We recommend that you wait at least ten days from the date that the items were mailed out before running any follow up campaigns.
The reason for this is that shipping takes between 1-5 days, and it is then wise to give the prospects a little bit of time to receive the item, as many will be away from the office, working hybrid etc. As you will be mentioning the item that you sent in your follow up campaigns, it won't do any good to phone someone referencing an item if they have not yet seen it.
However, if possible, we also recommend that you start connecting with prospects on LinkedIn prior to the campaigns going out, so that you have a list of contacts who are first degree connections on LinkedIn - allowing you to contact them with ease once the items have been shipped.
Overview
The purpose of this document is to offer some guidelines on how to structure a follow up LinkedIn campaign which references these items, but it's important to remember that every use case is different. You will have your own style and tone of voice, but we just want to give some examples of how we structure our follow up campaigns at Leadable for inspiration.
Some general tips to help with your LinkedIn campaigns:
If it is low volume and you have capacity in your team, it can be done manually (if you don't already have some software in place to help with this). When doing it manually, you will have the ability to send videos and voice notes natively within LinkedIn, and these can be very effective.
If you are looking for entry-level software to make your campaigns more efficient, tools like Expandi are affordable and easy to set up.
Stay within LinkedIn's activity guidelines and ramp up your connect requests / messages gradually. Do not start off by adding 100 contacts per day after not having done anything like this before, start with 20 per day and ramp up incrementally.
Keep your sequence to a maximum of 3-4 messages to avoid annoying prospects.
If possible, run the campaigns from a senior profile. Senior prospects are far more likely to accept a connect request from a senior profile than a junior one. It's not always possible, but if you can avoid running the campaigns from a 'sales' profile, it helps as prospects generally know what they would be getting themselves in for if the accept a connect request from an SDR.
Sending Your Connect Requests
There are two schools of thought when sending connect requests to cold prospects on LinkedIn, and the results tend to be similar with both:
Send the connect request with 'No note'. In many cases, prospects are more likely to accept a request when there is no note attached as it can seem like less of a sales pitch. If you plan to send the connect requests with no note, we recommend that you start to connect with prospects prior to the items being shipped so that you have as many first degree connections as possible when the time comes for the follow up campaign.
Send the connect request with a simple message referencing the item, i.e. 'Did that '{{ITEM}} from the future' catch your attention or bring a smile to your face?' or'Did you receive an unusual {{ITEM}} from the future at your {ADDRESS LINE 1} office recently?'. Needless to say, it is best to wait until after the books have been shipped if you are going to have a note like this in your connect request.
Don't talk about how you can help them in the connect request as it will come across as very salesy and have a negative effect on your acceptance rate.
Message Sequence Template
Message 1
Hey {NAME}, did you receive an unusual book from the future to your {ADDRESS 1} office recently?
If you have already used a message like this in your connect request, don't repeat it here.
Message 2 (3 Working Days Later)
Does this book / magazine look familiar?
{IMAGE URL}
We will provide you with an image URL for all contacts which shows the full design of the item that they have received. Sending this here will generally prompt a conversation.
Message 3 (5 Working Days Later)
One last roll of the dice from me here {NAME}…
We sent you this book because outbound on the traditional channels is no longer as effective as it once was - I'm not sure if you have noticed a slow down on this front at {COMPANY} over the past year.
If so, we can help you to get the attention of hard-to-reach prospects by creating wow experiences via creative direct mail campaigns.
Cost is reasonable. No long term contracts. You’ll see ROI on the first campaign.
Open to hearing more?
This is similar to the first email of your email sequence - we recommend that you use it to deliver your value proposition.
Advanced Tactics
Native LinkedIn Videos
This is time consuming as it has to be done manually, but it can be extremely effective. These videos can only recorded within the LinkedIn mobile app, but the experience for the prospect is much smoother than if you send a URL to a Loom / Vidyard video. The reason for this is because they can view the video natively within LinkedIn.
For the script with these videos, it helps (but is more time consuming) to do some research and personalize your message, but we recommend that you keep it templated and mention that you were the one who sent the book / magazine and that you'd love to explain why.
Native LinkedIn Voice Notes
Similar to the above, these have to be done manually, but the experience for the prospect is a good one as they can listen to the voice note natively within LinkedIn.
Our recommendation is that if you are going to do this, doing the videos is likely to take the same amount of time and have a greater impact. There are some cases where people can't or don't want to record videos, however, and the voice notes can act as a good substitute.