Best Practices and Frequently Asked Questions

Most important -
1. Outreach is a numbers game. So please do not take the rejection(s) personally. There's a stat that says, out of 100% of your prospects, only 40% will ever be interested. Which means that the "majority" of your prospects will never be interested. And to go a level further, of the 40% that might be interested, only 3% are interested right now. So, what about the other 37%? You need to follow up with them - that's just the name of the game. The money is in the follow ups.
What are some of the "best practices" for creating a ReplyAssist Campaign?
1. The most common Campaign type is the "New Connections" Campaign. And it's worth noting that your main goal at the beginning of these Campaigns it to get your invite accepted. If your invite isn't accepted, none of your follow ups are able to send. So please make sure to be more casual & vague in your connection request message to ensure more people are accepting it. Your follow up messages are where you can be more direct and get straight to the point.
2. Add between 400-2,500 members to a Campaign.
  1. If you have too few (ex: 150 people) in a Campaign, the Campaign will run out very soon. If you have too many (ex: 3,000), ReplyAssist is not able to add them all into a Campaign - the max amount you can add is 2,500.
3. "Warm up" your account to keep it safe on LinkedIn
  1. If it's been longer than 1 month since you've done automated outreach on LinkedIn (or you've never done automated outreach on LinkedIn before), you don't want to start sending 27 invites per day on LinkedIn (their rough daily limit as of 1/11/25 if you're doing outreach all 7 days per week).
    Suggested account "warm up" process:
    Days 1-7: Send 7 invites per day
    Days 8-14: Increase to 12 invites per day
    Days 15-21: Increase to 15 invites per day
    Days 22-28: Increase to 22 invites per day
    Day 29 & beyond: You can send up to 27 invites per day
4. If you can, prioritize targeting 2nd-Degree contacts over 3rd-Degree contacts.
  1. It's not the end of the world, but within 2nd-Degree contacts, you have at least one shared connection, so there's more "reliability" between you two because of that/those shared connection(s).
5. Be curious & show reliability in your messaging
  1. To be curious - ask open-ended questions. Your intention is to get the prospect to "open up" by telling you more. The more they tell you, the more information you are able to use to continue diving deeper on the conversation.
    If you need help coming up with open-ended questions, open up ChatGPT.com, start a new chat, and then enter this prompt after filling in your inputs:
    "I am a (your job title), and I am talking to one of my prospects on LinkedIn. They are a (their job title) at (their company) and I want to ask them about (topic you're wanting to ask them about). Please provide me with 5 open-ended questions I can ask them to dive deeper on the topic. Please make sure to be casual - I don't want to seem 'salesy'."
    It'll look like this:
    I am a financial advisor, and I am talking to one of my prospects on LinkedIn. They are a software engineer at Microsoft and I want to ask them about their RSUs. Please provide me with 5 open-ended questions I can ask them to dive deeper on the topic. Please make sure to be casual - I don't want to seem "salesy".
  2. To show reliability - you want to show all similarities between you and your prospect (same city, same college, same interests, etc). The more similarities you have with someone = the easier it is for them to trust you. And when someone trusts you, they open up to you. So, since you need someone to open up to you in order for you to sell to them, you need them to trust you first.
6. Pattern Interrupt
  1. This is one of the most important marketing terms for you to always keep top of mind. Effective marketing is all about grabbing someone's attention, and you don't grab attention by saying what every other salesperson is saying to their prospects. Instead, you grab attention by being unique. Being unique gets your prospects to actually stop what they're doing to think about what you said to them. It makes them pause & reflect rather than move on to the next thing.
7. Space out your Follow Ups
  1. For example, below is a solid cadence for your Follow Ups because, as you follow up more and more, you're giving your prospect more "space".
    Follow Up 1: Send 2 days after connection request is accepted
    Follow Up 2: Send 7 days after connection request is accepted
    Follow Up 3: Send 21 days after connection request is accepted
    Follow Up 4: Send 52 days after connection request is accepted
    Follow Up 5: Send 118 days after connection request is accepted
    Follow Up 6: Send 325 days after connection request is accepted
8. If you don't already have it, get Sales Navigator. This gives you additional search filters, such as the key ones below:
  1. Excluding certain contacts. For example, excluding anyone who works in the Financial Services industry.
  2. Targeting contacts based on their job title (and excluding other contacts based on their job title, too).
  3. Targeting contacts based on the size of their company (and excluding other contacts based on the size of their company, too).
