LinkedIn can help you continuously find clients, partners, employees, and new business opportunities in any niche. According to the 2022 trends, messages to leads should be personalized and contain a qualifying question. Including pictures can also be your personalization option, but how can you take advantage of all the personalization options if you use automation for mailing?
Linked Helper will allow you to make cold messages as adapted as possible to the target audience, as well as use links in messages. To do this, the software has integration with the Uclic service, which will help you set up a mailing list with images and use custom variables for free. You can start trying the service for free, just like Linked Helper, if you’re not already using it.
Many marketers and sales professionals who are trying to set up mass outreach in messages for the first time can make mistakes that lead to a low level of opens and clicks. The LinkedIn audience is sensitive to who writes to them, so you should look for common ground with the audience. For example, you can use keywords to make your messages more relevant to your target audience segments by mentioning the following:
- The name of the organization where the lead works. In Linked Helper you can use the built-in plugin variable which will insert the organization where the recipient works into each message.
- An event that the lead has participated in. In Linked Helper, you can add custom variables by downloading a CSV of your leads and adding a column with a custom variable. This variable could be the name of the event where you met with the leads. After the table is loaded into the software, the software will use the data from that table. You can learn more about how personalization works in our blog post about logical operators.
- A mutual educational institution. Mentioning a common educational institution in the message can be a good way to connect with colleagues from other companies. This is a great conversation starter and will help you get a better response to your message.
- Common connections. Having common connections can help you gain people’s trust, just like in real life. If you are inviting people who also know your connections, mention this fact as a point of contact. This variable is built into the Template Builder in Linked Helper. watch our tutorial video on how to create message templates.
Using images and links along with the above ideas will help you generate leads. Next, we’ll look at how Uclic makes it easy to work with media when sending messages in Linked Helper.
What is Uсliс?
Uclic is a service that helps users create personalized pictures based on the built-in library or imported files. This service can work with social networks and various platforms for mass mailing and marketing automation in social networks. This helps get more replies because the lead sees a post with a picture that includes text with their name in it – this can have a cool effect because the person will think you gave them special attention. Also, Uclic helps to create not only hyper personalization in mailings, but also to make a landing page with a custom call-to-action for each visitor.
You can register with Uclic for free and try it for an unlimited number of days. In the the trial period, the service supplies the user with 100 credits from the start.
This means that as part of the test, you can send 100 personalized images or links. Such a number of messages will help you set up the service with any outreach tool and measure the effect on your audience.
Then you can choose one of the subscription plans depending on the size of your audience (from 6K to unlimited monthly links). Also, when signing up for a paid subscription, templates from the service will be available to you without restrictions. These are ready-made graphic works – they include a picture and text. When customizing, the text from the template will be replaced with the personalized version that the lead will receive from you.
The value of using the service for LinkedIn outreach is that you can be creative and break up the dry facts in the text with a funny picture. It will attract the attention of the lead when they open their inbox, and they will be more willing to read the text of the message.
If you start working with Uclic + Linked Helper you will notice that there are two ways of doing it:
- The image is right in the body of the message. In this case, your leads will receive messages that will immediately include a picture. In this picture you can show your creativity to the fullest!
- Landing link in the message. You can use links in LinkedIn messages, but we strongly discourage doing so from a new account or using links in a connection request message. In this case, in the message the lead will see a page preview that includes hyper personalization so they are more likely to follow the link. The link may lead to your site, where the offer will be placed.
How do Uclic and LinkedIn automation work?
Getting started with personalized messages and Linked Helper is easy. You can start using both services without linking a bank card, which will help you get a complete picture of targeted mass mailing on LinkedIn without risks.
#1 Download Linked Helper
You can download software for any operating system on the official website. After downloading, you will need to sign in to your personal LinkedIn account. It can be either a regular basic account or any of the paid social network solutions. If you start your mailing campaign through a paid solution, you will have more options for finding leads and creating lists, and it also includes paid InMails that you can also automate with Uclic capabilities. Downloading the Linked Helper software will not take you more than 15 minutes, after which you can immediately proceed to setting up the first campaign: sending personalized messages to your contacts or creating an “Invite & Follow up” campaign. In this case, you can start expanding your network and then send follow-up messages to everyone who adds you as a connection.
It is convenient that in Linked Helper you can use ready-made campaign templates of the most common types. This will help you create a campaign in a few steps, without needing to have a deep understanding of what actions to add to the campaign. You can find examples of drip campaigns and lead generation tips in our blog post.
