LinkedIn Automation for Digital Agencies

Digital Agencies face a super-competitive landscape. Every 22-year-old with Yorkshire Terrier and an Instagram account is out there offering a social media management service and almost every techie is quietly offering SEO on the side.

Sure, good strategy and great design can separate the poor agencies from the great. Surely that is not enough advantage? The secret lies in offering LinkedIn Automation and then combing it with email. Most young agencies simply don’t understand LinkedIn, which is why they cannot and do not offer this service.

The results are off the charts. You clients will enjoy open rates of 35%-45% and click through rates of 10%-18%. Mind blowing stuff. Amazingly, 75% of all our sales come from this explosive pairing. The balance come from referrals. This is the only form of marketing we use.

LinkedIn Automation requires a careful mix of software and content writing services, making it the perfect offering for a progressive digital agency.

Let’s take a look at LinkedIn Automation in action using JESS, our secret weapon:

1. Every day JESS logs into a personal LinkedIn profile and searches for a specific target market.
2. JESS invites those people to connect, sending them a personalised invitation.
3. She checks periodically to see which invitations have been accepted. If so, she sends them another personalised LinkedIn message, this one a little longer.
4. Key data (name, Email address, company name, etc.) is extracted from LinkedIn.
5. Now email takes over. An “Email Journey” takes the client on a progressive nurturing process.
6. From time to time a “bulk message” is sent to all LinkedIn connections for added spice.

The trick is to never sell a product or service – it’s about interesting, insightful content. As an agency, you provide your client with this content, the design and the strategy while we provide the software... and we handhold you every step of the set-up, testing and measurement process. Right, let’s break down the requirements that make up a great LinkedIn and Email automation campaign:

Content

Without great content you are doomed. Once you have produced great quality work for your client, delivery via LinkedIn and Email should be automated. The goal here is to create a kind of “marketing machine” which gets fed daily with fresh new targeted connections from LinkedIn. Here is the recipe for the content you would need to produce for your client (or we can provide you with this service if you wish):

1. A short, personal message that goes alongside each invitation
2. A longer (one paragraph) message sent via LinkedIn after the invitation has been accepted
3. An Email series with 5-12 episodes
4. A feature article or lengthy blog post that establishes the profile owner as a credible industry expert
5. Some collateral on the web: a case study or two, a video, a product demo, more blogs, articles or PR. These are included as links in the various Emails to get your audience engaging.

Strategy

If you are planning to spam your LinkedIn connections with a hard sales pitch then please stop reading this! If you want this process to work, you need a 6 -12 month strategy that involves the profile owner being seen as a credible industry expert.  Spamming is reserved for those desperate deviants who seek to ruin the world by aggressively flogging virility supplements and other noxious narcotics… it doesn’t do well for building the integrity of a brand.

You also need to know exactly who you are targeting and what your “niche” is. Generic content does not work well on LinkedIn so try to write content that suits a specific target market. JESS is going to run a search and find exactly the people you are looking to reach so try to be relevant. “Construction, CEO, London” would be the ideal search term, for example. You can always adjust it later.

Graphic Design

Our motto is “prettiness is for the web, not Email.” You want to get people clicking away from Email onto something interesting or cool or experiential. We recommend short text based Emails with 1-2 images max. You don’t want spam filters blocking you so avoid those awful MailChimp templates. Design a very simple look-and-feel that is personal and compelling. Remember, LinkedIn is human-to-human so sending an Email from a brand instead of the profile owner is not a clever move.

While we’re on the subject, ensure that you configure your email sending sub-domain correctly. Never ever send mail from something like this: on behalf of jon@clueless.com…

If you don’t know how to fix this, talk to us at Majestic3.com and we will happily send your Email and perform the LinkedIn Automation service using a best practice approach.

Aside from Email creation, you should also design the article, blog posts, videos, etc. into slick landing pages. Landing pages are powerful ways to convert traffic and a sizable number of those LinkedIn contacts are going to view them. Those pages are going to see plenty of high quality traffic so make them count.

Measurement

The best way to measure LinkedIn Automation results is to score contacts based on engagement. This is why JESS stands for  Journey Engagements Scoring System. Each time a LinkedIn contact engages with your content, JESS tracks it. For example: they may get 10 points for visiting your LinkedIn profile and two points for each Email they open. You end up with heatmap which I like to call a gnocchi pot because it’s just like cooking those delicious Italian potato balls. Firstly, they all sink to the bottom then, as they ‘cook’ they rise to the surface. The higher they rise, the hotter the contacts become, like this:

If your agency wishes to resell our LinkedIn Automation and Email service to your clients, please Email scott@majesticway.net