The episode's transcription:

Ofir: Today, we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is how do we use LinkedIn and email to reach people who do not know anything about us, also known as sales, also known as spamming. So today we're going to learn how to spam like a boss. The first thing that I want to talk about today, which is a philosophical point here, is that, well as I said, audience is more important than everything, but that it is basically impossible, you know, following on what two ladies down in that row said. You over there. My hands are a mirror so it's kind of hard to say, but you said that, you know, you get all these emails from people, you don't know who they are, why should you trust them, why should you open this, who opens that, how does this ever work? And that's the question that we need to ask ourselves as we send this emails, because it's actually most probable people are not going to open them. And so the statistics are, if we send a very successful email campaign, LinkedIn campaign, then 50% of the people open the email at all, even click on it, that's a massive success. And then if about 3%, yeah about 3 people, out of 100 reply, we're in the absolutely amazing zone. You know, if you get 20% reply, you're doing something very particular. You're doing something with an audience that has keen ears, but mostly people don't have keen ears. They're like, oh, another whatever from somebody.

And so, the goal in my experience, is to try and get a spreadsheet of 100, 200, 300, 500, 1000 people, that are in your target audience, and then you can run them through what I call grab packing, which means you show them ads on Facebook, and Instagram, you send them messages on LinkedIn, and then you send them emails, all in the space of one week, which makes them say haven't I heard this somewhere? Didn't I see the ad on--? And that little, that weak binding in their brain cells that says, 'haven't I heard of this somewhere?' is light years ahead of 'I've never heard about this brand or person, why should I even open it?' Because that is where authority comes from in the 21st century, it comes from recognition. It always has, but in the past, you know, authority was more bland. If this brand is big and it has billboards, I trust it because it's a big, trustworthy company. We don't really feel that way towards anything. Everything feels like it's trying to sell something to us these days. So the only thing left is simply to be recognized. That's the highest level a starting brand can get to. 

Having said that, today's agenda, generally speaking, is we're going to talk about LinkedIn, we're going to talk about email, each one of those as a distribution channel, for those of you who are in the jargon, jargon like you said earlier. The distribution channel meaning a way for us to contact people. So LinkedIn has distribution channel, email, the different hacks and little things that we can do to make that work, and then I'm going to piece that all together until it's kind of brand-hacking Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, email, big one campaign. And then the entire second half of this Jolt is just how to write an email that people want to engage with. Email/LinkedIn, it's the same thing. And, so, here we go. First things first, LinkedIn. 

So, LinkedIn is the biggest, largest business network in the world. I guess it doesn't really have any competition of that size, but if you would have to look for other business networks that are very big, madeup.com comes to mind, where some, you know, some people are whispering that in the future, WeWork is going to have some kind of network where all of its' members are online, so maybe one of those companies someday will have the reach and the richness that LinkedIn has, but today it's really lonely at the top. It was founded in 2004 by Reid Hoffman, who simply wanted to rid himself of the embarrassment of having to come up to people in conferences and ask them who they are and what they do. If he could only research the people going to the conference, in some online way, he would know who he needs to go to and network with. So he said I'll do this thing. He never imagined it would be the top recruiting tool worldwide, and he never imagined it would be such a huge business sales resource. And if I have to say, from my experience, what the number one superpower of LinkedIn is, it would not be messaging people, because people very rarely reply to cold messages on LinkedIn. The number one superpower of LinkedIn is its' search. ‍

Because, if anybody here has ever done paid marketing on Facebook, or has worked with somebody who has done it on their behalf, you will know that Facebook is actually pretty bad at targeting people by their profession. And especially if you want to get into particular details, like what the specific title or what the size of their company is. So, Facebook/Instagram being such a huge network, we always expect them to be good sources for us to find people, but actually anything that has to do with business, LinkedIn is fantastic at finding. And I'm gonna go over this with you. So, if everybody here that has a laptop would be kind enough to go into LinkedIn, I wanna teach you a little hidden corner in the website that most of you won't reach unless you... You have been to, I guess.

Man: Even in the app as well?

Ofir: I actually believe it works in the app as well, yes.

Man: Ah, OK.

Ofir: So, you go to LinkedIn.com and then you click on the search bar at the top of the page, and then, instead of searching something, it'll have a little drop-down menu that says People, Companies, and something like that. Click on People. And then at the top of that screen, something like All Filters is right at the top. Am I correct? All Filters or

Man: More Filters.

Ofir: More Filters, there you go. So, please click on that. And then you reach the same page as is shown on my slide here on the screen.‍

Man: Yes.‍

Ofir: And so, first of all, Facebook doesn't have any feature like this. You can't search people on Facebook based on anything other than their name, basically. So, this is a fantastic way to use LinkedIn, however, I am not a paying customer on LinkedIn. So, I don't have all the search features. But if you spend those $59 a month of the Sales Navigator, or $79--it depends on which exact one you want-- then you have a million additional search filters. You can search people by where they work, what their title is-- let's talk about granularity, all right? So, for example if you want to build an AB test-- everybody here know what AB test is?

Woman: No.‍

Ofir: Somebody doesn't? Let me explain for you. All right, AB test is a multiple variant campaign, in which you have A, which is, let's say, for example, A is THIS title for the email. And B is THAT title for the email. But in both of them, the email itself is identical. And that way, you isolate which email title is better. Subject line. So, it allows you to run tests and isolate components, compare them to each other, and see which one of them has better performance. AB testing is the bedrock of, I would say, digital marketing. Because, using this online statistics you can narrow your work into the best, most successful path. And we're going to talk about that, actually, in an expanded fashion, just in the next slide. So, just talking about the filters here. You are able to target somebody by which company they work for, which country they're from, I would say those are the basics. But if you think about more advanced ones, you have, once you pay LinkedIn, features like: how many employees does the company have? Maybe you find your sweet spot is under 200 employees. Those are the type of medium-sized businesses that will be most likely to engage with you. And then you have more characteristics. My personal favorite: the title. So, you could do an AB test campaign: One of them where you are targeting marketing managers, and one of them where you are targeting marketing directors. Or you could do marketing managers and directors in audience A. And then in audience B, VPs and chief marketing officers. So you'd have the higher ranks and the lower ranks. Obviously, if you can get the higher ranks to reply to you, that's amazing, but they're less likely to reply, right? Because they're more busy. And then, if you reach out to managers and directors, they might reply more often, but they have less decision power. So, that's an interesting way to think about having an AB test through these networks.