Successful LinkedIn outreach relies on building genuine connections and demonstrating to the right audience that you can meet their needs.
But social selling can take effort and requires upfront research. Anything you’re doing manually can be hard to scale. And if your outreach can’t scale, you won’t see results.
Every strategy you use to increase efficiency when prospecting on LinkedIn saves you time and ultimately money. If you can reach 50 people with 15 mins of work instead of 4 hours, you can spend that extra time researching and speaking to more prospects or closing out deals.
You probably know that a LinkedIn automation solution can almost double your prospecting efficiency. But are you making the most of all the time- and money-saving features a tool like Salesflow can provide?
Here’s a rundown of 5 Salesflow features you can use to streamline your outreach today.
1. Run multiple outreach campaigns at once
First up, the big one. Yes, you can use automation to send message connection requests and follow-up campaigns. But, if you’re not setting up and running several different campaigns at once, you’re not benefitting from personalization at scale.
Different campaign types exist for a reason. They allow you to reach a wider audience than you could otherwise and engage people in different ways. This optionality is crucial because some prospects respond to certain message types better than others.
You can reach different audiences depending on the campaign type you select. An existing contacts campaign can make sure you’re getting the most out of your current network, while an Open InMails campaign lets you send messages as InMails to LinkedIn users who have open profiles – a great way to bypass the 100 connection request limit and reach more potential buyers.
The default Salesflow campaign type sends automated connection requests to leads you want to add to your network. It includes optional follow-up messages sent several days after a lead accepts.
Set up multiple campaigns based on different LinkedIn searches to include message templates that always seem personal, no matter how broad your outreach. For example, you could create:
- One campaign for leads who are second-degree connections,
- One campaign for leads in the same LinkedIn Group as you,
- One campaign for a specific vertical and persona. E.g., Product Managers at growing Finance companies with 100-250 employees.
Salesflow has different campaign types you can use to deliver this personalization at scale without any extra effort. Simply set your LinkedIn search parameters, add your template message and personalization tokens, and wait for engaged leads to roll in.
Over time, this saves you enormous amounts of inefficiency and is crucial for an effective outreach strategy that scales.
- Try different campaign types to find the best strategy for your business.
2. Reply to hot prospects fast with inbox filters
So you’ve automated your outreach and are busy going about your day. How much time are you wasting sorting through every single lead that replies? And what impact is that having on how quickly you’re able to reply to legitimate, interested prospects?
Missing eager leads in a disordered and overwhelming inbox is like watching your hard-won pipeline swirl down the drain. Especially when you realize the importance of response time: Inside Sales found reps who responded within 5 minutes had 8x higher conversion rates.
Filter your Salesflow inbox by “positive responses” and never miss a hot lead again. AI technology analyzes each reply and determines if it’s positive or negative. The “positive responses” filter ensures you’re responding fast to eager and engaged leads and helps you avoid missing business.
Already using the “positive responses” filter? Make sure you’re aware of custom tags and notes. Get all the context you need at your fingertips and organize with ease. Don’t ignore our other filters, too: you can sort by conversations you’ve marked as leads, unread messages, or messages you’ve replied to. Saving you hours of manual time.
3. Track and improve what works with the right analytics
There are best practices for outreach, but what works for your business will vary. That means prospecting can sometimes feel like stabbing in the dark. And it’s no good having super efficient automation processes if you’re getting no positive replies or your connection requests aren’t accepted.
An analytics tool that tracks the outcomes of your LinkedIn campaigns can help you grow sophistication with every outreach message, quickly transforming your outreach strategy.
For your LinkedIn outreach to be maximally efficient, you need to know:
- Whether to send a message with your connection request or leave it blank
- What percentage of prospects are replying to your messages – and on what touchpoint
- How many messages you need to send to get a response
- Whether InMails, invites, or connection requests get the best results
- How many prospects and campaigns you’ve engaged over the last day, week, month, and year.
That’s why the Salesflow dashboard is filled with helpful real-time data on the success of each campaign.
Understanding your data points is the key to building an efficient and repeatable LinkedIn strategy. As LinkedIn itself collects no outreach statistics, an automation solution with built-in analytics can help you avoid hours of manual data collection and find the best path for your business.
4. Import, export, and sync your lead lists and data
It can take hours to manually search for CRM contacts on LinkedIn, log LinkedIn conversations back to the CRM, or keep an up-to-date list of leads. So long, in fact, that many reps and business owners either give up logging or give up LinkedIn.
Giving up logging might work for a little while – but you’ll soon run into thorny issues around lead assignment and pipeline visibility. (And trust us, your leads don’t want 3 different reps reaching out to them with the same campaign or message templates. It’s not good for business).
Giving up LinkedIn isn’t an option – unless you want to lose direct access to over 65 million business decision-makers.
Salesflow’s integrations make syncing data between LinkedIn and your CRM easy. Search for and save lead lists from LinkedIn and have them auto-populate in your customer database. Quickly upload lists of existing prospects from your CRM into LinkedIn campaigns. Log changes to leads when they engage in a conversation so you always know the lead status.
Interlinking your data systems is the difference between prospecting that’s a nightmare and a sophisticated outreach machine.
5. Use the built-in blacklist
It’s all too easy to set up a LinkedIn or Sales Navigator search, find hundreds of good-fit leads in your target market or vertical, add them to a campaign, and click go. But wait! Five minutes later you sit up with a jolt. Were any of my current customers or competitors on that list?
It’s a terrifying situation and an area where unfortunately mistakes happen a lot – especially when multiple reps are working on territories that haven’t been clearly defined. Manually removing competitors and current customers isn’t only risky (humans are nothing if not fallible). Over time, it’s a significant waste of energy that could be spent prospecting.
Salesflow has a built-in blacklist where you can upload lists of clients you don’t want to contact. You can use it in other ways, too, such as for an additional filter.
If certain irrelevant job types keep appearing in your lead lists, for example, you can set conditions in the blacklist to automatically remove these from any campaign.
Share the blacklist across your team and it will automatically prevent contacts from being enrolled in campaigns – even if they accidentally make it into your LinkedIn search list. Which means hours saved each week manually scanning through search results; and the best use of precious weekly connection requests that you can save for relevant prospects.
Save time and money with LinkedIn lead-generation strategies that work with your business
If you’re an existing Salesflow user, adopting the tips above can improve your outreach results and decrease manual input. If you’re not using Salesflow and want to see the difference the right LinkedIn automation strategies can make to your business, start a free trial today: