How to Use LinkedIn Connections for Email Marketing

Social media marketing is like busking on a busy, noisy city street. A lot of people might be around, but most of them aren’t there to listen to you.

Email marketing is different. It’s like being invited to a radio station where everyone is intent on lending you their ears.

Studies reveal that there are more than 4.3 billion Internet users around the world and almost 80%  of these have social media accounts. Impressive, right?

Anyway, here’s the thing: Most of them have email accounts. Savvy marketers know how to use this data to their advantage. Read on to gain the best practices on using LinkedIn for your email marketing efforts in Australia.

Is Email Marketing still “in”?

Email marketing, according to HubSpot, is “the process of targeting your audience and customers through email. It helps you boost conversions and revenue by providing subscribers and customers with valuable information to help achieve their goals.”

As a business expert, connections play a huge part in your prosperity, and emails are a proven channel to build your list of prospects. Your prospects’ inboxes are continuously flooded with messages from numerous reps. Thus, you might be wondering if email marketing is still relevant these days. The answer is YES. In fact, it’s more relevant now than ever. 

Most people still prefer to use email as a channel, even with the advent of social media where the number of users and visitors is always on the rise. As a matter of fact, 87% of marketers choose email marketing as a channel to promote their content. It is used by approximately 81 percent of businesses to market their content, trailing only a few steps behind social media.

It’s actually a bit surprising that, in this era of information, email marketing stays the one method of digital marketing that can stay up-to-date for a long time. Third-party cookies, AI revolutions, algorithmic changes- email marketing remains steadfast and relevant amidst turbulent digital market changes.

Related: How to Transform Email Churn Rates into Click Rates

The power of a LinkedIn connection

Who receives those emails determines the difference between a success story and a waste of resources. This is why you should concentrate on building an email list of recipients who will not roll their eyes when your message appears. LinkedIn is the most suitable place to start with.

LinkedIn is a professional website that’s gained a good reputation for searching for jobs and recruiting people coming from different backgrounds. It provides employees with exposure and can be used to make connections and expand your business network. It is considered a powerful platform for B2B companies to generate leads.

 It’s unquestionably the most powerful networking tool to grow connections with “like-minded” professionals who aim to diversify their networks and join other high-quality accounts. It also gives businesses the opportunity to gather new leads with the right strategies. Today, LinkedIn has around 830 million members with over 58 million registered companies and over 1 billion interactions every month. Utilizing it in the right way can help you expand your brand’s online presence.

LinkedIn enables you to interact with clients and build better customer relationships. With this platform, you can connect with your target audience, make them aware of your business, and add them to your email list.

Related: Why Keeping Customer Relationships for Your Business is Essential

10 ways to use LinkedIn contacts for email marketing

The number of email users has now risen to 4 billion. This figure makes it clear that email marketing remains the most preferred channel to reach the target audience.

The correct email list coupled with engaging content makes up the winning recipe for successful email marketing business promotion and growth. However, the real challenge is this: Growing your email list. Locating your target audiences’ email addresses can be tedious. This is where LinkedIn comes in handy.

Aside from job searching and obtaining online resumes, owning a LinkedIn profile gives you the ability to connect. The power of a connection is that you can get valid email addresses and grow your email list using the said platform.

Since the main goal of LinkedIn is to connect professionals, it’s important to regularly grow this network and generate a more sizeable list of contacts. These networks and contacts are helpful; as you grow your email marketing list. Here, we will discuss how you can use your LinkedIn connections for email marketing.

1. Build your email list
   Let’s be honest here. What’s the first thing you do when you meet somebody new? Do you cyber-stalk them?  Of course, you do. The LinkedIn world works that way too. When you send a connection request to your prospect, they’ll initially browse your profile and get information about your identity. Your LinkedIn profile works as a business card for you and your organization so make sure that it accurately represents your brand.
   Polish your LinkedIn profile and use a custom cover image to look compelling and professional. Make sure to reach out to new connections on a regular basis, but don’t move too fast, or LinkedIn will suspend your activity.
2. Use LinkedIn to find the right target audiences and leads
   The ideal email marketing strategy focuses on cautiously selecting the targets who’ll make it to the high-quality lead lists and crafting the right message for them right after. LinkedIn is the best site to find these individuals and companies.
   Finding the right audiences and leads results in higher email open and response rates since the chosen recipients will see the message’s value.
   These are some ideas you can consider in finding favorable LinkedIn demographics:
   
   • Industry-relevant hashtags – these make the posts relevant to your line of work and who created, liked, and left a comment visible.
   • Competitors – you can steal your competitors’ customers through automated LinkedIn outreach.
   • Professional groups – LinkedIn houses people who gather to talk about the latest trends and issues and ask for assistance, product/service reviews, and recommendations. It’s a great opportunity for you to join in.
   • Relevant public figures –  Profiles of individuals with a huge following and connections act somewhat like an agora where the audience serves as a wide pool of possible connections you can pick from.
3. The right timing matters
   Savvy marketers send their marketing campaigns on the most suitable daytime and the best-performing day of the week. LinkedIn’s InMail depends more on connecting with active LinkedIn members than delivering messages at the right time of the week or day.
4. Connect with people in meaningful ways
   Connecting means more than adding someone on LinkedIn. When people let you into their online and real-life social circle, it means that they’re hoping it’ll bring them something good in return. It doesn’t always mean another sales pitch.
   Your leads are humans too, and it helps when you warm up to them before you send personalized emails and contact them in LinkedIn’s Inmail. Anecdotes, comments, and jokes directing to helpful resources help build rapport.
   Most importantly, invest your time in producing valuable content on LinkedIn. It should create a positive association with your brand and be something your connections can relate to.
5. Create a Personalized Copy
   Generic messages make your recipients’ eyes roll with boredom. Messages that aren’t custom-fit are totally out and if you want to boost the chance of generating responses from your audience, make your message more personalized. 
   Here are some thoughts you might want to materialize for your message personalization:
   • Specify a particular contact.
   • Mention a typical LinkedIn Group.
   • Learn more about a LinkedIn Group post (theirs or someone else’s).
   • Discuss a typical organization, experience, or individual interest.
   • Request an emotion
     
