Did you know that 53% of companies use manual search and outreach for their prospecting? That’s a lot of hard work—especially when sales teams can save these efforts by leveraging LinkedIn and AI. 

Prospecting tools combine the power of AI and LinkedIn to automate LinkedIn prospecting. By integrating an AI sales prospecting tool with LinkedIn, you can enable smart targeting and lead scoring to recognize high-intent prospects. 

Additionally, you can automate the following workflows by leveraging LinkedIn and AI: 

• Conducting prospect research
• Extracting LinkedIn data and creating prospect lists
• Creating an automated LinkedIn sequence and personalizing the messages

Want to know everything about how LinkedIn prospecting automation tools can help you achieve your prospecting goals and save you precious time? Keep reading. 

What is LinkedIn prospecting?

LinkedIn prospecting is the process of conducting prospect research, identifying target audiences, and reaching out on LinkedIn.

Ideally, reps will:

• Identify relevant prospect information such as their contact details, work experience, and buyer pain points.
• Create lead lists
• Make them warm leads by sending them connection requests, endorsing their skills, liking and commenting on their LinkedIn posts
• Find conversation starters and role-specific characteristics to craft personalized messages
• Automate outreach by creating LinkedIn drip campaigns 

Happysales is a good example of AI in sales that can be used for LinkedIn prospecting. It extracts key prospect information from LinkedIn, and generates talking points that the sales rep can use while personalizing their outreach. 

Benefits of automated LinkedIn prospecting

First, let's understand how much value automated LinkedIn prospecting can actually add to your overall prospecting efforts. 

• Gathers prospect insights: Get real-time summaries of every prospect’s personality type, work experience, and pain points by analyzing their LinkedIn profiles. 

• Enhances personalization: Include dynamic variables such as the prospect’s name and company name, and hyper-personalized images and GIFs in your messages to increase the chances of getting responses from prospects at scale. 

• Enables more targeted prospecting: Because LinkedIn offers advanced search and filtering capabilities, you can narrow down your target audience based on the location, job title, industry, job functions, etc. This gives you highly relevant results, making your prospecting more targeted. 

• Improves conversions: It’s easy for your outreach emails to get lost since LinkedIn’s inbox is not organized intuitively. With LinkedIn automation, you can send outreach messages in larger volumes, add message sequences, and send automated follow-up messages—leading to higher conversions.

Types of LinkedIn prospecting automation tools

Before taking a deep dive into different LinkedIn prospecting tools, let’s first understand the types of tools and how they can simplify your sales prospecting process:

• List building: They let you manage your prospect list on LinkedIn and offer functionalities such as search and filtering capabilities.

• Data scraping tools: They crawl through LinkedIn profiles of your targeted leads and extract useful information such as names, email addresses, etc.

• Prospect research: They integrate with LinkedIn profiles and extract data such as work experience, LinkedIn posts, and the LinkedIn About section to provide insights on the prospect’s personality, their unique challenges, and potential conversation starters.

• Prospect outreach: They let you create and send personalized outreach campaigns across formats like email and DMs (including personalized GIFs).

• Engagement: They improve the way reps can engage with their prospects’ LinkedIn profiles and content. They offer functionalities such as engagement pods (communities of bots or real humans who help boost LinkedIn engagement), automated connection requests, and liking and commenting on LI posts.

Top 12 tools to automate LinkedIn prospecting

Ready to discover the different prospecting tools to automate your LinkedIn prospecting? Here are 12 tools you must explore:

Prospect research & outreach tools

Prospect research: These tools assess prospects’ LinkedIn profiles to gather information like their work experience, education, and pain points.

Prospect outreach: These tools automate sending LinkedIn messages—be it LinkedIn Inmails or multi-channel campaigns. 

Here are 3 LinkedIn prospect research and outreach tools you can leverage:

1. Happysales

Happysales AI is a LinkedIn-based AI prospecting automation tool that enables prospect research and outreach. It lets sales reps understand buyer personalities, generates call scripts, assists with sales pitches, enacts AI-driven roleplays and provides real-time feedback to reps for skill improvement. 

