Outreach and LinkedIn are two popular tools used by sales and marketing teams to generate leads, build relationships, and close deals. Outreach is a sales engagement platform that helps teams prospect more efficiently, while LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking site.
TL;DR
Yes, Outreach offers native integration with LinkedIn to help sales teams optimize their LinkedIn prospecting and outreach efforts. With Outreach’s LinkedIn integration, users can:
- Import LinkedIn profiles into Outreach for prospecting.
- Enable LinkedIn profile data sync to keep data up-to-date.
- Log LinkedIn messages and connection requests directly in Outreach.
- Track opens and clicks on LinkedIn messages.
- Use Click-to-Message to quickly message prospects on LinkedIn.
The native LinkedIn integration makes it easy for Outreach users to execute effective, targeted outreach campaigns on LinkedIn without toggling between multiple platforms.
What is Outreach?
Outreach is a sales execution and sales engagement software designed to help sales teams optimize their sales prospecting workflows and improve sales productivity. Outreach combines capabilities for email/phone/LinkedIn outreach, workflow automation, sequence analytics, and sales performance analytics in one platform.
Key features of Outreach include:
- Sequencing – Automatically schedule and optimize multi-touch outreach across email, LinkedIn, phone, and SMS.
- Templates – Use templated messages to scale personalized, relevant outreach.
- Tracking – Track real-time prospect engagement across channels to understand what works.
- CRM Sync – Sync contacts and accounts with your CRM to centralize data.
- Analytics – View sales performance analytics to double down on what’s working.
- Integrations – Connect with essential sales tools like LinkedIn, Gmail, Salesforce, and Slack.
In summary, Outreach helps sales teams automate and scale outbound prospecting while optimizing results based on prospect engagement data.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform with over 660 million users worldwide. LinkedIn connects professionals from all industries and career levels, enabling users to network, share content, build their personal brand, and participate in industry groups.
As a professional networking platform, key features of LinkedIn include:
- Profiles – All users have a professional profile displaying their work experience, education, skills, accomplishments, and recommendations.
- Feed – A newsfeed shows users relevant content, comments, and updates from connections.
- Groups – Users can join industry or interest-based groups to connect with like-minded professionals.
- Job Listings – LinkedIn lists over 30 million jobs to help users find new career opportunities.
- Messaging – Users can message connections directly via LinkedIn Messaging.
- Content Sharing – Users can publish long-form and short-form posts to share content, ideas, and news.
For sales and marketing teams, LinkedIn is a valuable tool to identify prospects, establish connections, engage through content and messaging, and ultimately generate leads. Many teams use LinkedIn in conjunction with sales engagement software like Outreach to optimize prospecting.
How Outreach Integrates with LinkedIn
Outreach offers robust native integrations with LinkedIn to streamline LinkedIn outreach and sync LinkedIn data directly in Outreach.
Here are 5 key ways Outreach integrates with LinkedIn:
1. Import LinkedIn profiles
The LinkedIn integration allows Outreach users to import LinkedIn profile data directly into Outreach. This includes profile details like name, company, title, location, as well as the full profile text, connections, groups, and more.
Bulk importing LinkedIn profiles makes it easy to build targeted prospect lists natively within Outreach for outreach. Users can source relevant prospects on LinkedIn and import their full profiles into Outreach in one click.
2. Enable profile sync
Outreach users can enable LinkedIn profile sync to automatically update contact or prospect data in Outreach whenever the LinkedIn profile is updated. This ensures prospect records stay up-to-date as people change jobs, titles, etc.
Syncing is especially valuable if you’re re-engaging old prospects – it ensures you have their latest contact points before reaching out.
3. Log LinkedIn messages
The LinkedIn integration automatically logs LinkedIn messages and connection requests directly in the Outreach activity feed. This makes it easy to keep all prospect touchpoints in one place.
Users can also view delivery and read receipts for LinkedIn messages to better track prospect engagement.
