Digital Prospecting: Boost Your Lead Generation!

Today, we’re recapping the webinar on the secrets of multi-channel strategy for your digital prospecting in this article. Ready? 🚀

It’s Denis Cohen, founder of Dropcontact, who explains to us how to optimize our prospecting thanks to multichannel. On the program of this live:

• • Advanced targeting.
  • Cold Email: over 70% open rate.

• Getting responses to LinkedIn messages.
• Copywriting: a must.

If you want all the details, feel free to watch the webinar below: 👇

 

What is Digital Prospecting in Marketing?

When going to prospect for new customers, you have to be very careful ⚡ that it is not considered spam. No one likes to be spammed (oh yeah, no one) and you won’t get the right results if you start doing this bad practice.

Advanced audience targeting tactics

We keep repeating ourselves over and over again, but the basics are all about knowing your audience. It’s imperative to identify 🎯 who you’re going to target and whether those targets match your audience.

But that’s not all, the game 🎲 is not over, because even when you think you have your prospecting base, you have to think about cleaning up your prospecting lists to have an optimal base. If every other person on a list is not part of your audience, you’re going to decrease your performance rate.

Let’s talk about targeting in more detail and in particular, informational targeting.

 

Informational retargeting

On LinkedIn, a user will fill in static, highly qualitative information ❤️🔥 about themselves such as:

• His title.
• The size of his company.
• His region.

This contact information, as you might guess, is also used by other people who will be prospecting.

Let’s say we’re going to solicit CEOs of companies with 50 to 200 people, these are already highly solicited targets 😥 on LinkedIn because everyone is doing the same thing.

On the other hand, where it gets interesting is doing behavioral targeting. A user who interacts with LinkedIn is going to emit interest marks on topics or issues.

So we’re going to be able to reuse his or her interest marks 🤗 to do more qualitative targeting and reach people that you hadn’t potentially identified. You identify them more by a need and not by a factual data in your prospecting phase.

 

How do you do online digital prospecting? Definition

Traditional targeting is segmented, so I will target people according to their profiles. Event-based targeting or behavioral targeting allows you to prospect based on comments, likes ❤️ or even events.

It is important to keep in mind that when doing behavioral targeting, there must be people who create content posts on its sector but who also engage on it.

It’s not necessarily a base where we’re going to have high volumes but, we know that this person has this need and, therefore, we are likely to provide the solution.

The benefit of this technique is that often, you’re going to have people who are not identifiable on Sales Navigator (because a user will have put a title like “Helping Marketers Grow Their Business”) and you’ll definitely miss out 🤷 on a potential customer.

Where it gets interesting is that this person is more available to digital prospecting strategy since they are less solicited by your competitors.

 

Prospecting campaign by event

It couldn’t be easier. To find a post, here are the steps to follow:

• Connect on LinkedIn.
• Type the keyword related to your field.
• Click on “Posts”.

• Click on the post you are interested in and check the comments and relevance of the post.
• Retrieve the post link.
• Copy it into your automation tool.
• Start your campaign.

The great thing about being able to get new leads based on their comments is that you can run campaigns over time. In fact, depending on the tools ⚒️ you use, the new comments will also add to your campaign if of course you have set up your campaign properly.

 

Digital prospecting: Normal search VS Sales Navigator search

LinkedIn’s free option gives you access to a number of search filters, but this is still limited.

On normal search, there is really some resegmentation work 📏 to do. It’s not impossible to do, far from it, but you’re going to have to clean up your lists and make sure you’re targeting the right people in your audience.

The tool, Sales Navigator, offers the possibility to have filters that are much more precise for your b2b prospecting. Indeed, you will be able to choose by title. But when you scroll through the results you got, you will realize that there are only keywords in the titles that do not match your search 🔍.

In this case, you will have the opportunity to exclude these keywords that do not match your audience in any way.

This will improve the consistent stream of quality of your list. In any case, when you do digital prospecting, it is imperative to do a good targeting. And that requires thought, iteration and testing. So don’t hesitate to use A/B testing in your prospecting efforts to get THE prospect, the one who will buy 💰 your product or service.

