For businesses looking to book more meetings on autopilot, close more deals, and ultimately – generate more revenue from their outreach, multichannel outreach is the way to go.
As the name implies, multichannel outreach uses multiple outreach channels to reach your target audience.
If you work in B2B, the channels you’ll want to focus on are email and LinkedIn.
Why’s that?
On LinkedIn, you can use Sales Navigator or even the default, free search to filter for your ideal customer persona.
And email is ideal if you want to follow up with your leads.
Here’s why:
- People on LinkedIn are getting hundreds of low-quality, spammy, automated connection requests per day.
- And if you use only email for outreach, you’re significantly reducing the effectiveness of your campaigns.
This is not to say you can’t run successful outreach campaigns on LinkedIn or email alone.
But the point is that it’s getting harder and harder to stand out.
Which is you should take a multichannel outreach approach if you want to get more out of your outreach.
And that’s exactly what we’ll be covering below.
- Why use multichannel outreach campaigns in 2023
- Top 5 benefits you gain with a multichannel outreach that makes it ideal
- How to use EXpandi to set up and automate your campaigns in under 15 minutes
- Setting up your first multichannel outreach campaign in real-time (with templates and smart sequence)
But first, there’s one more thing to mention here.
We run a free, private community group called The LinkedIn Outreach Family. In it, we’re also constantly sharing the latest outreach hacks, proven campaigns, as well as templates you can copy. It’s free, so, be sure to join and say ‘hi’!
Table of Contents
Why You Should Be Running Multichannel Outreach Campaigns In 2023
As mentioned above, it’s getting harder and harder to stand out nowadays.
Whether you’re doing email or LinkedIn outreach.
That’s because everything can be easily automated and there are available, ready-to-use templates everywhere.
The downside of this, however, is that it invites a lot of low-quality outreach campaigns.
This means:
- Low-quality, overused templates, which become less effective by the day.
- Your LinkedIn account can get suspended if you overuse automation.
- You need to put more effort into who you target as part of your outreach.
- You can still use automation (and you should), but you need to go about it the right way, which we’ll cover below.
Essentially, the “spray-and-pray” outreach tactics are over and no longer work. Instead, we’ll be taking a sniper targeting multichannel approach below.
Here’s what you need to know.
What is multichannel outreach?
Multichannel outreach uses multiple channels to reach your leads.
The goal is to cut through the noise and reach your ideal customers directly.
If you use only LinkedIn for example, you could send a connection request, the prospect might miss it, and you’ll have no other way to contact them. Aside from paying from LinkedIn InMails.
Similarly, you could build out a prospect list, scrape audience contact info, and launch your email campaign. Here, depending on how well you did your lead generation, some of your emails may bounce or be unverified. You also need to warm up your email, which also takes time.
What about omnichannel outreach?
The main difference is that omnichannel means following an integrated approach across different channels to reach your ideal customer.
With this in mind, it might sound like multichannel outreach is going to be more inconvenient and expensive.
Which is true to a degree.
Multichannel outreach might NOT be for you if you:
- Have a limited budget.
- Do not have the time to invest in warming up your LinkedIn and email.
- Do not have your target audience defined well.
- Do not have a LinkedIn presence and you’re just getting started. In that case, you’ll want to optimize your profile and define your content strategy first.
If the above does not apply to you though, multichannel outreach might be ideal for you. Here’s why.
Top 5 Benefits Of Multichannel Outreach
The main reason you’ll want to focus on a multichannel outreach strategy is that it essentially gives you more chances to engage with your target audience.
So, the main benefits include:
- More likely to have direct conversations with leads.
- Reduced platform-specific risk.
- Competitive advantage.
- Easier to stand out.
- Can be fully automated.
Let’s take a look at each in detail.
1. More likely to start conversations with leads
The whole point of outreach is to develop your relationships with leads and eventually, turn them into paying customers.
But when you’re contacting CEOs, executives, or heads of departments, there’s no guarantee they’ll see your first message.
A multichannel outreach campaign makes it more likely for them to see your message and open up a conversation.
