There is a time and a place for LinkedIn automation

There is a time and a place for LinkedIn automation

Automation is a great way to streamline your business, but only if it’s used appropriately. Already most of the mega-companies and world’s businesses have started using automation for smooth execution of their processes. Automation lets us do things quickly, affordably and accurately. It is being used everywhere right from social media analytics customer service to digital marketing and sales. This is where LinkedIn business automation tools can help you gain an edge.

LinkedIn automation tools hold a special place in the automation world. With lead generation being the ultimate goal of every business, LinkedIn automation helps achieve this objective in a better and more organised way.

Where most automation tools provide raw data and statistics that need to be processed further to derive the required result, LinkedIn automation can deliver real-time insights into sales campaigns.

On top of that, it enables you to make genuine connections which are essential to maintain the level of human bonding in sales. These tools can automatically analyze suitable profiles and send automated connection invitations with personalised messages. This significantly reduces the user’s efforts since they don’t have to search across millions of profiles for a suitable connection.

The main advantage of using LinkedIn automation tools is that they help you reach out to people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service by targeting specific keywords in their profile descriptions or job titles. This saves time and effort while allowing you to engage with them on a more personal basis rather than blasting out generic messages like other bulk emailing tools do!

These tools also allow users to create customized messaging templates which can be personalized, so they can save time on the more mundane, repetitive outreach tasks, allowing you to refocus this time instead on closing deals or other core business activities.

Automation can make your life easier, but it can also cause a lot of problems if you don’t understand how to use it.

You might wonder why every company using marketing automation isn’t jumping for joy and rolling in the dough. Well, just like any technology, marketing automation only works when applied strategically to a well-defined process.

According to Bill Gates:

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

So, if the core buying experience is subpar, automation only serves to amplify an already poor experience. In the process, companies can alienate a massive number of prospects and customers.

Using LinkedIn automation for lead generation

The best way for you to achieve success through LinkedIn automation is to spend time thinking through your approach and ensure your strategy is sound by testing your automation processes first.

You can test out different subject headers and content, variable message sequences, and make changes to the timing of your campaigns to see which approach generates the right results – and only then should you look to ramp up your prospecting across a wider audience.

Find the winning formula - define your proof of concept:

It’s actually much simpler than it sounds to find the right approach to generating leads for your business.

Below is a step-by-step guide to follow, to help you find the automation process that works for you.

1)    Identify your target market

At Dux, we recommend using LinkedIn Sales Navigator over LinkedIn Standard. This is thanks to its enhanced search capabilities, which will provide you with a more refined, targeted list of prospects to work with. The more relevant your audience, the higher the conversion rates are likely to be.

Once you have your finalised list of prospects, select a small subset (perhaps 200 profiles, or 15% of your audience) to trial your process with.

2)    Visit profiles and tag them for segmentation

You can manually or auto-visit LinkedIn profiles, depending on whether you use an automation tool or not. With a tool like Dux-Soup, you can auto-apply a tag to each profile you visit, to make it easy to identify target profiles for specific campaigns. Being able to instantly find suitable LinkedIn profiles means that you can send multi-message campaigns, or one-off messages, out to a pre-segmented list of profiles, whether this be clients, prospects or partners.

3)    Create your campaign

Automation tools can allow you to create LinkedIn campaigns with multiple messages, including a connection request messages. Create your campaign within your automation platform, with clear call-to-actions and personalization where possible. Content should be relevant and timely for optimal response rates.

If you’re new to LinkedIn campaign messaging then this article gives you real statistics on best practices for when to send your messages and the type of content that really works.

4)    Expand your campaigns

Once you’ve set up your first campaign you can create further campaigns, tweaking the parameters to see how the changes affect the success rate of your campaign.  Tools like the Funnel Flow from Dux-Soup allow you to view, drill-down into and compare results. Factors to ‘play with’ include your audience, the frequency and number of messages sent, the use of CTAs to make it simple for prospects to fulfil your desired outcome and making changes to your message content.

For help on different messaging approaches, you might like to take a look at some of the webinars below, packed with useful tips and alternative approaches to (almost) guarantee that all-important sale:

- THE LinkedIn nurture sequence that achieves an 85% response rate

- How to book over 100 sales appointments a month on LinkedIn

To find the optimum result, repeat the above steps with different lists, tweaking and testing the various parameters until you find the version that your audience responds to best.

