Email Advice in Your Inbox Volume 38

LinkedIn is one of those channels we often see email senders sleeping on for audience growth.

We get it. LinkedIn isn’t as sexy as some of the other social channels. Some (biased) folks don’t realise its potential, like this dude:

Don’t worry – We vehemently disagree (and we’re South African so we’re also allowed to say that Elon’s pretty cringe himself).

Shiny objects aside, LinkedIn works. So many members of our community have joined us from the platform that we strongly support it.

You can use today’s insights as a checklist of 4 concise tips you can implement on LinkedIn for audience growth, regardless of your industry.

PS: Follow our LinkedIn growth journey and say hi here!

Begin with your LinkedIn profile

Your LinkedIn profile is likely where folks will visit before they click that “newsletter” link – Make sure it looks good (and contains the right stuff):

• Create a solid banner image and use a profile picture that looks the part. Those 2013 Facebook profile pics don’t look great.

• Add your newsletter to your highlights section. This is great real estate to visually punt your emails and capture attention before folks click through to your landing page.

• Add your newsletter link as a call to action under your name. This is seen whenever your name is seen and is crucial to the “comments” strategy later in this email (here’s how we place ours 👇 and how to do this here.

You gotta get posting and engaging

It’s said that only 1% of LinkedIn’s users actually post. The rest? They lurk or sometimes interact (and soon, will be signing up to your emails).

The only way to tell potential subscribers that you have valuable emails to share is exactly that. Tell them.

To spark a few ideas, you can:

• Make it contextual. Tell stories, share graphics or drop knowledge bombs that tie into your email in some way. (Here’s how we do this)

• Repurposing email content is a great way to attract the right subscribers. If your audience engages with snippets of knowledge from your emails, then you’re reaching the right people to ask to join.

Check this link out for more tips on LinkedIn content curation.

Plug in the comments (respectfully)

There’s a fine line between strategic placement and being downright shameless when it comes to plugging your newsletter in the comments on posts.

It takes sound judgment to apply this strategy, but the comments on posts can be a goldmine for email growth.

You’ll want to aim to add value first and then introduce your emails. The goal is to keep things contextual.

Our recommendations:

• Only add your link to someone’s post comments, in a contextual way, if your comment is relevant.

• Rather DM someone who is engaging with comments around your newsletter instead of obnoxiously slapping your link in there.

• Don’t be silly. Shamelessly adding your link to irrelevant posts from large creators is going to get you banned and make bad friends.

Master the strategic DM

You know what Uncle Ben said about LinkedIn messages, right? “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Sending a DM to someone on LinkedIn is often a super effective way to introduce your newsletter, but it’s filled with landmines if you don’t have a plan in place.

We’re planning a dedicated Volume on this topic soon, but if you want to do this well:

• Find the right folks to message. You should understand who will find value in your emails and only message them. Leave everyone else alone.

• Craft something that makes it worth their while. A message about how good your emails are won’t cut it. You need to sell your value and find something that will entice them beyond just an email.

• Respect boundaries. If someone doesn’t reply, don’t follow up incessantly. Say Sayonara and move on.

We leave you with this: Don’t be annoying on LinkedIn. There are so many opportunities to grow and collaborate using this channel – The last thing you want to do is give your newsletter (and LinkedIn reputation) a bad name.

Before you go!

If we built this - Would you read a dedicated email series on growing your email and brand using LinkedIn?

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On a lighter note: Sharing the love this V-Day 😻

This (brilliant/offensive/ we can’t decide) was sent by the team at BarkBox for a Valentine’s Day promo last year.😅

It’s always risky to push the boundaries, but we had a chuckle when we first saw this.

Seeing as it’s Valentine’s Day this week, we’d love to see a few of your campaigns (or campaigns you’ve received), so don’t forget to send those over!

(PS: Here’s the apology email if you’re curious - We don’t believe them)