As you reach your prospects on multiple channels, they’ll be more likely to reply.
2. Reduced platform-specific risk
By not being bound to one channel exclusively, you reduce overall outreach risks.
For example, with LinkedIn, you can send around 100 connection requests per week.
And if you’re not following best safety practices, you risk getting your account temporarily or permanently suspended.
If you rely on LinkedIn exclusively for your lead generation and outreach efforts, you’re putting all of your eggs in one basket.
3. Competitive advantage
As mentioned above, multichannel outreach is not for everyone.
However, this can also be your secret weapon. If your competitors are using LinkedIn only, you’re almost guaranteed to get more outreach results with a multichannel campaign.
By focusing on what your competitors are missing out on, you’re more likely to scoop up the target audience faster.
4. Easier to stand out
This is one of the biggest advantages of multichannel outreach.
Simply by focusing on more than one channel, by default, you’re more likely to get on your audience’s radar.
According to HubSpot, it can take an average of 8 touch points to get an initial meeting or conversion when doing outreach.
With a multichannel campaign, you can automate:
- LinkedIn connection requests.
- LinkedIn cold messages or follow-ups.
- Emails.
- InMails.
- And other LinkedIn actions.
If you want to take this to the next level though, you can also include dynamic image and gif personalization in your campaign to stand out more. This also has the added benefit of humanizing your outreach.
5. Can be fully automated from one place
Finally, this leads us to our last benefit.
Outreach automation is nothing new.
However, with what you’re about to learn below, you can fully automate your multichannel outreach, which includes LinkedIn, InMails, and email – all from one place.
This means:
- No more switching between different tools.
- No more confusing campaign reporting, metrics, and KPIs.
- Easier to measure lead generation.
- Freedom in who you target – you can scrape LinkedIn searches directly or upload your own spreadsheet of leads.
- Saving a lot of time and money.
How does this work?
Essentially, you can use Expandi to fully automate your multichannel outreach campaigns.
We may be biased, but Expandi is the ideal tool for this as it’s the safest LinkedIn automation tool on the market that runs on the cloud and gets you leads 24/7 by automating manual tasks.
This automation is based on 11 Actions and 10 Conditions which are as follows.
Actions:
- Visit profile.
- Follow profile.
- Follow company page.
- Endorse skill.
- Send a connection request.
- Send a connection request based on leads in spreadsheet file.
- Send a mobile connection request (to avoid LinkedIn limits).
- Send a follow up message.
- Send an open InMail.
- Send an email.
- Like their post.
Conditions:
- If connected.
- If followed you.
- If visited your LinkedIn profile.
- If opened your email.
- If your email bounced.
- If clicked your email.
- If their email exists.
- If they have an open profile for InMails.
- If they liked a post.
- Custom condition.
There are a lot of smart outreach sequences you can set up with this in mind.
We’ll cover that, along with potential templates you can use below in detail
First, let’s take a look at how you can use Expandi to help your multichannel sales, how to set up campaigns, and then, some example ready-to-use campaigns.
Launch Your First Automated Multichannel Outreach Campaign (With Templates And Smart Sequences)
Let’s take a look at some multichannel outreach campaign first, and below, we’re also going to cover how to set up, manage, and launch your own campaign today.
Here’s what the campaign looks like.
Then, here are the templates you can use and an overview of each step.
If connected (first branch from the screenshot)
1st follow up (If connected, delay 8 hours)
“Hey {first_name} – hope you’re doing well!
Reaching out as I saw {company_name} on Clutch listed as one of the top-rated agencies in the UK that specialize in email marketing, and I want to discuss your plans to scale up this year, as well as any new strategies you might have in mind for your clients.
We offer a cloud-based social selling automation tool that could help you generate more leads for your clients leveraging advanced hyper-personalized sequences. I’d love to dive into discussing your current setup!
Are you currently using LinkedIn to generate leads for your clients?”
2d follow up (delay 2 days)
“Thought I’d ping you again to see if you caught the above {first_name} – Would love to understand if you’re running campaigns on behalf of your clients internally?”
