I feel your frustration! You send email and LinkedIn messages to prospects and they don’t always respond. Even when your client told the prospect you’d be reaching out… crickets!
Your prospects are bombarded with email and LinkedIn messages every day. Their brains are constantly scanning and reacting… “Relevant? Irrelevant? Relevant? Irrelevant? If you don’t strike them as 100 percent relevant to them at that moment, you’ll be ignored. And there’s nothing worse than being ignored – irrelevant.
Copy-Paste. Copy-Paste. Copy-Paste.
Have you ever received an email or LinkedIn message where it was pretty obvious someone had just copied and pasted a generic message? Of course, you have. You can spot these things a mile away. The sender may think they’re customizing the message by using your first name at the beginning, but you’re not fooled.
What’s the answer? How do you get your electronic messages to get noticed, opened, and responded to?
Take 1-2 minutes to do just a bit of research – that will help you make your subject line and message as relevant and personalized as possible.
Personalize. Personalize. Personalize.
The key to getting your LinkedIn and email messages noticed and answered is personalization. Creating personalized messages requires a little bit of research.
Here are the two types of research you can do.
1. Warm Research is possible when you’re being referred by a client or other source. This is the best kind of research, in that you learn things you can’t learn in other ways. You can learn what’s important to your prospect. You can learn about their personality and other characteristics that will help you create a more personalized contact strategy.
2. Cold Research can also be quite helpful. The three most efficient places to go to learn about your prospect are their company website (if they are employed), their LinkedIn profile, and their Facebook profile. The quality of information you obtain from these places will depend on what they have posted and in the case of Facebook, what settings they set for access. Since their website and LinkedIn profiles are directed at a business audience, most of what you learn will be business oriented. On the other hand, their Facebook page is more likely a source of some personal information.
WARNING – Do not try to Friend prospective clients (or brand-new clients, for that matter) on Facebook. Most people are very selective with whom they connect with on Facebook. Personally, I keep my Facebook Friends limited to people I really know. I find it annoying when people I don’t know attempt to Friend me. If you have a more open position with whom you are connected on Facebook, don’t impose your position on them. Wait until you’ve reached a level of business friendship.
5 Simple Ways to Make Your Linkedin Messages and Emails More Relevant & Personalized
1. If messaging a referral prospect, use the referral source’s name in both the subject line and at the front of the first sentence. If the referral source gave you some fun information about the prospect, consider using that in some way as well.
2. Don’t forget to ask your referral source, “What’s the most important thing going on in their life (or business) at the moment?” Try to refer to that in the subject line and/or the first paragraph.
3. Take a hard look at the prospect’s LinkedIn profile. You can refer to such things as where they went to school, a recent post, or something interesting that you observed in their profile.
4. Look at their company website. What stands out to you as interesting or compelling to which you can refer in your message?
5. See if you can find their Facebook page (personal or business). Can you refer to something you both have in common such as their favorite sports team, pet, or obvious special interest?
Don’t make the copy-paste mistake. And don’t make the generic message mistake. What is a new client worth to you? It pays to slow down. In today’s world of marketing-message overload, your email and LinkedIn messages are much more likely to produce the results you want when you send relevant and personalized messages.