We tried the 4 best lead generation tools for LinkedIn– In-depth feedback

Everyone knows that LinkedIn is the #1 social media platform for lead generation, outreach and sales.

This is especially true for B2B lead generation since all the big business shots are on LinkedIn.

In fact, LinkedIn is the preferred network for more than 65 million decision-makers and is also home to over 58 million companies worldwide.

That’s why LinkedIn lead generation is an essential step in any serious outreach strategy. And yet, doing it all by yourself is no easy task, which is why most sales and marketing teams use lead generation tools for LinkedIn.

However, with all the different options available today, it’s difficult to find the one that fits your needs just right.

That’s where we step in. We’ve taken a number of lead generation tools for LinkedIn on a test ride – which resulted in this list of 5 all-time winners.

We’ve reviewed each of these tools:

• Features
• Downsides
• Pricing
• Primary use cases

That way, you’ll have all the necessary info for making the right decision.

And now, let’s get down to business!

TLDR

• Lead generation tools for LinkedIn are a no-can-do-without for any serious business looking to empower their lead gen, outreach and sales
• Sales Robot is an all-around LinkedIn lead gen and sales tool that can automate LinkedIn outreach from A to Z while keeping users safe at all times
• Sales Navigator’s biggest advantages are providing users with unlimited searches and having lots of filters for narrowing down your prospecting and lead gen
• Lusha helps extract info about any and every lead from both LinkedIn and other places on the web
• Shield is the Google Analytics of LinkedIn that delivers insightful reports on data crucial for successful lead gen

Best lead generation tool for LinkedIn #1: Sales Robot

Sales Robot is a cloud-based platform designed specifically for LinkedIn sales, meaning that it can effectively automate all the segments of your LinkedIn sales funnel.

As such, it has a bunch of features that help significantly improve and speed up your LinkedIn lead generation every step of the way.

What Features Does Salesrobot Offer?

• It has several foolproof methods of safely bypassing LinkedIn limits - Sales Robot allows you to send over 200 messages and connection requests daily. In addition to using email and InMail, Sales Robot can also send bulk messages to group members and event attendees.

That way, Sales Robot helps you work around the LinkedIn weekly limit in a way that’s both effective and completely safe, given that these methods are completely in line with LinkedIn’s policy

• Safety first - Sales Robot takes personal care of its users’ safety, as it mimics human activity almost to perfection. It achieves this by randomizing activity, skipping holidays and weekends, making delays between actions, and minding LinkedIn limits. You can even schedule and gradually increase your activity to avoid raising LinkedIn algorithm flags and set up daily limits for various activities.

In addition, Sales Robot’s cloud-based, which makes it practically undetectable by LinkedIn.

There’s also a Safe mode that’s available no matter what pricing plan you opt for

• First-rate personalization options - with this software, you can effortlessly draft and send highly-personalized messages and connection requests in just a few clicks. Sales Robot’s latest generation AI can automatically find the things that stand out from a particular profile, such as experience with volunteering or top certifications, among others.

The tool uses that data for drafting a message so human-like that your leads will feel like they’re talking to an actual person rather than a tool.

As a result, people will be much more open to accepting your connection requests and answering your messages.

And if you decide to write your messages, rather than use the pre-made fully customizable templates, Sales Robot will calculate the probable response rate of those messages

• Smart campaign and message sequences – you can make them from scratch or use one of the ready-made templates that are fully customizable to fit every goal and purpose. The sequences are based on your lead’s behavior, so there’s no chance for embarrassing missteps, such as sending a follow-up even when the lead’s already answered your first message.

You can also set up triggers, delete pending invites, blacklist individuals and companies, skip duplicates, etc.

As Sales Robot’s interface is very intuitive, you will have no problem creating your own campaigns in no time. And as an added help, there are ready-made campaign templates to help you start and learn the ropes on the go;

• Email enrichment option - the tool will find and verify your prospects’ business email addresses effortlessly. Since Sales Robot has integrated data from a verified email address provider, the chances for a mismatch or difficulties in verification are reduced to a minimum.

That makes it much easier for you to connect with potential prospects via email, as Sales Robot will provide you with all the data you need

• Smart Inbox that keeps all your conversations sorted in one place, with auto-follow-up options. That ensures you won’t miss following up with a lead ever again

• Integrates with many different tools and platforms to enable users to connect and coordinate their entire sales process

Get more sales on LinkedIn. Start a free 14-day trial today.

Shortcomings of Salesrobot

• Its image and GIF personalization could be better – this feature isn’t as advanced as Sales Robot’s other functionalities. However, Sales Robot integrates with Hyperise, meaning that it certainly allows adding both images and GIFs to your messages

How Much Does Salesrobot Cost?