 

Example of digital prospecting: Cold Email

What’s interesting 🤔 about digital prospecting, and especially about using automation tools, is that it’s multi-channel.

 

Indeed, contacting someone only on LinkedIn, or contacting someone on Cold Email, divides by two the possibilities.

What we want is to contact the same person in a different way and multiply the possibilities of conversion.

In the end, what is Cold Email? It is a technique that is very different from e-mailing. It is different on the fact that you will not send 10,000 emails per day, you will not do mass mailing, there is no HTML, it is not newsletter ✉️. Cold Email is a sales type email, its text must be punchy and must really get into the conversation like what you do when you are in sales.

The advantage compared to the salespeople who send emails, is the fact that you can automate a number of things:

• Sending the same hyper-personalized message 💖 and tailored to more people (once you’ve made the starting template, you’re going to be able to send it to 100 people without it taking any more time).
• If the person has not opened the email (in a sequence), we will be able to send after X days a second email, then a third one after X days.

By sending several emails to the same person, we will then increase the probability that they will open this email.

 

Responding to the Cold Email problem

When we implement this practice, we must do it intelligently 🧠 and subtly. You don’t want to send an email 10 times in two days since, of course, that saturates. In fact, it happens exactly the same way as when you send a message on LinkedIn. You have to be lighthearted, you have to understand in the relationship that:

• First we get in touch with a person.
• Then we evaluate their level of interest (we arouse their curiosity).

In the cold email, there is one part that is extremely important, and that is the configuration of its domain.

 

When you have an email domain, it is often badly configured. Denis Cohen explains that, on the market, when you send an email with your email address and your domain, there are a certain number of criteria taken into consideration by the mailboxes receiving your message:

• The notoriety 💎 of your domain.
• If your domain makes a lot of spam.
• The configuration of the domain (if it is not correctly done, the mail will be rejected).

 

Deliverability on DropContact:

In order to maximize deliverability, it is imperative to implement these three things:

• SPF
• DKIM
• DMARC

If you don’t put them in place, your email signature is not protected 🔒. It does not certify that it was your domain that sent an email. When you send an email with these three elements set up, it means you are sending an email with a certified and validated domain.

This is an important step on the deliverability of your domain. When you send unsolicited emails, often you will set up a tracking element to see what percentage of your emails are opened. This is extremely important in the beginning to see if your email was received, if the email subject line 📧 is working and people are opening your email.

Another thing you probably track is the number of clicks on a link. Again, in order to know this percentage, everything is connected to a server and it is the server that will give you the information.

However, because of email filtering solutions, Denis Cohen does not recommend tracking clicks on links because it lowers deliverability rates.

Ok, you have managed to determine the object that works well and the message that pleases. So you have a good Cold Email open rate (we consider a good ✅ open rate, a rate that is above 60 to 70%).

Once you reach this percentage, you will remove the tracking because you have reached a goal. There’s no point in looking at the stats to see if you’ve gained 1% every day.

 

Digital prospecting: The message on LinkedIn

There’s a big debate on LinkedIn about invitation notes. What we’ve found is that there are 10% more acceptances 👀 on an invitation without a note. But this is a statistical reality because there are things to consider. Indeed, if you don’t have good segmentation and copywriting…. There is a good chance that your invitation will be declined.

On the other hand, if you have an excellent segmentation and you manage to arouse curiosity, it is better to put a note. It will really depend on the good practices you put in place. In both cases, don’t hesitate to test both.

What you should know is that if you have a good approach, you should have a better acceptance rate.

Sometimes, it happens that KPIs can ❌ fool you. You’re going to look at the number of acceptances, you’re going to see your social media network grow but you have to ask yourself if you’re converting in that acceptance rate. The goal is not to have a big community but to engage in conversation and exchange. It’s the engagement that counts.

 

What are the tools of digital prospecting?

