Wondering how you’re gonna be getting prospect intent/ engagement data from LinkedIn without using scraping tools, now that LinkedIn is waging war on scrapers? Or how you’ll send all those follow-up messages to your posts without using automation tools like HeyReach, MeetAlfred, Expandi etc. – so your account doesn’t get blocked? 🥲

LinkedIn is cracking down on scraper & automation tools that violate their terms & conditions double time:

For once – because while everyone loves scraping, no one exactly loves being scraped. The thought that someone is reading all your posts, comments and engagements on Linkedin, and then using that to profile you & target with personalised messages, and that there are entire companies capitalizing on that – is naturally quite outrageous.

But also – all of these tools are competing with LinkedIn’s own revenue streams: LinkedIn Ads and SalesNavigator. So this is a not-so-gentle nudge for the hustlers to stop using the cheap methods – and use LinkedIn’s native solutions to achieve the same results instead.

Problem is – not everyone knows how to use LinkedIn ads to obtain prospect intent information in a “legit” way. So here’s what this post is about – how obtain that prospect-level and company-level intent information from LinkedIn, and reach out to prospects en masse without scraping. 

What happened – the LinkedIn Scraper crackdown in a nutshell

Over the last week, LinkedIn cracked down on several tools that were scraping data off LinkedIn (members’ emails, post engagements) and automating messaging and comments on their platform. Big data providers & sales engagement tools like Seamless.AI, Apollo.io or Prospeo.io had their LinkedIn pages shut down and Chrome extensions banned.  Several people who used automations & Chrome extensions of the tools violating LinkedIn terms reportedly had their accounts deleted or frozen: 

I think everyone’s getting the memo – we’re in an era where scraping & automations is threading on thin ice 😬 What can you do instead?

How to collect first-party intent signals from LinkedIn without using scrapers on LinkedIn – workarounds:

I know it’s going to be more expensive…and slower…and more tedious…but if you don’t want to risk having your profile banned by using automations, here’s what you can do (and what we do at Userpilot):

1. Create campaigns with specific intent “encoded” in the name, “decode” which companies engaged with them using ZenABM, and “retarget” the right personas in those companies with tailored DM ads

This is how we’re structuring our LinkedIn ABM campaigns at Userpilot, to glean “intent data” from campaign engagements:

• We create Campaigns Groups based on different intent (e.g. separate one for analytics, one for engagements, one for  Competitor1, Competitor2, Competitor 3…). Each campaign group contains relevant content in campaigns by inventory (image, video, TLAs…)
• We target the campaigns at a specific list of accounts (specific companies), and target specific personas in these accounts, e.g. only Product Managers (a list of related titles): 
  
• We then look at *which* companies engaged with this campaign in ZenABM:
• ZenABM pushes these campaign-level and campaign-group-level engagements directly into Hubspot as company property – so you can then just create an active list of companies based on this campaign name as a filter on Hubspot:
• We then push this list as an audience to LinkedIn Ads and create a DM ad targeting the same personas (job titles) in these selected companies as we did for the first ad campaign group.❗ If you don’t use Hubspot, you can just export the list of companies as a CSV file and upload them to LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Then, filter down by Job Titles (current), including the same ones as in the original Campaign Group audience targeting.
• You can also find the target personas on Sales Navigator, and then import them as a contact list – provided you have more than 300 members on the list (recommended more like a 1000 – the match rates rarely go over 80%).
• In the DM ad copy, you write what you would have written in a scheduled message via LinkedIn automation, e.g.:

  Hey [First Name],

  I noticed you checked out our video on Session Replay & Analytics—so I wanted to reach out directly.

  If you’re looking for a frictionless way to analyze user behaviour, spot drop-offs, and optimize your product experience—Userpilot brings it all together in one place. No more jumping between tools.

  Would love to hear how you’re currently handling session insights and see if we can help. Want to take a quick look together?

  Let me know, happy to share a short demo.

  Best,
  [Your Name]
  [Your Position] | Userpilot

You can do exactly the same with “sponsored content” – i.e. “Thought Leader Ads” – you create an active list of companies that engaged with a LinkedIn ad campaign containing the specific post you “boosed” (it doesn’t have to be your post or your employees post – you can ask other people, e.g. influencers – to let you sponsor their posts on LinkedIn – they will just have to approve it!)

Then – you again “re-target” relevant personas in companies that engaged with them, rather than specific likes/ commenters on the post.

❗ Simple “retargeting” is not possible with TLA ads.

Thought Leader Ads (TLAs) are promoted posts from a personal LinkedIn profile, not a company page. Retargeting TLAs is tricky because LinkedIn does not natively allow engagement retargeting on TLAs.

Workarounds for Retargeting TLA Engagements:

Option 1: Retarget Clicks with Website Visitors

• If the TLA post links to your website, set up LinkedIn Insight Tag.
• Create a Website Retargeting Audience for users who clicked and visited the landing page.

Option 2: Build a Manual Engagement List – ☠️ involves usage of Scrapers, but you do it “off” LinkedIn:

• Similar to organic posts, export people who liked or commented on the TLA using Phantombuster or Shield App.
• Upload as a Matched Audience (Contact List) to retarget them with ads.

Option 3: Invite Engagers to Follow Your Page and Retarget Followers

• If the TLA was from an executive’s profile, invite those who engaged to follow your company page.
• Later, target Company Page followers with Sponsored Content ads.

Hope you enjoyed these ideas on how to scoop the intent off LinkedIn post engagements and reach out to the people who engaged using LinkedIn ads rather than scrapers & automations. I know these methods are more tedious and expensive – but using automation now could get you into a LinkedIn jail, or worse still – get your profile on LinkedIn blocked for good, and send years of work on building your network down the drain 😬!