17 Best LinkedIn Automation Tools for Successful Lead Generation
LinkedIn is more than just a professional networking tool. The social media platform is also a valuable business to business (B2B) marketing solution that brands use for growing connections, generating leads, and more.
With over 500 million users in almost 200 countries around the world, LinkedIn helps forge important connections for large enterprises and their customers, making it a core part of any social media marketing plan.
LinkedIn automation tools help marketers get even more value from your LinkedIn account by streamlining your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
What is LinkedIn automation?
LinkedIn automation uses tools to perform tasks like sending messages, posting scheduled content, finding potential contacts through LinkedIn search, generating leads, and even running reports. Automated messages free up your team's time and help you scale-up outreach campaigns and drive lead generations.
Automation turns your LinkedIn account into a cost-effective and efficient customer relationship management (CRM) and lead management tool. Some automation tools provide valuable insights into your target market that you can use to refine your LinkedIn lead generation program.
The benefits of LinkedIn automation
LinkedIn automation is a little like outsourcing your outreach efforts without using expensive marketing agencies. There are many reasons why running automated LinkedIn is useful for your business. The benefits of automating LinkedIn actions include:
- Faster growth because LinkedIn automation makes it easier to send connection requests to multiple prospects at once.
- Generating leads faster and more cost-effectively by automating LinkedIn actions like messaging and lead prospecting.
- More value for money because automation reduces the labor costs of extensive LinkedIn marketing strategies and messaging drip campaigns.
- More effective LinkedIn strategy because these LinkedIn automation tools deliver reports and actionable insights faster and for less money.
When brands use the power of automated LinkedIn tools to execute, refine, and monitor their B2B strategy they save time and money and also make their efforts more effective.
Types of LinkedIn automation tools
LinkedIn automation tools operate in three main ways:
Browser-based LinkedIn automation
Web-browser LinkedIn automation tools operate within your internet window and don't need you to log into another account or dashboard. Browsers include Google Chrome, Safari on Apple iOS, and Microsoft Edge.
Often these tools use a web browser extension to help you do things like react to content, send connection requests, and scan profiles automatically.
You need to be actively using your web browser on the site for these tools to run.
Cloud-based LinkedIn automation
Cloud-based LinkedIn automation tools run in the background for you, even when your web browser or computer is turned off.
This type of LinkedIn automation software offers the same features as other types, with the added benefit of running without your intervention. You usually need to log into a dashboard or online portal to set up your cloud-based LinkedIn automation tools.
Desktop-based LinkedIn automation
In this instance, a third-party LinkedIn automation tool installed on your computer operates your automated LinkedIn outreach for you.
Despite the name, desktop-based apps run on both desktop and laptop computers. It's just a catch-all term for computer-based tools. Most of these run on PC or Mac operating systems.
The type of LinkedIn automation tools that suit your needs will depend on the features you're after and what types of security protocols you operate under.
Types of LinkedIn automation tasks
There are also three key categories of LinkedIn automation tasks. These include:
Marketing automation tools
LinkedIn marketing automation tools help you with your B2B outreach efforts on LinkedIn. These tools drive lead generation marketing efforts because they can:
- Find potential from your target market
- Send connection requests to new prospects
- Follow up on contact with leads
They also help you execute your LinkedIn marketing strategy through your own LinkedIn profile by doing things like:
- Scheduling LinkedIn posts
- Automating engagement on posts
LinkedIn marketing automation extends to direct outreach with messaging tools.
Messaging automation tools
These messaging automation tools will:
- Send direct messages to prospects
- Respond to messages in your LinkedIn inbox
- Automatically follow up on unanswered messages
Many messaging automation tools also offer artificial intelligence (AI)-powered content creation to help draft personalized messages. This helps make your outreach more effective.
Measurement automation toolsAutomated reporting makes it easier for companies to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics so you can analyze and refine your LinkedIn marketing campaigns.
The best automated LinkedIn reporting solutions provide easy-to-read reports in a simple dashboard that helps you determine where to focus your LinkedIn marketing efforts.