3d follow up (delay 3 days)
“Hey {first_name}, I didn’t manage to hear back from you so circling back one last time. If you get a minute let me know if it’s worth us having a conversation to discuss how you’re currently handling your client’s outreach?
Or if this isn’t relevant and you’re not running campaigns please let me know :)”
If not connected (second branch from the screenshot)
InMail (delay 1 hour)
“Hey {first_name},
I saw {company_name} on Clutch listed as one of the top-rated agencies in the UK that specialize in email marketing, and I’m really impressed. I’m interested in understanding your plans to scale up this year, as well as any new strategies you might have in mind for your clients.
We offer a cloud-based social selling automation tool that could help you generate more leads for your clients leveraging advanced hyper-personalized sequences, and I’d love to set up a meeting to discuss this further!
If you think it would be a good idea when would be best to chat?
Look forward to hearing from you soon.”
If InMail is not available, the campaign will follow the profile instead.
If connected
1st follow up (If connected, delay 4 hours)
“Hey {first_name} – hope you’re doing well!
Reaching out as {company_name} came up on Clutch when I was diving into the top-rated agencies in the UK that specialize in email marketing! Wanted to dig into your plans / new strategies you have in mind for your clients this year…
We’ve been looking at best practices when it comes to running campaigns for clients via LinkedIn and noticed a ton of agencies aren’t leveraging events to drive leads – are you currently using LinkedIn events?”
2d follow up (delay 2 days)
“Pinging you again to resurface this to the top of your inbox {first_name} – it would be great to understand if you’re currently using any automation on behalf of your clients to run their campaigns?”
3d follow up (delay 3 days)
“Hey {first_name},
So we wrapped up a guide breaking down the latest plays for 2023 when leveraging Linkedin!“
If not connected
Connection request message
“Hey {first_name}, I saw that {company_name} has been rated as one of the top UK email marketing agencies on Clutch Impressive! I thought connecting on LinkedIn would be a great way to exchange ideas on plans this year and strategies for clients. Let’s connect!”
If not connected
1st follow up (If connected, delay 8 hours)
“Hey {first_name} – thanks for accepting!
Wanted to introduce myself briefly; we run a cloud-based social selling automation tool that helps you generate more leads via LinkedIn for your clients.
We work with several UK agencies that specialize in email marketing and with {company_name} being a leader in the space, I thought this guide sharing the latest tactics when running campaigns via LinkedIn in 2023 could be helpful for you / the team!
Leaving this here: https://go.expandi.io/triple-leads”
2d follow up (delay 2 days)
“Thought I’d circle back and ping this to the top of your messages {first_name} 🙂
Did you have a chance to look through the guide?”
3d follow up (delay 3 days)
“Hey {first_name}, thought I’d circle back one last time!
The guide touches:
1) How to get over 1,000+ people to register for your LinkedIn event.
2) Skyrocket your reply rate by 55% via dynamic GIFs on LinkedIn.
3) Expandi’s best LinkedIn content retargeting growth hack for 2023.
Quick question is this relevant for {company_name}, or are you not running campaigns for your clients via email/LinkedIn?”
4 Other Ready-To-Use Multichannel Outreach Campaign Steps And Sequences To Use
It’s worth noting that the sequence you will use will largely depend on your outreach objectives, target audience, and if you’ve had any prior relationship with your leads.
So, based on that, you can adjust the above template and steps accordingly.
With that in mind, here are 4 more potential multichannel outreach steps you can use.
1. Targeting LinkedIn group members
With this campaign, you can scrape LinkedIn group members and reach out to them automatically.
This is ideal if you can find a group your target audience is in.
What makes this campaign so good is that you don’t need to be connected with someone to message them, as long as you’re in the same LinkedIn group.
You need to:
- Find a LinkedIn group with your target audience.
- Copy the group URL.
- Add new search in Expandi.
- Select group search and paste the URL.
- Create Campaign Builder campaign, paste the search, and set up the following steps.
