Several years ago LinkedIn implemented a weekly invitation limit for all its users so now you're able to invite only about 150 - 200 profiles a week. So, if previously you could invite 100 - 150 contacts per day, 7 days a week, now you're allowed to do only 200 invites on Monday or Tuesday, for example, and then have to wait till the next week for the limit to be lifted.
Moreover, recently they implemented one more limit for personalized invitations which is about 10 - 20 invites with text note per month (and up to 200 without a text note) for a free account. If your LinkedIn account was affected, the solution to continue sending personalized invitations is to buy a LinkedIn Premium subscription. Otherwise, you can simply delete the invitation note and continue inviting up to 200 profiles per month as usual.
Do you really need an automation tool for those 200 invites? Is there any other way apart from inviting to send a message to your 2nd or 3rd-degree connection leads? Is there a sense in using LinkedIn as a lead source for a business?
This may seem like a dead-end for automation as well as a hard time for those whose business depends on LinkedIn. And you can't do anything with the way things are... or can you?
We in Linked Helper believe that it's not the end of the story just yet. To avoid that limitation we came up with a couple of workarounds which you should be aware of.
Alternative ways to reach out to your leads
Although there are no more solutions to the weekly invitation limit, Linked Helper provides a number of other ways to reach out to your leads.
Send free messages to group members
Since LinkedIn restricts its users from sending invitations, it could be a good workaround to substitute the invites with messages to group members. Unfortunately, in regular LinkedIn, there are no filters to collect only those who meet your criteria. However, that's not an issue if you have a Sales Navigator subscription since it offers a "Group" filter on top of which you can use all the other available filters:
Basically, you need to:
- Filter out the target audience using the needed Sales Navigator filters.
- Collect the profiles into a campaign and assign a group ID for messaging from within the Action Queue.
- Start a campaign.
Reference material: How to filter profiles via Sales Navigator and send them free messages as group members?
Moreover, you can transfer filtered profiles to other LinkedIn accounts managed in Linked Helper 2 and contact them even without a Sales Navigator subscription (but provided that those accounts are in the same group as transferred leads). So, if you're an agency, you can pay only for one Sales Navigator subscription, but use collected profiles on several LinkedIn accounts. All you need is to transfer the leads and assign a group ID as per the article above.
Here is some additional information:
- How to download profiles from Linked Helper
- How to upload profiles' data from Linked Helper CSV file
- How to change the LinkedIn platform for processing profiles
Send messages to event attendees
LinkedIn allows you to filter and collect profiles who attend an event which you are hosting or attending, too. What's more important, LinkedIn allows you to send messages to event attendees even if they are your 3rd-degree connections.
Let's imaging you're a recruiter who searches for a junior marketing manager. So instead of inviting every suitable candidate, you can collect them from an event which has lost of suitable candidates:
And then simply send a direct message via the event without a need to be connected:
The same thing can be done via in Linked Helper but in an automated way which saves you loads of time and efforts, not to mention invitation credits saved to this feature:
Send free InMails to open profiles
LinkedIn allows sending free InMails to premium profiles (those with a gold LinkedIn badge) who didn't disable the ability to receive free InMails from others. Such contacts are called "Open link" or "Open profile" and have a special hidden badge on their pages.
Prior to sending limited invitations, you can reach out to your leads via free InMails thus saving the invites for those who do not have an open profile and cannot be reached via group messages.
Please refer to the article with detailed instructions on how to filter out such profiles: How to send free InMails to Open profiles.
Get emails of your 2nd and 3rd connections
LinkedIn does not allow you to get emails of your 2nd and 3rd-degree connections, but that's not a problem: using Linked Helper, you can get their emails via via LH Email Finder (our own service) or via built-in integration with Snov.io / its alternatives if you're willing to go through a few extra manual steps. Reference materials:
- Use Find Profile Emails action in order to get personal email addresses of your 2nd and 3rd-degree connections.
- How to extract emails of your 2nd and 3rd-degree connections via Snov.io
- How to get emails of your 2nd and 3rd connections in LinkedIn
What else Linked Helper can be useful for?
Warm-up your leads
Automation in a social network is not limited to inviting and messaging only. For instance, it would be far from ideal to just bump into your leads with an offer in the invitation note - it's better to warm them up prior to reaching out in order to increase the acceptance rate.
For that, you can use Follow/unfollow profiles as well as Like and comment posts and articles actions which help your LinkedIn account to be noticed by your leads so they are aware of you being interested in them. Also, after some time since the invitation is accepted, you may consider endorsing some skills of your 1st-degree connections.
Here is an example of the Workflow:
- Action #1- Like and comment posts and articles to show targeted 2nd and 3d level connections that you like their content.
- Action #2 - Delay between actions for 1 - 2 days to postpone the transfer of the contacts to the next action in order to make sure they had some time to check the notifications.
- Action #3- Follow/unfollow profiles to let your prospects know that you're interested in them.
- Action #4 - Delay between actions for 1 - 2 days to postpone the transfer of the contacts to the next action in order to make sure they had some time to check the notifications.
- Action #5 - Invite 2nd and 3rd level contacts to invite targeted contacts.
- Action #6 - Filter contacts out of my network (keep 1st level only) to filter those who accepted the invitations to connect.
- Action #7 - Message to 1st connections | Group members to send 1st follow-up like "Thank you for accepting my invitation to connect!" to start a small talk.
- Action #8 - Delay between actions for 3 - 5 days to postpone the transfer of the contacts to the next action.
- Action #9 - Endorse my contacts to endorse some skills and show that you value the person as a professional.
- Action #10 - Delay between actions for 2 - 3 days to postpone the transfer of the contacts to the next action.
- Action #11 - Message to 1st connections | Group members to send 2nd follow-up with your offer.
- Etc.
Boost your posts
Boost post action is a perfect option to marketers or influencers to drag attention to their posts. Creating content can be your superpower, but expanding your outreach demands too much manual work and routine actions. That's where Boost post feature comes in! After sharing a post about "5 Proven Strategies for Acing Interviews", you can tag key industry players. This triggers personalized notifications for them, inviting them to engage with your content.
Invite to group / event / organization
Apart from usual invitations, Linked Helper is capable of inviting 1st-degree connections to join a group or event in LinkedIn, as well as to follow your LinkedIn company page provided that you have the ability to do that manually.
This may help in building brand awareness and keeping your LinkedIn account active.
- How to invite LinkedIn 1st-degree connections to join a group
- How to invite connections to join Event
- How to automatically invite your connections to follow your Company page on LinkedIn
Extract and export profiles and messaging history
Linked Helper 2 allows you to export your 1st-degree connections with all their details including messaging history:
This may be helpful when you're about to cancel your Sales Navigator subscription because, as per LinkedIn Help Center, your messaging history will be lost: Cancel Your Sales Navigator Account
Here are some more useful articles from our blog:
- Automate mass LinkedIn outreach: 10X more sent invitations
- Mass invites: Grow sent connection requests on LinkedIn by 7 times
- Best LinkedIn automation bot to send mass messages & grow your network
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