An Ultimate Guide to Using LinkedIn for Email Marketing

Why use LinkedIn for email marketing?

The idea may not seem obvious at first but think about it. Depending on your niche, you may want to market your business to relevant professionals — especially if you operate in B2B. And where can you find real people from real companies if not on LinkedIn?

Of course, there are other methods out there with the possibility of getting larger numbers of potential prospects. But by using LinkedIn email marketing, you’ll get something better — quality leads within your niche that are much easier to convert. Here’s why you should consider trying LinkedIn to reach your email goals:

• It’s cheaper. If you wonder how much email lists cost when it comes to business clients, it’s a lot. You may not yet have such a budget for your email marketing if you are just starting. Meanwhile, LinkedIn may cut you some costs on lead generation.
• It gives more intel. Learning specific information about your prospects from their LinkedIn profiles gives you a better chance at setting up email segmentation. You can easily break up your base by niche, company, job position, and so on and use it to your advantage.
• You build up meaningful and personal relationships with your contacts, rather than just reaching out into the unknown. Yes, it requires more time and effort, but personalized communications with real industry professionals make it easier to convert them into clients, followers, or even partners.

So, to know how to build an email list with the help of LinkedIn, you can try out this guide and make use of what the platform has to offer.

How LinkedIn works

LinkedIn has two main instruments of engagement — feed and direct messaging. 

They both work just like in any other social media. When you post your content, it appears alongside other posts in the timeline. You can use it to find prospects among the general LinkedIn audience. After that, you can invite them to form a personal connection, which is more direct compared to other forms of lead generation.

Note: You still need to comply with all the necessary regulations, like with any regular email campaign. So, make sure your prospects willingly subscribe to your emails and consent to process their personal information.

Creating new posts and using them as lead magnets

Posting on LinkedIn is a whole culture with rituals and traditions. Sure, there are many memes about people overusing the business lingo or making up stories to exaggerate their importance. Still, we must admit that even the most unhinged LinkedIn posts do what they were supposed to — grab attention and make good use of the algorithm.

But don’t just go sharing your kettle chicken recipes with your network. Virality is good, but to turn your profile into a lead-generation machine, you’ll need to combine creativity with some business thinking ahead.

Here are some tips on how to craft an effective LinkedIn post that will turn viewers into leads:

• Pick a topic that is directly tied to your area of business — you should be able to show expertise and give a unique point of view.
• Address your audience’s pain points and reflect them in the beginning — you can start with a direct question, like “Are your emails not bringing you any leads?”.
• Then, outline what you are offering — a PDF file with instructions, a checklist, a video, and so on.
• Tell the reader how they can obtain the resources you describe in the post — usually one has to comment and subscribe, but you can add more steps depending on the value of your offer.

The goal is to create an engaging post that works as a funnel for your further interaction with its readers. You can give your audience a taster in the form of a “Top 10 Tips & Tricks” article, and then offer in-depth and exclusive resources if they subscribe to your newsletter.

Using your LinkedIn connections

Before anything else, LinkedIn is a powerful networking tool. Whenever you add someone to your contact list, it guides you towards even more professionals from all around the world. Find the right people and build relationships to get a nice boost to your marketing efforts.

When you build your LinkedIn connections network, you attain a regular audience that you can easily interact with. This way, you can reach out in a personalized way and gain access to a network of profiles with all sorts of verified information. It will help you understand your audience a lot better and engage them in one-to-one communication.

Direct messages (DMs) are especially powerful in this regard. When you are building your email list, start by connecting with your target audience, and then DM them with personalized messages. Like with regular posts, you can offer a valuable resource in exchange for their email address. The goal is the same — to promote your newsletter while offering something useful in advance, with a promise of even more value when they subscribe.

LinkedIn and email marketing campaign formulas that work

Let’s see how you can combine your LinkedIn experience with running email campaigns.

LinkedIn connection → Message → Email

Ideally, when you make a LinkedIn connection, you start by introducing yourself and explaining why you reached out to the person. This allows you to develop this invitation into a fully-fledged dialogue. Then you can offer your valuable resource or a discount code as a way to say “thank you”. 

If they click on the link and enjoy the resource, you can go further and propose subscribing to your newsletter to keep track of other useful content.

Targeted Ads → LinkedIn connection → Message → Email

You can add a targeted ad into the equation to attract your ideal audience, based on their LinkedIn profiles. Run a paid campaign on the platform, and when they engage with the ad, send them a connection request. 

