LinkedIn automation in 2023 – Can you still automate LinkedIn prospecting?

How is LinkedIn Automation perceived?

Automated tools can be used to send connection requests at predefined intervals to increase the chances of success by providing a personal touch instead of bulk messaging. It also eliminates the manual effort of following up with each prospect individually and eliminates tedious tasks like annotating contacts with custom names or sorting through profiles for relevant information.

Automation gives sales reps access to sales data, activity information, and other essential analytics which helps them make informed decisions about their marketing strategy on LinkedIn just as easily as any other platform. Furthermore, it enables salespeople to create dynamic campaigns that react in real time in order to maximize returns on investment. LinkedIn automation provides many advantages over manual efforts -all without sacrificing quality or attention to the personalization of prospects.

LinkedIn automation tools are becoming increasingly popular, as they provide time-saving features and a helpful way of reaching and engaging with an audience on LinkedIn. Automation tools like Sales.Rocks, Waalaxy, LinkedHelper, and so on, make the process of interacting with users easier and more efficient by mimicking human behavior as it carries out certain activities for you.

This can include activities like sending out automated messages to potential leads, creating personalized campaigns, visiting a person’s profile, interacting with their latest posted content, etc.

The real story behind LinkedIn Automation for 2023

This is everything that LinkedIn automation tools aim for when preparing their roadmaps. However, LinkedIn doesn’t agree much with the psychology of automation and strived to keep the human touch and interaction between the social platform users, so to say to keep its “sociality”.

On the other hand, LinkedIn, like the rest of the social platforms is concerned about data breaches and came up with a bundle of implementations to strike off the latest concerns, both security and automation. LinkedIn introduced “new rules” against LinkedIn automation in 2023, making the job really hard for automation tools.

LinkedIn has implemented stricter policies and algorithms to prevent spam and misuse of its platform. This means that using certain automation tools that violate these policies may result in account suspensions or even permanent bans.

The latest sources uncover that LinkedIn has implemented additional login steps with re-captcha to prevent fraudulent logins from different devices, which will affect automation tools that work without native LinkedIn login. 

Even if the login is passed, an entirely automated campaign with sending direct messages to prospects, reading of the inbox for triggest, and following up correctly in an automated manner will be almost impossible to implement due to the daily limits and connection request restrictions from LinkedIn.

Can you still automate LinkedIn prospecting?

Automating LinkedIn prospecting is still possible, although it may not be as effective as it once was.

There are still legitimate automation tools and strategies that can be used to streamline your prospecting efforts, such as sending connection requests, direct messages, or using templates for outreach. It’s important to stay up-to-date on LinkedIn’s policies and guidelines to ensure that your automation efforts are compliant and effective.

Before sending fully automated campaigns with sequence messages and interactions on LinkedIn, it’s important to consider how you want your message to come across.

Not only should your message be consistent with your brand identity, but it should also be personalized for each recipient. Giving a message a personal touch shows the recipient that they’re more than just another lead — they’re an individual you are taking time out of your day to reach out to.

This is when we need to consider how far we want to take the automation.
For example, you could automate your first contact with the prospect and the contributing actions, however, once you start the conversation, it’s advisable to continue the conversation human to human.

The reason behind it is that LinkedIn is still considered a social platform with its main use for chatting and networking. Thus, the communication should also be human-like instead of sending large templates that would contain your sales pitch as you would normally send through email.

How to bypass some of LinkedIn’s new rules?

At Sales.Rocks we follow LinkedIn’s latest trends and implementations and strive to enable LinkedIn automation while still being compliant with LinkedIn’s policies. 

For example, if your profile gets constantly disconnected from your automation platform, try to keep it logged in on the same browser and don’t log in from different devices. This will keep your active LinkedIn session from only one IP address and one device, not alerting and triggering LinkedIn’s latest login regulations.

Another example is to keep your automation (chrono)logical. Don’t try sending a direct message to prospecting that is still not in your network. This will only alert LinkedIn that “someone” is trying to send a message on their behalf to a person that hasn’t been connected with you yet. Set up your automaton sequence in chronological order: first, check if the profile is connected, give it a day or two, and then send a connection request, if the profile connects you can only after automate a direct message or interaction with their latest content, liking their recent post for example.

LinkedIn has also a limit on daily interaction that you would also do manually, like sending connection requests, daily invitations, and so on. So, instead of just preparing a list of 1000 people that you want to connect on LinkedIn with as potentials split your list into a lower number of prospects (20-50) and set up your campaign. It will take a while until your automated campaign is finished, but you’ll most certainly get the most out of your LinkedIn prospecting without risking your LinkedIn profile.

Last, but certainly not least, watch out for how many automation actions you run per day. If your LinkedIn profile is “active” the entire day liking and connecting with profiles, LinkedIn will detect that something fishy is going on. So keep your actions in a human and reasonable number, and try not to spam the network with automated interactions.

Final thought

Automation is a controversial topic in the world of LinkedIn prospecting. While some argue that it is still possible to automate certain aspects of the process, others warn of the potential risks involved.

Those who choose to automate their prospecting efforts should do so carefully, with strict adherence to LinkedIn’s guidelines. Additionally, it’s important to remember that automation can never replace personal touch and human interaction, that we as a LinkedIn automation tool advise you to continue once you establish your first communication with the potential.