How to adapt your prospecting to the new restrictions on LinkedIn?

The limit of 100 invitations per week has been much talked about on LinkedIn.

It’s quite unprecedented and it impacts the prospecting of thousands of people around the world.

To answer the questions of these thousands of people, we were LIVE this June 14, 2022 with SalesByTech. 😎

Here’s what we had to remember!

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What is the new restriction announced by LinkedIn?

Well, first LinkedIn didn’t really announce but rather propagated an update, without communicating it in a public way. 😅

No need to communicate by the way, since everyone is affected by this update.

It limits you to about 100invitations per week on LinkedIn. This limit is valid regardless of your acceptance rate, the size of your network or even your LinkedIn subscription (Premium or not).

Why is the 100 LinkedIn invitation limit scary?

This limit is scary because LinkedIn has become a major BtoB acquisition channel, if not the most important one with the Covid crisis that put an end to trade shows, door to door and other “physical” acquisition channels.

As a result, the number of invitations has dropped from 500-700 to 100 per week. However, the invitation is essential to get in touch with a prospect on LinkedIn, because without it, no exchange of messages is possible, so no prospecting…

The arrival of this limitation is therefore scary for all those who have put LinkedIn at the center of their acquisition in recent years. 😎

Recommendations for prospecting on Linkedin

This limitation is a good thing for the network, in the sense that it will encourage people to first bet on quality before quantity.

It is fundamental to understand that automation should not be there to make up for bad practices by just sending more bottles to the sea. 🙃

Automation is a way to scale up techniques that already work, with the goal of scaling up the results.

So, there are two main principles to good prospecting:

• Good targeting,
• Good approaches.

Finding the right prospects on LinkedIn

I identify two types of targeting: informational targeting and behavioral targeting. 👇

Informational targeting

Informational targeting is using information provided by the user himself on his profile. In general we use:

• His title,
• His company,
• His region,
• Sometimes his school.

This technique is the most used because it is the most “easily accessible”. It poses several concerns:

• Search results are sometimes quite low quality and require some reprocessing (30 to 40% of prospects don’t match your LinkedIn search) 😅
• These prospects are in high demand because everyone is searching for “CEO” on Sales Navigator.

Behavioral targeting

The “behavioral” targeting is based on data that the user has left, which have marked an interest in a subject. ❤️

Among these techniques we have:

People who have visited your LinkedIn profile

They already have a small interest in you. Although difficult to prospect them, contacting them again with the pretext of “you visited my profile” offers interesting acceptance rates. Ideal for growing your network! 😎

People who have published on a LinkedIn hashtag

This is about prospecting people who publish on a specific hashtag on LinkedIn. We are generally on limited volumes but the advantage is that we are sure to target active profiles. And then the “I saw your post on the #hashtag, I wanted to connect” approach gives nice success rates. 😊

Get people who commented or liked a LinkedIn post

By far my favorite. With the lead magnet technique (asking for a comment to receive content), you have thousands of people every day showing interest in a topic. 😄

All you have to do is scrape the people who comment on a post on the topic of your choice to offer them similar content. Guaranteed effect!

The advantage of this technique:

• You have very mixed profiles,
• These people are often less solicited on LinkedIn than those who come up in your LinkedIn searches.
• You are sure they are active on the network.

Contacting other members of a LinkedIn group

It’s safe to say: that’s allLinkedin groups are for. They have no reach in terms of posts and offer no interest other than being able to contact other members with a good excuse.

LinkedIn groups offer you huge databases. A little less qualitative than the 3 previous methods because the data is often less updated (we rarely leave a group), it remains nevertheless very effective.

Moreover, you can contact them with a message request (and not an invitation request), which is not part of the weekly quotas.

This feature will soon be implemented on Waalaxy

You can target members of a group directly by joining the group and extracting the members or with the Sales Navigator filter (requires subscription) “Is a member of the group”. The second technique allows you to add other filters to refine your search.

The technique also works on the participants of an event. 😊

Choosing the right approaches

This is a broad and complicated topic. What to remember from this section:

• There is no template that works every time. An approach depends on the context, the prospect, you and what you are selling.
• If there was such a template, once your prospect had received it 3 times, the template would no longer work.
• Empathy is the key to good prospecting.

This last point is FUNDAMENTAL. Understand who your prospect is, that they don’t know us and don’t give a shit about us and put yourself in their shoes. 😅

So the technique we’ll remember: when you write a prospecting message, ask yourself:

“If I get 10 solicitations a day on LinkedIn for prospecting, will I respond to THIS message?”

