Marketers’ Showdown: LinkedIN Automation VS Cold Emails
Outbound sales are always the favourite B2B sales approach. Companies and sales reps continue to rely on these tactics, regardless of the advances in technology. Salespeople use outbound strategies online using social media platforms or when they reach out to large groups of contacts using automated messaging tools and group emails.
Even if email has almost become a mainstream digital sales channel, for marketers it still remains to be one of the most effective ways to reach their customers. With 24/7 availability and completely transparent opt-in mechanics, email campaigns remain a favourite sales channel among marketers.
You just need to draft the email, select and segment your target audience, then press that send button! Email marketing is a great channel for driving qualified leads. When done correctly, it’s one of the most effective channels around. Until everybody started doing it.
As email use became widespread, companies started using it as a marketing channel, which resulted in an influx of spam. It’s no secret that we live in an email-driven world, but it’s impossible to deny just how much our daily lives are affected by these messages. The average American now receives 41 emails per day, and each individual sends a whopping 126 emails EVERY DAY. Additionally, with 4 billion people using email every day, roughly 293 billion emails are sent each day. Email marketers are facing increasing competition for the inbox. In previous years, there were few other options. But as time has passed, that has all changed. Now, it seems every other day a new company is launching a product in this space, which has created increased competition for marketers who try to reach customers through email.
The Internet has become an essential part of everyday life. The average person spends approximately 6 hours and 42 minutes on the Internet each day. But they don’t spend those 6 hours staring at their inbox.
Among all different channels to engage people online. You can find professional opportunities by engaging with others on LinkedIN, which is one of the most widely used social media platforms for businesses and professionals. LinkedIN has nearly 260 million active users, so businesses can reach a broad audience on the platform.
Here are the top 3 reasons why you should include LinkedIN in your email automation marketing campaign:
Your InMail campaign gets a greater response than any other form of marketing for your company.
If you are like most people, you receive tens of emails per day. This can be both an enjoyable and annoying experience. Many of these emails are spam messages or people trying to sell you something. Yet as a potential customer, there are instances when you come across an email from a person or company that is unexpected. It may even feel intrusive, and this shows on the low open rates.
According to some industry surveys, the open rate for emails ranges from an average 14% to 23%. In order to get to the 20% range, you will need to have a highly targeted campaign, this takes a lot of work in drafting the email list.
With InMail, you can set your audience based on anything from geography to the profession. And with over 50% open rates, you don’t even have to build an email list! With LinkedIN, you can target the leads that you are looking for, right from within the platform. Send messages and see response rates go up as high as 39%! With email response rates hovering at around 1%, it’s easy to see why marketing automation has taken over the business world.
Don’t need to worry about getting people’s consent to send them InMail
Unsolicited emails are illegal in most countries and can carry heavy fines. The EU has strict regulations about sending a marketing email to citizens of the Union so does other countries.
You need to make sure you have their consent before you email them. A form on your landing page is a great way to get people to sign up and confirm they are interested in the information you want to send them.
It’s necessary to design and execute the funnel before you can send the emails. This can be time and cost consuming, while using LinkedIN you don’t need to worry about all these. You just need to draft the message and set the criteria for the target people. Simple as that.
More human touch in connecting with LinkedIN
Some people are hesitant to give out their email addresses unless they know you. When they give you their email address, they are trusting you and opening up the possibility of being bombarded with unwanted emails in the future. They also not expecting to receive those cold emails after they provide their email address via a landing page.
On LinkedIN, people are generally more open to receiving messages from people they don’t know. Why? Because they are at least somewhat expecting to receive messages from strangers, and as such don’t take them as seriously or carefully examine the message. By messaging them in a more light-hearted manner, you can subtly slip in your request without them being aware of it until afterwards. Another advantage of a LinkedIN profile is that it helps you to personalize cold InMails for better results.
