How to invite 2nd and 3rd connections and send a follow-up message – Linked Helper

With the help of Linked Helper 2, you can invite 2^nd and 3^d level contacts to join your network and send them a follow-up message after they accepted your invitation. Such a workflow is a best way for sellers to find as many leads for their sales as possible. In this article, you will learn how to collect needed contacts from the LinkedIn search page to Linked Helper 2 for inviting.

Create a new campaign.
Collect contacts for inviting.
Review action settings and collected profiles
Start the campaign.

1. Create a new campaign.

In the Campaign menu click the list of campaigns:

Choose the Create new... option:

In the pop-up window give your campaign a name (1), choose the type of campaign (2), choose the needed template - Invite and Follow up, click Create (4):

Go to the Workflow section of your campaign and you will see 3 actions:
- Invite 2nd and 3rd level contacts - sends an invitation to your 2nd or 3rd level connections;
- Filter contacts out of my network (keep 1st level only) - filters those who accepted your invitation (the rest is moved back to Queue).
- Message to 1st connections | Group members - sends a follow-up message to newly added connections within the previous inviting action.
- Check for replies - monitors replies to the messages sent via the previous messaging action of the campaign.
If you do not want to send a follow-up message, you can delete the second and third actions. Here is the link to instruction on managing the workflow of your campaign: Workflow.

If you are using Advanced interface, then you can use this instruction: How to create a new campaign in LH2?

2. Collect contacts for inviting.

Click on the Add button in the left Linked Helper 2 menu;

Choose the Source for collecting (it can be ordinary LinkedIn search, Sales Navigator search, or Recruiter search), I'll go with the ordinary LinkedIn search page. You can also upload contacts for inviting if you have a CSV file with URLs of the needed 2nd and 3d level contacts for inviting - How to upload contacts to Linked Helper 2?

Add all the needed filters to your search (1) and hit the Collect button (2) and choose ...from current page (3) option. Do not forget that we can collect only 2nd and 3d level contacts for inviting, so pay attention to the Connections filter:

Linked Helper 2 will start to scan search results and collect contacts to the Queue for inviting.

3. Review action settings and collected profiles.

Review profiles

You can check the collected contacts in the Queue list. There you can exclude some contacts if you for some reason do not want to invite them:

Set up Invite 2nd and 3rd level contacts action

Enable workaround for LinkedIn weekly invitation limit to be able to invite more than a 100 profiles per week - Is there a life after LinkedIn weekly invitation limit?:
Add your invitation message in the Message tab of the Invite 2nd and 3rd level contacts action:

You can use {firstname}, {lastname}, etc variables. They will be replaced with the real recipient's first name & last name, etc. And click Save and Preview button to save your message:

You can preview the invitation message for each contact in the Queue by clicking the Preview message button:

Adjust settings for Bunch size, Timeout between bunches, and Delay settings according to your needs for every action of your campaign:

You can also choose the text input method for your invitation message. Linked Helper 2 offers three options for that. Random method - Linked Helper 2 will choose the input method itself; Insert - your message will be pasted into the text field; Type - your message will be typed as you'd type it manually yourself using the keyboard. You can find these settings in the Delay Settings tab.

Note: If you use the Sales Navigator subscription and you want to "Save as lead" all the invited contacts, then Linked Helper 2 can automatically check the box with the "Save as lead" option automatically while inviting. You need to go to the Advanced Settings tab and set up Yes for the Check "Save as lead" checkbox on the invitation popup in the Sales Navigator filter.

You can change the platform where profiles will be processed Change platform feature which is available in the Advanced User Interface of Linked Helper.

Set up Filter contacts out of my network action

After receiving invitations your successfully processed contacts are being moved to the Queue for the Filter contacts out of my network (keep 1st level only) action.

Filter contacts out of my network (keep 1st level only) action allows finds out who accepted your invite and became a 1st-degree connection. It will move contacts who have accepted your invitation to the Queue for the next action (in our case it's Message to 1st connections | Group members action).

We recommend leaving the default settings. To learn more about his action, please, check this article.

So, in the Queue (1) list you can see invited but not accepted contacts and accepted contacts are in the Successful (2) list of the Filter contacts out of my network (keep 1st level only) action.

