It’s always great to hear what Dux-Soup has in store for the coming months, but it’s an utter treat to hear it directly from Will van der Sanden himself!
As the Founder of Dux-Soup Will, is always looking 10 steps ahead of the rest of us, to work out the direction that Dux needs to be heading in.
Whether it’s responding to LinkedIn updates, or user feedback, Dux wants to make sure we are giving our users what they need – and more than that, giving them things they never knew would make their lead gen and LinkedIn automation workload so much simpler!
In this blog Will shares his hottest updates of the year so far, and showcases his 3 newest features – he even used the webinar to announce them!
If you want to hear from the master himself, then head over to our channel, to watch the recording in full - LinkedIn features; Dux-Soup functions: Will van der Sanden on LinkedIn automation’s hottest topics.
If you couldn’t make the session, but want to read all the latest in Dux news, then head down the page, as we summarize the best bits, and give you the recording times to view the live demos.
2022 – the Dux story so far this year
Here’s a summary of the best features we’ve enabled this year to date (just in case a couple of them may have skipped you by).
14-day FREE Dux-Soup trial – The launch of our quacking ‘free trial’ flew off the pond, in January with our commitment-free trial. Users, get full use of Dux-Soup Turbo, without any restrictions for 2 whole weeks. We ask for absolutely no commitment from you whatsoever – we don’t even ask for credit card details – it’s the perfect way to see the features in action and understand how they can work for you.
High Flyer Customer Success programme – Being a part of the programme; users benefit from free booster calls and have access to 1-2-1 training and support sessions, giving High Flyers, priority 30-minute and 60-minute consultations.
Users will automatically join our customer success programme when they have:
- 15+ seats Pro Team license
- 5+ seats Turbo Team license
There’s a lot to take in when you get started with Dux-Soup especially when you’re using it across multiple seats, so this is a great way for users to get that assurance that everything has been set up correctly and is working as it should be, following the initial set-up procedure.
Obviously, our target is to help you to scale your LinkedIn growth faster, so this facility means you’re up and running with minimal fuss, and the Dux team ‘have your back’ should you have any pressing queries.
New APIs – There have been a lot of API updates this year, but the key ones recently have been the Signal API and Settings API. Both updates are targeted towards larger teams or agencies using Dux-Soup.
The Signal API is great for businesses that are using a 3rd party to manage their Dux-Soup activities. The Signal API allows the customer to control the actions taking place inside the extension. These actions are often geared towards LinkedIn, triggering user interaction commands via the API. This means that automation activity can be centrally controlled.
The Settings API allows the owner of the Dux-Soup installation to select the configuration and campaign settings, so the end-users they don’t need to make any changes. This means you can control the configuration centrally, so you know that all activity is being run according to the same settings.
This is a great way to ensure the right security settings are in place, so the end-user is free to just get on with the job of prospecting.
LinkedIn Recruiter – Dux has supported Recruiter Lite for the last 5 years or so, but as of 2022, we now support LinkedIn Recruiter too. This means Dux-Soup now supports all versions of LinkedIn – Basic, Business, Sales Navigator, Recruiter Lite and Recruiter.
Take a look at how to use Dux-Soup with LinkedIn Recruiter, in our recent webinar recording.
Ensable Integration – Ensable is our new integration partner. Their sales automation platform provides information about customer behaviour to signal the optimum time for marketers and sales teams to reach out to prospects and secure the desired outcome.
Ensable was delighted to have enabled a LinkedIn integration for their users, using Dux-Soup, which is awesome!
Queued activity filters – With the creation of more campaigns, we noticed that the amount of queued activity on the Dux-Dashboard was also increasing. The volume of queued activity made it difficult to see what was going on in which campaign. We introduced the queued activity filters, so users now have the ability to filter by:
- Campaign
- Activity
- Profile
This means users have a much clearer insight into what's in the queue and this feature has made it much simpler to control and remove campaigns which are queued, but no longer relevant.
LinkedIn Updates – There have been some major changes in the LinkedIn user-interface (UI) over recent months, which have included Sales Navigator and Recruiter too.
In spite of all the changes, Dux-Soup has made all the required updates to keep supporting the different versions of LinkedIn.
2022 – What’s next?
Will announced three awesome new features to get splashing about for summer 2022.
All three features
- Were requested by users (via our feedback pages - https://feedback.dux-soup.com)
- Received lots of support in favour of development
- Are ready to launch - now!
So, let’s take a look.
