How to Build Email Marketing Lists using LinkedIn Groups

March 24, 2020 jeya shri

LinkedIn is the power house for B2B lead generation. Around 79% of the B2B marketers consider LinkedIn as a good source to generate B2B leads and build email marketing lists says, a recent LinkedIn statistics (2020)

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Also, LinkedIn states that there are more than 2 million groups and nearly 8,000 groups are created every week. On an average, members join 7 groups; whether it is for professional growth or to learn more about topics they are passionate about.

5 Steps to Build Email Marketing Lists using LinkedIn Groups

Why Join LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn best practices to find the right groups
Keyword ideas to find the best LinkedIn groups
How to scan LinkedIn groups that your prospects join?
How to build email marketing lists using LinkedIn groups?

Why Join LinkedIn Groups?

The primary reason why LinkedIn Groups are used for marketing is

It is a gold mine for B2B lead generation as it provides instant access to thousands of highly-targeted sales leads. The key advantage of using LinkedIn groups are: (a) The group members are looking for interaction & networking. (b) All the group members are already interested in a particular topic. (c) The group members are present in the group to find new prospects for their business.

People also join LinkedIn Groups for:

Finding their next job or finding their next hires
Finding mentors & coaches
Learning from peers and experts in their industry
Marketing themselves or their company
Getting industry-related news and articles from groups in news feed

We look for LinkedIn groups that have our target prospects or target customers. It will take some research to find the correct group, but once you find them, the right group will yield a continuous stream of new sales leads.

LinkedIn Best Practices to Find the Right Groups

How do you find the biggest & the most relevant LinkedIn groups? In this section, we will learn how to research and find the LinkedIn groups you should be targeting for your email campaigns.

To discover Linkedin groups, click this link, or click this section on LinkedIn:

You will get a list of groups that LinkedIn recommends you. They suggest LinkedIn groups based on your Job Title, Industry, Geography and other elements. Here are the groups that LinkedIn recommended me:

build email marketing lists using linkedin groups

Now, as marketers, we all know that bigger is not always better… unless it’s a super-targeted group 🙂

Keyword Ideas to Find the Best LinkedIn Groups

When you use “Jobs” as the search keyword, it displays LinkedIn groups that have large number of members. Add your industry along with the keyword, such as “Aviation Jobs” to narrow down to the ones that are relevant to you. These LinkedIn groups are useful in finding the prospects who are mid-level managers and executives. But it might not be great for C-level executives such as owners and CXOs.

When you use “networking” as the keyword, it displays targeted LinkedIn groups. I would suggest you to add {your location} along with the keyword to get more targeted results. What I love about these LinkedIn groups are, almost all of the members are open to a new conversation. This keyword is great for geography-based prospecting.

Email marketing lists using Linkedin groups - group search

“Alumni” groups are great too if you have a common ground with them.

Another set of groups we love to prospect into are those who share the same interests and passions. This example shows a group of BMW enthusiasts. This is one list you’ll never get anywhere! No list vendor can give you such list. And what’s more, the LinkedIn profiles linked to these groups are all updated with their latest work and contact information.

How to scan LinkedIn Groups that your prospects join?

Before you scan to see what LinkedIn groups your ideal prospects are a part of..

Find out the average number of LinkedIn groups your prospects have joined. That tells you how much your prospects leverage LinkedIn groups for business.

If their average number of groups is 5 or < 5, then they belong to the generic category

If the average number is > 5, the prospect seems to leverage LinkedIn groups effectively and is into expert lead groups category.

Prefer to select some of your prospects from the expert-lead groups category. Manually research their groups to find out what kind of LinkedIn groups they have joined.

Visit as many profiles as you can to figure out the relevant LinkedIn groups

After you carry out this research, you will be able to find a lot of relevant LinkedIn groups. Shortlist the ones that contains the right prospects for your business.

How to Build Email Marketing Lists using LinkedIn Groups?

