Your connection messages are hitting the spot and your 1st degree connections are growing, but how do you keep this valuable audience engaged and your outreach memorable?
In this blog, we share tips and tricks to stay active and engaged with your community using Dux-Soup. You can watch the webinar on which this is based, or read on as we explore our favorite guests’ top messaging tips including how to:
• Personalize your LinkedIn messaging
• Add value with the content you post
• Endorse and engage with your 1st degree connections
• Create the right campaign sequence for LinkedIn follow-ups
What is a drip campaign?
A drip campaign is a series of messages and/or actions to a prospect you want to engage with. Delivered at scheduled intervals, each message provides relevant content or information to maintain the prospect's interest.
The idea of drip campaigns has been around for decades by way of email and phone calls. And now, the concept is available with LinkedIn automation tools too. Drip campaigns are a much-loved feature of Dux-Soup's Turbo and Cloud editions.
If you’re just getting started with LinkedIn automation, you can get Dux-Soup Turbo for free for 2 weeks. No credit card is required. Install it via the link below to follow along with this blog.
Use the right campaign for the job
When creating your drip campaigns, decide what you want to achieve from your campaign, then you can determine how best to do it. Here are some examples:
Scenario 1:
You just downloaded the Dux-Soup trial and you want to create a drip campaign to nurture your existing 1st degree connections.
When you build the list, you know it’s going to include people with whom you left off a conversation. Decide if you're targeting your existing 1st degree network with or without these Dux-Soup contacts. You’re not going to go through every conversation to see when you connected, or what you last talked about, but you might want to take it into consideration and tailor your campaign accordingly. For example, you can acknowledge you’ve had contact in your opening sentence if you were to say, “I don’t know if you’ve already heard…..”
Scenario 2:
Your list for a drip campaign includes Dux-Soup contacts who’ve been enrolled in previous Dux-Soup campaigns. They didn’t respond to you in that campaign and you’re going to re-enroll them into a different campaign.
Since you haven't connected with these individuals and don’t know them personally, you have more flexibility to build out your nurture sequence in the campaign.
Scenario 3:
You’re going to build a drip campaign into a 1st touch campaign. The campaign starts with a connection message followed by a series of messages going to 120 days out.
With this approach, you have a solid campaign package in place. However, for campaigns running over an extended period, you might want to make adjustments. While changes are possible, they can become a bit complicated.
Before launching any drip campaign, take time to carefully plan how to structure it for the best results.
Personalize your messaging
Consider the following elements as you develop your messaging:
- A drip campaign aims to get people engaged and interested in having a conversation with you. Avoid simply recycling old emails and pushing your product; instead, focus on using meaningful content. Don’t spam!
- A drip campaign is about nurturing prospects. Offer them engaging content, and they might discover a compelling insight that draws them in and encourages a response.
- Share your own content and include purposeful articles that are relevant to your audience. If you have the means, create custom trackable links that you can leverage inside Dux-Soup. This will give you access to stats for your outreach.
- In a lengthy nurture campaign spanning several weeks, consider sharing content from others alongside your own. This demonstrates an appreciation and respect for different perspectives.
- Use insights about how the list was created to tailor your messaging personally. For example, reach out to individuals from a previous campaign who were targeted for a specific event that they didn't attend. Use the scenario as the incentive to get them to talk to you:
“Hi_FN,
I know you weren't able to make the event 5 days ago, I just wanted to know if you knew of any other events coming up focused on lead generation?”
- Promote communities and/or events by creating lists and searches for gatherings you’re not planning to attend. Mention a local event to spark a conversation and encourage a response. The event serves as an entry point, allowing you to smoothly transition into a call to action.
- To strike up a conversation ask open ended questions about the content or the event.
To harness events fully, read How to use events to secure sales appointments.
The key to successful messaging is being memorable and relevant. Get specific and the higher your conversions will be. For template examples for different campaigns and people, read our Tips for writing direct messages to your 1st-degree connections.
Share content
When you include content in your nurture sequence, think about the following:
- When incorporating content into your campaigns, it's advisable to share it at least once before including it in your drip sequence. This approach can enhance overall engagement - a weekly post is ideal for maintaining interest. Aim to vary the content and link it to topics relevant to your industry, even if it's not directly about you.
- Pay attention to how much screen space your message occupies.
- And remember, the content must be relevant to your audience!
Campaign example
There are so many different ways to build a nurture sequence for 1st degree connections. This isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach. You’ll want to make adjustments and test new strategies over time to determine what works for your product or service.
The example we’re going to share gives you a good basis from which to approach your LinkedIn lead generation campaigns.
This sample campaign will re-target individuals who were participants in a completed Dux-Soup campaign:
Step 1: Visit.
The first action is a simple Visit to their profile, this will bring their attention back to you following the end of the previous campaign.
Note: Check the Visibility setting in your LinkedIn profile is turned on so people know when you’re visiting.
Step 2: Follow-Up message #1
5 days after the Visit a message is sent. This example targets lead generation agencies using email or SEO, who may or may not offer LinkedIn lead gen services.