1) Campaign Control (Turbo)
From a UI perspective, there’s not that much to look at, however this feature provides users with the much sought-after ability to pause and un-pause campaigns.
This awesome is especially poignant for users who are running campaigns that are only valid for a certain period of time, after which sending more follow-ups just makes no sense. Users can now pause the sequencing and stop all pending requests.
Simply access the feature via the Dux-Dashboard and remove any paused, queued activity from the campaign. Your campaign is now clear, ready for the next event.
It might not be super fancy, but it is ducking useful!! Just remember whenever you make any changes to a drip campaign, you must press the save button (we’ve made it that way so you can’t accidentally delete anything)!!!
This was a request submitted via our website. It received 40 upvotes and has now been delivered. Whoop Whoop!
To see the live demo go to: 18:00 on the recording
2) Tag Tool (Turbo)
The Dux-Soup Tag Tool feature gives Turbo users the ability to add, remove, search and export tagged lists. The key requirements are the ability to edit, rename and remove tags.
Until this update, users needed to visit individual profiles to remove tags, which was extremely time-consuming. With this capability, users can now remove tags in batch and export lists to use for lead gen purposes – all of which makes the entire process much quicker and simpler.
This was another functionality request submitted via our website feedback pages, which received 20-30 upvotes and has now been delivered. Yay users!!
To see the Tag Tool, demo go to: 15:36 on the recording and/or take a look at our brief Search by Tag user guide.
3) Visibility
Until now if you wanted to access the Dux-Dash you needed to have the Dux extension installed. The great news is you can now access the Dash via any browser, anywhere, at any time, and make ‘on the go’ updates in real-time, even from your mobile phone.
This ultimately means you’re not limited to managing your account via your laptop. You can easily monitor activity while you’re between meetings, or nipping out for lunch, and benefit from being able to:
- Qualify prospects in or out of the funnel
- Edit campaigns instantly (when you have a spontaneous moment of genius)
- See how well your campaigns are running in real-time
There is no live demo of this feature, as it just looks exactly the same regardless of which browser you’re using. So, the best advice here, is to simply try it out in your chosen browser.
This has HUGE benefits for our users in the future, as it creates a lot of possibilities for us to deliver features which are more mobile-focused, such as enabling notifications directly to your mobile phone. There’s a whole range of functionality we can think of that’s now possible because we have detached the use of the Dux-Dash from the user extension.
Audience questions:
Q) Do you have any general tips and advice when using Dux-Soup, to make sure you keep your account as safe as possible? How can you minimize the risk of being given a warning, or perhaps having your account banned, or suspended, or worse – being kicked out of LinkedIn completely?
A) Will says the biggest trick – is to use the default settings in Dux-Soup. They’ve been set to mimic the ‘general’ behaviour of a user whose account is active and has been for a while. Dux change the default settings as and when we find appropriate and based on feedback from our users. So - the default settings are there to keep you safe.
We have seen cases where new profiles start to receive warnings because they are suddenly generating a lot of activity. If you’re new to LinkedIn or you’re using a new LinkedIn account, then it’s best to dial down the default settings, so you’re not going at quite the same speed as a ‘customed’ user. This is just while you bed the account in, so you’re not drawing attention to your profile.
For all the latest updates on using Dux-Soup and managing connection limits, take a look a tour online resource pages at: https://www.dux-soup.com/resources or take a look at the following blogs and webinars:
Blogs:
LinkedIn profile visiting: A Dux-Soup guide for beginners
Bypass the connection limits with Dux points
‘You’ve reached the weekly invitation limit’– message from LinkedIn
Webinars:
How to get started with Dux-Soup
LinkedIn Limits – ‘How to scale lead generation with LinkedIn’s 100 connection per week’ limit
Q) Do you require a certain Sales Navigator subscription in order to use Dux-Soup Turbo?
A) You will always be able to do more with a paid LinkedIn account than you do with a free LinkedIn account, but you CAN use all the Dux-Soup Turbo functionality with the free LinkedIn account. The main difference between Sales Navigator and the free LinkedIn version is the amount of activity that you will be able to generate. Sales Navigator simply allows you to do more, at a greater level of granularity and provides you with a much longer list of results.
2022 - What's next for Dux-Soup?
Whilst we don’t want to let our competitors in on all of our forthcoming development plans, there’s a lot we can share about where we are heading in the next few months, so here’s a summary of the key features we are looking at right now:
New LinkedIn function - LinkedIn events and company pages are becoming a much more central theme to LinkedIn activity, so Dux-Soup are adding some automation functions that will work with these new LinkedIn features – stay tuned!
