Why Linkedin Automation Is Crushing Cold Emails In 2019
LinkedIn Automation: Taking sales beyond email
Email marketing has been the king of sales enablement for years. When people talk about great customer engagement and lead generation tools, email is always brought up.
That was the case until social selling became a thing. After years of dominating the sales automation industry, email is no longer the undisputed champion. Social selling is outperforming email in many ways. This is mainly because how social networks work.
People think of their social media accounts as their public online presence. The expect strangers to see them and they’re there to connect with other people. This is particularly true on LinkedIn.
Unlike the case with emails and cold phone calls, Linkedin users are more open to connecting with other users. People who don’t want to connect with new people/businesses won’t be on LinkedIn. And that’s what makes LinkedIn automation much more powerful than traditional email outreach methods.
LinkedIn is all about building relationships and acquiring new connections. While people there are open to being approached, you need to do this the right way. With the right LinkedIn automation tool, you’ll be able to target your leads with relevant content and messages.
Asides from being good for lead nurturing, LinkedIn autionation gives your sales reps more time to engage leads conversationally.
The following are the seven main reasons why you should join the movement to take sales beyond email with LinkedIn automation and social selling.
Reason 1: It’s a Warmer Approach
Do you like getting calls and emails from total strangers trying to sell you stuff? You probably don’t. And Nobody does, including your customers. They HATE cold calling and spammy email from people they don’t know.
The reason for that is quite simple, which is the psychology behind how emails and LinkedIn invites are perceived. . While invites are considered “requests”, unsolicited emails are considered a privacy breach. That’s why an invite on LinkedIn is a better way to introduce your brand than cold emails. .
Approaching your target audience on LinkedIn is much better because they are open to connecting with strangers there. They want to make connections and connect with new people and businesses. After all, that’s what a LinkedIn account is all about.
Your customers’ LinkedIn profiles are public and you’re welcome to approach them there. They’re expecting it. A nice LinkedIn message is better than one of those creepy emails.
Reason 2: LinkedIn Notifications Get Attention
People receive tons of emails every day. Most of them are deleted without being opened. Adding to the daily email mayhem of your potential customers won’t do your business any good. They’ll probably ignore you or even hate you for it. That’s if they notice who you are in the first place!
On the other hand, LinkedIn users don’t get that many notifications and when they do, there is a chance it’s a good opportunity. They can expand their LinkedIn network with a valuable contact or even find a better job. That’s why they pay attention to these notifications.
The notification system itself is different. People get push notifications on their phones and an email notification if they’re subscribed. This increases the chance of them noticing your invitation and triggers social lookbacks, which makes your LinkedIn profile function in a way that’s similar to a landing page.
Even if someone doesn’t accept your connection request, they’ll pay enough attention to notice who you are, which is always a good thing.
Reason 3: Better Business-Customer Interactions
Whether you have a B2B or B2C business model, LinkedIn allows you to interact with your customers in more effective ways. Once you’re connected with someone, you can use LinkedIn messaging to send them follow-up messages.
In addition to sending people customized messages, you can also create content that they can interact with. Since content is -and will always be- king, email is no where close to LinkedIn when it comes to business-customer interactions.
Instead of putting a bunch of stuff in an email, send it, and hope for the best, you get a two-way communications channel with your target audience.
Reason 4: People Spend More Active Time on LinkedIn
Whenever you read any email-related stats, you find pretty impressive numbers. People appear to be spending lots of hours there, which is a good thing. Right?
WRONG!
While it’s true that people check their inboxes frequently, they spend most of their time their deleting cold, unsolicited sales emails, responding to work emails and trying to keep things organized. It’s not like they open their inbox and start reading every email. That never happens.
What will most likely happen is that your lead generation email will end up swiped away with 76% of the emails that are never opened. That’s why the time people spend there isn’t that relevant.
On a network like LinkedIn, people spend their time networking. They scroll through their news feed to find interesting posts to read and check out what everyone else is doing. There is a good chance you’ll have a meaningful interaction with them there, not when they’re trying to sort out the flooded inbox.
Reason 5: Better Customer Insights
Spending time with your target audience on a network like LinkedIn will help you know a lot about them. Unlike email, the insights go way beyond open and response rates. Being able to post different types of content there allows you to better understand your potential customers
What type of posts do they read, who do they follow, what kind of feedback do they leave on your posts is just the tip of the insights iceberg.
Using this information will allow you to improve your business. When you’re using a LinkedIn automation tool, this information can be used to make your LinkedIn marketing efforts more effective. You can also target the right audience with the right content and personalized invitations.
Reason 6: Powerful Networking Effect
On social networks in general and on LinkedIn in particular, people tend to connect with similar people. If you’re targeting people from a specific industry, each new LinkedIn connection will give you access to tens or even hundreds of similar people.
When you’re using an automation software, you can turn LinkedIn into a lead generation machine that’s working 24/7. Email doesn’t work this way. You don’t access people’s contact lists when you send them an email.
This effect is hard to replicate with traditional email marketing, which makes LinkedIn automation more powerful.
Reason 7: It’s Future-Proof
Cold emails and unsolicited calls are on the way out. As email spam laws keep getting tougher and people become more resistant to cold outreach, the effectiveness of these tactics will just keep dropping.
That’s not the case in LinkedIn, and it’ll never be. As LinkedIn is about networking and making new connections, engaging with other people is an integral part of how it works. This is what LinkedIn was made for. As the world becomes more connected through social media, the way we interact also changes.
For example, discovery calls no longer have to be phone calls. We are living in the the era of instant messaging. Sales organizations need to take advantage of Linkedin by interacting with users through chat. Messaging is the new discovery call.
Sales organizations that want to future-proof their business model need to adapt their sales process to find and engage customers on and across different social channels.
Cold emailing is no longer “the” go-to tactic for lead generation. If you want to engage users in a meaningful way to grow your business, social selling in general -and LinkedIn automation in particular- is worth investing in.