Key features

• DISC personality assessment: Happysales AI integrates with LinkedIn and analyses the prospect’s LinkedIn profile using the DISC framework to understand their personality. This helps sales reps craft hyper-relevant LinkedIn messages to turn leads into prospects.
• One-click prospect summary: Get real-time summaries of every prospect’s work experience and challenges and speed up your research process. Also, Happysales also brings the latest news about the prospect’s company for you to identify sales opportunities, or even tailor conversation starters for your emails too.
• GPT-assisted pitch: Get multiple versions of your value proposition tailored to the prospect’s personas and their unique challenges. You can also get different conversation starters based on the buyer's personality to guide the reps for better pitching. 
• Personalized emails & messages: Happesales enables you to bulk personalize emails and messages based on the prospect’s LinkedIn information & DISC assessment.

Pros

• Easy-to-navigate platform
• A forever-free starter plan that provides access to 5 LinkedIn profiles a week
• Integrates with LinkedIn for AI sales prospecting

Cons

• Doesn't automate LinkedIn outreach

Pricing: Starts at $25 per user/ month; free plan available 

2. Dripify

Dripify is an advanced LinkedIn outreach tool that lets you create drip campaigns using automated actions and conditions. 

Key features

• Drip campaigns. Create drip campaigns using various LinkedIn actions, set delays, and triggers 
• Smart inbox. Manage LinkedIn conversations with Smart Inbox—responding to leads, marking important conversations, and adding notes on leads’ profile
• A/B testing. A/B test your drip campaigns—test audiences, connection request notes, and message templates in multiple campaigns
• Live monitoring. Track your performance with advanced LinkedIn analytics—daily usage stats, recent activity, and performance campaigns

Pros

• Fast onboarding
• User-friendly and intuitive platform
• Powerful automation capabilities
• Setting up campaigns is easy
• Integration with 1000+ software
• Safety measures implemented to keep LinkedIn accounts safe

Cons

• Expensive for early-stage startups

Pricing: Starts at $39 per user per month

3. Expandi

Expandi is another LinkedIn outreach tool that lets you automate LinkedIn outreach, manage sales team permissions and roles, track performance, and create reports. 

Key features

• Profile warmup. Automatically engage with leads before sending them a connection request —visit their LinkedIn profile, endorse their skills, and like their post.
• Image and GIF personalization. Send icebreaker images, GIFs, and CTAs on LinkedIn to amplify your outreach, and A/B test them.
• Omnichannel follow-ups. Engage with prospects through multiple social channels such as email and LinkedIn Inmail, and follow up with them effortlessly.

Pros

• Excellent customer support
• Easy to integrate and customize
• Mimics human behavior for humanized engagement 
• 100s of templates and stock images available including product GIFs, memes, and more

Cons

• Platform experiences occasional performance issues

Pricing: Starts at $99/ month

List building tools

List building tools offer functionalities like search and filter capabilities, and seamlessly integrate with LinkedIn and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. 

Here are two list building tools that you can use to create and export leads, and clean irrelevant data:

1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator enables sales reps to find and create targeted lead lists based on filters such as location, job title, team size, and more. 

Key features

• Lead recommendations. Get lead recommendations based on your saved searches
• Custom lists. Create custom lists to save and track your priority leads and accounts
• Smart Links. Get real-time insights on how recipients are engaging with your content with Smart Links
• TeamLink. Get access to your team members' 2nd and 3rd-degree network with TeamLink

Pros

• Easy to use
• Powerful search capabilities
• Integration with tools like Salesforce and Zoominfo 

Cons

• Expensive pricing
• Steep learning curve

Pricing: Starts at $99/ month; 30-day free trial

2. Evaboot

Evaboot is a LinkedIn prospecting automation tool that integrates with LinkedIn Sales Navigator and exports leads, filters leads, and automatically cleans irrelevant data.

Key features

• List export. Export lists in the .csv format with 20+ data filtering options
• Data cleaning. Clean data parameters such as job titles and company names after they’re extracted

Pros

• Ease of exporting clean and useful data
• Quick customer support
• Cost-effective 

Cons

• Inability to filter specific columns during data extraction 
• Pulls tons of information—which can be overwhelming to users

Pricing: Starts at $29/ month; 30-day free trial

Data extraction tools

Data extraction tools integrate with LinkedIn/ LinkedIn Sales Navigator to assess prospects’ LinkedIn profiles and extract information like their full name, email address, phone number, and social media profiles. 