Of course this webinar, is a live about the Dropcontact x Waalaxy tools, so we also have to ask ourselves about the use of the sequences.

On LinkedIn, we know that 99% of responses are made in the first 3 messages 📥. Beyond that, we start to be in spam. So it’s in your best interest to capture attention in the first few messages so as not to bore the user.

 

Digital prospecting: Best practices for prospecting on LinkedIn

Some of you know it 💡, LinkedIn has put restrictions in place because of bad usage practices. This is to mitigate the mass sending of low-quality, fairly unsegmented invitations. Today, the limit is 100 per week.

On Waalaxy, we can get around this limit, allowing you to prospect up to 250 profiles. This can be done by sending messages to people who are in other groups than you, without being in a relationship 🤝 with them.

What you should not forget is that you when you send a message, you get twice the response rate when it is less than 300 characters as opposed to a message of more than 1000 characters.

So we come back to the basics and curiosity, the shorter it is, the more you are on the open question, the more you are on the interest for the prospect and the more you have a qualitative response rate. So that’s why we tell you that copywriting is extremely 💣 important.

 

Copywriting is part of the steps in digital prospecting

What you should not forget is that the person you are sending your message to is a human. So there is a lot of thinking to do on this. Put yourself in his place and make a work of empathy to integrate into your digital prospecting:

• Don’t introduce yourself, your first and last name are written on your profile. You will lose the first 5 seconds of attention ✋ of your prospect.
• Don’t look for templates, that’s nonsense. And it doesn’t work because you are selling different products or services than others and it will also depend on who you are. Your prospect will receive the same messages over and over again and you want to stand out. Take inspiration from them but don’t copy and paste.
• Your client or prospect should never suspect that you are using automation software.
• Think that your target 🎯 is also the target of other people, so you need to differentiate yourself.

 

Conclusion: Make a good digital prospecting plan

During this article, in order to improve your digital prospecting, Denis Cohen and Toinon Georget have given us their various tips to boost your lead generation:

• Do good targeting, advanced targeting whether it’s in your lead titles by adding and/or excluding elements. Don’t hesitate to do behavioral targeting 🎯 to reach people you might not have been able to or knew how to identify.
• Initially, use LinkedIn’s free search to build your lead sheet. Then feel free to use Sales Navigator to benefit from more precise targeting options (you can exclude elements you have no use for).
• To reach your prospects, a multi-channel use is essential. We will therefore use Cold Email first so that your prospects recognize you when you send them a message on LinkedIn.
• Set up your domain so that it does not fall into spam (i.e. SPF, DKIM and DMARC).
• When you go to send a message on LinkedIn for your digital prospecting, be careful how you write it. Put yourself in your target‘s shoes. Your copywriting needs to spark the curiosity 🥰 of your prospect.

 

FAQ of the article : Why do B2b digital prospecting?

We are coming to the end of this Dropcontact X Waalaxy live and some elements should not escape you. Let’s do a little recap.

Know your audience:

There’s no secret. To be able to prospect well and win new customer-prospects, you need to make buyer personas, the portrait of the ideal customer, and use very specific targeting criteria so that your message can generate interest 🏆 in your future customer. You can absolutely use LinkedIn in its free version to start by using as criteria:

• His title.
• His company.
• Its industry.
• Its location.

If you want to be specific and really reach your core target audience, don’t hesitate to use Sales Navigator which will allow you to exclude certain results that don’t match your expectations. You can also find new customers through behavioral targeting. By this we mean people who have liked 💖 or commented on a post for example.

 

Cold Email Strategy in Digital Prospecting:

It is often mistakenly thought that email is outdated. Rest assured, quite the contrary. In fact to reach your targets, it is even an essential first step in your overall prospecting strategy. Of course, you have to think 💡 :

• To the content of your email.
• Its subject line.
• The configuration of your domain.

You also have to think deliverability, that’s why you configure your domain: so that it is validated 🔐 and certified. Of course, you will rely on the opening rate in the early days but when you reach 60%, it is advisable to stop tracking this KPI.