  4. Targeting those who recently changed jobs.
  5. Targeting those who have been at their current company for less than 1 year.
  6. Targeting anyone who is within a 25-mile radius of your zip code.
  7. Targeting alumni of the college/university you went to.
  8. Targeting someone based on their years of work experience.
  9. Targeting anyone who has recently posted on LinkedIn.
If you want to get higher acceptance & response rates, improve your LinkedIn profile.
1. As in, make your profile more "attractive" to the prospects you are reaching out to them. Meaning, think about what is important to them + what they find interesting, and tie that in with what is listed on your profile.
2. This financial advisor has a great LinkedIn profile to model off of.
Do the follow up messages start ONLY if/after someone accepts my invitation to connect?
1. Correct. In general, unless you're using Open InMails, you are not able to message someone on LinkedIn unless they are a 1st-Degree connection of yours. So that is why a prospect has to accept your Invite for additional automated follow ups to send to them.
If someone does not accept my invitation to connect will the connection request message be resent out again after a specified time?
1. Nope. In general, if someone doesn't accept your LinkedIn invite, they intentionally don't accept it. So, to make sure you don't seem too "salesy", invites are only sent to a prospect in a Campaign once. BUT, since our Campaigns automatically withdraw those invites over a few weeks, you could always remove that prospect from the current Campaign, and retarget them in a different Campaign in, say, 3 months (for example). Note - we tell you to put the prospect in a different Campaign because the same prospect can only be in one Campaign at a time.
If someone accepts my invitation to connect but does not respond to any of the follow up messages will the communication stop after the last follow up message is sent out?
1. Correct. We allow you to schedule follow ups out to 360 days in advance, and we are HUGE advocates of "spacing out" follow ups.
  1. For example, let's say your connection request is accepted today by one of your prospects. Then Follow Up 1 sends in 2 days. Then Follow up 2 sends in 7 days. Then Follow Up 3 sends in 22 days. Then Follow Up 4 sends in 52 days. Then Follow Up 5 sends in 142 days. Something like that!
If someone from my Campaign responds, will they receive any more automated Follow Ups?
1. No. As of right now, if someone responds, that is where you need to step in manually to move the conversation forward.
What are some "best practices" for how to successfully move conversations with prospects forward to scheduling a appointment/meeting together?
1. Your main goal in LinkedIn messaging is to get the prospect to "open up". As in, start saying more (more words, more sentences, etc).
  1. The more they talk, the more information they give you. The more information they give you, the better questions you can ask. The better questions you can ask, the more likely you are to discover pain points/areas of interest. The more you are able to discover pain points/areas of interest, the easier it is to sell a solution.
    Once the prospect starts to "open up" (in general, they start saying more than just a couple of sentences), is a good time to suggest scheduling an appointment/meeting together (so you can talk more in-depth).
    So, it's a GOOD thing when prospects talk a lot.
2. Review each prospect's LinkedIn profile before messaging them
  1. Most people have a solid amount of information on their LinkedIn profile which will give you more context as to who they are as a person (their experience, interests, upbringing, etc).
3. Why's it so important to build good rapport?
  1. Someone's finances (their money) is one of their top priorities in life. So, it makes sense why they're guarded about the topic. That's why you need to show that you care AND make it clear that they can trust you. Build both rapport & trust, and it'll make it MUCH easier for your prospects to become clients.
4. As a rule of thumb, as long as your prospects don't tell you to leave them alone, follow up
  1. This means, don't end the conversation too early. If a prospect explicitly tells you they aren't interested and don't want to talk, politely end the conversation. But if they haven't explicitly told you, assume they still have some level of interest in talking with you.
5. Mirror the length of the message the prospect sends to you
  1. If you send a short response to their long response, you seem lazy. If you send a long response to their short response, you seem desperate.
6. Mirror the specific words that your prospects use.
  1. People choose their words carefully - because those words are important to them. And by using the words that your prospect uses, you seem more "similar". And similarity helps build trust.
7. Everyone has problems. EVERYONE.
  1. So if a prospect says they are "all set", feel free to dig deeper into that. It's not pushy or salesly. The fact of the matter is that we, as humans, are flawed. And we don't know everything. So, we ALL need help in SOME way, and no matter how much we "think" we have it all figured out.
    Most people aren't even aware of their weak areas/areas in which they lack knowledge/expertise.
8. Don't wait too long to explain WHY you reached out to them
  1. From the moment you send your connection request on LinkedIn, the prospect is innately wondering, "Why'd they send me a LinkedIn Invite?". So, just know that most of your prospects are curious about this. It's okay to let them know why you reached out, but don't lie or try to beat around the bush. Be honest and straight to the point - people respect that.