“Hi_FN,
Ever thought about offering any type of lead generation services to your customers?
We recently released an article about how agencies can leverage automation on LinkedIn to drive more conversations on the platform. Thought you might enjoy it?
An agency's guide to selling LinkedIn lead generation services (dux-soup.com)”
Notice that this message doesn't mention scheduling time—it's already implied and might have been addressed in previous campaigns. Including it could make the message sound like spam.
Whenever you include a link in your message, check how it appears by creating a dummy LinkedIn profile for yourself. Send the message to this profile (or a friend/colleague) to see how it looks to your connections. Why is this important? A large thumbnail can overshadow the rest of your message, causing recipients to miss important content if they don’t scroll. By previewing it, you can make adjustments to improve visibility.
Read our guide on How to send direct personalized messages to your 1st degree connections. It contains examples and templates for the best ways to approach them.
Step 3: Visit
15 days after Follow-up message #1 Visit again to keep them engaged. With a visit you maintain a presence without overwhelming them with another message.
Step 4: Endorse
15 days after the last Visit, Dux-Soup will Endorse their profile on your behalf. You simply select the number of skills you would like endorsed from the drop down list.
Endorsements may seem small, but they play a significant role in building credibility and rapport. Recognize their skills and strengths with endorsements to add authenticity to your engagement.
Step 5: Follow-Up message #2
15 days after the Endorse step, another message is sent, again with an open question. This one reads:
“Hi_FN,
What are your thoughts around LinkedIn lead generation services and AI?
We have a client that’s been using both with great success which you can see here:
MedSelfEd | A Dux-Soup Success Story”
This is how it looks as a drip campaign in Dux-Soup:
Now the campaign is set up, you can enroll all the people from the previous campaign that’s now complete. To do this:
1. Go to the Dux-Soup Funnel Flow and select the Campaign that previously targeted these connections.
2. Select ‘Copy All’ and all the profiles will be copied to your clipboard.
3. Open a Google Sheet and paste in the data. You only want the people with the status of “Follow-Ups”, so filter out anyone with a status of ‘Rejected’, ‘Invited’, ‘Enrolled’, ‘Qualified-in’, ‘Accepted’ or ‘Responded’.
4. Copy the URLs of all the ‘Follow-Ups’ and return to the Dux-Dash Funnel Flow.
5. Select ‘Enroll from Clipboard’, paste the URLs into the pop-up box, select the target campaign and click ‘Enroll’. Dux-Soup will start to enroll each person.
Go to 23.33mins of the recording of the webinar to watch a demonstration of the enrollment process described here.
Targeting your existing network
In our campaign example, we know they’ve all been part of a previous Dux-Soup campaign, so the messaging is tailored with that in mind.
When targeting your 1st-degree network, consider how you know each person. Some may have been approached with Dux-Soup before, while others haven't. You might have personal connections with some, while others are more distant. Some conversations may have ended without clear closure. Will your message work for all these scenarios? Instead of checking every past interaction, craft dynamic messaging that fits any type of previous engagement.
Guest host approaches
At Dux-Soup, we've collaborated with users who share their campaign successes. Their outreach strategies and best practices for nurture sequences and messaging frameworks have been featured in our webinars and interactive business workshops, offering instantly implementable approaches with proven results.
Michael Simpson, the owner and Founder of Ideas First shared with us his long-term nurture approach taking high-value prospects through a long sales cycle using LinkedIn and Dux-Soup. Read about it here: The long term LinkedIn nurture strategy to increase sales.
Tyron Guiliani, LinkedIn Sales expert and founder of Selling Made Social shared his LinkedIn mastery with us in an interactive business focused workshop. His 1/10/4 approach is to share 1 message, every 10 days with 4 items of content. Each one being short, to the point and information your connection can apply instantly. Take a look: The LinkedIn nurture sequence that achieves an 85% response rate.
In Summary
Building a strong, engaged network is crucial to your success. Nurture your 1st-degree connections, respect their time, and keep the following in mind:
- The key to successful outreach is being memorable and offering relevant, quality information.
- Be thoughtful, ask questions and remember less is more in your content. As Winston Churchill once said, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”
- Utilize insights from the people you're targeting. If you build your list with a specific demographic in mind, you can tailor your messaging to better resonate with them.
- Finally, consider how you would feel if you were the recipient of the drip campaign and its message content. Remember that most people don’t like to be sold to, but they do like to network and make connections.
Listen to the Q&A
There were plenty of questions for the Dux-Soup team at the end of the webinar from the live audience. Listen in full at 37.32 mins of the recording.
Here’s are some that came up:
- Does Dux-Soup work for Company accounts or individuals?
- What are the options for enrolling your contacts into a new campaign?
- If you accidentally enroll the same person into a campaign twice, what happens?
- If changes are made to any of the steps in an active drip campaign, will the updates be applied to those already enrolled in the campaign?
- Does Dux-Soup integrate with Pipedrive?
If you have any questions or comments, you can get in touch with our customer support team via the live chat, or send us an email:info@dux-soup.com.