If not connected (right branch)
“Hey {first_name},
Saw that you’re also part of (LinkedIn group name)!
Guess we have (topic) in common.
Hope we can learn from each other.
Cheers
(your name)”
(Follow up) message #1 if connected (right branch)
“Quick question, {first_name},
Was just wondering how do you solve (pain point) at {company_name}?
Asking because we just helped (client) achieve (case study/outcome).
Can send over the unpublished case study, if you’re interested. No strings attached.”
(Follow up) message #2 if connected (right branch)
“Any thoughts on this, {first_name}?
Asking because we tend to help agencies like yours at (company name).
Can send over a Loom video instead, if you’re interested.”
Email message if no reply to follow-ups
Subject line: Tried connecting on LinkedIn
“Hey {first_name},
Don’t want to spam you. Saw you didn’t reply on LinkedIn, so, thought I’d try one last time.
I recorded a quick Loom video on how {company_name} can get more qualified leads with an omnichannel outreach campaign (helped our clients get 3 new clients in 4 weeks!).
Let me know if I should send it over?”
Open InMail if not connected (right branch)
Subject line: Knock knock…
“Hey {first_name},
Wanted to connect but maybe you missed the request.
Anyway, was just wondering how you solve (pain point) at {company_name}? Asking because I noticed we’re in the same {LinkedIn group}.
We helped our last client get new 3 clients (not leads!) in just 4 weeks. Can send over a 3-minute Loom video if you’re interested?
No strings attached”
Email message if not connected and no Open InMail (right branch)
Subject line: Tried connecting on LinkedIn
“Hey {first_name},
Recently tried connecting on LinkedIn, but probably you missed my request.
We’re in the same {LinkedIn group} and I was just wondering how you solve (pain point) at {company_name}?
I’ve got 4 potential ideas if you’re interested, just let me know.
No strings attached.”
(Follow up) message #1 if connected (left branch)
“Glad to connect, {first_name}!
Was curious, how are you solving (pain point) at {company_name}?
(Follow up) message #2 if connected (left branch)
“Asking because we recently helped one of our clients get 3 new clients in just 4 weeks, with an omnichannel outreach campaign.
Can send over a 3-minute Loom video on how this might outlook like for {company_name}, if you’re interested?”
Email message if connected (left branch)
Subject line: From LinkedIn
“Hey {first_name},
Let me know if I’m being too persistent (annoying? what’s the difference 🙂 ).
But I’ve got 4 ideas on how you could supercharge your outreach and land more qualified leads with 0 effort on your part, without running any ads.
If you’re interested, say the word and I’ll send over a 3-minute Loom.”
Email message #2 if connected (left branch)
Thought I’d try one last follow-up, {first_name}, and you’ll never hear from me again!
I recorded a quick video for you.
Check it out here: [URL]
And if you’re interested in executing everything with 0 effort on your part – let’s talk!”
Need a more detailed breakdown of this campaign or other potential templates to use?
See our guide on multichannel sales for more info.
2. Contacting people who reacted to your LinkedIn post
This goes hand-in-hand with your LinkedIn content strategy. Especially if your posts gain a lot of engagement.
Though, similarly, you can simply scrape someone else’s post.
With this campaign, we’ll be scraping everyone who engaged with a specific LinkedIn post and reaching out to them in a multichannel fashion.
What makes this ideal is that it’s easy to personalize your sequences (based on the original LinkedIn post) and that you can also target a very specific group of people here.
- Go to the Campaigns section in Expandi.
- Press Add Campaign and select Campaign Builder.
- Select a campaign name, click Next, and Create without template.
Then, add the following steps.
(Follow up) message #1 if connected (left branch)
“Hey {first_name}, noticed you reacted to my post about (topic).
Feel free to let me know if you need any help with this.”
(Follow up) message #2 if connected (left branch)
“Just wondering, do you have a specific approach for solving (pain point) at {company_name}?
Asking because we recently helped a client achieve (outcome). I can send over the unpublished case study, if you’d like?”
