Video Overview
In the #15 episode of “The B2B Outbound Marketing & Sales Automation Series”, Dancho spoke with the CEO and owner of Linked Helper 2.0, Alexander Erin.
Alexander firmly believes that any progress is based on innovative ideas, that need to be successfully automated, and put on stream so that they can bring results in large quantities.
“Our mission is to develop and implement cutting-edge solutions that will put marketing tasks on the conveyor and greatly simplify the life of a business.”, says Alexander.
Linked Helper:
1. has 300 000+ users
2. has 31 features;
3. being on the market for 7 years;
4. is 5-star rated;
5. is present in 180 countries;
6. has Instant 24/7 support &
7. is the safest tool.
They offer 3 pricing plans:
– Free trial;
– Standard, $15/month &
– Pro, $45/month.
Check them out here!
Start a free trial here!
STAY TUNED for more success stories, tips&tricks, and awesome tools in the B2B Outbound world!
Speakers
Interview Transcript
[00:00:06.180] – Dancho – Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the B2B Outbound Marketing and Sales Automation Series. By now, you should know my name, Dancho Dimkov, and I do a lot of effort in finding the best automation tools out there to show to you guys. Maybe it will save you a few hours of your life. And guess what? I have a new tool. It’s a really nice one, and it’s not really a new. It’s out there on the market for quite some time, but I found the founder and I brought him here. And for today, I actually wanted to show you Alexander Erin, who is actually the founder and CEO of Linked Helper 2.0 version 2. So Alexander, welcome to the show.
[00:00:47.170] – Alexander – Hi, hello everybody. Thanks for having me. Thanks Dancho. It’s nice to be here. Thank you.
[00:00:55.880] – Dancho – Here virtually because I’m based in Macedonia at the moment.
[00:01:00.170] – Alexander – It’s okay. Today world is digital world.
[00:01:02.890] – Dancho – Yeah. After COVID, we kinda get used to Alex, to the online world. Everything is online already. Alex, to get the ball rolling, I’m really curious because I would check your website. It’s Linked Helper 2 on a square. I was curious, there has to be a story here. Tell me a bit more, what’s the thing with version 2?
[00:01:24.460] – Alexander – Yeah. The first version was founded in 2016. It was a Chrome extension fully developed by me. This extension was super successful on the market. We had a huge user database and even in the Chrome Store. If you type LinkedIn Care Word, we… Was on the first place and LinkedIn extensions was on the second and third places and only DAX toolbox was on the fourth place. We… Was very huge on the market. But the problem is that extensions cannot be 100 % undetectable by websites. We understood this. From the 2019, we started developing the second version, which is not Chrome extension at all. It is actually web browser that you install like Chrome or Firefox on your Windows, Mac, or Ubuntu operating system. The core feature to automate all stuff, we don’t need to inject anything into LinkedIn page. We don’t need to call LinkedIn API to send the message or send the connection request on your behalf. We really repeat your actions like clicking on the buttons, typing text, scrolling the page, moving mouse, etc. From the technical point of view, it’s impossible to website in our case LinkedIn.
[00:03:25.830] – Dancho – It’s human or is it automation too?
[00:03:28.890] – Alexander – Yes. From the technical point of view, it’s impossible to detect that it is some kind of bot because everything without any science of this. Of course, LinkedIn measure how fast you’re doing things, how many actions you’re doing per day, but it’s up to you. We have default settings which is safe, but you can increase and take your own risk. With the first version, when we already was developing the second version, we actually wasn’t so fast and in the middle of 2019 when the second version was still under development, our users got a message from LinkedIn, you’re using link helper and you will be restricted if you continue to use it. This issue was fixed in two weeks and the first version was working until 2022 of August, but it was without any support from our side. Some very small % of users, they saw the first version, they didn’t want to change to any platform, even that we say it’s totally free to switch to the second version. But more than 99 % of users switched to the second version.
[00:05:12.020] – Dancho – Nice. Well, I was looking now on the Linked Helper 2, and when I saw Download, I was like, oh, okay. So then it’s a downloadable software on your computer. And that is one way of how you can actually get away with all the restriction that LinkedIn is imposing. You’re saying it’s just like an additional web browser, actually, that mimics its own… Since it’s from a desktop, you can click, you can move your mouse even a bit, so you can really mimic a human, right?
[00:05:45.540] – Alexander – You can work with this tool with a normal browser manually, but you can set up your campaign and hit start. The LinkedIn window will be blocked and it would be impossible to you to interact with it. But linked helper will repeat your actions, will click buttons, etc.