Then you go through the same pipeline — introduce your business, offer them a resource and guide them towards the newsletter subscription. It is important to underline that you will not spam them, especially when you reach out to them after they interact with an ad.

Email → LinkedIn messages for follow-ups

This formula is useful for nurturing leads. If you are connected through LinkedIn with a person on your mailing list, you can message them after you send out another issue of your promo email/newsletter. Ask if they received it, and what they think about it. Invite further discussion and maybe offer some extra resources. 

This approach will give your business a more memorable presence and will keep you on the radar without being too pushy.

Best practices for using LinkedIn for an email marketing campaign

To really make your LinkedIn presence shine, you need to make it top-notch. Here are some tactics that will help you stand out in the sea of content.

Target your audience and build your network

LinkedIn is first and foremost a network-building tool, so use it to its fullest. Know who you are reaching out to and study your prospects. 

Search for representatives of companies that you want to do business with. Find people with fitting job levels to deal with your offers. LinkedIn has filters by location, language, and industry. This is enough to conduct a general search to narrow down your key audience, based on where they are in the world and what business they are in. 

Sales Navigator subscription adds two more parameters to filter people by seniority level and years on the current position. This will help if you want to market to specific roles like CEOs or high-ranking managers. Targeting the right people means a higher potential interest in what you have to offer.

Plus, if your connections with people are strong enough, you can even ask them to redirect you toward more professionals who may be interested in your services.

Personalize content

People like to see messages aimed specifically at them. 

Make your messages personal and refer to things that you’ve heard or researched about the person. This is your first — and maybe the only — chance to make a good impression, so make the most out of it. Address your recipients by name, offer immediate value, and write each message to reflect your knowledge about the person on the other end.

Be concise and respect your connections

Don’t waste anyone’s time and be comprehensible. People should always be able to tell what it is that you want from them. LinkedIn is a business platform, so get down to business. For example, there’s no use in opening a conversation with a new person by sending a witty pick-up line or asking a question about their cat — they are not here for that.

Here are a couple of examples of what to do and not to do on LinkedIn DMs:

Respond quickly

If you are actively engaged in a conversation and want to convert your prospect into something more tangible, make it a habit of yours to reply instantly. This will leave a good impression, make conversation flow more effortlessly and, in the end, save time for both of you.

In fact, Harvard Business Review reported that companies that respond to leads within an hour are nearly 7 times more likely to qualify the lead than those that take longer.

Send follow-ups

One or two follow-ups are usually enough, though. Don’t overwhelm your prospects with too many messages, and respect their time.

The optimal follow-up time can vary, but it’s usual to wait 5-7 days after the connection or your initial message. This gives your contact enough time to reply without feeling too rushed. If you still don’t get an answer, try again after another week or so. If they don’t respond after some time, it’s better to give them some space.

Cross-promote

This is a great strategy for every form of marketing. If you have several accounts on different social platforms, use your posts to direct people towards content on each of them. 

Put an email subscription CTA into your fresh LinkedIn post, post a teaser of it into your X account and simultaneously run a Facebook ad campaign. This will bring in new people who may exist well outside your LinkedIn circle.

Create shareable content

Don’t want to waste your budget on ads? Make posts that get promoted by just being out there. 

Organic promotion is extremely effective and doesn’t require a lot of investment — just some good content to kick it off with. Look at the successful creators or check official LinkedIn guides if you are in need of some inspiration.

Optimize your company pages

Last, but not least — always keep your own info up to date. 

If a person comes from the feed to learn more about you, it’s in your best interest to have a complete list of services and contacts ready for them. Nothing worse than having your prospects try to reach an employee who quit last year.

Final thoughts

LinkedIn may not be the first thing that comes to mind in terms of marketing — but it certainly shouldn’t be the last. The platform offers some powerful ways of lead generation for the B2B niche with a lot of possibilities for organic promotion.

To fully master the possibilities of LinkedIn, you’ll need to combine content marketing with careful lead nurturing through direct messages.

• Post and promote your content in the feed.
• Offer people valuable resources in return for their contact information.
• Find new connections and build professional relationships through direct messaging.
• Make your marketing look less like a sales funnel and more like networking.

By using these strategies, you’ll make LinkedIn into a powerful tool for building email lists for your email campaigns and driving more sales.