Email message if connected (left branch)
Subject line: From LinkedIn
“Hey {first_name},
Messaged you on LinkedIn.
Saw you liked my post on (topic), so, I wanted to show you how we help companies like {company_name} solve (pain point).
Let me know if you’re interested?”
Open InMail if not connected (right branch)
Subject line: You liked my post!
“Hey {first_name},
Saw you liked my post on (topic)!
So, I wanted to reach out and show you how we help companies like {company_name} solve (pain point).
Is this worth a convo? Or I can send over a 5-minute Loom video.
No strings attached.”
Email if not connected and no InMail (right branch)
Subject line: You liked my post
“Hey {first_name},
Saw you liked my post on (topic) on LinkedIn!
Wanted to ask what you’re doing to solve (pain point) at {company_name}?
I can send over a 5-minute Loom video going over how we helped a client achieve (outcome).
Let me know if you’re interested.”
Note that if the prospect connects with you (through the right branch), the follow-up LinkedIn messages are the same as left branch. So, you can reuse the template there.
3. Reaching LinkedIn event attendees
With this campaign, we’ll be scraping LinkedIn events and reaching out to its attendees.
The best part?
You can scrape any LinkedIn event, as long as you hit ‘attending’.
So, you can also target a very specific ideal customer persona here.
- Copy the URL of a LinkedIn event (make sure you’ve clicked ‘Attend event’ so that Expandi can scrape it properly.
- Go back to Expandi.
- Go to the Search tab.
- Click New Search.
- Then, simply paste the URL in the Event Search section and click Search.
Then, we can set up a multichannel outreach campaign targeting its attendees who we just scraped.
(Follow up) message #1 if connected (left branch)
“Hey {first_name},
Saw we’re both attending (event name).
Cheers!
(PS – Wondering how to use personalized dynamic GIFs like this in your LinkedIn campaigns? Check out our guide to advanced LinkedIn dynamic personalization for more info.)
(Follow up) message #2 if connected (left branch)
“Hope the event will bring you some value!
On that topic, if you’re interested in (event name), you might also be interested in a playbook I wrote on the 10 proven outreach templates that book meetings for me on autopilot.
Would you like a copy?”
(Follow up) message #3 if connected (left branch)
“Here’s the book, {first_name}.
I would love to hear your thoughts?
[Attachment].”
If not connected – send a connection request and use the same follow-up message templates as left branch.
If not connected, connection request (central branch)
“Hey {first_name}, saw you’re planning to attend (event name)! Me too, looking forward to (speaker).
Would love to get connected before the event”
If not connected and open InMail exists (right branch)
Subject line: We’re going to the same event!
“Hey {first_name},
Saw we’re both attending (event name). Really looking forward to (speaker name) personally.
I wanted to reach out because I recently wrote a growth playbook on (pain point) that allows me to get (outcome) on autopilot.
Want me to send it over?”
If not connected, no open InMail, email message (right branch)
Subject line: We’re going to the same event!
“Hey {first_name},
Saw we’re both attending (event name). Really looking forward to (speaker name) personally.
I wanted to reach out because I recently wrote a growth playbook on (pain point) that allows me to get (outcome) on autopilot.
Want me to send it over?”
For a potential template to use here, see our full guide on scraping LinkedIn events.
4. From website visitors to leads
With this campaign, we’ll be retargeting people who visited your website.
How?
With certain tools like Leadinfo and Albacross, you can obtain information about which businesses are visiting your website by inserting a tracking code in your website.
Then, we’ll find their contact info and reach our ideal customer persona in that company.
Without getting too technical, you can see the campaign steps below and a more detailed explanation in our LinkedIn lead generation campaign guide.
The reason this campaign is more direct is that you’ll want to get straight to the point. As in most cases, you won’t have a lot of space to establish rapport here.
bnmEmail #1 if mail exists (left branch)
Subject line: How can (your company name) help you?
“Hey {first_name},
Wanted to reach out because I saw someone from {company_name} visited our website in the past few weeks.
Was wondering if you’re interested in solving (pain point)?