     Keeping a conversational tone makes the message more individualized, so push for a free-streaming message that sounds like it came from an ordinary person.
6. Keep your subject line crisp and clear
   Your email’s headline works like a guarantee that clarifies what your recipient will see the moment he clicks it open. It also explains the email copy, so you have to write it in a clear and compelling manner to get your reader’s attention.
   Subject lines that are exciting, personalized, and containing 80 characters or less have higher open rates than regular ones.
   Take a look at these actionable tips for effective subject lines:
   • Personalization is the key –  The usual “Hey, (recipient’s name)!” won’t cut it. Capture your recipient’s interest by tackling a pain point, mutual contact, shared interest, or competition. 
   • One-liners – Since you have limited characters to use, it’d be better to keep your subject line short and straightforward. 
   • Seamless transitions – Always remember to connect your entire message to the subject line. Including details that aren’t related to the content or subject is annoying and disappointing.
   • Trigger your audience’s curiosity – When you’ve tried all these tactics but still end up failing, go ahead and write something intriguing. Avoid being outrageous or offensive, focus on being interesting.
7. Give your prospects a clear and compelling reason to respond
   As a marketer, you have two main goals: To connect with your LinkedIn members and start a conversation. You have to do your best to collect the responses of your recipients to achieve these goals. 
   They can provide their answers by responding with a referral or opinion.
8. Create your company’s profile
   Generate and update your company’s LinkedIn profile. Also, try creating engaging content about your product and uploading it on a daily basis. The most recent developments and expansion taking place in the sector must be posted too.
9. Make it simple, concise, and clear
   The majority of busy professionals read their messages on mobile devices, so it’s a good practice to keep messages brief, ideally between 50 and 125 words. Short messages are simple to interpret and allow you to respect the prospect’s busy schedule. To engage the connections in dialogue, you must write the message in straightforward and understandable terms.
10. Engage the group with compelling content
    Engaging and interactive email content has grown robustly in these past few years. These emails increase interactions, boost customer engagements, and upgrade customer experience.
    Some interesting elements that make up interactive emails are surveys, polls, user-generated content, call-to-action buttons, interactive images, and product carousels.

Adding LinkedIn connections to your email marketing list: A step-by-step guide

There are several ways that LinkedIn users can look for potential leads in their contacts: interest lists, lookalike audiences, groups, and more. These options enable users to narrow down their searches based on specific categories like industry, company size, and location.

You can add LinkedIn connections to your email marketing list in three steps:

• First, you need to post an update on your Homepage to share the information with your connections.
• You can also create a message to make your connections aware.
• Additionally, you can send an announcement for all your group members to give their email addresses.

If the steps mentioned above seem quite general, here’s a step-by-step guide on exporting your LinkedIn contacts:

Step 1: Log in to your LinkedIn account. Click the “Me” icon and select Settings and Privacy on the drop-down list.

Step 2: On the left side, click on the Data Privacy tab, and select “Get a copy of your data”

Step 3: Next, go to the second option from the list. It says, “Want something in particular? Select the data files you’re most interested in.” Click “Connections” and press the “Request archive” button

Step 4: LinkedIn will send the file to your registered email.

Step 5: Click the “Download archive” button when ready to download the file. This action will send you a CSV file that contains your Linked contacts’ information.

In the file, you’ll receive this information:

• First name
• Last name
• Company
• Position
• Connection dates

Even though you’ll acquire enough information on your contacts using the data you obtain using these steps, you will not have access to the email addresses of all the contacts you have exported.

On an end note…

Every business should optimize using LinkedIn contacts in their email marketing strategies. The combination of these two powerful tools provides an efficient and cost-friendly way to generate top-quality contacts that are bound to generate good leads and elevate conversion rates. To make the most out of these tools, marketers should be able to craft interesting and custom-made messages that wouldn’t find themselves stuck inside your customer’s junk or spam folders.

To establish a strong brand presence in the diverse Australian market, outsourcing to a trusted AI-powered lead generation services provider like Callbox can be a game-changer.

With the assistance of B2B experts, you can obtain a rich database of LinkedIn contacts, allowing you to maximize the targeting and results of your email marketing efforts. By leveraging the expertise of professionals in the field, you not only streamline your lead generation process but also ensure that your brand resonates effectively with the Australian audience, leading to increased engagement and business opportunities.

Since 2004, Callbox has been the top-notch B2B lead generation services provider in Australia, fostering business growth across multiple industries. By leveraging our expertise in lead generation and appointment setting, along with our multi-touch multi-channel approach and AI-powered tools, we assist your business in reaching, acquiring, and nurturing target prospects, ultimately converting them into clients.

Simplify your B2B efforts, expand your prospect reach, and capture more high-value leads by teaming up with us. Get in touch with us now!