretty quickly.
2. Start Slowly and Warm Up Your Account
Don’t start connecting with hundreds of leads per day. Start slowly.
Show LinkedIn that you’re a real person, using LinkedIn in an authentic way.
Connect with people in your industry, interact with content on your feed, and send messages to people that get real engagement.
When you start increasing the volume of messages you’re sending, it won’t look as unnatural as it would if you ramped up from zero.
Even if you’re generating good results on LinkedIn, don’t try to scale up your campaigns too quickly. The problem with relying on a third-party platform like LinkedIn is that you can get cut off by them at any time, so it’s better to exercise caution even when your results are good.
3. Run LinkedIn Campaigns Alongside Email Outreach
LinkedIn is a great platform to generate sales-ready leads, but there’s always a risk involved with investing too heavily in one channel as it’s easy for your prospect to miss your message.
Running cold email outreach campaigns is a great way to ensure your outreach gets noticed and you connect with the decision-makers that you need to.
Many of the tools we’ve mentioned here will let you export your lists of leads as a CSV file.
From there, import your prospect list to QuickMail.
Then, build your campaigns. These can include emails, but allow you to add a variety of extra tasks to suit your needs.
Next, you’ll need to write your email templates.
Make sure to personalize every email using attributes, like your prospect’s first name, company name, and anything else that you need to ensure your email stands out.
Then, when you’ve created your email campaign, you can add your prospects, then sit back and wait for the replies. If a prospect doesn’t get back to you, QuickMail can automatically follow up to make sure they do see your message.
If you’re ready to start sending emails that get replies, you can start your free trial of QuickMail here.
Wrapping Up
LinkedIn is an amazing way to generate leads, and these tools are going to help you scale up your outreach campaigns without them needing to take up hours every day.
The tools here will help you find prospects, connect at scale, and automatically schedule messages and follow-ups.
They’re the perfect way to take your LinkedIn outreach to the next level. As always, be careful with them.
Don’t connect with too many people at once, and set generous delays between actions to avoid being flagged for bot activity.
Test them out, find the ones that fit into your sales process, and stick with them.
Using a tool like QuickMail helps you safely stay within LinkedIn’s limits and guidelines to increase your connections without putting your account at risk.
Get started with a free 14-day trial.