#2 Create a Uclic account
You can register in a minute on the official website. For this you just need an email, first name, and last name. After the start of the trial, your balance will immediately have 100 credits (i.e., 100 chances to use a picture or a link in a message).
#3 Go to Uclic Generator
When your Uclic profile is created, you will see options to create a campaign. At the top of the menu, you will see the Generator tab. Click on this menu item and a new tab will open in your browser where you can continue setting up your personalized campaign.
In a new tab, you will see various templates for a custom picture that will be visible to the recipients of your messages. There is also a gallery of backgrounds you can use. When you select a template from the Public Template Gallery, in the further settings you can customize it as much as you like. That is, change the image, font, and text so that your banner will look unique.
Therefore, when choosing, consider the template as a graphic framework in which you can change everything in a few minutes.
Your campaigns will be displayed under the My Campaigns menu item. Here you can create a new campaign or edit the current ones.
Click on the template that suits you and the Edit menu will open.
#4 Set options for personalization
Here you might think that the settings are not easy. But in reality, everything will be easier than you think. Essentially, the menu consists of three sections, each of which will make your personal message on LinkedIn closer to the heart of the recipient.
Variables
Here you can create your own variables or use built-in ones. These are the parameters that will distinguish your message from hundreds of similar ones that your leads receive. By default, this section contains the first name, last name, and organization name. But just like in the Linked Helper, you can add a variable by giving it a name and a value.
Note: Variables in Uclic and Linked Helper differ in that for Uclic they are separated from the text through double brackets {{}}. Also, the variables that you set through the Excel file in Linked Helper should be of the form “cs_[variable name],” for example “cs_city.” It is important that the variables match when the two products are running so that Linked Helper and Uclick can both recognize them. Therefore, if you add such variables to the Uclic template, it must begin with “cs_.”
You can also add an Excel file to Uclic if you want to add a large number of variables at once.
Read detailed instructions in the Linked Helper Knowledge Base.
Landing Page Settings
In this menu item, you can specify a link to the page where you want the person to go from the message. For example, this could be a detailed job description if you are looking for an employee through outreach in LinkedIn messages.
Thumbnail Settings
In this section you can set custom text for the link preview. It can be a kind of CTA where you can include the lead’s name, company name, or any other trigger option. This is a preview of the link where you can lead the person from the message.
In this menu item you can see a link to the visual that is used in Uclic for the background. In our screen, we have highlighted the field where you can add your custom visual – a downloaded image or a branded banner from your designer.
Then you can edit the text that will be displayed over the banner image. It can also contain personalized plugins.
Content Settings
In this field you will see the simplest settings for HTML, but don’t let that scare you away! In fact, a hint on how to use the code is given in the information box. There you will find instructions on how to use the code.
You can find more examples for customizing text via code in the knowledge base article.
#5 Set up the integration of the two services
When you are done with customizing the template, whether it is images or links, you will see that a unique link has been created for this template. This link is needed when setting up messages in Liked Helper.
In this section you will see two options – copy the “Dynamic link” or “Dynamic image link”. Your choice will depend on whether you want to use the redirect from the message to your site (specified as a link in the settings), in which case you choose option 1 in the screenshot, or if you just want to use a custom image, in which case you must copy the link from option 2. You can see this visual in the preview in the settings.
There is no need to remove the extra parentheses from the link name, as the Linked Helper software will automatically remove the extra brackets. Where should I insert the link from Uclic?
#6 Open your campaign in Linked Helper
Select the action that contains the message. Go to Message template editor
Go to the Attachment image URL → Uclic section. Paste the link into the appropriate field.
If you’ve added custom variables to Uclic, then you’ll also need to add them to Linked Helper. You can download them by following the instruction article on that topic in our knowledge base.
As a result, your leads will get super personalized messages like in the example below:
What else should you know about Uclic?
#1 Set up logical operators for personalization to work seamlessly
When you use custom variables, the software may not find the required value if it is not specified in the lead’s profile. For example, in your campaign, you can search for leads in a certain city, and this city may not be listed in the account. Therefore, you can think over this option in advance and play it safe by setting an IF THEN ELSE operator. It’s not as difficult as it might seem. The software will use the required data from the THEN string in case there is a value of variable in IF statement. If it doesn’t exist, it will use the string you provide for this fallback. It will not have a variable, but the meaning will be preserved (for example, you can write “in your city” without specifying the exact name).
Read about how logical operators work in the blog.
Also, you should make sure that the custom variable is set for the campaign or action. You can add a variable directly to the CRM if you want them to be available in all campaigns and activities. Read the detailed instruction How to create message templates.