 

What are the two types of multi-channel Btob prospecting?

To facilitate your commercial prospection, you must be everywhere. Indeed, you will have a greater chance to see your engagement rate increase if you use several acquisition channels.

Don’t forget that marketing automation tools are your allies. Use them wisely and you’ll see your results soar 📈.

Denis Cohen advises to do Cold Email first, since the opening rates are high. The person will open their email, you will know it and just after that you can send them a LinkedIn invitation with a message. These methods have several advantages:

• The person has already seen your email, so they have seen your company. When they receive the LinkedIn invitation, you get “Momentum” and you will get a higher engagement rate.
• When we get a prospecting email, if I’m not ready to make a purchase but I have a question, I can directly do it through the LinkedIn messaging.

Keep in mind that multi-channel should not be used to compensate for a campaign that does not work in mono channel, that’s where you get into spam. So use your digital tools with all the reflection 🧠 you may have done upstream.

 

Don’t underestimate the power of copywriting:

The most important thing in digital prospecting is to send the right message to the right person at the right time.

However, it doesn’t stop there, you have to keep in mind that your message must arouse the interest of your target within the first few seconds of your message.

Yes, this is the art of copywriting: writing a powerful message 🤯 to promote yourself, a message that will make your prospect want to go further with you.

 

When you send a message on LinkedIn, it is important to focus on your target rather than talking about yourself. Indeed, all your information is present on your profile, so you don’t need to repeat it to your prospect, he can read.

Don’t try to copy what you see on the internet either. Templates don’t work either. Do some thinking beforehand, look for originality and find your style, the one that corresponds to your audience.

Also, when you go to make posts, having a good copywriting is essential to bring you visibility, this is what we call inbound marketing: make content 💡 so that others can find you.

 

Q&A of the Live: Digital Prospecting Marketing

Is there any chance that Dropcontact can scrape LinkedIn contact numbers?

Not at all, on cell phones, we will never do it because mobile numbers are personal data and therefore regulations are strong. There are too many problems for us to collect this data.

What does Dropcontact do?

Dropcontact is the brick that will allow us to have the personal email addresses of people. We will have the name, first name which will be corrected, in the right order, to have the LinkedIn profile of people, to have a lot of information on the company.

How to identify the posts of influencers?

It’s a lot of work. You have the search for posts by looking for topics on LinkedIn but that doesn’t work so well if you don’t spend some time on it.

Is there a template for the post on LinkedIn?

No, you really need to have your own style, look for originality and adapt to your target. Ask yourself the right questions about what you like on LinkedIn, what makes you want to respond and apply it in your messages.

How to target companies raising funds?

This is often a very interesting target. There are sites that reference fundraisers, you’ll have to do a little bit of scrapping and a little bit of enrichment. By doing that, you then graft them to your LinkedIn search.

How do you set up an automated cold email?

The first thing is not to think about an automated cold email. You have to plan your messages, your objects and test them by hand. You have to put few people at the beginning and see how it reacts. Take a step back from your messages.

What are the three points to review in order to properly schedule your email?

It’s SPF, DKIM and DMARC on the technical side.

Can Waalaxy and Dropcontact sync with Hubspot?

Dropcontact integrates with Hubspot. Today there is already integration with Salesforces and Pipedrive. You enter your name, first name and company in the CRM and everything is filled in automatically. We detect the duplicates, we merge them automatically and we recover the emails of the company to enrich and we add the position of the people who work in this company.

Can we include cold calls as a last point of contact?

First of all, you need to have the phone number and there is a problem of cost and the origin of the phone number. We spend a lot of time trying to reach the person and we will contact people who will certainly not be interested at the moment and there will be a sales force to make an appointment. The return on investment doesn’t seem to be relevant at all for cold calling.

 

It is by taking note of the digital prospecting techniques that we have put in this article and by associating it with the right prospecting tool that you will succeed in boosting your sales. Now you know everything about multichannel acquisition that will help you boost your digital prospecting. Have fun 🚀!