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Automate LinkedIn Outreach with Clay & HeyReach

Boost engagement by messaging prospects about their latest LinkedIn posts.

 

Welcome back

In version 1.6 of Clay Hacker, you’ll discover:

  1. Boost your engagement by quickly finding active prospects on LinkedIn with Clay.

  2. Craft targeted LinkedIn outreach messages with ChatGPT or Claude.

  3. Automate LinkedIn outreach with HeyReach.

  4. Preview for next week.

To quickly recap last week, we covered how to instantly analyze 10-K reports at scale to uncover business challenges and rank accounts, and we included this in our email outreach to focus messaging on their business.

We can use the same process, and even the same Clay table and exported CSV, to add to HeyReach and deliver this messaging through another channel.

You can also use Clay to find prospects recently posted on LinkedIn and automatically write relevant messages in another ChatGPT or Claude column.

So, by taking a few extra steps and using a tool like HeyReach, we can automate LinkedIn outreach simultaneously with other outreach efforts.

Haven’t signed up for Clay yet? Sign up for free here.

Boost Your Engagement by Quickly Finding Active Prospects on LinkedIn with Clay

One of Clay's most underrated features is its ability to instantly find recent LinkedIn posts (and search for certain keywords) across all of your prospects.

To use this, add a new column and select Add enrichment:

For the enrichment, search for LinkedIn Post as seen below:

Finding LinkedIn posts with Clay

Next, select Find Recent Posts by User or Company, and you will be able to search for specific keywords and select how recent the posts should be:

Searching for LinkedIn posts with Clay

You can then select the information you want to pull from LinkedIn, including the post itself, the URL, and even reaction and comment counts, to prioritize who is most active on LinkedIn or reference a popular post:

Pulling LinkedIn post information with Clay

Finally, click Save, and Run (either 10 rows or all of your rows). Clay will add these columns with the LinkedIn posts, URL, Reaction and Comment counts, and more.

We can use prospects' LinkedIn posts to write a message with ChatGPT or Claude that we will send to the prospect via HeyReach.

Your HeyReach sequence can be customized so that your message is sent after HeyReach has already looked at the user's profile, sent a connection request with a custom message, and liked their post.

In addition, HeyReach can run in parallel with your email sequences and any calls you make.

A key limitation of using HeyReach to be aware of is LinkedIn's limit on the number of new connection requests that can be sent. Keep this in mind when prioritizing your prospects.

Craft Targeted LinkedIn Outreach Messages with ChatGPT or Claude

When writing messages for your LinkedIn outreach using Clay, you can create a ChatGPT or Claude column, just like you would when writing an email.

For the LinkedIn message, you can refer to their most recent LinkedIn post, which we found in the previous section, or other information in their LinkedIn summary, experience, headline, or awards.

Generally, a LinkedIn message should be shorter, more casual, and personable than an email. This applies to your connection request message, messages, and InMails.

Since we are utilizing the same list from Clay for sending emails and HeyReach, we can include LinkedIn messages from Clay as custom fields in HeyReach to be sent as connection requests, messages, and InMails:

HeyReach Connection Request

For the above connection request sent from HeyReach, I can simply add "Message 5," which is personalized for each prospect based on their most recent LinkedIn post or another data point from Clay.

Automate LinkedIn Outreach With HeyReach

Using HeyReach is very easy. It's a LinkedIn sequencer that leverages different touchpoints, such as looking at prospect profiles, sending connection requests, liking posts, and sending messages, plus InMails.

To get started with HeyReach:

  1. Sign up for a free trial: HeyReach.

  2. Using the menu on the left, connect your LinkedIn account.

  3. Using the menu on the left, select Campaigns.

  4. Start a new Campaign.

  5. Upload your list (this can be the same CSV from Clay you are using for your email sequences as long as it includes their LinkedIn profile (you may have to move the LinkedIn profile to the first column).

  6. Using the visual sequence builder seen below, you can create your sequence.

HeyReach Sequence Builder

As you can see above, once you send a connection request in your sequence, you will then define two paths:

1. If they accept your connection request, add an action like sending a message.

Send LinkedIn Messages with HeyReach

As I mentioned in the previous section, when you send a message, you can choose one of the custom fields from the list that you uploaded.

This can be one of the emails from your sequence or a separate field for a LinkedIn message.

2. If they haven’t accepted yet, then add an action such as liking a post (since you already follow them) or sending an InMail:

Send InMail messages with HeyReach

As previously mentioned, HeyReach's main limitation is volume. LinkedIn's daily connection request limit means I use it for my key sequences to reach highly targeted prospects.

Preview For Next Week

Watch out for Clay Hacker every Friday.

In the meantime, follow us on Twitter and Linkedin.

Next week, we'll use Clay to explore ways to grow our current accounts and opportunities. We'll also learn how to set up triggers to take action at the right time.

Thank you for reading,
Clay Hacker