Here are three data extraction tools you can use: 

1. PhantomBuster

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PhantomBuster is another LinkedIn prospecting automation tool that lets you extract various data points from LinkedIn and Sales Navigator. 

Also, it comes with pre-built data extraction and enrichment workflows that reps can instantly start using without wasting a minute. 

Key features

• Data scraping. Scrape all the data from the prospect’s LinkedIn profile—name, current job, company, education, professional email address
• Contact enrichment. Fill the gaps in the extracted data with reliable and professional email addresses, phone numbers, and social media information 
• Workflow automation. Build enrichment workflows with several pre-built phantoms like LinkedIn profile scraper, Sales Navigator profile scraper, and data scraping crawler

Pros

• Powerful automation capabilities
• 100+ readymade automation templates
• Integration with tools like Salesforce, Hubspot, Pipedrive, and Lemlist

Cons

• Steep learning curve
• Expensive pricing plans

Pricing: Starts at $56 per month; 14-day free trial

2. Skrapp

Skrapp is an email lookup and data enrichment tool that lets you extract data from LinkedIn, verify email addresses, and enrich the collected information. 

Key features

• Data scraping. Scrape data from LinkedIn profiles—likes and comments of the post, LinkedIn URL, LinkedIn group, and company page followers
• Data enrichment. Enrich your collected data with professional email addresses and information such as revenue, industry, number of employees, etc

Pros

• Cost-effective
• Easy-to-use platform
• Access to 20M+ companies’ data and 150M+ prospects’ data
• Integration with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, LinkedIn groups, and tools like Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho, and Google Sheets 

Cons

• Extracted email addresses can be inaccurate

Pricing: Starts at $39 per user per month; free plan available

3. Captain Data

Captain Data is a no-code LinkedIn prospecting platform that lets you extract, aggregate, and integrate data with different sales apps and CRMs. 

Key features

• Data extraction. Extract data from LinkedIn or LinkedIn Sales Navigator search—company and people URL, LinkedIn events, job information, and company insights such as employee size, funding events, and industry. 
• Data enrichment. Enrich your database with 200+ data points such as domain names, company names, email addresses, etc. 
• Workflow automation. Set up lead generation or enrichment workflows with pre-built automation

Pros

• Intuitive platform
• Personalized workflows with minimal setup
• Readymade workflow templates 
• Enhanced data coverage
• Responsive customer support
• Integration with other enrichment tools

Cons

• Limited learning resources for product education 
• Expensive

Pricing: Starts at $999/ month; 7-day free trial

Personality insights tools

Personality insights tools use the DISC personality framework to analyze LinkedIn profiles and provide you a breakdown of prospects’ personalities—whether they're friendly, confident, or quick to make decisions.

Here are two personality insights tools you can use to execute hyper-personalized outreach:

1. Crystal

Crystal enables sales reps to communicate with prospects based on their unique personality, motivation, and communication style. 

Key features

• Prospect research. Identifies the prospect’s personality (by integrating the tool with LinkedIn) using the DISC personality framework. It helps reps understand the words, phrases, and tones that should be used or avoided during communication with prospects. It also helps in handling sales objections based on the prospect’s personality.
• Writing assistant. Suggests phrases and words in real-time to personalize emails based on the prospect’s personality for maximum responses and conversions. 
• Enrichment. Enriches your traditional data with prospect insights such as DISC type, personality traits, etc.

Pros

• Ease of implementation
• Doesn’t require a steep learning curve
• Integrates with LinkedIn
• Real-time prompts to guide reps on the tone of emails

Cons

• Expensive, especially for early-stage startups
• Limited integration options

Pricing: Starts at $49/ month; free trial and free plan available

2. Humantic AI

Humantic AI is an AI assistant that predicts a prospect’s personality using DISC and the BIG 5 personality framework, and uses these insights to craft hyper-personalized emails. 