As seen above, Sales Robot has 3 packages:

1. Advanced at $99/mo
2. Professional at $179/mo
3. Pay per lead at an undisclosed price. The exact price you’ll pay depends on the exact services you want to be included in the plan.

There’s a 20% discount on all the prices when you opt for annual billing.

The professional plan is perfect for teams of all types and sizes since it:

• Allows seamless team collaboration because you can invite unlimited team members and assign each with a particular role
• Enables sending detailed analytics reports to any number of emails
• Provides a comprehensive overview across accounts on a single dashboard, etc.

The Pay per lead plan, on the other hand, is the best option for individuals and teams that need an extra hand with their outreach. Namely, all of your outreach campaigns will be directly run and monitored by Sales Robot’s experienced team in person.

Moreover, Sales Robot offers a 14-day free trial for the Advanced and Professional plans. That gives you plenty of time to try everything out and see whether Sales Robot can get the job done for you.

Sign up for a free 14-day trial right now and start growing your LinkedIn network. No CC info needed.

Can You choose Salesrobot as your right lead generation tool for LinkedIn?

Sales Robot’s numerous cutting-edge features make it the perfect solution for companies and individuals that want to improve their LinkedIn lead generation by:

• More precise targeting of the right kind of prospects
• Personalizing their outreach to the tiniest of detail
• Speeding up the entire lead generation process

The fact that Sales Robot can smoothly bypass LinkedIn limits in as many as three different ways, allowing you to send more than 200 messages and requests per day is also a pretty notable advantage. In addition, it ensures that you stay 100% safe at all times while doing it.

In addition, Sales Robot can automate smart sequences, create elaborate outreach campaigns, and personalize your messages to the highest possible extent, which results in high response and acceptance rates with no exception.

That way, Sales Robot makes sure that your LinkedIn outreach strategy results in a steady stream of SQLs and higher conversion rates.

Sales Robot is also a great option for teams of all sizes as it enables frictionless team cooperation and allows inviting an unlimited number of team members in a single account.

And if you need some extra help with your outreach, Sales Robot’s Pay per lead package provides you with a dedicated team of LinkedIn outreach experts that will run all your campaigns for you,

So, if you’re keen on getting a solution that delivers a hyper-personalized LinkedIn outreach, safely bypasses LinkedIn’s limits and creates fully autopiloted smart sequences and campaigns that bring in swarms of new leads, then Sales Robot is your go-to lead generation tool for LinkedIn.

Best lead generation tool for LinkedIn #2: Sales Navigator

No list of best lead generation tools for LinkedIn would be complete without at least mentioning Sales Navigator – LinkedIn’s native prospecting and lead generation tool.

The thing that makes Sales Navigator differ from other LinkedIn paid plans is that it’s particularly designed for LinkedIn users who use this network primarily for sales rather than recruiting or job seeking.

What Features Does Sales Navigator Offer?

• It’s completely safe to use – this goes without saying since it’s LinkedIn’s own product, so there’s no risk of getting banned for using it
• It provides untapped access to LinkedIn’s lead pool because it enables unlimited search options
• Has many advanced filters for narrowing down your prospecting and lead gen. Some of the most useful filters include Connection, Connections Of, School, Activities and Shared Experiences, Past Company, Title, Seniority Level, Groups, etc.

• You get 50 InMail per month. This comes in quite handy for bypassing the weekly connection limit
• Smart Links which enable you to see how users engage with the content you’ve sent them, so you can say it’s a form of very basic content performance analytics

Shortcomings of Sales Navigator

• The price – Sales Navigator is definitely on the pricier end of the spectrum. Moreover, the features it has are simply not worth that much money. Not to mention that you will have to opt for the most expensive Sales Navigator package if you want to see a real difference compared to the Basic and Premium LinkedIn plans
• Apart from the advanced search and InMails, it has nothing more to offer (and don’t forget you only get as little as 50 InMail per month)

How Much Does Sales Navigator Cost?

There are 3 Sales Navigator plans:

• Core at $99.99 per month
• Advanced at $149.99 per month
• Advanced Plus at an undisclosed amount

There’s a free 30-day trial for each of the plans, as well as an additional discount when billed annually.

Can You choose Sales Navigator as your lead generation tool for LinkedIn?

Since Sales Navigator enables you to perform unlimited searches and filter them for more precise targeting and provides a certain number of InMail, it sure can help with LinkedIn lead generation.

After all, it was designed for helping people and businesses that use LinkedIn primarily for sales.

However, Sales Navigator cannot do much more than give you a hand with prospecting as the very first step of successful lead generation.

That’s why most users often decide to use both Sales Navigator and a platform that can actually automate their LinkedIn sales & outreach process.

That way, you’ll get the best of both worlds.

Best lead generation tool for LinkedIn #3: Lusha

Lusha can be used as a prospecting and lead generation tool for LinkedIn thanks to its LinkedIn extension.