**Set up Message to 1st connections | Group members action**

After being processed by the Filter contacts out of my network (keep 1st level only) action your contacts are moved to the Queue of the Message to 1st connections | Group members action.

You need to set up a thank you for a connection message here (a follow-up message). You can set up your message in the Message tab.

You can use {firstname}, {lastname}, etc variables. They will be replaced with the real recipient's first name & last name, etc. And click Save and Preview button to save your message.

You can preview the message for each contact in the Queue by clicking the Preview message button:

You can also choose the typing method for your message. Linked Helper 2 offers three options for that. Random method - Linked Helper 2 will choose the input method itself; Insert - your message will be pasted into the text field; Type - your message will be typed as you'd type it manually yourself using the keyboard. You can find these settings in the Delay Settings tab.

Pay attention to the switches.

By default, Linked Helper checks reply only to the previous message of the current campaign ("Reject if a contact replied after"). This option checks your message history from the current moment back to the date the previous message was sent by the preceding messaging Action above in the workflow.

If you wish to skip contacts who received any message from you (except for the invitation note) no matter how the message was sent, manually or via any Linked Helper campaign - turn on the 2nd switch ("Reject if you or LH messaged a contact after connection date"). This option checks the message history from the current moment back to the date when the invitation was accepted.

So, in the Replied (1) list you'll see contacts who replied after accepting your invitation (if you set up the Yes option for the Reject if a contact replied after (1) filter).

In the Messaged (2) list you'll see contacts who have received a message from you after the connection date (if you have the Yes option set up for the Reject if you or LH messaged a contact after connection date (2) filter).

Note: If you send your messages via the Sales Navigator platform to those recipients who do not have it, then the messages will appear in the ordinary LinkedIn inbox of the recipient. If a recipient reply to such a message, then the reply will appear in your Sales Navigator inbox.

Set up Check for replies action

The next action that you have in your Workflow is the Check for replies action. This action monitors replies to the messages sent via the previous messaging action of the campaign. If no reply from the profile is found within the indicated time period (1), then the profile is moved to the next Action in the Workflow.

You can switch between several of its tabs to configure your action.

In the General tab you can:

set a name for the action;
postpone the start of the action with the Start at button;
set the delay (indicate the number of days and hours or make the delay infinite by choosing the never option) for the profiles, i.e. how much time each profile will be sitting in the Action Queue before it will be moved to the next action in case a reply is not found;
set a timeout between checks for replies;

In the Tags tab you can automatically add or delete tags to successfully processed profiles: how to use tags in Linked Helper:

In the Send replied to Zapier | Webhook tab you can automatically send profiles to any other app / CRM that supports Zapier or Webhook integration:

After execution, in the Replied list (1) you'll see contacts who replied to your previous message. In the Successful list (2) you'll see contacts who didn't reply to your previous message:

Note:

Replied contacts will be moved to the Replied sub-list and this is the ending point of the campaign for them, even if you have other actions in your workflow below. If you want them to receive the next message despite the fact that they replied, you can replace Check for replies with Delay between actions.
If no reply found within a specified period of time, a profile is moved to the "Successful" list and further down in the workflow, and his replies to the previously sent message won't be checked anymore.
Check for replies action searches for replies from the profile only in one platform where the previous message was sent; it does not check a messaging history in several platforms.
This is the last action in the Workflow, and by default, the "never" setting is activated which means the action continues checking for replies for contacts in the Queue and never moves them to the Successful list. If you want to add another Action below, then uncheck the "never" option, so not-replied contacts can be moved to the queue for the next action.

4. Start the campaign.

After you set up everything according to your needs, you can start your campaign by clicking the Start button.

Note: campaigns are programmed in a way to get your contacts through the funnel as quickly as possible so the actions are performed from the bottom to the top going from the latest action if there`s anything in the queue to the earliest.

You can export information for successfully processed contacts as a CSV file.

Open the Successful list for the needed action:

Click Select all and Download:

Choose the needed delimiters and hit the Download button:

Unfortunately, MS Excel doesn’t support CSV files in the same way as .xslx files. But I still able to open any CSV file with MS Excel: How to Import CSV file into MS Excel?

Thank you very much for your attention. We hope that these tips helped you! Here are some more useful articles from our blog:

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