[00:06:15.530] – Dancho – Nice. Alexander, when you said you started 2016 with the LinkedIn Helper version 1, we started around that time, 2015, 2016. I think that DAX soap was one of the automation that was available. Meet Alfred was one, but they also had either a desktop app or was a Chrome extension at that time.
[00:06:39.730] – Alexander – As I know, yes, that… Was available in 2016, like we. Meet Alfred was meet Leonard and was extension and was detected by LinkedIn before us.
[00:06:58.430] – Dancho – I forgot even the name, Meet Leonard was. But I was curious, how did you get up, Alex, into the automation world and into the LinkedIn? I mean, it’s not like you woke up one day and said, you know what? I have a LinkedIn link helper tool. So what was the origin story here?
[00:07:16.480] – Alexander – Actually, I’m a programmer by my high degree. At some point, I decided to start my own company. This was a company not for marketers, but for some restaurants, cafe, etc. At some point, I decided I need more people in my team, more developers, and need to hire them. I didn’t have any external investments into this project, my own money. I tried to find developers through LinkedIn and I spent a lot of time to sending the message, Hey, toss name, would you like to consider this job opportunity? Almost the same message. At some point, I decided to ask recruiters, Do you work the same way, like me?
[00:08:21.840] – Alexander – They said, yes. Okay. I thought it’s super stupid monkey job, actually. I spent less than two days to write just a script on JavaScript, which automated connection requests and messages for my own purpose. Then I offered some friends to use it. They said, oh, I need some interface. Okay, guys, I’m happy to do this for free, but you’re so lazy and so stupid, maybe. I introduce interface for you. Then I decide, oh, why not to put this into Chrome Store? In two months, some users started to use it, to buy it, to provide a lot of feedback. I was switching sometimes from my main project to link helper, actually. At the end, I ruined my main project and switched to link helper.
[00:09:35.010] – Dancho – That’s market feedback. When the market gives you good feedback, that’s the right direction. You have to follow the feedback.
[00:09:41.920] – Alexander – Yeah, that’s true.
[00:09:44.020] – Dancho – Nice. Alex, when I was looking at the platform, there were some quite big numbers. A lot of users are using Linked Helper already. As I said, it’s not a new platform out there. It’s been used for a lot of years. I was curious how it’s positioned on the market. Is it a premium enterprise solution or is it an affordable that individual solopreneur, entrepreneur that can use it? What is the unique aspect that you’re currently offering? There are a lot of automations, too many automations, if you ask me, but that’s good. Slowly, we’re moving toward the right direction. I just wanted to see, what’s your angle in this world of automation?
[00:10:31.670] – Alexander – From the position on the market, most users are lead generation agencies. We have some, of course, not only B2B lead generation agencies, recruiter agencies, a lot of them. This is two huge parts. But actually, we don’t have sales team in our company, but we have some good examples from the super huge enterprise world. We have a lot of users from SAP, ABM. But to be honest, they don’t buy us a corporate contract, but we have hundreds of users from these companies. The interesting part of it, we have some users from LinkedIn success trainers. This is the funny part of our user database. But to keep our positioning, I would say we are focused with the version two on the same fitting. Features is the second part of our focus. Although even the link helper one offered a lot of features, like, for example, we was first on the market to introduce ability to scrape people who like it, LinkedIn posts to comment at it. And of course, all pictures that you had in the first version, you now have in the second version and many more. For example, from the feature point of view, we allow to build complex message templates with the if conditions. For example, if we have some mutual connections, then put on the message, By the way, we both know this mutual connection and this mutual connection. So…
[00:12:55.552] – Dancho – Nice.
[00:12:56.790] – Alexander – Lot of features actually.
[00:12:58.910] – Dancho – Well, while talking about the features, maybe it’s a good idea if you can share your screen and actually show us, as a short demo of how the audience can actually use the link helper.
[00:13:11.090] – Alexander – Okay, okay.
[00:13:12.940] – Dancho – Do you always use link helper 2 or just linked helper just shows that you have an upgraded, modified version?
[00:13:20.250] – Alexander – No. In the title, we will see Linked Helper 2. Basically, for example, let’s imagine we want to hire some developers. At the beginning, we choose templates. We will offer more templates. But actually templates, it’s like preset campaign and you’d be allowed to build your own campaign without using any pre sets. But pre set allows you to do this faster and in simplest way. At the beginning, we need to send connection request. This is the message template editor. Imagine we want to make our template look more advanced. For example, we can put the variable message mutual trust full name. This means if linked helper see on the profile page that you and the person has mutual connection, you can use this variable and write something like, by the way.