In addition, Lusha has a set of features that allow users to find prospects and leads on other places on the web as well.

What features Does Lusha Offer?

• It can find relevant contact info on both companies and individuals alike. The information Lusha extracts includes email addresses, seniority levels, job titles, phone numbers, state in which they’re based, etc.

• It has many different integrations that enable easy export and syncing with various CRMs, email automation platforms and other tools
• It can scrape relevant prospect data from anywhere on the web and is especially useful for finding European phone numbers
• It comes with an analytics dashboard to help you get a better understanding of your lead gen efforts

Shortcomings of Lusha

• Users often report issues with data accuracy, especially regarding prospects who are not European-based
• It is a Chrome extension, meaning that it can lag and slow LinkedIn down. Moreover, the fact that it’s not cloud-based also raises the question of safety

How Much Does Lusha Cost?

Lusha has 4 plans:

• Free
• Pro at $39/mo
• Premium at $69/mo;
• Scale, which is a custom plan for enterprises that do their prospecting on a much bigger scale

Options such as analytics, CRM integrations, and bulk enrichment and prospecting are only available with Premium and above.

You should keep in mind that all the plans come with a (very) limited number of credits for finding prospect-related data.

Can You choose Lusha as your lead generation tool for LinkedIn?

When you need to quickly and smoothly find and extract the necessary contact info of your prospects and leads, Lusha is the way to go.

That information is priceless for running cold email or cold call campaigns and can also help you personalize your outreach attempts.

However, unlike Sales Robot, Lusha doesn’t have options for automating outreach and lead gen in total.

If you want more than just bare contact info from your lead generation tool for LinkedIn you’ll either have to combine Lusha with an automation tool or opt for a different platform altogether.

Best lead generation tool for LinkedIn #4: Shield

Shield is basically Google Analytics for LinkedIn, as it helps you track your profile’s overall performance over time.

As such, it’s an essential tool in any serious LinkedIn lead generation strategy.

What Features Does Shield Offer?

• It keeps track of all the essential metrics – Shield provides insight into data vital for getting more leads. It delivers reports on things such as your content performance, audience demographics, increase in connections and followers over time, and the best time for posting based on prior engagement

• It’s affordable - none of the pricing plans are too expensive. Moreover, even the lowest-tier plan includes plenty of features that are more than enough for getting all the necessary stats

Shortcomings of Shield

• The reports can be a little difficult to interpret particularly if you have little to no prior experience with analytics

• It’s a browser extension. As such, it can cause LinkedIn to lag and compromise your safety in the long run
• Aside from providing very detailed analytics, Shield cannot do much more for your LinkedIn lead generation

How much does Shield cost?

Shield has 3 pricing plans:

• Starter at $8/mo
• Creator at $16/mo
• Influencer at $25/mo

Shield offers a discount for annual billing, as well as a 10-day free trial.

Can you choose Shield as your lead generation tool for LinkedIn?

Understanding what type of content resonates the most with your target audience on LinkedIn is essential if you’re serious about making the most of the platform’s potential for lead generation.

And that’s what you’ll get from Shield – actionable insights into everything that matters and that directly influences your lead generation efforts.

Knowing what kinds of posts perform the best and what types of users consume your content the most, in addition to getting comparison charts of all the relevant stats will do wonders for your LinkedIn lead gen.

On the other hand, don’t expect Shield to deliver more than it can.

Shield is certainly a first-rate platform when it comes to LinkedIn analytics, but it cannot further leverage your lead generation because it lacks the necessary functionality for such a challenging task.

Final takeaways

Each of the tools that have made it to our list can help their users excel at certain areas of LinkedIn lead generation.

On the one hand, Sales Navigator and Lusha will provide features for laser-precise prospecting, each in its own way.

On the other, Shield will deliver detailed analytics on all the stuff that matters, so you’ll know what’s working great and what needs some adjustment at a glance.

However, if you need a lead generation tool for LinkedIn that can take your lead gen from 0 to 100 before you know it, you’ll want to find a platform with a more comprehensive approach.

Your tool of choice will have to be able to:

• Help with targeting the right kind of LinkedIn users
• Hyper-personalize your outreach
• Automate entire campaigns of various kinds
• Make sure you stay safe at all times
• And achieve all that much faster than you could ever hope to do manually

If that’s the kind of platform you’d like to have by your side, then Sales Robot is the ideal solution for you, as it can do all this and much more.

Besides, why take just our word for it? Sign up for Sales Robot’s free 14-day trial and see how it can help your LinkedIn lead gen soar.

Disclaimer: Please note that the featured information is correct as of October 2022. Sales Robot has made every attempt to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information provided on this website. However, the information is provided “as is” without a warranty of any kind. Sales Robot does not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained on this website.

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