How to find leads in your own LinkedIn network

Some of your best prospects are already in your LinkedIn network. Rainmaker can import your 1st-degree connections, rank them against a campaign's ICP, and add the people you pick as leads. Because you are already connected, they get a direct first message instead of a connection request.

Your network stays private. Only you can see the connections of a LinkedIn account you connected yourself; teammates, admins included, see only their own. Importing sends nothing to anyone.

1. Open your own network

In the sidebar, click Contacts, then Your own network. If you connected more than one LinkedIn account, pick the one you want from the account list at the top.

If you have not connected a LinkedIn account yourself, the page says Connect your LinkedIn account first and links to your LinkedIn settings.

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2. Import your connections

Click Import my connections. Rainmaker reads your connections a page at a time and shows how many it has so far, for example Importing… 1,000 connections so far. Pages are fetched a minute or two apart so LinkedIn sees a person browsing, not a script, so a large network takes a while. You can leave the page; the import carries on.

Imported connections are not leads, and nothing is sent to them.

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3. Check who you already know

When the import finishes, the page shows how many connections were imported and when they were last synced. Anyone who is already a lead in one of your campaigns is marked Already a lead. Search by name, headline or company to find someone.

Click Sync now to read your connections again. Rainmaker also picks up new connections by itself every few hours. If an import stops, the page says why and offers Try again.

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4. Choose Your LinkedIn network in Source more

Open the campaign you want to fill and go to its Leads tab. Click Source more (on a campaign with no leads yet, the button is called Run prospector). Rainmaker asks how to source:

• Rainmaker prospecting agent finds new people who fit the campaign's ICP, as it always does.
• Your LinkedIn network adds people you are already connected to.

Choose Your LinkedIn network.

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5. See who matches the ICP

Pick the LinkedIn account whose network you want to use. Rainmaker compares each connection's job title and headline with the job titles of the campaign's ICP, and shows the result, for example 7 of 1,266 connections match this ICP.

Each person shows why they match: Title matches, Similar title to or Same function as one of the ICP's job titles, plus an Industry hint when their headline or company mentions one of the ICP's industries. A connection carries no country or company size, so those are not compared here.

The line under the count says who is left out: people who are already leads in any of your campaigns, people who opted out, people at your own company and connections without a profile link. To pick someone who does not match, tick Show all connections.

If your workspace shows Strong match and Possible match badges instead, Rainmaker looks for two signals: a role that matches one of the ICP's job titles, and a company of the type the ICP describes, read from the person's headline or, failing that, from their company's website. A Strong match fits on both (or, when the ICP names no type of company, has a close title match) and is ticked for you. A Possible match fits only partly and is never ticked for you; tick it yourself if it fits. The count then reads, for example, 24 strong · 152 possible matches among 3,892 connections, and while Rainmaker reads company websites you see a line such as Checking 40 company websites…, which can confirm more people as strong.

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6. Select people and add them

Tick the people you want, or use Select all. You don't pick a country: Rainmaker detects each person's country from their LinkedIn profile and applies that market's rules (see markets and compliance). Leave Skip fitness scoring unticked unless you have already judged their fit yourself. Then click the add button, which counts your selection, for example Add 3 to campaign. You can add up to 200 people at a time.

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7. Draft and approve their messages

Rainmaker confirms how many people it added, then shows Detecting countries for 3 people… while it reads each profile. To stay within LinkedIn's limits, Rainmaker reads at most 90 profiles a day per LinkedIn account, spaced out, so a batch of more than 90 people takes more than a day, and a full batch of 200 up to 3 days. When it finishes you see how many are in your markets and how many are outside, for example 2 in your markets · 1 outside. They join as LinkedIn-first leads with no email address, and they are scored like any other import. When you draft the campaign's sequence:

• Each person is drafted once their country is known. Until then the strictest (European) rules apply to them, their country reads Detecting country…, and nothing is drafted or sent.
• People outside the campaign's markets are marked Outside campaign markets and are never contacted. If a country can't be found, the lead shows Country unknown — strictest rules applied and keeps the European rules.
• Their first touch is a direct message, never a connection request. In Review it is labelled First message.
• Every message to them goes out only from the LinkedIn account they are connected to. If that account is paused, disconnected or at its daily limit, their messages wait; they are never sent from another account.
• Nothing is sent until someone approves the drafts, exactly as for every other lead. See how to review and approve drafts.

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If the campaign sends from another LinkedIn account

A campaign can be set to send LinkedIn messages from one account only: the LinkedIn account field in the Sender card on its Settings tab. If that is a different account from the one whose network you picked, the network step shows This campaign sends LinkedIn messages only from that account and nothing can be added. Those people are connected to you, not to that account, so Rainmaker would have to send them a connection request from someone they don't know.

Pick that account's network if it is yours, or click Sender settings and change the campaign's LinkedIn sender first.

When someone from your network replies, answer from the same account. See how to handle replies.