If the answer is “no,” do it again.

It’s writing and rewriting approaches that will help you find the one that works best.

What indicators should I look at to evaluate my LinkedIn prospecting?

The objective of all prospecting is to generate clients. The main indicator to look at is: does my prospecting generate clients?

But there are obviously intermediate indicators. The one that precedes the “is a customer” step varies according to your activity. It can be for example: I got a call or a demo with the prospect or he registered on my site.

In our case, at Waalaxy, we focus on generating a response. That’s where our expertise ends, it’s up to you to do the rest.

So we will look at the response rate in a campaign. However, this indicator is limited because it does not tell us whether the response is positive or negative. Let’s say we got a return, that’s something 😅

Should we add an invitation note on LinkedIn?

This is a topic that comes up a lot. My answer is this:

• If you are prospecting manually, yes. Aim for ultra-personalization by doing everything possible to take advantage of this manual prospecting to avoid appearing like a robot. Otherwise you might as well use a robot. 😅
• If you’re prospecting automatically, the question really comes up. It has been shown that using automation tools, not adding a note offers a 10% higher acceptance rate than an invitation with a note.(see here)

Nevertheless, acceptance rate is only an intermediate metric. It may be that people who accept you when you add a note are more inclined afterwards to share with you, because you have given them an initial context, as opposed to an addition without a note.

What does Walaaxy offer to deal with the LinkedIn restriction?

To deal with the limitation, Waalaxy offers 3 solutions.

The first and most important one is that there is no limitation with Waalaxy. We simply found ways to get around this limitation. For example, it is possible to send more than 1,000 invitations per week, compared to 100 with the restriction.

The other two are cross-channel and ultra-customization.

Cross-channel consists of contacting your prospect on several channels in the same campaign (on LinkedIn and by email for example). 😏

Ultra-personalization is a more abstract concept, which we define as helping our user not appear like a robot to their prospect.

Because no one likes to be prospected by robots. ❌

What future for cross channel and cold email?

With the democratization of automation tools, the arrival of limitations and the saturation of different channels, multi-channel is becoming a given.

It will :

• Increase our contact points with the prospect, thus increasing our chances of getting a response.
• Appear less robotic because few people know that it is possible to prospect on LinkedIn + email + other channels at the same time.

The future is therefore in the use of different channels to prospect, with the condition of mastering each channel independently of the others from the beginning.

This point is fundamental: cross-channel should not make up for deficient marketing but serve to scale up methodologies that work. 😎

If email is saturated and you are limited on LinkedIn, what are the solutions?

Multiplying one’s touch points increases the chances of getting a response. So this goes for the LinkedIn + email mix.

There is also talk of going to other channels like Twitter or SMS, although these are still very controversial. 🤔

But multi-channel is not enough! There is then talk of adding ultra-personalization, which consists of giving the impression that the message is personally intended for the prospect, in an automatic way.

Among the techniques mentioned:

• An AI-based assistant to write your messages
• Audio messages on LinkedIn.

But who knows what AI has in store for us in the months and years to come on this subject?

Is multi-channel optional or is it becoming a necessity?

Cross-channel remains complicated for the uneducated. It requires understanding the underlying mechanisms, understanding each channel independently and then holistically.

Cross-channel, in terms of pure prospecting (for example, making a sequence that contacts the prospect on LinkedIn + email + Twitter + sms), is far from being a must.

On the other hand, cross-channel in terms of marketing strategy is a necessity. It is said that it takes between 7 and 13 touch points with a prospect to convert him.

Thus, even a strategy of prospecting only, will eventually fail. Therefore, you have to consider the other existing marketing channels and consider that they must work together:

• Google referencing,
• Advertising on networks (Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok),
• Create and distribute value-added content (blog posts, webinars on your expertise, LinkedIn posts…)

The strategy behind this approach is always the same: it is better to be excellent on 1 channel than average on 10. So prioritize the channels according to your skills and where your target is.

Then, when one channel is mastered and partially automated, add another. 😎

Article FAQ

Is the replay available?

Absolutely, you can check out the replay of this livein French, on the SalesByTech channel.

How can I learn more about the different topics discussed?

You can check out our guide on LinkedIn prospecting (to go from beginner to expert) and join our Facebook community of +1000 people to ask your questions on best practices!