At PhantomBuster we aim to make your life easier by helping you achieve your goals without lifting a finger - all you have to do is set it up, then let your strategies run in the background and gather data for you! Here, we've gathered all of our favorite tricks for doing this in one place.
- Schedule automatic launches
- Use a spreadsheet of data as input
- Send personalized messages
- Link data from one Phantom to another
- Process my entire data list in separate launches
1. Schedule automatic launches
The most important feature for automating is of course, having your actions happen automatically, as many times as you like. You can schedule automatic launches for any Phantom and rely on it running continuously without you having to do it every time.
Start by going to the "Launch Settings" step of a Phantom's Setup, where you'll see a couple of "Launch" options. By clicking on "Repeatedly" you'll be able to choose the frequency of automatic launches:
To manually set when your Phantom will launch even more options, select "Advanced".
You can find out more in our automatic launches tutorial.
AND the best part is -- as PhantomBuster runs from the cloud -- as soon as you've hit "Save," these launches will happen without you having to keep PhantomBuster, your browser, or even your computer open. Just sit back with a coffee and let it happen!
2. Use a spreadsheet of data as input
A simple way to provide a Phantom with multiple inputs to process is to list them in column A of a spreadsheet:
You just have to provide the Phantom with the spreadsheet URL (ensuring it's publicly accessible):
If the data you'd like a Phantom to process is not found in column A, you can specify which column you would like it to process in the Phantom's setup:
Enter the column name as written in row 1. For example, in the following example the column name would be "profileUrl":
3. Send personalized messages
You can customize a message you're sending with PhantomBuster by using a column name from your input spreadsheet as a placeholder variable by placing it between #s. For example:
Hey #firstName#, let's connect!
This tag will be replaced by the contents of the corresponding cell in the "firstName" column in your spreadsheet for each profile. It's important to be aware that these tags are case-sensitive! The means if you use an uppercase letter (i.e. A, B, C) instead of lowercase (i.e. a, b, c), the Phantom won't take the correct data.
With LinkedIn Phantoms (such as Auto Connect, and Message Sender), instead of using data from your input spreadsheet, any piece of data scraped from a profile can be used to personalize your message, such as #company#, #jobTitle#, and #location#. You just have to ensure that you have checked the "Enable profile scraping" on the "Behavior" step of your Phantom's setup:
You can find a comprehensive list of the output titles you can use in the "What you get..." section of LinkedIn Auto Connect's documentation:
Another thing to note is that where the same column name is found in both your input and output spreadsheet, the input spreadsheet will take priority.
4. Link data from one Phantom to another
You don't always have to create a file of input data yourself. Quite often an output file from one Phantom will contain the data you want another Phantom to process. We call this chaining Phantoms together.
A really simple way of linking Phantoms together like this to create seamless workflows is by using the "My Phantoms" option when setting up your Phantom. You can choose which of your Phantoms' results file you'd like to use as input:
If your Phantom's setup doesn't look like this, don't worry - you can chain Phantoms manually too.
If you have the Phantoms set up to launch automatically, this output file will be continually updated, therefore continually providing new input data for the next Phantom in the chain.
5. Process my entire data list in separate launches
A Phantom will automatically take the data in your input spreadsheet, such as profile URLs, and process them in the listed order. If you have a large data set that you don't want to process all at once, don't worry - the majority of Phantoms will pick up from where they left off in the last launch so as not to process the same data twice. Keep in mind the automation rate limits when setting up how many actions your Phantom takes per day.
For example, if you have 100 LinkedIn profile URLs listed in your input spreadsheet to send connection requests to, you can set your Phantom up to process 10 per launch and with each launch it will process the next 10 profiles after those it has already completed.
In these instances, if a Phantom comes across a duplicate profile, it will recognize this and not process it again, but simply skip it.
If you think this article does not address your issue, please contact Support directly. We are continuously improving, so your feedback means the world to us!