Top 17 LinkedIn automation tools
Now that we've covered the various types of LinkedIn automation tools and their benefits, let's take a closer look at the best LinkedIn automation tools available for marketing, messaging, and reporting.
LinkedIn marketing automation toolsIt's best to examine LinkedIn automation tools based on what you need. Marketing automation, messaging automation, and reporting automation tools all suit different purposes. These tools below are focused on marketing solutions.
1. Brandwatch
Brandwatch is a comprehensive social media management tool that lets you automate a wide range of LinkedIn actions.
Marketing-specific LinkedIn automation aids within the Brandwatch suite of social media management tools include:
Brandwatch Publish: a tool that schedules social media marketing posts. This automated post scheduler has a convenient collaborative dashboard that you can organize in a visual calendar view to get a snapshot of your LinkedIn content. You can share this view with others and even get stakeholders to sign off before you schedule your LinkedIn posts. Publish also includes a taggable and searchable content calendar and AI-powered features to help you create and optimize content. Furthermore, it supports LinkedIn-specific formats such as Polls and Documents post.
Brandwatch Advertise: a tool for creating and managing your paid LinkedIn campaigns. This ad manager tool lets you manage your entire paid campaign across multiple social media platforms all from one dashboard and helps you optimize your campaigns, too. Want more convenience? Advertise lets you turn organic posts into effective ads with just one click.
There are other LinkedIn automation features in the Brandwatch portfolio, which we'll discuss in more detail below.
2. Sprout Social
Like Brandwatch, Sprout Social offers automation aids for marketing on LinkedIn. The main component of this solution is a content creation platform with a built-in automated scheduler. Sprout social tools let marketing managers collaborate with staff, execute content strategy, and report on high-performing content.
Sprout Social lets users conduct outreach efforts targeted to audiences based on job title, company size, and industry.
It also offers reporting features based on the performance of your posts and messages. Sprout Social offers community management dashboards where users can respond to comments across multiple LinkedIn profiles and accounts directly from the platform.
3. Hootsuite
Hootsuite offers automated solutions for LinkedIn content publishing and ideation. This social-media scheduling system uses AI to help you write content and highlights top-performing features that you can then boost or promote through paid ad campaigns.
The Hootsuite dashboard lets you manage those paid campaigns easily within its dashboard and has AI-powered content variation tools to diversify your content. Hootsuite puts all your social media content from other platforms alongside your LinkedIn content to make it easier to track and schedule your campaigns.
4. TexAu
TexAu was designed from the ground up to automate mundane tasks on LinkedIn. It specifically helps streamline outreach to prospects and manage your follow list with automated profile viewing and data scraping solutions.
TexAu will send personalized connection requests and even follow up with prospects to help you grow your lead pool quickly and cost-effectively.
This solution will also collect key data from the LinkedIn profile of your target audience to help you build a lead database.
LinkedIn automation tools like auto message, auto comment, and auto follow keep you connected to a relevant audience so your sales team can focus on LinkedIn prospecting and lead generation.
Lastly, TexAu will scrape your own connection list to remove irrelevant accounts and help clean up your follow list. This makes it easier for your team to target the right audience using your LinkedIn posts. TexAu is available on a 14-day free trial.
5. Lempod
Lempod is an AI-powered browser extension that arranges a network of LinkedIn accounts in pods that automatically like and follow posts for other profiles within the LinkedIn group. This amplifies the reach and visibility of LinkedIn posts by boosting engagement, which leads to a larger audience and helps brands grow their profile.
This style of automation tool comes with risks because much of the engagement is from automatically curated LinkedIn group members outside of your target audience, which over time may hurt your visibility in the demographics that matter most.
LinkedIn messaging automation tools
LinkedIn messaging automation tools are those that are focused specifically on interacting with your audience and customers on the platform.
These LinkedIn lead generation automation tools integrate with LinkedIn sales navigator to send messages and connection requests, speeding up and amplifying your outreach campaigns.
Top LinkedIn messaging tools include:
6. Brandwatch Engage
When we introduced Brandwatch at the top of this list, we mentioned that its features cover every type of LinkedIn automation. Brandwatch Engage is the social media module that LinkedIn marketers and sales teams can use to connect directly with their audience and prospects through direct messages on LinkedIn.
