How to launch your first LinkedIn connection request campaign with nowCRM

Networking on LinkedIn can be tedious. You click through profiles, send individual invitations, and lose track of everything. Especially when you’re planning a larger campaign – whether for an NGO, a movement, or a targeted advocacy campaign – you quickly reach your limits.

With nowCRM, we have developed a solution for exactly this. Our LinkedIn integration feature makes launching your first linkedin connection request campaign a seamless, scalable process. Here, I will show you step by step how it works.

Why a LinkedIn invitation campaign?

LinkedIn is more than just a professional network. It’s the platform where you can connect directly with decision-makers, company employees and opinion leaders. For example, if you want to encourage a company to act more sustainably, you can specifically target engineers in the sustainability department, CSR managers or young talents who might be receptive to your message.

Instead of an anonymous petition that ends up in the spam folder, you start real conversations. You build a coalition from within. And this is exactly where nowCRM comes in.

Step by step: Your first LinkedIn invitation campaign

Step 1: Set up your LinkedIn identity

The first step is to set up your LinkedIn identity in the nowCRM admin panel. It’s easier than it sounds:

1. Open the admin panel in nowCRM
2. Click on the option to create a new LinkedIn identity
3. Name your identity (e.g. ‘Andreas Freimüller’ or ‘Heinrich Guggenbühl’)
4. You will receive a LinkedIn access URL
5. Log in with your LinkedIn email address and password
6. Authorise the connection

Done! Your LinkedIn identity is now connected to nowCRM and ready to use.

Step 2: Navigate to the Composer page

Now it’s time to get down to business. Go to the Composer page in nowCRM. Here you will find all your campaign options clearly listed. For our LinkedIn campaign, select the LinkedIn invitation channel.

The Composer page is your command centre. From here, you control who receives which invitation and when.

Step 3: Configure your campaign

Now it gets exciting. You configure your campaign:

Select your identity: Select the LinkedIn identity you just created.

Set the sending frequency (throttle): Here you specify how many invitations should be sent per day or hour. This is important in order not to violate LinkedIn’s terms of use and to appear natural. My recommendation: start conservatively with 10-20 invitations per day.

Add your target contacts: Now comes the crucial part. You have several options:

• Individual LinkedIn URLs: Paste the LinkedIn URL of a specific person you want to invite
• Entire organisation: Select an organisation and nowCRM will extract the relevant contacts
• URL list: Upload a list of LinkedIn URLs that you have researched beforehand

Important note: Make sure that everyone on your list has a LinkedIn invitation subscription in nowCRM and that a valid LinkedIn URL is stored. Otherwise, the invitation cannot be sent.

Step 4: Personalise your message

This is where nowCRM differs from impersonal mass tools. You can create a personalised message; more specifically, you can incorporate placeholders from the CRM into your message.

My tip from over 30 years of campaign work: Be authentic and specific. Instead of:

‘Hello, I would like to connect with you.’

Write instead:

‘Hello Sarah, I see you work as an engineer in the field of renewable energies at [company]. As someone who is committed to a sustainable future, I would be interested in your perspective on the company’s current energy strategy.’

Personalisation is key. People respond to genuine conversations, not generic requests.

Step 5: Preview and send

Before you click ‘Send’, use the preview function. Here you can see exactly what your invitation will look like – complete with your customised message.

Check:

• Is the message correct?
• Are all placeholders (if you use any) filled in correctly?
• Does the message sound authentic and not like spam?

If everything looks good, send the invitations and watch your network grow!

After sending: What happens now?

nowCRM automatically sends your invitations according to the sending frequency you have specified. You can track the progress at any time in the dashboard:

• How many invitations have been sent?
• How many have been accepted?
• How many are still in the queue?

Once someone accepts your invitation, you can follow up with follow-up messages. This can also be automated in nowCRM – but more on that in another post.

Best practices from real life

Start small and scale up: Begin with a smaller test group of 50-100 contacts. Look at the acceptance rate and optimise your message before scaling up to hundreds or thousands.

Be patient: LinkedIn campaigns are a marathon, not a sprint. A good acceptance rate is 30-40%. That means that out of 100 invitations, 30-40 will be accepted. This is completely normal.

Respect boundaries: If someone does not respond or declines, respect that. Activism does not mean harassing people, but rather forcing honest dialogue and creating transparency.

Ready to get started?

With nowCRM, launching your first LinkedIn invitation campaign is intuitive and quick. You save hours of manual work and can focus on what really matters: having real conversations and building momentum.

I always say, ‘Doing nothing is almost always worse than doing something wrong.’ Because we can, we must. And today, we can do more than ever before.

So, take these simple steps and boost your LinkedIn outreach with minimal effort. Turn your contacts into a movement.