Contents
Participating in events is a great way to generate new business opportunities.
However, it is hard to get the conversations as far as you want and close deals on the spot.
Everybody is busy and want to meet as much people as possible.
That is why following up on LinkedIn or with email is essential to continue the conversation you started on these events.
In this article we cover all the LinkedIn follow up best practices and give you some LinkedIn follow-up message templates designed to get replies.
Let’s level up your LinkedIn prospecting.
Why To Follow Up on LinkedIn after a Networking Event?
Following up on LinkedIn after a networking event has 3 advantages:
- Take advantage of the momentum
- Stay top of mind
- Repeat your value proposition
1. Take advantage of the momentum
When it comes to close deals, timing is key.
If you started a good conversation with a prospect at an event, you should take advantage of this momentum to create a strong relationship.
It’s really likely that this momentum will soon die after the event so ride the wave until you can.
2. Stay top of mind
Your prospects probably meet tons of people at this event. You are one among hundreds. People have memory limitations. It’s hard to remember 100 names in one day.
Your prospects most likely forgot you. Sending a follow-up on LinkedIn is a good reminder for him to remember who you are.
Plus, sending a follow-up show that:
- You remember your conversation
- You are serious
- You are committed
That way, you stand out from all the casual conversations your prospect had during the event.
3. Repeat your value proposition
Your prospect might remember your name and your face but not necessarily what product or service you offer.
By following up on LinkedIn after the event, you send a reminder of your value proposition. This helps your prospect to remember why he should stay in contact with you.
How To Follow Up on LinkedIn?
How to follow up on LinkedIn:
- Find the LinkedIn profiles of your leads
- Send a connection request
- Add a note to give context
- Propose a clear next step
- Follow up with email if no reply
- Follow up with InMail if no reply
- Automate your follow-ups
1. Find the LinkedIn profiles of your leads
The best thing you can do is to ask for the LinkedIn profile of your prospects on the spot and send them a connection request right away.
However, you will not be able to do that every time. Usually, you will get business cards.
That is why you will need to find the LinkedIn profile of people you meet using the LinkedIn search engine.
For that, you can use the keyword search using:
- First name
- Last name
- Title
- Company School
That should be enough to find people you met even with partial information.
If you can’t find your leads using this technique you can try to check the list of people attending the LinkedIn event (if one has been created for your event).
For that simply search the name of your event on the LinkedIn search bar.
Then go to the event page, click on Register and you will get access to the list of all attendees.
You can scroll this list and check if you see familiar faces.
2. Send a connection request
If you sent a connection request during the event, your prospect might have already accepted it.
If you didn’t, make sure to send one within 24H.
It’s important to be fast because if your prospect recognizes your faces, he will be much more likely to accept your connection request.
3. Add a note to give context
When you send your connection request, make sure to add a personalized note mentioning where and how you met.
This will help your prospect get context and remember who you are more easily.
Your connection request acceptance rate will be much higher if your prospects clearly remember your conversation.
4. Propose a clear next step
The connection request above is missing something.
There is no clear next step defined for the relationship.
You created a first bond with your prospect, what is the next step you want to take him to.
- Read a content?
- Get a Zoom meeting?
- Meet in person?
Define what is your goal and make sure to add a clear Call To Action (CTA) so your prospects can clearly where this conversation is going.
5. Follow up with InMail if no reply
There is a chance your prospect won’t accept your connection request. You will need to use another contact channel in that case.
InMail credits are the perfect tool for that.
InMail are premium LinkedIn messages that allows you to skip the connection request step to land directly in your prospects’ inboxes.
Without InMail, your connection requests need to be accepted so you can send a message. With InMail, you can directly contact your 2nd and 3rd degree connections.
Note that to get InMail credits, it’s required a LinkedIn premium subscription (LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator or Recruiter).
6. Follow up with email if no reply
If you don’t get a reply neither to your connection request nor your InMails, you can still use emails to reach out to your prospect.
There is no way to follow-up using InMail, so you have no choice. Email is your only option if the connection request and InMail didn’t work.
To find the email of your prospect you can use a tool like Lusha.
Once their Chrome extension is installed you will be able to find email addresses in just one click.
It’s simple as that.
You can even get the phone number of your prospect if you pay for additional credits.
7. Automate your follow-ups
You can see that all this follow-up process can be painful to do manually.
Hopefully, some tools like LaGrowthMachine can now automate all this process for you.
Using this tool, you can automate:
- LinkedIn connection request
- LinkedIn messages
- Emails
- …and even LinkedIn Voice messages
Simply build your message sequence, add your leads in it and LGM will do the rest.
With condition as Invite Not Accept or No Reply, LGM allows you to build super personalized scenarios.
LinkedIn Follow-Up Messages Templates
Here are a few LinkedIn message, InMail and email templates you can use to follow up after a networking event.
These templates take place into a multichannel outreach strategy using several channels to get a reply from your leads.