Let me know and I can send over a free 5-minute Loom audit.”
Email #2 if mail exists (left branch)
“Any thoughts on this, {first_name}?
We help companies like yours achieve (outcome).
Let me know if this is relevant.”
Open InMail if not connected
Subject line: How can (your company) help you?
“Hey {first_name},
Saw someone from {company_name} visited our website in the past few weeks.
Was wondering if you’re interested in solving (pain point)?
Let me know and I can send over a free, 5-minute Loom video.
Either way, glad to connect! :)”
How To Use Expandi Smart Sequences To Automate Your Multichannel Outreach Campaigns
Now, let’s take a look at how to set up similar multichannel outreach campaigns.
For this, we’ll be using Expandi.
Using Expandi is simple.
All you have to do is insert your target audience and build your outreach campaigns with a simple drag-and-drop interface.
In this case, we’ll be using the Campaign Builder type to set up our multichannel outreach.
But in general, you can set up the 10 different kinds of campaigns with Expandi:
- Mobile simulation campaign – Emulates sending connections as if they’re from your mobile and not desktop. Ideal for bypassing the 80-1o connection requests per week limit.
- Campaign builder – Allows you to build your campaign from scratch and include different actions or conditions as needed. This is what we’ll be using for our multichannel outreach campaign below.
- Open InMail campaign – To automate sending LinkedIn InMails.
- Company Follow Invite Campaign – it lets you ask your 1st-degree connections to follow any company page on LinkedIn, even if you don’t have admin rights.
- LinkedIn group campaign – If you’re in the same LinkedIn group as your audience.
- LinkedIn event invite – To invite up to 1,000 people from your network automatically. Ideal if you’re hosting a LinkedIn webinar or event.
- Connector campaign – Outreach campaign to automate sending connection requests.
- Messenger campaign – Outreach campaign to automate sending cold messages or follow-ups with your first-degree connections.
- Inbound campaign – To reach out to people who have viewed your profile directly. Helps if you’re also posting a lot of content.
- Recovery campaign – If you accidentally deleted a campaign in Expandi and need to recover data from it.
As you can see, there are different campaigns you can set up with different objectives.
But the Campaign Builder is what we’ll be using as it allows you to set up your own smart sequences with different steps and campaign objectives.
To create an outreach campaign in Expandi, all you have to do is:
- Grab the free, 7-day trial if you haven’t done so yet.
- Click Search in Expandi.
- Then, click on Add new search.
- From there, you can select a different Search type based on who you want to reach out to. You can import a LinkedIn search, scrape a LinkedIn group, upload your own spreadsheet of leads, and more.
- Enter a search name and paste the URL if it’s a LinkedIn search or group.
Once Expandi scrapes the leads in a few minutes, you can filter down your leads as needed (e.g. by position, company, etc.) or move on to creating your outreach campaign.
To create an automated outreach campaign all you have to do is:
- Go back to the Campaigns section in Expandi.
- Press Add Campaign and select Campaign Builder in this case.
- Select a campaign name, click Next, and Create without a template.
From there, you’ll want to import a search (who you’re targeting) and set up your smart sequence steps with a template.
Who you’re targeting with what is one of the main things that will determine the success of your outreach campaigns.
For more campaign ideas, see our ultimate guide to multichannel marketing.
Now, let’s take a look at how to do that with your first automated multichannel outreach campaign now.
Conclusion
So, hopefully you learned a thing or two about multichannel outreach by now.
To recap, multichannel outreach can be especially useful for you if you:
- Have the budget for it.
- Have the time to warm up your LinkedIn and email (or already did this).
- Have your target audience defined and know how to find them on LinkedIn.
- Have a strong LinkedIn presence: Including an optimized profile, content strategy, and regularly creating content for your ICP.
From there, you just need the right tools to automate your outreach.
Expandi is ideal for this because it can do all of the above and much more.
And the best part is that you can get started with a free, 7-day Expandi trial, set up your campaigns in under an hour, and start seeing results while you’re still on the free trial.