#2 You can make each message match the gender of the recipient
This may be relevant for languages where the form of address is different depending on the gender. For this task, we have written instructions. You can enhance this deep personalization through Uclic. How to tailor your message by gender of the recipient.
#3 You can try more advanced personalization methods
If you’ve successfully tried creating personalized pictures or post links, you can evolve this technique. For example, you can try to make a full-fledged landing page, where a person will see his or her name in the CTA. To do this, you can use the API settings by yourself or contact the support service for smooth connection.
Setting up LinkedHelper and Uclic automation is more likely to help you get more replies when you bulk email on LinkedIn. In order to choose the right tone of voice, we advise you to analyze the target audience. This is easy to do if you try scraping profiles of people and organizations. You can also run a parallel email campaign to compare which type of drip campaigns work best for your industry. You will probably see that personalized outreach via social media will get more responses.
Linked Helper will help you find and export target audience emails in LinkedIn profiles, our internal database, and via Snov.io integration. This will help you quickly collect an email database and integrate it into your mailing list.
4 crucial tips about Linked Hepler personalized automation
With Linked Helper, you can set up automated campaigns that are deeply personalized for each audience group. In fact, the software includes all the necessary features and capabilities that will help you kill two birds with one stone – reach thousands of people in several campaigns at the same time and use a personal approach to everyone. The robot can do all the boring work for you, you just need to set up a drip campaign and sort leads.
The key to a successful personalization campaign is to set up targeting in such a way that the most relevant leads get into the funnel. This can be done using the built-in social network filters or by connecting Sales Navigator, which provides improved opportunities for finding people. You can find out the difference between using Linked Helper with a basic profile and with Sales Navigator in the article.
You can add people from a search, a LinkedIn group, a custom list in Sales Navigator, and other social network sources to an auto-drip campaign. In one round, you can transfer 1,000 people from the search, but then you can apply more detailed filters to add more than 1,000 people.
#1 You can send automated free InMails
As we discussed above in this article, the Template Builder in Linked Helper has the ability to customize personalization via Uclic. The possibility to add a link to an image will also work for InMails – messages that you can send to anyone who is not part of your network of contacts. These people can be your potential employees, long-term clients, or influencers, so using Uclic you can get their attention.
By default, InMail credits are included in LinkedIn paid solutions. But few people use the opportunity to send free InMails to certain users – those who have designated their profile as “Open Link” in the settings. This setting allows everyone, without exception, to write free InMails to such users. But for this task, automation will definitely come in handy.
The fact is, you can sort such users immediately when parsing in Linked Helper. You can do this by selecting the “Service” categories in the filters (all profiles in this category have Open Link status by default), or you can sort the list of leads in the Linked Helper CRM by selecting in the Open Link profile filters.
After such parsing, you can create an InMail campaign even if your profile is basic and does not have paid credits. People will still get your InMails, which you can enrich with deep personalization.
#2 Send personalized messages through groups
According to the rules of LinkedIn, users can write each other private messages even if they are not 1st degree contacts if they are in a common group. For this reason, you may be interested in actively using group marketing, looking for groups on a case-by-case basis where your target customers might be.
When you send bulk messages to members of the same group via Linked Helper you can add a link to an image via Uclic integration. This can help you grab the attention of leads because, by default, messages from common group members come in a separate section and are not visible in all inboxes. Therefore, the use of common ground is extremely important in this type of communication.
#3 Using Boolean Operators is a plus
As we mentioned in this article, custom variables and logic functions should become a tool in your arsenal if you use automation. Logical functions will help you avoid jams that may occur when using automatic personalization, such as an empty space in place of the desired word if the custom variable you selected is not present in the record. If you do not want this situation, then the Linked Helper advanced functionality will allow you to add a plan B for a situation where there is no value for a variable.
#4 You can automate live communication safely
The main advantage of connecting Linked Helper and Uclic is that, unlike many analogues for automation, our tool behaves like a real person. That is, you will get the opportunity to conduct a dialogue as you would naturally, but do it automatically and at the same time not risk losing your account.
Once you try setting up your first campaign, you can literally watch Linked Helper work. It will open the profile of each lead and enter the text of the message as a real person would do. You can also notice how the software uses natural pauses between actions and never presses the buttons exactly in the middle. That is, the behavior of the software will almost completely mirror yours. Therefore, you can be sure that working in the software browser will not arouse suspicion from the automation detection algorithm.
You can find out more in the blog article and make sure you don’t get banned in Linked Helper.