The cloud-based smart inbox makes it easy to read and respond to messages and posts across multiple channels.
It lets you automatically reply to messages, comments, and even mentions of your brand in posts on other LinkedIn pages.
Engage delivers a curated feed of inbound messages and comments automatically tagged with notes and tags.
It even assigns those messages and comments to a staff member so you can respond at the speed of social. It also allows you to set up automated message responses on LinkedIn. And, it supports direct messages to Company Pages, too.
7. Dux-Soup
Dux-Soup is a cloud-based automation solution that finds and automatically messages prospective customers based on the settings you provide. It integrates with LinkedIn Sales Navigator to help refine your lead generation efforts.
Users can set up different automations for everything from lead generation and sales to recruiting new staff.
Dux-Soup can run a different automated campaign for each different prospect list you set up, each with a different set of automation tasks.
Each of these campaigns is tracked and scored in a reporting dashboard that measures profile visits, message responses, and results for your outreach. Sales teams can sign up for a 14-day free trial of Dux-Soup.
8. Dripify
Dripify is another automatic messaging tool to help companies perform LinkedIn outreach on a larger scale with less cost. Dripify offers customizable messages for different audience segments and its AI-powered messaging tool uses natural language and human behavior to increase its effectiveness.
Dripify gets its name from the way it builds drip campaigns, with sequenced actions designed to deliver your messages more effectively.
Like others in this category, Dripify will crawl LinkedIn to find prospects based on the criteria you set, including industry type, location, and other key demographic data.
9. Expandi
Expandi is another cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool. This LinkdIn lead generation tool finds prospects and reaches out to build connections and grow your LinkedIn network automatically. It also syncs with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
It offers a campaign management dashboard including reporting functions and integrates with other CRM tools so you can connect your LinkedIn marketing campaigns to your other B2B marketing efforts.
The Expandi LinkedIn automation tool is available in a seven-day free trial.
10. LeadConnect
LeadConnect is also a connection automation tool that reaches out to prospects and leads automatically. It integrates with CRM systems like HubSpot to help manage and maintain your contacts.
This automation tool plugs into LinkedIn search to find prospects based on specific values specified by the user, or it can reach out to profiles uploaded to the cloud-based app from a CSV file or Google Sheets list.
11. Octopus CRM
Octopus CRM offers automated mass messaging and personalized connection request solutions for LinkedIn marketers.
Companies can set up lists of LinkedIn profiles and program a dedicated outreach campaign for each group.
This tool, like the others before it, makes the process of prospecting for leads and converting sales easier, faster, and more effective by automating your outreach.
LinkedIn measurement automation tools
No B2B strategy is complete without set goals and a plan to track them. Measurement automation streamlines your reporting and helps optimize your strategy to get the best possible results. Here's a list of top LinkedIn measurement automation tools:
12. Brandwatch Measure
Brandwatch Measure is another in our one-stop shop of social media marketing solutions. This solution offers detailed analytics that support the automated engagement tools and lead generation automations from other Brandwatch products. Measure automatically compiles reports on key LinkedIn metrics, including:
- Likes
- Reactions
- Shares
- Comments
- Clicks
- Video views
- Engagement rate
This robust data offers actionable insights you can turn into more successful campaigns.
You can review insights from up to 200 posts over a year of historical data. Advanced search filters let you drill down to the exact types of comments you want to track and measure for your LinkedIn campaign.
Brandwatch offers a similar tool for your owned pages with Listen. Brandwatch Listen monitors comments on your own page to automatically assess the sentiment of your company among your LinkedIn connections.
These robust measurement tools deliver deep insights into your LinkedIn presence so you can fine-tune your strategy and extract the best possible results.
13. Crystal
Crystal is a browser extension AI tool that analyzes a LinkedIn profile to assess the personality type of the prospect you're looking at.
It builds a personality profile and then offers up tips on how best to communicate with that contact to get the most success. This makes prospecting more effective because it helps contour your messaging to suit the target customer.
Crystal is a useful tool for sales teams whose target audience responds to personalized outreach messages. You can test if Crystal works for you with a limited free trial.
