How to Personalize your LinkedIn Outreach with Elyse Archer

To get all eyes on your messages, you need to add little doses of personalization wherever you can. To stand out from the crowd, you need to be different, says Elyse Archer, CEO and Founder of She Sells with Elyse Archer. Over the years, LinkedIn has emerged as a strong channel of conducting sales outreach and is making its way into a rep’s sales sequences.

In session 11 of our Outbound for Dummies series, Elyse Archer dug deeper into why personalization on LinkedIn truly matters and shared some simple yet distinct methods to catch your prospect’s attention. We spoke to her about How to Personalize your LinkedIn Outreach and Accelerate Lead Generation.

Before we cover Elyse’s session, let’s look at why people stress over personalization.  
 

The Need for Personalizing your Messages 

Instead of personalization, if you send the same message in bulk to thousands of prospects, there are high chances of your prospects turning their heads away and sending your message to the notorious spam folder. This is why personalization matters:

1. Growing connection: As you understand and talk about the prospect’s specific needs or something that they can relate to - you get to create a stronger emotional connection. This becomes a solid ground for any further communication.  

2. Capturing Interest: Tailoring your message as per your prospect is a sure-shot way of getting their attention. They can see you have put in the extra effort in doing your research, and this is a heavy plus point.

3. Bucketed personalization: You need not personalize every single message. You can hyper-personalize messages that are of prime importance. For other prospects, you can bucket them into similar (and smaller) groups and personalize the message based on a common factor amongst them. Even a smaller aspect of personalization gets you closer to a win.

4. Improved conversion rate: With your prospect’s reacting positively to your tailored messages, there’s no doubt there would be an increase in the number of meetings on your calendar and the number of yes’s you hear.

5. Enhanced Trust: Reaching out with a personalized message lets the prospect differentiate you from every other bulk message. You’ll make them feel valued and heard - signalling sincere interest.

Let’s go to Elyse’s session now. 
 

Mass Messaging Vs Personalization

You can personalize things in a mass way. In the end, it’s about finding alignment in what feels most authentic to you.

Today, people want to be seen, feel heard and know that you actually care about them. The way to do this is to slow down to speed up. That means, taking the time to personalize and really connect with people.

How to Do Your Groundwork?

You cannot come to a prospect without having any information about them or their company. Nowadays, you have to walk in with at least a little bit of information.

It also depends on what stage of business you’re in, and what level of automation you’re using to do your research. Are you manually scaling through the information online or are you using tools to get you all the required data on the prospect?

Elyse says, you need to take at least 5 minutes to watch your prospect’s video, or even listen to their podcast. Try to be intentional with your connections and reach outs, instead of doing a spray-and-pray approach.

Learning more about your prospect can take a lot of time, but the results are worthwhile.

At the end of the day, your prospect’s are human too. You need to look at them with that lens and do your research and outreach.
 

SDRs and LinkedIn Outreach

The most important thing today is how you can be different. How can you stand tall and apart from everyone else who’s trying to do the same thing?

Can you send a voice note, instead of typing out a message? (This is what Elyse recommends!) Can you record a video message, instead?

But remember the catch: You have to bring the same energy you would bring to a high level meeting. Your video messages or voice notes cannot be devoid of your energy or any conversational aspects.

You might be nervous in your first audio or video message, but the effort of going the extra mile will trump everything else. Your prospect will notice the time you took in reaching out to them.

“People don’t trust perfection. You should be real,” says Elyse. It’s all about how you can show up authentically. 
 

What Does a Good LinkedIn Outreach Look like? 

Elyse says her LinkedIn inbox is usually overflowing with messages. There are few messages that catch her eye and she guarantees will intrigue you too if you see them. Here are a few tips:

1. Use a video or a voice note if you can. You’ll automatically be different from all the messages. If something doesn’t catch their eye immediately, they might hit the trash button. The idea is to catch someone’s attention enough, so that they’ll at least listen to what you have to say.

2. Take the time to include something personal. Look at their post, what they commented on, podcast episodes, etc. It shows that you care and you want to learn more about them. That message becomes more effective.

3. Create an environment where people are open to explore. Don’t be too assumptive and strong in your outreach. Saying something like “I have a product that’s absolutely going to help you.” will scare them away. Instead you can say, “Hey, I’ve been checking out what you do. I’ve got an idea. We have helped x,y,z companies do {list the benefit} Would you like to schedule a quick 5-10 minute phone call… ” This makes people more open and receptive.

4. (We loved this analogy!) Imagine you’re at a networking event. Would you pitch straight off the bat? - asks Elyse. The answer is a big no. You’d first say, “Hey, it’s so nice to meet you” and then you would continue the conversation. Your first few sentences would not have a product pitch. Understand that LinkedIn is the virtual equivalent of a physical event.

How Can Managers Empower SDRs? 

As a manager, it’s important to lead with curiosity. Be understanding and curious about your team's actions and reactions. Remember, everyone on the team is doing the best they can.

The best you can do is, have the rep introspect their messages and ask them if they sent the message to themselves, would they respond to it? Have them imagine themselves in the prospect’s shoes to reflect on their outreach.

Would the messaging make you stop and think? If yes, then it’s a clear winner.

Elyse says you need to be willing to share your own mistakes as a leader - that way there’s a stronger learning curve. Being human in sharing feedback is very important. 
 

The Future of LinkedIn

We asked Elyse if there’s something she believes is going to get bigger in the future, and this is what she said:

“Personal branding. It is critical to build that brand online.” It can just be about showing up and adding value - you can do this by simply sharing a video or re-sharing a post and adding your insights. Anything that will help you build a voice online. Soon, this approach will get you more inbound leads or messages.

The best part, this shortens the sales cycle and builds more trust. You must remember that you don’t have to be a big founder to start a brand on LinkedIn. You just need to start.

Listen to Elyse’s entire session recording below and grab all the insights you need to make your next LinkedIn message a hit!