Key features

• Personality AI Assistant. Get the prospect’s personality insights based on the DISC and BIG 5 framework by integrating the tool with LinkedIn.
• Email personalization. Combine Gen AI in sales with DISC insights to write personalized sales emails. 
• Omnichannel enrichment. Get pre-built into tools like Salesforce and Outreach to enable enrichment for various buyer attributes like job level, designation, influence, DISC personality, etc.

Pros

• Responsive customer support
• Integration with tools like LinkedIn and Hubspot
• 1-tap email personalization
• Bulk personality analysis
• Analysis of 36 different personality types

Cons

• Accuracy issues
• Limited options for customization and personalization of emails
• Steep learning curve

Pricing: Starts at $180/ month; 7-day trial period

Engagement tools

Engagement tools let sales teams engage with prospects’ LinkedIn profiles and posts—and build a strong rapport with them. 

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Here are two LinkedIn engagement tools you can use:

1. Lempod

Lempod is a LinkedIn engagement tool where you can find 200+ different public pods to boost engagement. The best part of using these pods? They are used by real people, not bots—keeping your LinkedIn account safe. 

Key features

• Company pod. Automatically get likes from your teammates and leverage the company’s network to improve visibility
• Engagement pods. Filter pods by industry and location and join relevant pods with secret codes to engage with your LinkedIn posts.
• AI-generated comments. Select meaningful (not generic and spammy) comments from AI-generated suggestions to engage with other LinkedIn posts.

Pros

• High-level LinkedIn engagement pods available relevant to your industry
• Engagement pods are filled with real people, not bots
• Responsive customer support

Cons

• Doesn’t integrate with any other tools except LinkedIn

Pricing: Starts at $3.99 per user in a pod (if you want to create a company pod) and $9.99 per pod if you want to join the engagement pods

2. Octopus CRM

Octopus CRM is a LinkedIn engagement tool that lets you automate the engagement efforts with a prospect's LinkedIn profile—sending automated invites, connection requests, messages, and follow-up messages.

Key features

• LinkedIn mailer. Send automated messages and follow-ups to your prospects on LinkedIn, auto view profiles and auto endorse them.
• Invite automation. Automatically invite your target audience to your network and follow them (automatically) after they accept your connection request.
• Automated connect. Filter LinkedIn profiles, send customized connection requests, and follow up messages
• A/ B testing. A/B testing your outreach campaigns—messages and call-to-actions.
• Reporting and analytics. Monitor your LinkedIn outreach efforts by analyzing metrics such as connection requests sent and accepted, sent and responded messages, profile views, endorsed skills, pending invites, campaign performance, appearance rate in search results, and acceptance and response rates.

Pros

• Affordable
• Simple and easy-to-navigate interface
• Build a seamless LinkedIn sales funnel
• Compatible with LinkedIn Free, Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter Lite

Cons

• Limited automation capabilities
• Difficulty in cancelling subscriptions

Pricing: Starts at $6.99/ month; 7-day free trial

Key features to look for in a LinkedIn prospecting tool

Before opting for a LinkedIn prospecting automation tool, make sure to validate the following key features: 

• DISC personality assessment: Check if the LinkedIn prospecting tool offers a DISC personality assessment framework to understand the prospect’s personality for better outreach. 

• Personalization based on LinkedIn profile: Look for different levels of personalization the tool offers by assessing the prospect’s LinkedIn profile such as the prospect's pain points, conversation starters, and company value proposition tailored to personas.

• Reporting and analytics: Check the different prospecting progress metrics you can monitor with the tool and see if they meet your tracking needs. 

• Customer support: Make sure the vendor’s customer support is quick to respond and easy to reach.

• Integrations. Find out the different CRMs and apps the LinkedIn prospecting tool integrates with.

How Happysales helps you boost your LinkedIn prospecting strategy

If your reps have been spending most of their time conducting prospect research and crafting the right sales pitch—then you don't need tools like Expandi and PhantomBuster. 

Instead, you need AI sales prospecting tools like Happysales that integrate with a prospect’s LinkedIn profile and instantly fetch all relevant information—personality insights, pain points, and talking points. 

With this information, your reps can improve their pitch and craft hyper-personalized outreach messages. 

Want to see the impact Happysales can have on your sales prospecting efforts? Check out Happysales AI here.