Your LinkedIn Connections are rightfully yours. Whether you are in sales or a business owner or an agency or into recruiting, the LinkedIn connections that you worked hard to build over the years are indeed an asset. Now, platforms keep changing their policies from time to time and so it is essential to have a copy of your contacts and content to avoid a situation in the future. And like any asset, the value lies in asset utilization. You can leverage these contacts to build yourself a strong prospect pipeline with some simple strategies that actually work.

In this post, we will cover

• How to export them as an Excel or CSV file from LinkedIn.
• How to extract them with emails. Basic LinkedIn export since 2018 does not include emails. We will cover how to organize your contacts into separate lists and set up a marketing campaign with Linkdra.
• Finally, we will look at how to engage with your contacts in LinkedIn as an alternative to sending emails where the competition to get the user's attention is so much more.

Bonus: How to expand your connections in your target segment on LinkedIn

So, let's get started!

Export LinkedIn Contacts using LinkedIn Method

Exporting contacts you already have as your connections is a fairly simple process. Just follow these steps:

1. Click the 'Me' dropdown menu.
2. Click 'Settings & Privacy'.
3. Select 'Data privacy'.
4. Click on 'Get a copy of your data'.
5. Select the data you want to export. Recommend selecting 'Connections' and then press 'Request Archive'.
6. You will receive an email on your primary email with a link to download your list of LinkedIn connections. This may take a few minutes based on the selections made in the last step.
7. Click 'Download archive'.
8. Open your CSV file to access your data.

This CSV file can then be uploaded to any CRM including Linkdra Prospecting CRM or any other marketing engine you use.

There is another way to export connections and Nigel from ValueExchange covers that well with a detailed step by step guide.

Export LinkedIn Contacts with Emails

You would notice the export from LinkedIn does not contain the email address or telephone number of your contacts except for those you uploaded. Most users don't upload and even if you did, there is not much value in getting the same back. This wasn't the case earlier but sometime in late 2018 LinkedIn changed its policies sighting 'Data Privacy'. (This is another good reason to always keep a downloaded copy of your contacts). Interestingly LinkedIn still shows the email and phone details if you visit a profile and click 'Contact Info' (unless of course, the user has blocked it and most haven't). So, it seems a case where things were made harder to access and not so much of a binary policy call.

The second problem you notice is, the export is a long list of all contacts. For your prospecting efforts, you may need a certain subset of them by geography or industry or organization, and filtering them out of the exported CSV is a pain.

So, how does Linkdra help solve this? Well, here are the steps.

1. Sign up for a free Linkdra account if you haven't already done so. Setup Workbench Browser.
2. Click Search on Workbench and visit LinkedIn people search page
3. Click 'All Filters' and check '1st' under connections on the LinkedIn search page. This limits the results to your level 1 connections. Apply other filters such as industry, location, company, etc. to get the desired list. Once done, let Workbench read the final list and update your Linkdra CRM.
4. Now that we have the list organized, the next step is to visit each profile and read the 'contact info'. Linkdra Workbench makes this easy by helping you navigate the profiles and update the CRM with contact information if on record.
5. Connect your favorite CRM or export contacts as CSV from Linkdra CRM.

This is not the only way to export contacts with email and phone numbers. Martin Pahulje from Aspiration Marketing covered a few alternatives in a post in 2020. Most of the automation tools listed are chrome extensions that were options back then, but 2022 has a better range to pick from.

Engage your contacts on LinkedIn

Once you have your list of contacts handy, the next thing to do is set up a process to be in touch regularly. We often underestimate the power of occasional messages around events or seasons, yet they are a great way to be high on recall. This is besides posting quality content on LinkedIn at least 1-2 times a month and even better posting at least once a week. Also effective is to review the activity feed and 'like' posts from your connections or comment back. Besides these, another strategy to raise the bar is to send direct messages. Here is how you can organize and track your outreach efficiently with Linkdra.

1. Run through your contact lists and send 1:1 messages on LinkedIn. Once you sync your messages on Workbench they are updated in your CRM as well. Alternatively, you can compose 1:1 messages in CRM and use Workbench to navigate and compose the message for each contact. Of course, all updates go to your CRM.
2. Set up a template campaign message and target one or more contact lists. Linkdra personalization engine automatically converts the templates to messages for each contact that you can send 1:1. One of the main reasons why people fall behind staying in touch is it takes time. Linkdra makes that efficient.

Bonus: Expanding your contacts on LinkedIn

Leaving your LinkedIn data just to be there and not using it to improve your business is a mistake that numerous marketers make every day. And even if you are not into sales and marketing, a professional network is the fuel for personal growth and it just makes sense to build strong professional connections. LinkedIn is the holy grail for all B2B purposes and increasingly for Local Services Businesses such as agencies and advisors.

On an average a Facebook account has about 300 friends compared to over 900 connections on LinkedIn. Company pages at times have millions of followers. Now, LinkedIn is not known to be the platform where people spend a lot of time and so, clearly, people are much more densely connected on LinkedIn though low on exchanges.

One of the reasons, this is has been the case is because LinkedIn limits whom your can message. It's just your 1st level connections and with some limits using paid InMail to others. There are a few others approaches such a messaging to group members and we will cover that later in this post.

What LinkedIn is amazing at is the size of the active business profiles. It's arguably the most current public database that you can search easily. Very likely all of your clients and professional contacts are on LinkedIn. They may not be active every day but that does not mean they can't be reached. In fact, it is just the opposite. Less noise in this case translates to better attention. This applies to your future prospects too! For example, you can easily find and shortlist 50 profiles from your target segment, visit their profiles to build interest. But how to work on them next? LinkedIn provides 2 options.

1. Drop InMail messages and wait for their response?
2. Send a connection request message and hope they accept!

InMails don't work for a couple of reasons.

First, the response rate is very low. Think about it, you don't send InMails to your connections. So, anyone sending InMail is probably trying to sell something - and no one likes being sold to (well mostly). Also, there is a limit on the number of InMail messages you can send. If your response rate continues to be low, LinkedIn might even flag your account as spam.

Second, even the prospects who respond aren’t integrated into the regular sales and marketing engine. This means tracking and following up is a nightmare on LinkedIn even if you get responses to your InMails.

This is where Linkdra comes in handy with an integrated approach to effectively search target prospects and build new connections organically. You can search directly on LinkedIn people search, or members within groups that you are part off or networking with event participants or simply use Linkdra engine to search public indexes of LinkedIn profiles without even visiting LinkedIn.

Sign up for a free Linkdra account today and see how easy it is to expand your business connections with as little as 5 minutes of time invested 3-4 times a week.