14. Salesflow
Salesflow is both a messaging and measurement automation tool, but we've included it in this section because its campaign reports are its greatest strength.
Salesflow is also able to trawl through LinkedIn profiles and provide reports on the best leads to reach out to for sales.
This tool is powerful for its ability to improve close rates on leads and deliver robust reporting on your LinkedIn performance.
15. LinkedFusion
LinkedInFusion also offers multiple LinkedIn automation solutions but its automated messaging tool is supported by a robust measurement solution that earns it a place in this section of our list.
LinkedInFusion uses LinkedIn Premium and LinkedIn Sales Navigator's advanced search filtering to find top-rated prospects in your target audience.
It supports your sales team by sending personalized messages to multiple accounts at once, helping boost your LinkedIn lead-generation efforts. Its reporting dashboard gives you control over your LinkedIn outreach campaign.
As well as importing a list of LinkedIn connections to target, LinkedInFusion lets users export lead generation reports so you can apply the data in other tools and reporting systems.
16. Taplio
Taplio is an AI-powered LinkedIn analysis tool that assesses trends, measures content performance, and helps you refine your content plan.
It will identify your best-performing posts and recycle them back into your feed to maximize engagement.
This LinkedIn helper includes LinkedIn hashtag analytics to keep your content relevant and increase engagement.
Automated measurement of content from multiple LinkedIn accounts makes your LinkedIn campaigns more successful and effective.
Its reporting tools and other LinkedIn automation software help marketers get the best results from their LinkedIn posts and outreach.
17. Hublead
Hublead is a browser-based automation tool that syncs with Hubspot and turns it into a LinkedIn CRM. It measures your interactions with contacts and automatically updates the Hubspot CRM.
Hublead can even automatically scrape the contact details and information for LinkedIn connections and update it in your CRM platform.
This makes it easier to track the personalized messages you've sent and assess their success in your LinkedIn prospecting efforts.
While other LinkedIn automation tools for measurement track campaign and post performance, Hublead is focused solely on tracking and managing your outreach efforts and lead generation program. Its user-friendly platform produces lists and dashboards that track your LinkedIn actions and results.
Choosing the right LinkedIn automation tool
Finding an effective LinkedIn automation tool can be a daunting task. Some LinkedIn automation software is focused on specific tasks, while other LinkedIn automation tools offer a one-stop solution for your entire LinkedIn marketing program.
The best LinkedIn automation tool for your business will depend largely on your strategy.
Are you using LinkedIn content to enhance your reputation as a thought leader in your industry? If so, then the best LinkedIn automation tool for your needs should include engagement tools like automatic message responders and likes.
It should also help you plan and create the content most likely to get views. Your LinkedIn content marketing strategy will also need robust automated reporting tools to help you measure your performance and refine your content.
If your LinkedIn strategy is geared toward lead generation, you'll need automated messaging and a tool that can help you find and assess different LinkedIn profiles to reach out to. Lead generation tools also need reporting features to track the impact of your LinkedIn outreach.
Whether you're trying to send connection requests to your leads' LinkedIn profile, a built-in LinkedIn CRM to help you track your LinkedIn contacts, or even just an automated scheduling tool for your LinkedIn posts, look for:
- A user-friendly interface
- The ability to manage multiple accounts
- Team management features
These are key attributes that the best LinkedIn automation tools should have, regardless of your plans.
Best practices for using LinkedIn automation tools
It's important to use LinkedIn automation tools responsibly. To get the best results out of your LinkedIn campaigns and make sure automation works for you, not against you, it's important to follow these best practices.
Make a plan
Plan your LinkedIn lead generation or content marketing strategy before you begin. That includes setting a clear goal and timeline, understanding what you want to achieve, and deciding on what growth automation platform to use.
Be human
Just because you're using AI-powered tools doesn't mean you can't be human. Personalized messages help improve the impact even when you're automatically sending connection requests to LinkedIn users.
Drip campaigns help you reconnect and target your audience in a more human way so you don't risk spamming them.