There are two ways to build your email marketing lists using LinkedIn groups.

Target that particular LinkedIn group where you found the right prospects for your business
Find “Aliens” in the group and target them.

1. How to find prospects on Targeted LinkedIn Groups?

Are you already a part of the LinkedIn group that you want to target? If Yes, you’ve already got all the power to see the whole list of your co-group members! Click see all to view your co-group members.

What if you are not a part of any LinkedIn group that you want to target? Don’t worry, you still have access to the LinkedIn group members!

LinkedIn Sales Navigator has the advanced lead search option that lets you to make a search using the groups search filter. This helps you to see all the LinkedIn group members even if you are not a part it.

Now that you have access to the group members, the next step would be to reach out to them right?

It is a known fact that a lot of prospects use LinkedIn groups for the messaging feature, which is a key advantage of LinkedIn groups. You can manually send out a message to each of the fellow members in the group. Build a relationship initially and take up your conversation from there.

But that is going to take a lot of manual human effort which is a really slow and tedious process that might take days or even months together to reach out to all of the LinkedIn group members. A manual process lets you reach out only to a few customers a day, meaning less business.

If there is an automated list building software that lets you start prospecting immediately, you will be able to quickly build an email list of your potential prospects resulting in more business. The list building software not only copy-pastes the information of your prospects to a spreadsheet but also finds the missing work email addresses and phone# of your ideal prospects and verifies the same.

Here’s how you can finely Target the list

If you want to fine tune your prospect search, you can use the other search filters such as,

Geography
Title
Seniority level
Function &
Company head count

Targeting LinkedIn groups finely can get you super-targeted leads that double your cold email responses.

2. How to find “aliens” in a group and target them?

Who are the aliens in a group?

Aliens are prospects who join a LinkedIn group not only to learn or share insights but to target their audience to find new clients for their business. These aliens primarily join a group to reach out to their co-group members and pitch about their products or services

Now, do a deeper research by scanning those LinkedIn groups that your prospects are present as aliens. Target these LinkedIn groups and segment them into the following 4 types of groups:

Local Business groups
Academic groups
Industry related groups
Peer groups

Pick only those LinkedIn groups where your clients have joined just to prospect.

Example: If sales/business development and recruiters are present in a Logistics and supply chain networking group, then let’s assume that they are there in the LinkedIn group to prospect or reach out to the other members in the group.

Another example: If you can find recruiters in a job search LinkedIn group, then I’m sure they are present in the group to pitch about a new role to the candidates who are present in the group.

So, target these aliens who are in such groups, to reach out to their target audience.

In each LinkedIn group, the Aliens present probably represent their companies. Once you identify companies, target the entire or all of the departments from the company (not just the person). So, we can get 5-10 top executives from each company using (LeadGrabber Management-Finder Pro), an account-based lead generation software. The tool finds and appends executives’ name, email, phone, job title and LinkedIn ID, etc.

For each LinkedIn group..by using keywords from the group, we can send targeted personalized messages and drive up interest and generate leads.

Therefore, you can build email marketing lists using LinkedIn groups by targeted prospect search and by finding aliens in your targeted LinkedIn groups.

We have solutions that can help you build targeted email marketing lists easily & effortlessly. If you are someone looking to build email lists, fill in the form below.

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How to write B2B Cold Emails that Get Responses

March 2, 2020 jeya shri

Cold emails are one of the best ways to reach potential customers and generate new sales leads consistently. However, the success rate depends upon the response rates. Generally, we all assume that we have written a perfect B2B cold email that will elicit more positive responses. But in reality, it doesn’t happen that way. So how to write cold emails that get responses?

When I thought I wrote a compelling cold email, I did not get an impressive cold email response rate in spite of my average open rates being above 45%. This made me search for the reasons, and in the process, I discovered that Targeting the Right Audience is the key to increase cold email response rates. It really helped me to double my B2B cold email response rates. I am sure these B2B cold email techniques will certainly help you to increase your cold email response rates.