Dux-Soup Team functionality – We have developed the team functionality in answer to multiple user requests, to make sure sales development agents aren’t tripping over each other when working on a shared campaign. This will make their lives much simpler.
Evolution of the UI – There is a lot of configurable functionality available within our existing products, which our more seasoned users often appreciate, however we know that a large proportion of our users (new ones especially), don’t need or want to understand these more complex UI settings.
In response to this, we are working to create a ‘simple UI’ and ‘power UI’, to make each interface and the experience for the user, more straightforward.
Hybrid deployment mode – We are often asked whether Dux-Soup will launch a Cloud-based deployment. Will confessed he has a sneaky suspicion that LinkedIn will be clamping down on APIs in the not-too-distant future, but that he does recognise the need for a mixed deployment model where some functionality is available via the Cloud.
Hopefully, this will be available later this year.
SharpSpring CRM integration – SharpSpring CRM has been a highly requested feature and is a great CRM system with a lot of automation capabilities, so we’re very excited to announce that this integration will be enabled shortly.
Other native integrations – It shouldn’t be a surprise that we have a number of discussions taking place with integration providers looking to include LinkedIn outreach as a part of their solution, so the best suggestion here is to watch this space for more information!
Audience questions:
Q) Can you explain the difference between Dux-Soup Pro and Dux-Soup Turbo?
A) Dux-Soup Pro provides you with a toolbox to carry out your automation activity. In essence, it’s a semi-automated tool, where you still need to push the right buttons: select the right prospecting lists and trigger the activities that you’d like to occur.
Dux-Soup Turbo is a simple ‘fire and forget’ fully automated solution. Simply define your campaign sequences, enrol your prospects and that’s it. Dux-Soup Turbo does the rest for you.
Q) Will you develop the option to have 1 contact enrolled into 1 campaign at a time, to avoid having the same contact receiving messages from 2 concurrently running campaigns?
A) The ability to add prospects into multiple campaigns is a conscious design decision. Customers will have long-running, repeating campaigns such as newsletters or events as well as short-running campaigns, such as the launch of new product features. For these examples, it makes sense to have prospects in multiple campaigns at one time, so they can receive different messages at different times, about different things.
If there is a use case to support this request, then raise it on the feedback site, and if there’s enough support for it among our users, then it’s something we will look at.
Q) Where did the name Dux-Soup come from?
A) When I started the company, my wife and I were looking on the internet for a catchy name and found a little-known expression ‘duck soup’ as a term for something that is seemingly easy to do. At the time the focus was on pulling data into a spreadsheet, so we swapped the CK in duck, for an X (for xls) and Dux-Soup was born!
Q) When will Dux-Soup link with Zapier?
A) It already does! Hurrah – take a look at our Zapier Integration pages here.
Q) When will Dux-Soup be able to attach files to InMail campaigns?
A) This year.
Q) Why is Dux-Soup better than the other LinkedIn automation tools on the market?
A) The key benefit to using Dux-Soup over a competitor’s product is that Dux is built purely as an automation platform. The competition use either headless browsers or they connect with LinkedIn directly, using an API, neither of which are ‘safe’ methods of connectivity. Dux-Soup is different because we are purely automation-led, and have so many safety features built-in to make sure that we mimic human behavior.
Dux-Soup is the most feature-rich and cost-effective way of managing LinkedIn automation.
Q) Can Dux-Soup bypass the LinkedIn connection limits?
A) We could, but we choose not to. Why would you want to break the connection limits, and put your account at risk? We automate outreach in LinkedIn as much as possible, so you don’t have to spend your time, doing menial tasks.
Q) Are the default settings in Dux-Soup the same for all users?
A) Yes, the settings are the same for all users, but they change over time to make sure they stay in line with any changes that occur in LinkedIn. The default limits will be different according to the version of LinkedIn you are using – but Dux-Soup does not differentiate user settings.
Q) Are there any plans to introduce AI search functionality to better match leads?
A) We are looking at AI, but more at ‘common’ auto-responses that can be used, such as ‘thank you’ and ‘no thank you’. Regarding any filtering at the start of the funnel, we rely on LinkedIn, or manual intervention from the user and we don’t have any plans to change that.
If you’d like to listen to further questions from this session, head to 42:20 in the recording LinkedIn features; Dux-Soup functions: Will van der Sanden on LinkedIn automation’s hottest topics.
