For busy readers
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LinkedIn is simply the (!) global address book in business. LinkedIn thrives on connections between members and the information they exchange.
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To exchange with LinkedIn members, a connection request ("invitation") is necessary. If the recipient accepts it, any messages can be exchanged.
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The more personal and relevant the invitation texts are, the higher the acceptance rate. This can be automated using AI and process automation.
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Scraping tools can be used to enrich a previously created recipient list with posts, comments, or articles from recipients.
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Then a generative AI model can automatically create relevant invitation texts based on the posts, etc. Finally, these invitation texts are sent as LinkedIn connection requests via a process automation tool.
Tip to try out
If you want to automate your work on LinkedIn, you should take a close look at three providers: Expandi.io, Waalaxy, and PhantomBuster. Each of these tools has its strengths and weaknesses and covers a specific area of tasks very well. All three can be automated via APIs and integrated into end-to-end processes. At their core, they serve the automated outreach to LinkedIn members for marketing and sales purposes. Used wisely, they represent a workload reduction in sales without treading on legal thin ice or harassing LinkedIn members.
LinkedIn as a global address book
LinkedIn, the social network owned by the Microsoft corporation, is the world's leading address book for salespeople, marketing experts, and headhunters. On no other platform can you find so much professional information about a person. It is therefore no surprise that LinkedIn, alongside address databases like ZoomInfo, Dealfront, or Lusha, is among the most popular contact sources for outbound activities. Since LinkedIn makes its money, like every social network, through advertising on its platform, it makes it difficult for its users to use the data stored within it externally. They want to keep their (ideally paying) members on the platform.
Making contact to start the dialogue
Consequently, all communication between members should take place on LinkedIn. This is only unrestricted (especially for non-paying members) when you have "connected" with your conversation partner. The tool of choice is the connection request, which is inherent to every profile.
Once the recipient has accepted the connection request, messages can be exchanged freely. Otherwise, this path remains blocked. Paying members also have the option to exchange a certain number of InMail messages with non-connections. However, their number is limited monthly. LinkedIn favors knowing who knows whom. This enables more specific advertising to be placed optimally.
In short: Making contact is the gateway to dialogue with other members.
Creating personalized LinkedIn connection requests with AI
To maintain its attractiveness, LinkedIn limits the number of connection requests. This is intended to prevent spam. This limit varies based on your own Social Selling Index, which is meant to reflect your attractiveness as a LinkedIn member. The specific value apparently varies between 20-25 invitations per day -- or fewer.
Standard or personal
Consequently, successful salespeople must first build and expand their contact base in the first step, in order to present their concerns in the second step.
LinkedIn offers two types of connection requests:
- A standard text without a personal touch
- A personal message with a maximum length of 300 characters
The chance that a stranger accepts a connection request is naturally much higher with personalized requests. Especially when your own LinkedIn profile "smells" like sales or marketing, this path should be chosen.
However: What text should you write in the invitation?
Best practice for invitations
The invitation text should primarily be relevant. The invitee should be able to identify with it, as they rightly expect a thematic connection or even a shared interest with the inviter. Or do you want to be associated with everyone on social networks?
The most effective source for a relevant invitation text is the invitee's posts, comments, or published articles. What are they interested in? Where are there commonalities? What demand might they have that I can serve?
This requires human intelligence as well as human decision-making -- and time. This process is time-consuming.
Generative AI automates invitation texts
Thanks to Generative AI, a good deal of work can be automated here. Nothing is as fast at understanding and synthesizing longer texts as Large Language Models, as we also explain in our article on applied AI for managers. They penetrate the meaning and content of posts, comments, and entire articles in seconds. They summarize them pointedly. They are able to write specific invitation texts. Bingo!
Using OpenAI's GPTs (specialized ChatGPT bots) or agents (GPTs accessible via API), this task can be fully delegated to artificial intelligence. Give the AI model the posts of the person to be contacted and receive a relevant, well-formulated connection request that can be sent to the recipient immediately.
For this to work accurately and error-free, targeted parameterization of the AI model -- here the GPT or agent -- is necessary. It is the secret to success. Enriched with specific information about your own company and its areas of focus (for techies: Retrieval Augmented Generation plays a role here), the AI model selects posts with commonalities or high relevance to formulate a specific invitation text.
Note: Generative AI really plays to its strengths in text analysis and text creation.
Successful LinkedIn automation in the sales process
This takes care of the most important point: The machine-generated formulation of personalized connection requests. How can this be scaled? We ultimately want to add an entire list of interesting people to our LinkedIn network!
Process automation works wonders
This is where process automation comes into play. The recipe is as follows:
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Create a list of interesting contacts using tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Dealfront, Apollo.io, or other contact databases.
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Then enrich this list with the posts of the interesting contacts using the above-mentioned tools.
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Now let OpenAI's GPT model create a relevant, personalized invitation text based on the collected posts and the contact's name.
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Have one of the above-mentioned LinkedIn automation tools send this invitation text to the list of interesting contacts mentioned in step 1.
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If a person accepts the invitation, further automated messages can be sent -- or the human takes the wheel.
Workato, Make, and Zapier
Any capable integration and automation platform can be used to automate this process: Workato, Make, Zapier -- or even self-created or ChatGPT-created Python programs. It orchestrates the process, ensures the correct mappings and calls, and the step-by-step processing of information.
Of course, this can also be connected with a CRM system to trigger follow-up steps and conduct structured account and lead management.
The entire process is infinitely expandable and customizable. Sales, marketing, or headhunting activities no longer need to be laboriously carried out manually today when they can be delivered in equal quality through automation. Of course, as always, it comes down to the details and experience with AI-based automation processes. However, the commercially available AI platforms in conjunction with intelligent automation can be excellently used for AI-supported outreach on LinkedIn.
Artificial intelligence supports human intelligence to increase individual productivity -- including in personalized sales. Learn more about AI agents in business.