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2 Key Elements to improve B2B Cold Email response rates

If you are desperate to improve your B2B cold email response rates, you need to master the following two key elements for success.

Narrow targeting
Personalization

Let’s look at these in detail.

Narrow down your audience for cold email relevancy

The first key element to increase cold email response rates is Targeting the Right Audience.

Define your Ideal Customer Profile & Buyer persona: B2B cold email response rates are directly proportional to accurate targeting. If you can draft a great cold email but send it to the wrong person, all the efforts you took to write that perfect email would be in vain.

So, if you want to increase the cold email to potential client ratio, you must define your ideal customer profile and buyer persona carefully. In my case, my target audience is top-level CXO’s, VP Sales & Marketing in tech companies who can be easily found on LinkedIn and other B2B networks.

One audience per search criteria works best: Mixing too many personas or search criteria can get you off track. Try to use only one or more search criteria to make your audience lookalike. I use LeadGrabber Pro to target a lookalike audience from LinkedIn. This helped me to narrow down my search result and target a small group of potential prospects. So I understood my audience better and personalized the cold email message accordingly.

Example: I used minimal LinkedIn Sales Navigator search filters to get a targeted email list.
Geography: Illinois (Email sending time covers one-time zone)
Industry: Catering
keyword: “Corporate catering services” – to make my email more relevant.

Personalize cold emails more than just {Name} & {Company}

The B2B cold emails you write should be relevant to your audience. One audience per search criteria helps you personalize the email better. Personalize a common element (maybe title, geography, or service offering) to make your B2B cold email look more personalized and relevant.

Here’s how narrow targeting helped me in writing a more personalized B2B cold email:

How to write B2B Cold Emails that Get Responses 3

In the above illustration, I targeted prospects that belong to the catering industry. Now that I knew they offer corporate catering services, I personalized that common field across all the emails.

In the second line, I added my target audience’s potential prospects’ title with a benefit and a screenshot of where I found them.

I also stated how my product can add value to their business + a strong rational impact.

Finally, I ended up with a call-to-action.

Social Media and Website Research

The best cold email template should make the audience believe that you wrote the email manually. It must show you researched them and you are reaching out because you have a solution that can add real value to their business.

Social networks and corporate websites are some of the best places where you can find your targeted prospects. It helps you to research your prospects’ business, industry, services, products, solutions, geographical presence, probable prospects, accomplishments, etc. You can use any one of this information as talking points or you can relate them in your email.

4 Cold Email Strategies that Doubled my Response Rates:

Start with a stronger personalization: I always spend some time researching about my prospect on social media and start my email by congratulating on a recent achievement or job change; talk about a common interest on their profile or quote about their recent social media post. This way, I can grab attention and compel to read further.
Attach a social proof: I shared a link to the particular page that I researched on their website. Thus I can prove that I am not a spammer but genuinely reaching out to offer help.
Explain the value proposition: I addressed their pain points more than quoting about the solution. As a result, I added a screenshot of my software and showed them how I can help their business.
Add a clear call-to-action: Since most of the C-level prospects might be busy with meetings or traveling, they may not be able to commit 15 or 30 minutes straight out of their calendar. I tried asking for a quick call. Say, less than 5 minutes, which is a two-step process.
✔ A quick phone call to brief the solution and fix an appointment.
✔ An elaborate product demonstration.
This way, we can save both the prospect as well as the salesperson’s time and effort.

Remember to A/B test your personalized B2B cold email templates every day to get more cold email response rates and to measure the click-through-rates of your cold emails.

How to write B2B Cold Emails that Get Responses 4

[Note: Use the idea and framework but not the exact email template as it may not produce the same results for you. The spam bot will identify common elements of the template and your email might land in the spam folder]

Fill up the contact form if you want to find a Lookalike audience and send personalized cold emails that get more responses. We will get back to you with a live demo.

