If you’re a regular LinkedIn user, then you may be wondering how you can work more effectively.
LinkedIn is a winning platform for B2B networking and lead generation, generating huge revenue growth for businesses that properly invest in it as a sales channel, but it can also be time-consuming, and difficult to maintain a consistent level of activity on it.
Businesses face three key challenges with using LinkedIn effectively:
- Lack of time to make LinkedIn provide a consistent, sustainable source of leads
- Spending sufficient time on LinkedIn to provide the desired results, to the detriment of other business needs.
- Funding a dedicated LinkedIn lead generation resource if revenues don’t allow it
These are challenges that every business faces at some point along their journey. It’s a chicken and egg situation, where smaller businesses need to grow to fund the cost of a lead generation team, but how can they grow without investing the time in the first place?
The answer for many businesses lies in LinkedIn automation. LinkedIn automation tools arrived on the market in 2015, with Dux-Soup being one of the first, and have helped thousands of users to automate LinkedIn activities, including sending connection message and automating direct LinkedIn messages to your 1st-degree connections.
In this guide we walk you through how to automate your LinkedIn messages, solving the challenges outlined above by saving up to 80% of your time, whilst allowing you to scale your LinkedIn results to grow your sales pipeline, and business, faster.
What do we mean by ‘LinkedIn message’?
First, let’s cover the basics. A LinkedIn message can be sent to a 1st-degree connection ( someone who has accepted your connection invitation, or who has sent you a connection invitation, that you have accepted).
You can see your connections by going to ‘My Network’ and then ‘Connections’.
The great thing about building your connections is that you can send messages to any of your (1st-degree) connections for free.
LinkedIn messages contain up to 2,000 characters, which includes your name. This is plenty of space to get your message across, you don’t want to go any longer than this with your copy.
And with a LinkedIn Premium plan you gain the benefits of their AI tool, which can help you perfect your message copy.
LinkedIn claims that a direct message via LinkedIn gets a greater open rate than an email. So, if you’re not using LinkedIn as a platform yet for your outreach then we highly recommend you try it.
How to automate LinkedIn messages
Writing manual messages, copying and pasting, changing names and other content is one way of carrying out your LinkedIn outreach activity. But there are 2 problems with this:
- It is time-intensive
- You can make errors. Who hasn’t sent a message with the wrong name, company or other data when doing your outreach this way?
A LinkedIn automation tool will bulk send your messages, automating the whole process including personalizing each message as it sends it.
This solves both of the above problems, allowing you to scale your activity, save time, and ensure accuracy every time.
Here we walk you through the step-by-step process of automating your LinkedIn messages using Dux-Soup Pro, which is available for just $14.99/month.
Step 1: Prepare your list.
In LinkedIn, Sales Navigator or Recruiter, find the list of connections that you want to target. You can send a message to all of your connections by going to ‘my network’ and then ‘connections’ as shown above.
Or, if you want to be selective on which connections to send your message to, you can use LinkedIn filters. Say we want to just target business owners, start by typing ‘owner’ in the search bar. You can then use the additional filters to narrow down the search results to 1st-degree connections, geographical regions and more.
If you have Sales Navigator, you can use its additional filters. Go to ‘account list’ and select ‘1st degree connections’ from the ‘Connection’ option. Then filter by any of the addition lead filter categories.
Once you’ve got your list, you’re ready to automate your LinkedIn message.
Step 2: Select ‘Message’ from your Dux-Soup extension
Click on your Dux-Soup extension and, when your list is ready, you’ll see a button that says ‘Message’. Click on this button.
Step 3: Write your message
A box will appear where you can type in your personalized message. Once you have finished writing your message, press OK. Dux-Soup will start sending your LinkedIn messages out to the list of prospects on your screen.
How simple is that?
So there you have it. For under $15/month, that’s how to automate your LinkedIn messages, helping you to generate leads and grow your business at a fraction of the cost of hiring a dedicated resource.
Dux-Soup offers a free two-week trial of our Turbo plan, which gives you further features, including automated drip campaigns (this means you can create a sequence of up to 12 actions, instead of a single direct message with Pro).
With Turbo you would send your direct message as a part of your drip campaigns. Refer to our support article on the different ways to send a message to 1st-degree connections.
So remember, if you're struggling to give LinkedIn the time it deserves, or can't yet afford a dedicated LinkedIn lead generation resource, then Dux-Soup Pro is a great way of generating leads via LinkedIn for just $15/month
What to write in your LinkedIn messages
If you're struggling to know what to write in your LinkedIn messages, then we have some templates and ideas in our article 'Tips for writing direct messages to your first degree connections'. We hope they help!