1. LinkedIn Connection Request Template
For the first connection you sent after the networking, you have 3 goals:
- Make your prospect remember who you are
- What you talked about
- Define a next step for the relationship
You go with something like this if you had a conversation with your prospect:
LinkedIn follow-up template #1
Hey <first_name>, following up as promised after our conversation on <topic> at <event name>.
It was a pleasure meeting you.
I’m particularly interested in continuing our conversation on <specific topic>.
If you hadn’t had the time to have a full conversation and the exchange was really brief, you can send a message like this:
LinkedIn follow-up template #2
Hey <first name>, we met at <event>.
We briefly talked about <topic>.
Interested in continuing the conversation here 😉
2. LinkedIn Message Template to follow up
Some of the people you networked with will accept your connection request but won’t answer your message right away.
If the connection request has been accepted, it means the prospect is willing to continue the conversation.
Since the interest is validated, you can send a more precise call to action like a date for a meeting.
In that case, you can send a LinkedIn follow-up message like this:
LinkedIn follow-up message template #3
Thanks for accepting my request <first_name>.
As said in my note I’m interested in continuing on conversation on <topic>.
Found your insight really relevant.
Are you available next week so we can continue where we stopped?
You can also follow up with a content if you would rather not meet but continue the conversation on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn follow-up message template #4
Thanks for accepting my request <first_name>.
I come across this article today: <link>
Interesting perspective on what we talked about at <event>
What do you think?
3. InMail Message Template if no reply
If your prospect doesn’t accept your connection request, you need to follow up using another channel.
InMail is suitable first option as your face will appear in 2 places:
- Connection request tab
- LinkedIn main inbox
You can send a message like this:
LinkedIn follow-up message template #5
Subject line: <event name> talk
Hey <first_name>, sent you a connection request to know if you were willing to continue the conversation we had at <event name> on <topic>.
Let me know if you do
Best, JB
Here you are not confident that your prospect is truly interested in talking to you so got to back off a bit and give him space.
The last thing you want to do is be pushy.
4. Email Message Template if no reply
If your prospect doesn’t reply to your connection request nor your InMail, maybe LinkedIn is not the best platform to reach him.
There are 2 options now:
- Your prospect doesn’t want to talk to you
- Your prospect is not active on LinkedIn
We want to get rid of the second option. That is why we are going to contact the prospect by email.
Here is a message you can send:
LinkedIn follow-up message template #6
Hey <first_name>,
We met at <event>. My name is JB.
We had a 15-min conversation on <topic>.
Does that ring a bell?
I tried to reach you out on LinkedIn unsuccessfully so I’m following up here.
I found our conversation really interesting. Especially the fact that <mention something specific>.
I’d be curious to know more about what you do at <company> to face that issue.
Best, JB
Bonus LinkedIn Follow-Up Strategies
Here are 2 LinkedIn follow-up strategies you can use to generate leads:
- Follow up on people you didn’t meet
- Contact people attending to LinkedIn events
1. Follow up on people you didn’t meet
People you spoke with at the event are not the only person you can contact. You can try to follow up on all the attendees.
The first step is to get the list of the attendees. For that, you can check the website of the event or check if an event was created on LinkedIn.
You contact all these people manually. In case you want to use a LinkedIn prospecting tool, you can also extract these leads into a CSV using Phantombuster.
Once you get these leads, you can send a message like:
LinkedIn follow-up message template #7
Hey <first_name>, I was at <event> like you but didn’t get the chance to meet you.
Did you enjoy it?
They had great speakers. Particularly enjoyed <mention a specific fact>.
If this topic also interests you let me know. Would love to exchange about it.
In that case, it’s important to mention a specific fact to show that you really attended the event.
2. Contact attending to LinkedIn Events
Attending to a LinkedIn event is a signal of interest.
You can use this to your advantage by contacting people participating in events related to your industry.
LinkedIn makes it super easy to search for events using the search engine:
- Type your keyword in the search bar
- Click on events
- Browse events to find leads
Once you detected a relevant, you can contact attendees manually or extract the list of attendees using Phantombuster.
You can contact them before or after the event.
If you reach out before the event, you can send a message like this:
LinkedIn follow-up message template #8
Hey <first_name>,
I’m reaching out because you showed interested in participating to <event>.
Is this a problem you currently face at <company_name>?
I recently wrote a white paper on this topic.
Let me know if this helps,
Best, JB
If you reach out after the event, you can send a message like this:
LinkedIn follow-up message template #9
Hey <first_name>,
Saw you attended to <event>
Was it interesting?
Didn’t get the chance to attend.
Looking for feedbacks.
Best, JB
This is one is basic. You just want to start a conversation here, not sell anything.
Conclusion
If you have to remember 3 things from this article:
- Use a multichannel follow-ups strategy using LinkedIn messages, InMail and emails
- Make sure to be super specific in your follow-up messages
- You can also contact people you didn’t already meet with
Hope this helps!