How to use LinkedIn Likes to Generate New Sales Leads

February 4, 2020 jeya shri

According to Forbes, “2O2O is the year of personalized marketing.” Email personalization helps you to not just reach inboxes but also humans. Focused lists with personalized email blasts have been shown to generate new sales leads than generic emails sent to an entire list.

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In a customer-centric world, prospects expect to receive more personalized content and experience. Most of the marketers agree to the fact that email personalization helps increase customer engagement, open & click-through rates, and sales revenue. Therefore, it is essential for B2B Businesses to personalize all their marketing and lead generation campaigns to get leads and maximize ROI.

Email Personalization Strategy to Get Leads & Maximize ROI

Typically, email personalization is done using common demographics such as the prospect’s name, title, or company. But if you want to get maximum results, you have got to know the finer details of the prospects such as his/her interests. Based on this information, you can target your audience with similar interests. When you personalize your email – subject line, content based on your prospects’ interests, chances are high for open & click-through rates. Once you find a more similar audience, you will have a list of prospects with similar interests whom you can reach out to. This is called tighter targeting.

Unlike sending a generic email template to thousands of prospects, sending personalized emails to focused lists based on tighter targeting will help you boost lead generation results. You can get more sales leads & increase conversions. It will also help you avoid the spam trap and retain your sender’s reputation.

How to use LinkedIn to Generate New Sales Leads

“LinkedIn LIKES” marketing is one successful lead generation method that I used to generate new sales leads. It helped me to personalize emails effectively, generate targeted sales leads and get great results.

What is ‘LinkedIn LIKES’ Marketing?

LinkedIn is the only professional network that gives precise data about user interests and activities. ‘LinkedIn LIKES’ marketing helps you to find your prospect’s interests and also find prospects with similar interests. If used effectively, it can become a powerful LinkedIn lead generation tool especially for people who use LinkedIn for sales prospecting.

How to leverage LinkedIn likes for B2B lead generation

Engage with your Social Media Audience
If you have a bigger audience base and publish content or post articles to them on a daily basis, you might have a lot of people liking and commenting on your post. It is because they have found your product or services useful. ‘LinkedIn likes’ marketing helps you to convert your LinkedIn Likes into New Sales Leads. You can target selected audience and engage with them.
Target your Prospects where they Flock Together
Follow experts and relevant hash tags that your prospects would be interested in. This helps you to target your prospects more accurately as they are found at one place based on their interests.

LinkedIn Likes marketing helps you to find your prospect’s interest and build a list of prospects with similar interests. (Tighter targeting). You can use this email personalization strategy to get LinkedIn sales leads & maximize results.

In my case, our best customers are people who are on LinkedIn and who use LinkedIn for sales prospecting. On that account, I follow cold email experts on LinkedIn who writes a lot about email marketing, cold email messaging and LinkedIn sales prospecting. I also follow hash tags such as #sales #B2Bsales #emailtraining, etc., Hence, I get all the related posts coming up in my newsfeed.

How to use LinkedIn Likes to Generate New Sales Leads 6

In my recent activity, I chose a LinkedIn post which had 700+ likes. I quickly segmented my list and chose prospects that are the best fit. I reached out to them via cold email.

How to use LinkedIn Likes to Build your Email List?

If you are wondering how I built an email list of people who liked the LinkedIn post and emailed them, read on.

I used LeadGrabber Pro – a LinkedIn lead generation tool that copy pastes the Name, company and Title of the prospects into a grid. The software then appends missing contact information such as business email address and phone numbers. The tool also fills up the LinkedIn ID, Web URL, Company LinkedIn ID, job title level, business email domain, city, region, state, zip, industry and several other details of your prospects. Using these contact details, I was able to reach out to my prospects with a personalized email referring to the post that they liked on LinkedIn.

