If you’re an SDR or founder of a company and your lead generation metrics aren’t great, the chances are:
A.) Your prospect list isn’t ULTRA- Refined
B.) You are not personalizing your outreach messages enough
For example…
Which message would you rather engage with…
Message A
Or
Message B
Probably message B.
Why?
Because it’s hyper-personalized, not salesy and it’s to the point. Notice that the personalization goes way beyond mentioning the prospect’s first and company name.
In order to get your personalized messages right, you have to actually research each person on your list and find one thing about them to mention in your cold outreach message.
Yes, it sounds like a ton of work, but if you want 1 guaranteed sales lead per day, you have to follow the outreach strategy below.
(Salesbread has generated close to 7000 qualified sales leads in the last 24 months for our clients. If you would like a 39% positive reply rate on Linkedin, try our personalization techniques. Or if you would also like to perfect your list-building skills, read this article: How to Build a Sales Prospecting List in Any Industry )
Why use personalization on Linkedin?
There are countless studies and stats that show how important personalization is for winning over business.
Have a look at some statistics below:
- 84% of consumers say being treated like a person and not a number, is very important to winning their business. – Salesforce
- 73% of consumers say a business has never communicated with them online in a way that felt too personalized or invasive. – Accenture
- Consumers are 2.1x more likely to view personalized offers as important versus unimportant. – Salesforce
- 59% of consumers say personalized engagement based on past interactions is very important to winning their business. – Salesforce
- 70% of consumers say a company’s understanding of their personal needs influences their loyalty. – Salesforce
- 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences. – Epsilon
- 90% of U.S. consumers find marketing personalization very or somewhat appealing. – Statist
- 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalized messaging. – SmarterHQ
But besides this…
Personalization creates a pattern interrupt.
If you look at your Linkedin inbox, you probably have hundreds of messages that all seem salesy or automated. How often do you read these messages, or just ignore them?
Most of the time, people ignore these kinds of messages.
Why?
Because many of us have “blinkers” on when it comes to sales pitches.
Unless it’s something we really need, we are going to ignore anything that seems remotely like a sales pitch.
Even if you’re selling something that the prospect needs, they will still ignore your message if the first few lines seem like a pitch.
This is where personalization creates a “pattern interrupt.” It interrupts people from their usual behaviors. So if a Linkedin user normally ignores sales type messages, a hyper personalized message that’s written specifically for them will capture their attention.
Here’s an example:
When you write a connection request that’s something along these lines:
“Hey Michaela, loved your article on “How to use Chat GPT for sales.” Especially the part on XYZ. Would really like to connect with you and pick your brain further on this topic.”
The chances of a prospect connecting and engaging with you will be so much higher.
Here are some replies we have received from prospects because of our personalized approach.
(Note: At Salesbread we share “the reply of the week”. Here are some recent ones.)
We have hundreds of replies like these from prospects where they agree to booked sales calls with our clients.
Because of our obsession with personalization we are able to get these kinds of high quality sales leads for our clients.
Here’s our Linkedin outreach message strategy
When it comes to any form of personalized messaging; whether it’s a connection request, a follow-up or even an Inmail… (Note: You can use this for cold email outreach tool)
You can personalize any message if you follow this formula.
Compliment
Commonalities
Questions
Basically this means that you should research each prospect on your list and write a customized intro sentence that either uses a compliment, mentions a commonality, or asks a question… SPECIFICALLY related to that prospect.
This does take time and is a lot of work.
So you could either do this yourself, or hire someone to do it for you.
Salesbread has 2 dedicated personalization experts on our time who do just this. They research each prospect on our target audience list and write customized cold messages for each person.
Here’s an example.
Let’s look at the prospects’ Linkedin profile below…
Compliment
As you can see she is an event stylist. She mentions how she recently graduated from university and has an honors degree in dance research.
This is how you would write a personalized connection request for her.
“Jaime, congrats on your recent graduation. It must have been incredibly interesting performing internationally. I would love to connect with you and pick your brain on choreography for an app that we are developing. Is Li the best place to chat?”
Commonalities
Commonalities mean finding something that you have in common with the prospect. It could be being part of the same Linkedin groups, enjoying the same pastime activities like hiking, or even knowing the same mutual connections on social media platforms.
Here is an example of how you would use commonalities in a Linkedin connection request:
Jacob, I’m also in the world of content marketing and totally agree with you that writers shouldn’t use automation to write blog posts. It’s just not the same. Can we connect here? Would be great to hear how you handle (pain point?)… For reference, our company does XYZ.
Questions
When it comes to using a question, think of pain points the prospect might be experiencing. Perhaps your company solves their bleeding neck problem…
Or you could ask them something else that’s related to business, such as “what’s their secret to success?”If they were recently promoted, for example.
Below is an example of how you can do this:
“James, I saw your Linkedin post about XYY. It was really insightful, just curious about how your company deals with XYZ? Do you mind connecting here? Would love to hear your thoughts.
PS: Just signed up for your webinar.”
If you’re interested in finding some more personalized connection request templates that will increase your acceptance rate – This article shares 60 outreach templates.
Once you have sent out your personalized connection request or InMail, you can then follow-up.
Add MORE personalization and follow-up 3 to 6 times every 3 days
If a prospect doesn’t reply to your first message, you will have to send a follow up message 3 days later.
Add more personalization, for example you could mention that you know they are super busy, and add an easy way for your prospect to reply.
Here’s an example:
Noice how this follow up is 90% about the prospect. All the questions are directed at the person and even the “P.S” at the end has an excellent value proposition. Who wouldn’t want new b2b sales leads?
Here’s another follow up example:
Hi {firstName}, {custom Intro/icebreaker.}
After reading that you’re working on {specific project responsibility} for {type_of_client}, I’d like to find out how you’re dealing with {current pain point}.
My company is working on new ways to handle {unique benefit} for {customer_type}, but I’m curious to hear what’s been working for {Company} lately if you’re open to exchanging ideas around {pain point}. How’s Thursday or Friday looking to get in touch?
PRO TIP
We suggest following up every 3 days because this doesn’t annoy the prospect. But we have also found the Fibonacci sequence quite successful when sending personalized follow ups.
You start off by sending your messages quite close together. You would send a message on day 1, day 2, day 3, and then on day 5, 8, 13, and so on.
This helps in the sense that initially, your outreach messages are frequent, but then they slow down over time.
You will have the benefit of expanding your campaign over time so that you can reach your prospect at the right time for them.
Also….
We suggest adding 1 value prop of your business in each new follow up.
Remember to cut the sleazy sales pitches, but also be mindful of giving enough info about your business for context.
If a person agrees to a call and you hop into a sales pitch, it’s going to be a pretty awkward call.
The Takeaway
Personalization takes time and research. Sending the same copy paste sales pitch via a Linkedin automation tool isn’t going to get you a killer positive reply rate.
If you’re looking to partner up with a lead generation agency that obsesses about list building and personalization, reach out to us.
Still not convinced?
Check out some of our case studies. (See how we got 183 IT leads for a SaaS company in 130 business days or how we generated 118 fintech leads in 8 weeks..)
We also offer free 15 minute strategy calls to all those interested 🙂 Hit us up below.