2021 - from LinkedIn Automation to LinkedIn Lead Management

The LinkedIn Automation marketplace has continued to expand at an exponential rate. It’s hard to believe that the pioneers, like Dux-Soup, have been specialising in helping clients scale their LinkedIn activity since 2015.

Adoption of Dux-Soup has exceeded 70,000 users in 6 years which, at a growth rate of over 10,000 new users a year, highlights just how popular automation tools have become for sales and marketing professionals.

The market is fierce though, and with automation providers coming (and going) at a rate of knots, there’s no time to sit still. So, what’s the secret to coming out on top of a highly competitive marketplace?

Staying ahead of the game

For Will Van der Sanden, founder of Dux-Soup, pricing and listening to his customers are key factors in how Dux-Soup has managed to attract so much popularity - things which he discusses in a recent podcast.  

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In the podcast Will comments, “You should really listen to your audience and give them what they are asking for, which often means developing your product away from your own ideas. Price point is also extremely important - don’t make it hard for people to buy!”

(That's why, if you're not already a Dux user, then we give you a free 14-day Dux-Soup trial and we don't even ask for any payment details).

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Accessible to all

Expanding on this comment on price, Will certainly delivers on his long-held promise of making Dux-Soup LinkedIn automation and growth hacking accessible to everyone.

Dux-Soup is unique in offering everything from a Free Starter edition, that automates the basics of Searching and Visiting LinkedIn profiles, to a premium Turbo edition aimed at more sophisticated users, like digital agencies.

All Dux-Soup users (regardless of which edition they use) have access to the vast user Knowledge Base, lots of online tutorials, bi-weekly webinars, a very active user community and super-responsive technical support.

New team and agency plans

In January 2021, Dux-Soup pricing was re-launched for individuals, teams and agencies – with even more flexible, tiered rates that can flex with your business.

Again, this fits with Will’s vision (and market demand) to make automation tools available to all, with the right functionality and price points that users need to scale their business.

This approach also means that Dux-Soup can grow with businesses and the already strong brand loyalty is reinforced. Use cases that we see illustrate this.

For instance, White Rabbit, an AI-enhanced lead gen agency who use Dux-Soup extensively, start new recruits on the Free version, moving to the Pro and then Turbo editions as employees get comfortable with the tool and their clients demand more from the lead gen service that White Rabbit offer.

Directional pull from the customer

For any progressive technology company, there are always customer demands. For Dux-Soup, the release of two additional LinkedIn Automation subscriptions over the years has been in response to these.

A Professional (Pro) edition offers more personalization; the ability to upload your own contacts and export the contact lists -  whilst the premium Turbo subscription offering integrates with third party systems for centralised management of LinkedIn Automation flows, data extraction from LinkedIn and drip campaigns.

Launched in early 2019, the swift uptake of Turbo has been really positive for Dux-Soup – and is used by digital agencies, lead generation specialists, virtual assistants and businesses that use LinkedIn as a part of their lead generation process.

Defining market needs

In the podcast, Will understands that remaining at the forefront of his market is a challenge.  

Whilst a large customer base offers an opportunity to gain invaluable market insight, it also offers the near impossible challenge of trying to keep everyone happy.

One thing that has become apparent to Will is that you certainly can’t sit still in the world of technology and automation. The market moves fast and for LinkedIn Automation providers there are becoming 2 distinct needs:

• The need for a low-cost solution to enable access to basic functionality for everyone. Features like being able to accurately target, build your network and communicate with them in a personalised way to begin your outreach process are crucial.
• The need for a more advanced lead flow and management tool that takes the automated lead gen process further, acting more like a marketing automation system. This is where individual demands can get complex e.g., moving contacts between workflow sequences, creating rules and tailoring messages depending on how they respond.

All leading towards a shift for Dux-Soup in 2021 from just LinkedIn automation to LinkedIn lead management. But what exactly do we mean by that?

LinkedIn Lead Management

For Dux-Soup, the move towards LinkedIn Lead Management was the next obvious step – and a great example of this is in the latest advancements that are now available to all Turbo users.

They come in the form of a dashboard called Funnel Flow that gives users real-time statistics with drill-down details on:

• Profile views

• Connection requests sent

• Connection acceptance rate

• Follow up messages sent

• Message responses

• Qualified leads

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Instant visibility of how your sales funnel is growing and shrinking allows instant decision making on which stage of the sales cycle need some attention, or where the conversion rates are weakest.

