We have been using email automation tools as Zopto for many years to publicise our clients outbound campaigns and content, but we found it to be a perfect tool to put to new use. And we were right!
The challenge
We decided to try to generate engagement and traffic to a specific URL. To focus not on volume traffic but on quality traffic.
Goals:
- Engagement. To achieve a 30% response rate in our messages vs. the average which is 11,2%.As we will see later, this was not the correctly formulated objective and we learned a very important lesson.
- Community. Generate conversation that would turn into positive comments and feedback on the article, at least 10 comments. In advance, the results exceeded all expectations: over 600 views and 140 comments!
- Conversion. Obtain 4 budget requests in total from a trilogy of 3 articles. When this issue arrived (and more than doubled) we decided it was the time to report the results, although we had not yet started to spread the third content.
The process
To begin with, we took two articles published by our CEO, Ricard Vidal.
- The mechanisation of business processes.
- B2B sales is a matter of metrics.
We set up a total of 13 campaigns with an average of 300 prospects in each, all of them being only the 1st degree contacts from Ricard’s LinkedIn account.
Definition of the target
The content of the articles themselves dictated the reader’s desired profile, that is, their professional position and area of work.
While for the first article it was a salesman, sales manager, sales representative, CCO, as well as CEOs, founders, company boards, the second content was clearly designed for the marketing teams. This can be seen in the nomenclature of the campaigns as well.
We did the scrapping with Sales Navigator, filtering by position, the degree of contact.
Why does the target matter? Because a person who comes from the hospitality sector will not generate a quality interaction with the content on B2B sales, and vice versa. While a certain interest and level of conversation is needed to build the community.
Dissemination
The start dates of the campaigns coincide with the date of publication of the content, since the LinkedIn algorithms monitor activity (recommendations, reactions and comments) during the first hours and therefore these are golden.
The configuration of the campaigns always depends on the target. In this particular case the sending is limited by the working hours, GMT time.
Although response rates are not high at all, the impact of this action is reflected in the statistics of the posts themselves and… In something else!
The impact
Engagement
*The percentage counted on the total number of contacted persons
We have already mentioned above that targeting a certain response rate was not the best idea, and now we explain why. It is only logical that when receiving the message with a link the person, before responding, will read the content offered. And after finishing the reading instead of returning to the private conversation they will comment directly on the publication.
Therefore the most correct metric also counts the views and comments:
*Percentage counted over the total number of people contacted
KPIs
As we can see from the statistics of each publication, we have met the objective of the target: the profile of the readers matches the desired profile. In other words, we have been able not only to involve people in the active dialogue, but also demonstrate to the network algorithms that the content adds value and knowledge to the determined profile.
Indirect benefits
There is another very important indicator that greatly affects the LinkedIn algorithms and increases the visibility of the profile, the acceptance rate of the invitations and, in general, the reputation of the account. This is the social media sales index (SSI). In the following screenshots we can see that this profile indicator used is far above average both in the industry and on Ricard’s own network.
What is this index for? To be more visible in other people’s feeds, whether they are your contacts or not. But to upload this indicator is not enough to publish often, you have to make a great effort and know the algorithms well. And one of the tools that helps to give visibility to your activity is spreading through private messages.
That is, it is about a vicious circle: the more they read you, the more publications of yours they see and the more interaction and engagement you will get from your community.
In the case of focus, the average profile views increased by approximately 20% between April and May:
The result
Finally we come to the last but not least point. With these activities we have received several requests for quotations.
How many?
9!
IF we look at the initial challenge, it was 4 for the trilogy of items, while in reality we got 4.5 for EACH item.
Anyone who works in B2B sales and marketing will tell you that taking the 9 opportunities to the budget stage just by spreading two articles to your own LinkedIn network of contacts is… AWESOME!