Once you’ve identified the winning formula – it’s time to scale up your activity, reaping the benefits of automation. Keep reading to find out how.

Top 6 ways to use LinkedIn Automation

Although Dux-Soup (with its Starter, Professional and Turbo editions) has many features, we’ve shared the most widely used features below, so you can start your automation journey in the right place:

1. Viewing and Tagging LinkedIn Profiles. It’s just human nature that we’re intrigued as to who is looking at our LinkedIn profile, right?  When you view someone’s profile, the other person can see that you’ve done this, which sparks a curiosity as to why you may be viewing their profile. Chances are they may look at your profile in return, and so this becomes your first opportunity to showcase your brand/business/capabilities to them. Therefore, it’s important to have an up-to-date profile before you start automating your LinkedIn activities. As we’ve already mentioned, when you build target lists in LinkedIn, it often helps to tag prospects and categorize them for follow up. It may be that you want to tag them based on what information they’ve shown an interest in, or if they fit into a specific campaign you are running. By tagging prospects you can segment them easily and follow up with more personalized content. And we all know that more personalization yields better results, right?

2. Automating Connection Requests and Campaigns. By automating your connection requests as part of a multi-touch campaign sequence, you’ll save a lot of time and generate plenty of leads. Some may argue that the connection request process shouldn’t be automated as the messages look too generic. Well, the good news is that by tagging profiles with your automation tool and then creating really tailored campaign message sequences, we’ve proven that you can achieve up to 75% connection acceptance rates and 70% response rates to your campaign messages! You’ll find that your network will start to grow, and your pipeline will scale fast.

3. Personalized Messaging to your First-Degree Connections. Use LinkedIn automation to message your first-degree connections to save time and reach more of your audience. You can search and filter your audience to personalize your message to specific sectors or decision makers. The opportunities are endless, and the rewards high.  

4. Target your existing contacts via LinkedIn. If you’re struggling to connect with a prospect via your usual marketing channels, LinkedIn may just be the approach that get their attention. It is often said that people are more likely to read a LinkedIn InMail than respond to an email.  By uploading your contacts to your LinkedIn automation platform, you can set it to automatically message your existing database with relevant content, updates, marking messages or offers.

5. Download your LinkedIn data. When you’ve built your lists and sent connection requests, you may want to pull your lists off and market to contacts via another channel. LinkedIn automation tools allow you to download profile data from LinkedIn, including email addresses and start to communicate with your prospects ‘off platform’.  

6. Build your email database. Access 2nd and 3rd degree email addresses which are not normally provided by LinkedIn to build your email database. Download your lists and use them for email marketing campaigns. Now you’re scaling your business even further!

What NOT to automate

Whilst we believe that automating SOME parts of your sales process can offer huge time savings and increased sales conversions, we don’t promote using automation for every step in the sales process.

Nothing beats personal interaction with responsive prospects, and this is where we recommend you start to take your LinkedIn activity into your own hands. So, once you’ve got a response to a message in your drip campaign then we recommend you pick up the phone or send them a message directly so that you can start to build a deeper, more meaningful relationship.

LinkedIn automation in conjunction with your email marketing

Email marketing is still one of the most cost-effective digital marketing strategies. A focus should be on. Building an email list with recipients that won’t roll their eyes when your message pops up.

With in excess of 830 million members, LinkedIn provides the perfect Business networking platform – with the capability to reach an ever-increasing number of potential leads. If you are looking to build a database of prospects for your marketing campaigns, then LinkedIn is the place to state.

But how do you get email addresses from LinkedIn?

‍LinkedIn automation tools are the perfect solution for those looking to build up an email list and automate their email marketing strategy. With Dux-Soup, you use it with LinkedIn to get tons of prospects on your mailing list or send out direct emails using Zapier.

By connecting Dux-Soup to an email warmup tool, you’ll encounter a higher deliverability rate and get better results from your email marketing, whilst automating all the hard work of getting your data into your email system.

Not a LinkedIn automation user yet? No problem - you can try Dux-Soup for free today and discover the benefits of LinkedIn automation for yourself.