The ability to drill deeper down into each sales stage gives users visibility of the contacts to assess quality and length of time in each stage. Below we drill down into the contacts that have accepted a connection requests to see the list.

Contact lists can be exported to external workflows for follow up or added to LinkedIn drip campaigns.  The ability to qualify contacts out of sales stages keeps your pipeline up to date.

For users wanting to see conversion rates and compare workflows, Dux-Soup’s Funnel Flow gives powerful insights with easy management.

With greater control of your sales pipeline, manual interventions can offer a balance between full automation and manual outreach. The ability to decide at critical points whether contacts should avoid workflows can help results rocket.

What more can we expect in 2021?

There is constant acceleration when it comes to the expectations for automation. Never more so than in digital marketing, where activities from cold outreach, lead generation, database enhancement and nurturing, social media and advertising can be automated to deliver better results at a lower cost.

Marketers don’t just want standalone capability; they want to integrate all their automation workflows together to create a multi-channel approach that includes personalisation, workflow rules and segmentation.

As a result, plans for the first half of 2021 also include the ability to run multiple drip campaigns with even smarter automation processes and visualization of campaigns.  

Plus, auto qualification and response tools that help cut down on manual tasks even further.

And this all needs to look good and be as intuitive to use as possible. That’s why we launched the new Dux-Dash interface in 2020 and will continue to push user interaction through this.

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Integration with more automation tools is also on the cards…

Integration partners

Dux-Soup Turbo - with its webhook functionality, open Dux-Soup API and connectors like Zapier or Integromat - ensures LinkedIn activity and lead gen can be integrated to any CRM or automation tool.

However, Dux-Soup has also teamed up with selected integration partners – for example LeadFuze, Pipedrive, Google Sheets and Zymplify to offer a direct integration that makes it even easier to drive more revenue from LinkedIn.

These integrations have been extremely well received. Look out for more integrations happening in 2021 – carefully curated for users of both tools to accelerate business growth.

Protecting users

Dux-Soup remain dedicated to giving their user base the lowest possible cost solution, with a laser focus on safety and usability.

And there’s no let up on this focus in the months ahead.

As the main topic of much of social media ‘chatter’ the safety of user’s LinkedIn accounts gets constant attention.

We wrote a blog recently that clearly states our position and strength in LinkedIn safety. The blog addresses the chatter and give users and potential users a balanced viewpoint.

With years of experience developing the very best pre-configured safety protocols, Dux-Soup has to date avoided permanent LinkedIn bans for all customers using these settings.

In a recent webinar addressing LinkedIn safety we highlighted a world-renowned LinkedIn coach who recommends and teaches Dux-Soup to his clients. Out of hundreds of people he’s coached on use of the tool only 2 have received suspensions – and it’s because they ignored the clear safety warnings in the product.

Yes – LinkedIn run detection (which Dux-Soup skilfully avoids – call it our secret sauce) but how you use the tool is equally important and our advice on this is constantly updated and revised according to LinkedIn changes.

Nobody wants to be banned from LinkedIn, and although LinkedIn regularly restricts accounts as a way of slapping your wrist, we know a permanent ban can be disastrous to those using automation tools.

Summary

In the shift to lead management and constant improvements, innovations and integrations, there’s still so much more to come from Dux-Soup LinkedIn automation.

At the core is the ability to harness the power of LinkedIn, the world’s leading B2B social networking platform, to grow your business quickly and efficiently and place it at the heart of your lead generation strategy.

We’ll leave you with two thoughts:

• Still, some of the best results achieved are those where automation takes on the most menial, high volume low impact tasks such as profile views and connection requests. Yes – all this development and integration is fabulous but the Free and Pro solutions can dramatically improve your lead gen just by automating these low-level tasks. Running in the background while you focus on later stage sales funnel and closing the deal.
• And, adjacent to this, it’s important to know when automation should stop, and manual intervention start. Make sure you’ve got that right – at some point you’ll need to talk 1:1 and (virtually if not in person) shake your new customer’s hand.

With so much more room for development it’s going to be an exciting year. We are passionate about what the future holds and hope you are too!

Next Steps

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