One Prospecting Technique You Must Stop Immediately - Winmo
The article advises against the unethical and often illegal practice of adding LinkedIn or conference contacts' email addresses to marketing lists without permission, emphasizing that such unsolicited emails are ineffective due to high inbox competition and low engagement rates, and instead recommends building genuine relationships through personalized follow-ups to cultivate a strong professional reputation.
If your prospecting goal is to build good relationships on the way to creating customers and clients who buy from you (as opposed to making sales), you probably have a ton of business cards stacked up on your desk, and your LinkedIn connections are in the tens of thousands. But what should you do with them?
There’s a question about one prospecting technique in particular that divides conference goers and LinkedIn denizens in sales and marketing departments across the land: is it okay to add the email addresses of my LinkedIn or conference connections to my marketing emails or sales cadence?
The case for no
Melonie Dondaro, author of The LinkedIn Code, says in a post about LinkedIn etiquette, “Do NOT export your connection list and add them to your email database – EVER. Just because someone has connected with you on LinkedIn does NOT give you permission to add them to your list and send them emails. This is completely unethical and in some countries illegal.”
But beyond that, you’re fighting a losing battle for attention. The average number of emails people receive every day is more than 120. If you’re just adding to that noise you’re wasting your time, and it’s much more difficult than you might imagine to stand out. Sure, you might have killer content in your email and any recipient would be lucky to find it in their inbox. But bigger companies than yours hire professional copywriters whose only job is to figure out how to increase open and click-through rates, and even they’re stuck somewhere around 35% for open rates and 3.5% for click-through. And that’s for opted-in addresses (sometimes double opt-in), not for people who didn’t ask to be on your email list.
One of your top indirect prospecting strategies should be to cultivate a great reputation. Do you want to be the person who connects at conferences and then sends an email reaffirming the connection and includes some specially curated content and links, or do you want to be the person who connects at a conference and immediately begins sending irrelevant emails to someone you barely know.
Katrina Orendian goes into more detail on this point in her great post on Infusionsoft, saying “Resist the urge to export this list and mass email them from your email service provider. This is not only an open invitation for increased spam complaints, but it can negatively affect your business’ reputation as well.”
The case for yes
I could write a few things here like:
- They can opt out anytime
- More prospects means more prospecting success
- Everybody’s doing it
…but they’re all desperate rationalizations of a bad practice. And if you’ve heard any of these excuses, you’ve been told one of the biggest myths about sales prospecting: that people think and behave differently about spam and unsolicited interruptions differently than you do or would.
Honestly, though, there isn’t a case for yes. This isn’t one of those prospecting skills that work over the long term and could hurt your personal reputation, your company’s reputation and might even get you blacklisted by email services.
What you can do instead
There’s a right way to build your email list by using sales intelligence tools and good old-fashioned one-to-one emails. If you’ve connected with someone online or in real life, there’s a really good chance they’ll respond positively – or at least open – an email reminding them of who you are, where you met, and the kinds of problems your company solves.
And if you keep it personal and useful, they might even click through to that ebook link you include. This email is where you should offer a link to be opt-in to your marketing email so they can get even more great content in the future.
Ultimately it’s about treating your connections how you’d treat yourself. Reaching back out with a personalized and sincere email is okay; adding all your connections to your email list without their permission isn’t.
Related
How to Sell to the Elusive CMO
In this B2B Sales Show episode, Chief Marketing Officers Jennifer Groese and Nicole Smith discuss strategies for selling to CMOs, emphasizing the importance of clearly demonstrating ROI to facilitate smoother sales cycles and reduce competition, while highlighting UserIQ's role in aligning sales and marketing to drive brand awareness and demand.
Updated: How to Build a Winning New Business Referral Strategy
The article outlines how agencies can effectively grow their client base by implementing a targeted, well-timed referral strategy—highlighting benefits like shorter sales cycles and higher closing rates, advising to set measurable goals, wait to ask for referrals until after demonstrating value, and focus on a top 20% list of strong advocates for optimal results.
3 Steps for Building Your Advertising Contact List - Winmo
The article emphasizes that building an effective advertising contact list today requires using advanced sales enablement tools that provide verified decision-maker contact details, filtering options by industry and media spend, and predictive intelligence, warning against outdated, labor-intensive manual methods that yield low ROI and highlighting the importance of investing in quality software often priced above $5,000 annually.
13 Biggest Myths About Sales Prospecting
The article debunks 13 common sales prospecting myths, emphasizing that buyers do appreciate timely, value-driven outreach, networks are continually evolving with new opportunities, and overcoming outdated beliefs is crucial for building effective B2B relationships and pipelines in today’s competitive sales environment.
Find Decision Makers with 5 Sales Intelligence Must-Haves - Winmo
The article from Winmo emphasizes that effective sales intelligence tools, especially for targeting national marketers and agencies, must include five key features—most importantly human-verified data—to help sales professionals quickly identify and engage decision makers, thereby accelerating lead conversion, shortening sales cycles, and allowing focus on relationship-building rather than tedious research.
22 New Business Statistics to Kick Off 2022
The article presents 22 updated business statistics for 2022 highlighting that successful sales teams blend traditional methods like cold calling with modern tools such as CRM and social media, emphasizing the importance of quick response times, persistent follow-ups, lead enrichment, and listening to buyer needs to outperform competitors and adapt to the buyer-controlled sales journey.