[00:15:02.680] – Dancho – We have similar friend.
[00:15:04.650] – Alexander – We both know this guy. Of course, there are other features. For example, if it’s not your connection request or message to the first connections in the template, you also can add personalized images. We don’t offer our own message template, images template editor, but we integrate it with the U click and Hipper eyes.
[00:15:43.190] – Dancho – Mhm.
[00:15:45.650] – Alexander – Interesting thing at this point, you probably know that LinkedIn introduced weekly limits. This was a very painful for a lot of professional LinkedIn users. Currently, we offer one option to go over this weekly limit, but it’s actually on your own risk because as I said previously, everything that link helper does, it really repeats human actions. But if you use this feature to go over weekly limit, this is somehow impossible to do manually. And you should understand risk, theoretic risk, because we have this feature for more than a year and nobody will restrict it by using this feature and a lot of users use it. With this feature, you can send up to 700 connection request a week. Then you probably want to remove unaccepted invitations, all the invitations. Okay, leave it. Next, what we will send if person connected with us, like, thank you for accepting invitation. Next in, let’s say, three days, we will write something like, consider the job.
[00:17:32.040] – Dancho – Amazing. There is some delay between what you type and what you’re saying, but I can still follow the method sequence.
[00:17:40.700] – Alexander – Sorry, maybe it’s because I’m in Dubai. I don’t know. And that’s all. At the end, we get a lot of actions like connection action, action that finds who accepted our invitations, welcome message, action which will check who reply to the welcome message and you will see replies in the reply list. To understand how link helper works, let’s say, let’s collect some people into the campaign. There are a lot of ways, but one of the core way just to use LinkedIn search page. You will see that my hands will be here and the program will do the job.
[00:18:36.800] – Dancho – If you’re a sales employee and your job is to do this, you can just sit on your desk and let a link helper do your job.
[00:18:47.300] – Alexander – Yeah. Currently, this account is working through with proxy, so probably we will see some delays here.
[00:18:57.040] – Dancho – I see. This is actually the uniqueness of linked helper. It is because it’s a dedicated desktop app. It is moving the cursor, it is clicking connect, it is clicking. It is really human behavior.
[00:19:12.090] – Alexander – Yeah. For this purpose, I just send the filter on the developer with the location and the other stuff. Now I’m clicking the collect button and the tool will go through the search pages and gather everybody from the search results into campaign. At the top left, we can see how many available. Linkedin shows 100 pages and 10 profiles on each page. With one search request, we can collect only 100, but you can do a lot of search request. For the demo purpose, I will stop collecting now, to show how to send connection request. We can check who was collected. By the way, the tool removes smile from the names and last names, remove some stupid characters, fixes upper and lower cases. So somebody writes their names in only lower case. This is how the…
[00:20:31.920] – Dancho – Or all caps.
[00:20:32.310] – Alexander – Yeah, automatically fix it and even allowed it to fix by yourself. So it’s not a problem. You can exclude from the campaign people who are not relevant because LinkedIn has not super precise search engine. So you can check and then start the campaign. But for the demo purpose, I just start right now and I just want to decrease some timeouts. By the way, you have the full control. Even you see the timeouts like navigator profile. How many times from min to max allow for this action? Before clicking button, which timeout do you prefer? They remember them. You just set the range. But you can keep it on default. But a lot of users like it. It’s under your control as well.
[00:21:40.910] – Dancho – Nice. You actually have to use the control…
[00:21:44.320] – Dancho – My hands here and now you see what’s happening. You see at the left panel, it shows what action the program performs. Currently, it just opening the profile to send the connection request. My hand is still here. The first place, it’s scraping profile data available, and then it sends connection request.
[00:22:29.970] – Dancho – It’s like I can rest with my hand while the software is actually doing the job for me. I understand. Especially connection…
[00:22:44.150] – Alexander – I can text like a human.
[00:22:47.890] – Dancho – Alex, you can actually do it. Before you go to bed, you can put the automation, and by the time you sleep for eight hours on average, when you come back, you know that actually it has finished with the outreach.
[00:23:01.560] – Alexander – Yes. And actually, you can do other work. You can keep the application in background, of course, because it’s desktop application and LinkedIn overloaded website, not really good optimized. It consumes some resources on your machine. And lead generation agencies which runs, for example, hundreds of LinkedIn accounts, they usually take server in the cloud and run link helper there. And it’s cheaper than use cloud solutions because of our pricing policy.
