Do you know those monthly (or for some of us, weekly!) Duct-cleaning calls you get on your landline or cell? I always wonder who actually says, “Yes! I’m so glad you called -- Please come on over and clean my ducts!”, but for the number of calls, it must be working & generating sales for someone, right?
This questioning of effectiveness is also something that is triggered when looking at cold-emails & LinkedIn messaging strategies.
We have all received them, whether it be an InMail message, Sponsored message, or cold outreach from a personal account or recruiter, our Inboxes on LinkedIn are flooded with messages on a weekly (or even daily!) basis.
LinkedIn is a great professional (and some would argue, becoming a little too social) network. Marketers have been using direct messages for years, but are the outreach strategies going a little too far?
Recently, I’ve been getting many more messages with sales pitches, growth hacks, job offers, employment opportunities, and the more subtle “How’s business going?” or “I’m really interested in the work listed on your profile, open to setting up a quick chat this week?”.
I find myself more interested in seeing how persistent an outreach will be. What’s their schedule? It feels something like this:
Connection request (based on your job title, maybe location too, if you’re lucky) - with a generic message.
Thanks for accepting & follow up message (Hey Name! Thanks so much for accepting…here’s my ask) – once, it literally said “Hey, First Name!” – make sure you replace that at least.
Meeting invite – have time this week for a quick 10-minute touch base?
Did you get my message?
In case you missed my last 4 messages, I have more time this week to connect.
You look like someone who wants to scale their business, here’s my calendar link – you pick!
Am I speaking with the correct person for this inquiry? Please pass this along.
While you still haven’t responded to ANY of these messages, here’s an e-book we created for you to look at.
A month later circle back, because the first 8 were getting so close.
Over the years, I have seen some very powerful cold-emails & messages. The ones that stand out (and that I respond to!) are those who have taken the extra 4 minutes to read your profile, find a common interest or topic, and bring up something worth discussing. The cookie cutter bulk-send DM’s are not it (at least from my experience) and need to evolve with the times.
People love personalization, we love to feel unique and like we are being spoken to directly, not just a name or title in the crowd.
If your business is using LinkedIn messaging in their marketing strategy, it’s time to slow down the pace, and pick up the personalization. Skip the auto-sends (or at least customize it as much as possible) and get real people involved in your messaging strategy.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this! Feel free to share in the comments below.
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