4. Track opens & clicks
Outreach enables open and click tracking for LinkedIn messages. This visibility helps teams know when prospects open or click on LinkedIn messages so they can tailor follow-up accordingly.
5. Click-to-Message
The Click-to-Message feature allows users to quickly send LinkedIn messages directly from prospect or contact records in Outreach with one click. This streamlines sending individual messages at scale.
With Click-to-Message, reps can take timely prospects found in Outreach and instantly reach out via LinkedIn messaging to capitalize on momentum.
Benefits of Integrating Outreach and LinkedIn
Integrating Outreach and LinkedIn brings the following benefits for sales teams:
- Centralized prospecting – Import LinkedIn profiles into Outreach for one centralized database.
- Accurate data – Enable ongoing profile sync to maintain updated prospect details.
- Simplified engagement – Log all prospect touches including LinkedIn messaging.
- Optimized messaging – Track opens, clicks, and replies to refine outreach.
- Increased efficiency – Click-to-Message allows instant LinkedIn messaging.
- Improved analytics – Analyze integrated LinkedIn data to sharpen targeting.
By bringing LinkedIn and Outreach data into a single engagement workflow, teams can execute more targeted, relevant, and effective outreach campaigns.
Step-by-Step Guide to Configuring LinkedIn Integration
Follow these steps to set up LinkedIn integration in Outreach:
- Navigate to the Integrations section in Outreach.
- Select the LinkedIn integration.
- Click ‘Add Integration’.
- Log into your LinkedIn account.
- Agree to grant Outreach access to your LinkedIn data.
- Choose settings like enabling profile sync and activity feed mirroring.
- Select ‘Authorize’ to complete setup.
Once LinkedIn is connected, you can start using features like LinkedIn Profile Import and Click-to-Message immediately to boost prospecting.
Tips for Optimizing LinkedIn Outreach with Outreach
Here are some tips for getting the most from integrated Outreach and LinkedIn prospecting efforts:
- Build targeted lists natively in Outreach by importing LinkedIn profile data.
- Personalize sequences using prospect LinkedIn profile details like work history and interests.
- Test different LinkedIn messaging templates and subject lines.
- Leverage Click-to-Message for one-off touchpoints with hot prospects.
- Focus messaging on providing value, not promoting products.
- Vary your outreach approach using LinkedIn messages, InMail, and profile views.
- Analyze LinkedIn messaging metrics in Outreach to refine campaigns.
FAQs
Does Outreach integrate with the free LinkedIn plan?
Yes, Outreach will integrate with free LinkedIn accounts. However, some advanced LinkedIn features like InMail may not be available on free plans.
Can I automatically log emails from Outreach in LinkedIn?
No, automatic logging of Outreach emails in LinkedIn is not currently supported. But you can manually log emails by adding them as LinkedIn activities.
Is Click-to-Message available for both personal and company LinkedIn accounts?
Yes, Click-to-Message works for both personal LinkedIn profiles as well as company/sales navigator pages. The integration will leverage whichever account you connect.
Can I import leads from LinkedIn into Outreach with the integration?
Yes, you can use the LinkedIn integration to import LinkedIn lead profiles into Outreach as contacts or prospects.
Will syncing with LinkedIn impact API limits?
LinkedIn does enforce API limits, so syncing large volumes of prospects may impact limits. But moderate profile syncing is generally fine within API thresholds.
Conclusion
In summary, Outreach provides robust native integration with LinkedIn to optimize prospecting workflows. By importing LinkedIn profiles, enabling profile syncing, logging LinkedIn messages, and leveraging Click-to-Message, teams can execute targeted and effective outreach campaigns entirely within Outreach.
Integrating Outreach and LinkedIn results in more accurate prospect data, consolidated prospect engagement tracking, and increased sales productivity. If your team conducts LinkedIn outreach, connecting Outreach and LinkedIn is highly recommended to boost results.