Use LinkedIn automation tools that let you filter out the prospects you want to send connection requests to and don't overuse LinkedIn automation in your outreach campaigns.
Remember LinkedIn rules
LinkedIn is unforgiving of accounts it thinks are spamming the audience. It also has strict rules for how LinkedIn accounts can access and use the information on the platform.
That's why you should look for a LinkedIn automation tool that connects to Sales Navigator. This subscription solution opens up LinkedIn search features and allows users to send more connection requests than free accounts.
Sending connection requests to too many accounts at once is one trigger that may cause LinkedIn to question your account.
It's also important to limit your daily activity because accounts that scale up too quickly with engagement and content may be interpreted as fake or spam accounts.
Measure, assess, and optimize your LinkedIn outreach
From content marketing to generating leads, it's important to track the results of your LinkedIn outreach. Use automated measurement tools to refine your campaigns and monitor them regularly.
Optimize your LinkedIn profile by tracking the engagement rates and reach of your posts over time. Good reporting and detailed analytics are the difference between wasteful and successful LinkedIn outreach campaigns.
Frequently asked questions about LinkedIn automation tools
How does LinkedIn automation software help with lead generation?
LinkedIn automation tools increase the effectiveness of your lead-generation efforts in a variety of ways.
They speed up LinkedIn prospecting by sending outreach messages to lots of qualified prospects faster than you can manually. They also help find relevant LinkedIn users for your sales teams to reach out to.
More advanced LinkedIn automation tools designed for messaging can even run drip campaigns to help you control your sales pitch to your prospects and boost the close rates on sales messages to LinkedIn users from outside your network.
Are LinkedIn automation tools safe to use?
The best LinkedIn automation tools operate within the boundaries of LinkedIn's terms of service. Although the platform supports sales and business development, it has strict rules for fake accounts and fake engagement.
LinkedIn lead generation tools are generally safe to use, and so are LinkedIn reporting tools. The safest LinkedIn automation tools only use data provided by LinkedIn, don't create fake accounts, and don't create fake engagement.
Brandwatch is a safe LinkedIn automation tool.
Do LinkedIn automation tools work for all industries?
Yes. LinkedIn automation tools can help you manage LinkedIn posts and grow your audience no matter what industry you're in.
Whether or not lead generation and LinkedIn prospecting tools are appropriate will depend on the culture and nature of your business, but LinkedIn reporting and content tools can help any business grow its LinkedIn presence.
How can I ensure my LinkedIn automation strategy is effective?
Increase the success of your automation strategy by setting a clear goal and plan with a way of measuring your results on the platform.
Use LinkedIn Premium tools to increase your access to native features on the platform and increase the amount of invites you can send from one LinkedIn account.
Make sure you use personalized messages to increase the effectiveness of your LinkedIn lead generation efforts. And, use LinkedIn automation tools to help improve the quality of your LinkedIn content.
Are there any other LinkedIn automation tools?
There are many different LinkedIn automation tools on the market for everything from LinkedIn prospecting and lead generation to content creation.
Not all tools for LinkedIn automation connect with Sales Navigator though, and while some send messages, not all of them offer drip campaigns or personalized connection requests. It's important to shop for automation tools that offer these key features.
Can LinkedIn automation tools help with content marketing?
LinkedIn automation tools help you plan, execute, and monitor your LinkedIn outreach efforts through content just as much as they do for lead generation.
These tools help you refine your content marketing strategy and identify your best-performing posts with just a few clicks. The result is a more targeted, relevant, and effective content marketing strategy.
How do I know which LinkedIn accounts to message?
LinkedIn Sales Navigator gives users access to more advanced LinkedIn search functionality. Cloud-based automation tools designed for LinkedIn Prospecting use that Sales Navigator data to identify LinkedIn contacts to send connection requests out to.
Elevate your lead generation campaigns with LinkedIn automation tools
LinkedIn automation tools amplify the value of your LinkedIn outreach campaigns. From LinkedIn prospecting aides to automation tools designed for content marketing, these solutions make it easier than ever to get large-scale growth quickly.
Grow your LinkedIn profile audience and increase your lead pool with LinkedIn automation tools that increase your performance and save your team time.