B2B Cold Email Templates that Got Responses

I used two different cold email templates and did an A/B test. I added a screenshot of the post to one email and sent out the other with only text in it.

How to use LinkedIn Likes to Generate New Sales Leads 7

To my surprise, the text won over the screenshot. But what I loved about this was, I sent out only 233 emails and got 16% response rate. I got a lot of appointments and sales conversions. That’s a pretty great success for my targeted email campaign.

As this works out really nice and got me a good number of targeted LinkedIn sales leads, I would encourage you to try LinkedIn likes marketing as well. You can customize selecting hash tags according to your own industry and your prospects’ interests to make it work for you. Make sure you find out LinkedIn posts that your prospects have liked recently. This will help your prospects to recognize the post that you are talking about in your email.

If you want to convert your LinkedIn likes into new LinkedIn sales leads, fill in the form below and we will get back to you with a live demo.

Why a Backup of your LinkedIn Connections is Important

January 20, 2020 jeya shri

LinkedIn being a professional community and a great platform for networking, B2B lead generation, Job search and recruitment, it is always a good practice to backup your LinkedIn connections since you’ve spent years to build your network and engage with the right audience.

You will have to backup your LinkedIn connections for two reasons.

To connect outside of LinkedIn – It is important to create new business opportunities. So it is essential that you export LinkedIn connections, take them offline to meet in person or connect via phone call or email.

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Unannounced Account Suspension – LinkedIn might delete your account without any prior warning, on any particular contract breach or ignorant violation of LinkedIn professional community policies. When you backup your LinkedIn connections, it not only helps you to have control over your data but also to prevent the risk of losing access to your data.

Therefore, it is always advisable to take a few minutes and backup your LinkedIn connections once in a while if you have a rapidly expanding network.

How to Extract Data from LinkedIn

To extract data from LinkedIn, click the drop-down from your profile icon and click on Settings & Privacy

In the Privacy tab (This tab is displayed by default), click on Getting a copy of your data option.

LinkedIn allows us to download a larger data archive including connections , contacts and your account history or something in particular like Articles, messages and etc..

Select the desired option and click Request archive button.

Your archive will be ready for download in a few minutes. The data is exported as a zip file with many .csv files.

The .csv file of your connections includes the following information:

✔ Name
✔ Title
✔ Company

How your Exported LinkedIn Connections can help your business

Now that you have exported your LinkedIn connections, the next step is to leverage them. Your LinkedIn connections are more likely to respond to your email message since they are familiar with you. Therefore, taking these connections offline to another medium can help you to increase your sales & marketing engagements. Hence, you can kick start your own marketing initiatives.

However, to initiate your marketing activities, you need the email address and phone numbers of your connections in your CRM or email marketing software. But the catch is LinkedIn doesn’t provide the email address & phone number of your connections.

Why a Backup of your LinkedIn Connections is Important 9

Until 2018, when you export your connections, LinkedIn was providing Name, Company, Title & email address of your connections. But now, LinkedIn has stopped providing email addresses. Many people having large number of 1^st degree connections are upset about this. However, you still have access to your contact’s direct personal email/phone when you open their profiles one by one.

Even though you manually extract data from LinkedIn (copy-paste the email of your prospects), you end up only getting their personal email addresses. This is because people sign up with their personal email address as they also see LinkedIn as a job site. But reaching your prospects via a business email address has far more benefits than reaching them via personal email address.

Why work email address is better than personal email?

If you are in B2B business, it is better to get work email addresses than the personal (Gmail/yahoo..) emails because of the following reasons:

✔ Unlike personal email, business email inbox is not often bombarded with unsolicited or promotional emails.

✔ Reaching out to your prospect’s business email address helps you to stay out of spam.

✔ Helps you to maintain good email sender reputation

✔ Increases credibility and makes you look more professional

If you have a list of potential prospects with name and company, we can help you to get their work emails & phone# in no time.