The Best Tools For Prospecting On LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a bit of a prospecting Eldorado for generating B2B leads, but it remains a fairly human social network where poorly targeted messages can really tarnish your company's reputation.

Hence the importance of choosing your LinkedIn automation tools carefully so that your prospecting remains relevant (to your leads) and effective (to your business). In this vast and growing market, there are different types of tools: all-in-one tools that are not limited to LinkedIn, tools that are specialised in LinkedIn prospecting, and then simpler tools for scraping or social selling.

We tell you more in this article about the best LinkedIn tools!

What type of LinkedIn automation tool should I choose?

#1 Multi-channel prospecting tools

These are the tools we usually think of when we talk about LinkedIn automation tools, especially because they are the most expensive and do the most marketing. The promise is an all-in-one tool that allows you to manage complex prospecting campaigns on several channels: LinkedIn, email, phone, ...
In real life, it's very cumbersome and complex to make this kind of campaign work, and micro-actions can very often get you much more results much faster. And once the message, channel and target are all right, you can move on to this kind of tool. We are thinking of tools like LinkedHelper, Waalaxy, LGM, or the lighter Closely.

#2 Automation tools

In addition to extracting data from the social network, these tools are able to interact with LinkedIn to create connections, send messages, etc. We're thinking of tools like Phantombuster, or CaptainData for example. It's great when you know what you're doing, and these tools have the merit of automating many more things than LinkedIn. On the other hand, if you want to launch complex campaigns with precise reporting and highly personalised icebreakers, these tools are a little light.

#3 Simple scraping tools

The purpose of scraping tools is to extract data from LinkedIn, to exploit it as you wish outside LinkedIn. The oldest and best known by far is Dux-Soup, but we can also mention Evaboot for example.

#4 Social selling tools

These tools specialise in producing and promoting content on LinkedIn to generate inbound leads that then contact you on their own. ShieldApp is an analytics tool on your LinkedIn posts for example to do better, LinkedIn pods like Podawaa also allow you to promote your posts (when done right).

Top 10 LinkedIn Prospecting Tools: Comparison Chart

#1 Waalaxy: all-in-one LinkedIn prospecting tool

Waalaxy, formerly Prospectin, is an extremely powerful prospecting tool because it is not limited to Linkedin. As an extension for Google Chrome, Waalaxy allows you to set up multi-channel prospecting campaigns, notably via email and Twitter.

Interesting features include the ability to override the 100 connection request limit per week imposed by LinkedIn since 2021. You can also launch campaigns directly to LinkedIn profiles that interact with your posts or visit your profile.

A plus: you can check the upcoming functional evolutions on the Waalaxy public roadmap.

On the pricing, 4 plans are available:

• A free plan, with all the Linkedin features but limited to 100 Linkedin invitations per week.
• Pro at 21 euros/month, which offers 280 Linkedin invitations/week.
• Advanced at 40 euros/month: up to 700 invitations/week, this plan also allows synchronisation with your CRM and above all offers the possibility of launching campaigns to Linkedin profiles that have interacted with your posts.
• Business at 64 euros/month: this plan also offers email prospecting with the email finder function, which finds the emails of Linkedin profiles that interest you.

Please note, however, that their customer support is only available via live chat.

#2 Captain Data, to automate any LinkedIn action

Captain Data is an ultra-powerful tool for automating the retrieval of all kinds of data from the Internet. Including LinkedIn data.

The software allows you to extract and collect data from the LinkedIn profiles you are interested in and the companies they work for, as well as find their email addresses using the email finder. The depth of the data scraping and enrichment features is amazing.

Their site offers a wide range of case studies (how to enrich your campaigns with connections from your LinkedIn contacts, etc.) to help you use their tool.

At the pricing level, there are 3 plans:

• A free plan, available for 14 days and limited to one user.
• Growth Plan, at $399/month. It offers automation of 25,000 tasks/month and integration with your CRM. It is limited to 5 users.
• Enterprise Plan, at $2500/month. Aimed at companies with more than 50 users of the software, it offers all the options mentioned above but in an unlimited and personalised version.

As this is not simply a LinkedIn prospecting solution, the tool is significantly more expensive than its competitors, but this is justified by the wide range of possible automations.

#3 ShieldApp, a tool for reporting on the performance of your content on Linkedin

Shieldapp is a reporting tool specifically designed to analyse the performance of your content and actions on LinkedIn. It's a kind of Google Analytics but focused solely on your LinkedIn data.

