Scrape your LinkedIn message history, check for replies and export it via Linked Helper.

As of today, Linked Helper is now fully capable of scraping message history with the possibility of it being exported to CSV or sent to a webhook, such as Zapier, Integromat, your CRM or Google Sheets. Just the same way as check for replies works, which is closely related to this feature. Those two features combined can be extremely useful for those, who wants to stay on top of leads by knowing who replies first, find a lost message amongst thousands others, or export your data to 3rd-party applications. Both ‘Scrape Message History’ and ‘Check for Replies’ are not separate actions, but rather implemented as a part of the workflow for messaging campaigns. Those features are completely automated and fully adjustable once you get to know how it works, and you can always refer to our detailed instruction here.

Important aspects to know before we proceed:

• Scraping works only for LinkedIn and Sales Navigator inboxes, scraping for Recruiter or Talent is not implemented yet.
• Linked Helper scrapes chat (-s) only from the platform on which a profile is being processed, it doesn’t check all of them when sending a message or looking for a reply.
• Scraping works only on version #1.11.1 or above; in other words, if your Linked Helper version is below #1.11.1 or a profile was last time processed by such a version last time, then messages will not be scraped. Please see below for the workaround.
• Linked Helper cannot scrape chats with three or more participants.
• Linked Helper cannot scrape or save attachments — only number of attachments.

Scraping Message History

As mentioned before, there is no specific button that would initiate the scraping process. Messaging history is automatically scraped either from the LinkedIn or from the Sales Navigator inbox when Linked Helper is about to send a message or when it’s checking for replies.

Currently, messaging history can be scraped via Message to 1st connections | Group members, InMail to 2nd & 3rd contacts, and Check for replies actions.

Linked Helper saves messages sent by InMail to 2nd & 3rd contacts, Message to 1st connections | Group members, and Invite 2nd and 3rd level contacts to CRM automatically.

One of the biggest questions regarding this feature, is whether you can start scraping message history of a profile you have never messaged before via Linked Helper? The short answer is yes, as long you are on Linked Helper version 1.11.1 or above. But if a profile was processed earlier by Linked Helper version 1.11.0 or below, then messaging history will not be scraped; take a look here for two simple workarounds.

So if you are on version 1.11.1 or above and don’t want to send unnecessary messages for the scraping to begin, simply leave the message template empty, so Linked Helper will visit the profile, scrape messaging history, and move it to the Failed list with the “Empty message was generated” error without sending a message. Yet, initiating the scraping process.

Viewing Chat History (Sent Messages and Replies)

Prior to exporting scraping results or sending them via a Webhook directly, you can easily check if everything was executed correctly inside Linked Helper’s CRM.

Both sent and replied messages are displayed under the profile’s name in the ‘Replied’ list of the Linked Helper Action / Campaign. This is the case for ‘Check for Replies’ and ‘Message to 1st connections | Group members’.

For actions such as ‘InMails to 2nd and 3rd-connections’ or ‘Message to 1st connections | Group members’ the only difference is that you have to click on a green ‘Successful’ button right beneath the actions itself. The same applies to ‘Invite 2nd and 3rd-connections’.

Full messaging history can be found inside CRM where all you have to do is to click on the required profile.

Exporting Sent Messages, Replies or Full History

As discussed previously, you have two options on what you can do with those scraped messages: export them to a CSV or send to a Webhook.

Exporting full message history to a CSV is a straightforward procedure, and works in the same manner as you would extract the profile’s information. In case you are unfamiliar with how CSVs and Linked Helper work together, familiarize yourself here. When you download a profile from CRM, or any other campaign, simply enable the option highlighted in the screenshot below.

In case you wish to export a campaign messaging history, you would need to navigate to your chosen action/campaign workflow, click on ‘Successful’, chose profiles and in this case you would need to choose ‘Yes’ for ‘Campaign Message History’.

Sending your results to a Webhook is also a relatively easy procedure, but you can learn the basics here. Now all you need to do is to add the ‘Send person to webhook’ action to your workflow and you’re mostly done.

In case you wish to send full messaging history to webhook, just make sure that:

• Messaging history is scraped (check how to do that here and here) before the profile is sent to a webhook.
• Full messaging history is chosen for ‘Yes’

For sending a campaign message history to webhook, check that:

• You send profiles to webhook from the campaign which messaging history you want to export.
• Messaging history is scraped (check how to do that here and here) before the profile is sent to the webhook.
• The option of exporting campaign messaging history is enabled in the send person to webhook action.