Combining automated and manual outreach in LinkedIn
LinkedIn, the world's premier B2B networking forum, enables you to build relationships that can lead to new connections and ultimately sales.
For the most effective LinkedIn lead generation, you need to be able to automate your outreach process but also respond manually when needed.
We know that juggling these two opposite but complementary approaches can be a real headache, so having a tool that is super flexible - that can kick in the automation when needed and turn it off when not - is really important.
Setting the Scene
LinkedIn manual activity can be lead gen related, but it doesn’t have to be. For example, if you are surfing LinkedIn from a purely social perspective (or perhaps for your own private research purposes) you will likely be doing this manually. Come on - we know everyone takes time out at some point to see what an old colleague or boss is now up to!
This blog discusses best practices for Dux-Soup Turbo users on how to avoid manual activity interfering with automated activity and shows you how to use Dux-Soup to combine these effortlessly. It’s worth noting that many of these features are available in the Pro edition too!
LinkedIn Lead Generation Process
Before getting into the best practices it’s worth showing a simplified version of the LinkedIn lead generation process and highlighting what Dux-Soup can automate:
Dux-Soup is focused on automating the Connect and Engage phase and we’ve integrated with LeadFuze to help you with the Discover phase too. Routing the lead to sales is still a manual activity but we’re working on it!
Discover
There are more than 500 million members on LinkedIn today - forming the world’s largest professional network. That’s an amazing pool of potential leads - don’t let the volumes put you off!
As a best practice, remember that when you run a search on LinkedIn, the more 1st-degree connections you have, the bigger your 2nd and 3rd-degree network will be.
And while you cannot skip the exercise of knowing and creating your buyer personas (so you know the profile of who you are targeting) remember that you can source these potential prospects (using this targeting) automatically using Leadfuze. Learn more about how could you automate finding quality prospects and send them to Dux-Soup Turbo to begin LinkedIn outreach here.
Connect
As you are well aware, you can connect with prospects manually or using an automated Dux-Soup option to connect. To see the profile list that has been auto-invited by Dux-Soup, you can use Search by Tag tool and type in the 🦆-default-invited tag:
Just to let you know, if you have manually sent the connection request, the 🦆-default-invited tag is not applied.
Tip: Personalized connection requests increase the chances people will approve your request and give you a better shot at landing a sale.
Engage
Whether you’re looking to grow your business or expand your personal network, LinkedIn can help you raise awareness and boost traffic for your business.
With Dux-Soup Turbo, you can engage with prospects more effectively by visiting their profile, endorsing their skills and sending automated follow-up messages.
Once you have enabled the Message Bridge in Dux-Soup Options, Dux-Soup will open LinkedIn and run a check for the new connections and it will add a 🦆-default-accepted tag:
This means the target profile has moved to the engage stage.
Routing Leads to Sales
When the LinkedIn prospect responds to your message, Dux-Soup adds a 🦆-default-responded tag. This tells you that the prospect has been moved to the handover stage (use the Search by Tag tool).
This prospect is then ready to be passed on to sales for manual follow up, or for booking an appointment.
Best Practices for combining automated and manual outreach
Use the Planner
The Dux-Soup Planner tells Dux-Soup when you want it to do automated work, and when you don’t, e.g. when you are doing manual work in LinkedIn. This avoids parallel activity in LinkedIn which can cause performance issues on the computer and could trigger a LinkedIn alert.
This is definitely our top tip - if you don’t do anything else make sure you follow this best practice!
Blacklist Manual Targets
To avoid approaching the same profile twice, use the ‘blacklisted’ tag to take this profile out of the loop of the automated activity when you’re engaging with leads manually. By doing this, they will be excluded from all future automated activity.
Find more details about how to blacklist a certain profile here.
Using the Inbox(es)
When reading messages in LinkedIn (including Standard & Sales Navigator), make sure to mark the conversation Unread when you’re done. Failing to do this will make the new message invisible to the automated Engage stage, which could cause it to send more messages while it should have actually handed over to you for manual response.
As we’ve said before another way to ensure the automation stops is to make sure you blacklist the target profile.
Follow-up on Manually Added Connections
When you’re manually connecting with new profiles and you wish to follow-up these connections, you can tell Dux-Soup to auto-engage with these profiles by simply enabling this option in Dux-Soup Options, Actions tab:
Note:
- If this box is unchecked, Dux-Soup will only schedule follow-ups if the profile has been auto invited with Dux-Soup and a 🦆-default-invited tag was added to their profile;
- If this box is checked, Dux-Soup will schedule follow-ups for all new connections.
To Record or Not To Record
When doing manual outreach you might want to stop Dux-Soup from recording your visits, as this data will be added to the download data and it will generate visit events for the webhooks. As we mentioned before this might be due to the fact you're just looking up old work colleagues or just using LinkedIn recreationally and not for lead gen (yes, we know that happens!)
You can disable the recording of profile data via the Dux-Soup drop-down menu.
TURBO TOP TIP: When using Turbo, do NOT enable “Set robot and recorder to ‘off’ on new tabs”, this will stop Dux-Soup from executing the automated lead-gen activity altogether.
Join our webinar on Tuesday 21 January, 2020
Join our upcoming free webinar to learn about how to combine automated and manual outreach in LinkedIn. In this webinar, we will show you how to combine these effortlessly with Dux-Soup Turbo for maximum effectiveness. Plus, as always, loads of time for Q&A.
If you’re reading this after Jan 21, 2020 then you can watch all our past webinars here.
Summary
To sum up, Dux-Soup Turbo is a complete solution for effective LinkedIn lead generation that allows you to automate your outreach process and respond manually when needed. And most importantly, if you follow the guidelines in this blog, the tool ensures you don’t trip over yourself when doing this.
You can try all these features right now as we offer a free Dux-Soup Turbo 7-day trial to new users! To get your 7-day trial for free, follow this link.
Do you have any questions, comments or suggestions? We’d love to hear them so send them over to info@dux-soup.com and we’ll respond straight away!