The advantage for prospecting is that the tool gives you a lot of information about what works and what doesn't, which then allows you to extend the reach and engagement of your posts.

ShieldApp's tariffs are based on 3 offers:

• Starter - $6/month for 1 LinkedIn account and basic features: content performance and profile growth.
• Creator - $12/month for 1 LinkedIn account, all the features of the Solo plan, plus your audience demographics and csv exports.
• Influencer - $19/month for unlimited LinkedIn accounts, all the features of the Plus plan, plus aggregated data from all LinkedIn accounts and premium support.

#4 Linkedhelper, a complete LinkedIn CRM tool

We can only recommend our full review of LinkedHelperThe tool is so rich in features. I might as well warn you that this is sometimes to the detriment of ease of use, but the FAQ and numerous videos can help you get to grips with the tool.

Note already that it is an application to be downloaded on your computer, which launches a browser with a whole interface to launch campaigns. The advantage is that everything is done locally (even if the tool manages proxies), which makes all your actions much less suspicious for LinkedIn.

Key features include of course the automation of all your LinkedIn actions, but also prospecting and contact management functions directly integrated into their CRM: for example, on their application, you can import all your LinkedIn contacts in CSV without difficulty.

Two plans are available:

• Standard at $15 per month: the plan limits you to 20 LinkedIn invitations and 20 messages per day.
• Pro at $45/month: the features are the same as for the Standard plan but with unlimited access.

Both plans cost less if you take out quarterly or even annual subscriptions.

#5 Closely, an all-in-one prospecting tool to centralize your campaigns

Closely is an all-in-one tool for prospecting on LinkedIn. It is a Chrome extension but the software claims a human intelligence that makes it undetectable by LinkedIn so that it can exceed the invitation limit that the social network imposes.

The tool is built around 3 key features:

• Explorer: a tool that allows you to build advanced searches on LinkedIn (the equivalent of Xray search) and to export all contacts in CSV with their email addresses.
• Campaign creation: You can build email or LinkedIn campaigns, or both. The software offers a few templates and a fairly intuitive editor to easily build your campaign.
• Inbox: If you've ever done any work on LinkedIn you know how complicated it is to manage the inbox. Closely allows you to optimize that too, with a well-designed inbox and tags to qualify your messages.

But where the tool is very, very strong is that it allows you to manage a fleet of accounts, and to launch campaigns on each account from the same tool, and the same interface.

On the pricing side, the tool is available for free with 150 credits per month. Then it starts at 50$/account/month (but prices decrease if you commit more than one month). You can also buy credits directly, which are imperishable.

#6 Phantombuster, flexible and easy LinkedIn automation

Phantombuster is a very interesting tool because it doesn't work like other LinkedIn prospecting solutions: the principle of a phantom is a bit like an API route. You send an input, and it returns an output.

For example, you give the URL of a LinkedIn post, and the phantom returns a list of LinkedIn profiles that have commented on that post.

This allows you to automate a large number of LinkedIn actions, with almost infinite possibilities for customisation. What we find particularly compelling about Phantombuster is that by importing all the data into Google Sheets, you can keep control over the automations with human validation processes.

The solution is therefore much more flexible than its competitors, although it also offers ready-made workflows for novices. The downside of this flexibility is that the tool is much slower than other software.

In terms of price, PhantomBuster offers 5 packages with prices varying according to the time of use of the tool and the number of users in your organisation:

• Free Forever - Free. 2 hours of runtime per day and 5 slots. Bonus: 50 email credits.
• Starter - $59/month for 20 hours/month and 5 slots.
• Pro - $139/month for 80h/month and 15 slots. This plan gives you access to priority customer support.
• Team - $399/month for 300h/month and 50 slots. In addition to priority customer support, you get a dedicated account expert. 10,000 bonus email credits/month.

#7 Dux-Soup, for generating B2B lead lists

Dux-Soup is a Chrome extension designed for LinkedIn, which stands out because of its seniority and therefore its fairly advanced understanding of LinkedIn algorithms and their evolution.

It is also a very complete LinkedIn prospecting tool that allows you to automate many actions, such as retrieving all the profile data resulting from a request, and visiting each of these profiles so that a notification - sign of your interest - is sent to them.

In its paid version, the tool allows you to export the automatically collected profile data into a CSV file to generate lead lists or to export the notes you have taken. However, we appreciate the low price compared to the functional depth.