[00:23:50.310] – Dancho – Nice. You can stop with the automation. You’re like, I’m drinking coffee and something is already being done in progress. But if you can stop sharing with the screen.
[00:24:04.710] – Alexander – It’s robot.
[00:24:05.670] – Dancho – Yeah, that’s why I said I saw you with the robot, like as you’re drinking coffee.
[00:24:11.380] – Alexander – Okay. I think for the understanding of the core idea, it’s enough. I will stop the tool. When the campaign starts, you can work manually. Now, I’m working with my hand, I can scroll, etc. Just to show that it has many features. Some features, I think, unique on the market. For example, we’re automate inviting to LinkedIn groups. We’re automating inviting to all of your company page on LinkedIn. We’re automating inviting on your LinkedIn event. We’re automating messages to those who participate in LinkedIn event, even if this event hosted not by you. So it’s sometimes good thing to scrape these people and message them. The good thing that you can… Sorry, it’s my dog. The good thing that you can message people who are not part of your first level network and you don’t spend any credits for this. Also, automating messaging to LinkedIn group members. This is also a good way if you want to connect with more people, even if you run into the limit with the connection request. A lot of stuff actually.
[00:25:51.310] – Dancho – Yes, but that is for the people that are interested. They can actually connect and play a bit with this Alex, because I’m checking we’re actually running out of time with the podcast. But then I still have one or two questions that I wanted to ask you and I’m not letting you go until we go over those. But I have another question that I usually always ask people is partnership opportunities. Is Linked Helper open to affiliate program or white label or API or those stuff?
[00:26:23.640] – Alexander – We are actually not fully opened with affiliate, but we will start, I think, in one month. We are super lazy to develop this stuff, but it will be developed in the nearer stand. We do not offer any white label, et cetera, because it’s really huge development and a lot of stuff must be done because, for example, we offer 24 hours, seven days a week support, and it’s hard to tend to our knowledge base, replace everything there because we have hundreds of particles in our knowledge base.
[00:27:14.830] – Dancho – Nice. Alex, I see it’s a complicated tool that, of course, it’s customizable. You’re trying to create a solution that everybody can fit it according to their needs. But as we are entering in 2023, I was curious, where is this headed? Linkedin Helper 3.0, what can we expect actually to see in the future of this solution?
[00:27:42.600] – Alexander – Yeah. So currently, we offer email finding tool built into link helper, and we are going to extend it and offer not just emails, but a lot of other different information and contact information, etc. This will be ready, I think, in six months, maybe earlier. Also, we thinking a little bit started to work on the cloud version, but the core difference with our cloud version will be that we will keep this engine that really clicks buttons, not just working with the API like other tools offer.
[00:28:39.400] – Dancho – Yeah, you’re mimicking the human behavior.
[00:28:42.860] – Alexander – Yeah. It’s proper us, it’s not so super easy to offer a lot of stuff that, for example, offer some cloud things. But in our inbox, you can just view your message and history. But if you want to manually send message, you should go to LinkedIn, maybe in our browser and send there. But to automate all the stuff, if you work with API, just send one request. Now, our side, we don’t want to do so. We must really go to the page and hit buttons. A lot of stuff must be done.
[00:29:28.620] – Dancho – The harder route, but it’s more secure, actually.
[00:29:32.590] – Alexander – Yes.
[00:29:34.740] – Dancho – Alex, I think we’re finishing with the time, but I saw on your website there is a 14 days free trial. For everybody that are listening to this, they can just go to linkedhelper.com and there is a 14 days free trial where they can actually try it out, play with the software a bit, try to see if it fits their purposes. And of course, if they see it feasible, they can start using it and they can start doing the outreach. With this, I really wanted to thank you, Alex, for giving us the time and showing what you’ve made in the Link helper 2.0. We would be excited to see 3.0. What it’s going to bring. And for everybody that is listening, we always try to find good software that you can use because, yes, as you saw Alex, he was having a coffee while the automation is doing his job. Give it a try. I hope you really find it useful as I saw it useful as well. And we continue with our other episodes. Alexander, thank you very much for coming on this show and I do wish you have a great day.
[00:30:44.890] – Alexander – Thank you very much, Dancho. I wish you a lot of great podcast on your YouTube channel. Thanks. Bye.
[00:30:52.250] – Dancho – Thank you.