September 18 2017
We spend hours developing Facebook ads, but we tend to overlook LinkedIn as a potential source of business. And even more than that, we may not realize that every LinkedIn connection has entered in an email address that we have access to.
Here are the four steps to exporting your connections from LinkedIn, then importing them into your CRM. From there? Engage them with one-to-one follow up and leverage your favorite market report to nurture them over time.
Start off by logging into your LinkedIn account. Then, from your My Network page, click on Your Connections:
On the next screen, you'll see every connection you've made on LinkedIn. On the top right, click the button that reads Manage synced and imported contacts:
The next screen is where the magic begins! Under Advanced actions, select Export contacts:
Click to download an archive of all your LinkedIn data, which will include information about your contacts.
Once downloaded, unZIP the file and open the Connections folder to view a full spreadsheet of your contacts' names, email addresses and more.
Open up your Connections spreadsheet to ensure it has your contacts' first and last name and associated email address. In some cases, you may need to rename the column headers, but most CRMs should be able to map the main headers (name and email) to their own internal fields.
Once your contacts are fully loaded into the CRM, consider sending a warm email saying that you recently came across their email and wanted to see if they had any upcoming real estate needs or questions about the local market. Or, consider sending a video message to reconnect. A free Chrome extension that makes 1-1 video easy to do from your webcam is www.ViewedIt.com.
Tailor your outreach to the type of relationship you have — don't use the same approach with your first cousin and a former colleague you only interfaced with a few times. And be sure not to auto-add every one of these contacts to your ongoing email campaigns without their permission.
CAN-SPAM is a federal law that requires emails sent for marketing purposes to comply with certain restrictions. The fines for violating CAN-SPAM can be hefty. Make sure to stay on the right side of the law.
Getting your contacts into a CRM is one thing, engaging them is quite another. How do you make the jump from LinkedIn contact to potential client? Share your favorite tactic on our Facebook page, where we keep in touch with more than 35,000 agents from across the country!
To view the original article, visit the Realtor.com Results blog.