For individual accounts, there is a free plan that gives you access to basic profile viewing and profile searches. Then there are two plans:

• Pro-Dux: for 12.99 euros/month, you have access to all the functions for automating LinkedIn actions and generating lead lists.
• Turbo-Dux: for 49 euros/month, in addition to the functions of the Pro-Dux plan, you have access to advanced LinkedIn campaign generation and lead management functions.

#8 Evaboot, to scrape your Sales Navigator data

Evaboot is a Chrome extension which leverages the goldmine of LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find your prospects' emails quickly. From your Sales Navigator searches, you can easily generate lead lists in CSV format.

The functions of Evaboot are therefore very simple:

• Extract and enrich your leads from your search using Sales Navigator filters to obtain the LinkedIn profile URL and company information, including the website URL.
• Clean up your data and generate a clean file: Evaboot removes duplicates and other special characters that could affect the quality of your data.
• Filtering: the idea is to detect leads that do not match your Sales Navigator search to avoid poorly targeted messages.
• Find and check your prospects' professional emails: thanks to integrations with the main email finder, Dropcontact or Hunter in particular.

Evaboot's plans are based on the volume of leads you want to extract from Sales Navigator:

• Small: 45 euros/month for 2,000 leads per month (and obtaining professional emails).
• Medium: 90 euros/month for 5000 leads and access to priority support.
• Large: 181 euros/month for 20,000 leads. This plan also offers Sales Navigator coaching.

#9 Podawaa, to increase the reach of your Linkedin posts

Podawaa is theChrome extension developed by the Waalaxy suite that allows you to generate links and comments on your LinkedIn posts.

It is based on "pods", groups of individuals who organise themselves to comment or like certain publications to make them visible in the LinkedIn algorithm. Other tools such as Lempod or Alcapod had been created to automate this process, but they were closed by LinkedIn.

The principle is very simple - Podawaa connects you with other LinkedIn users in 'pods' to increase the reach of your posts:

• You can earn credits by commenting or liking LinkedIn posts (3 likes earn 1 credit, 1 comment earns 2 credits).
• Then you can spend these credits to get likes or comments (1 like costs 1 credit, and 1 comment costs 5).

The pricing is composed of three plans:

• Freemium: this plan gives you access to 100 credits per month, which allows you to get 100 likes in total.
• Pro: for 9.99 euros/month, this plan gives you access to 500 credits per month.
• Advanced: 24,99 euros/month. Here you get 2000 credits per month, and soon access to the Podawaa dashboard, which you can follow on their public roadmap.

#10 Piwaa, to manage your LinkedIn email

Piwaa is also a tool in the Prospecting suite, which has since migrated to Waalaxy. It complements LinkedIn messaging, which is not very intuitive.

The goal is to optimise LinkedIn messaging, with features that save you time:

• Pre-configured answers, with personalisation of first and last names.
• Automated reminders, note-taking function on prospects
• Lead tags to easily track their activity on LinkedIn and easily find your conversations
• A centralized messaging system for multiple LinkedIn accounts.

The tool also integrates with your CRM to update your prospect lists.

Piwaa offers 3 price plans:

• Freemium - Free of charge, you benefit from the ergonomic interface, the reminder programming and the grouped actions in particular.
• Advanced - £4.99/month/user for Freemium features, plus Zapier and Integromat integrations, intelligent response suggestions and Sales Navigator & Recruiter.
• Enterprise - €3.99/month/user (minimum 2 users) for advanced features, as well as multi-account management and therefore tracking the overall performance of your sales team.

#11 Apollo, the best Chrome extension on the market for LinkedIn

Apollo is one of the largest B2B databases in the world with nearly 200 million contacts. For LinkedIn prospecting, it is a chrome extension which allows you to access a phone number and an email address from any LinkedIn profile.

But the tool doesn't stop there: you can write your email (using a template or not) directly from the LinkedIn profile of your prospects, with all the information in front of you. For the more experienced, you can also simply add them to your prospecting sequences. The tool manages email, phone, and reminders, and it integrates with all CRM software on the market.

It is a real all-in-one prospecting platform, accessible from LinkedIn.

At the pricing level, there are 3 plans:

• A Freemium offer, which gives you access to the LinkedIn extension but is limited to 50 emails/month for prospecting
• Basic: for $49/month, you get 200 emails per month,
• Professional: at $99/month, this plan gives you access to an unlimited number of emails and 50 phone numbers.

A customised plan is also available on request, to adapt the tool to your needs.

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