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Welcome To The Clever Letter!

Every Saturday, we’ll share an actionable lead generation guide that’ll help get your first (or next) 100 customers so you can take your business to the next level. This newsletter will remain Free forever. We hope you enjoy!

Last week, we showed you how to optimize your LinkedIn profile so you can generate more leads through LinkedIn.

Today, we’re looking at: Connection requests.

How important are they?

Check this out 👇

If done correctly, connection requests can:

• Start meaningful conversations

• Build deep connections

• Establish your authority

But it’s not as simple as writing a message and hoping your LinkedIn profile will do the rest.

There’s a process.

How To Write A Connection Request That Converts:

Here’s the 4-part guide:

1. The Mentionable Persona

2. Pick a Niche Thoughtfully

3. Craft the Connection Request

4. Do We Pitch in the Request?

1. What is a Mentionable Persona?

A mentionable persona is a profile you can use to make your copy more personalized.

Let me explain.

Your service could provide value to CEOs and VPs in one industry.

But both have very different needs.

What most people (do to catch all of their prospects) is write general requests.

They use:

• Vague jargon

• Fake pain points or features

General requests don’t accepted.

People can tell you’re just blasting them out.

You’re not spending time on them,

So why should they spend the time on you?

Look at these bad examples:

And another…

They feel unnatural.

They feel promotional.

90% of the time these will go ignored or straight to the trash.

This is where the Mentionable Persona comes in.

To compose a mentionable persona, ask yourself these things:

• Look at your best existing customers (job title, end user, decision maker, industry)?

• Who is most likely to truly care about your service? Who feels the most pain?

• What types of companies have the greatest need or best fit?

• What do their demographics look like?

A mentionable persona is composed of 2 or more characteristics that you can call out in your copy.

It makes your prospects subconsciously think, “yes this message is for me.”

You can then call out these characteristics to make your outreach more personalized.

Even if you are sending at scale.

It’s niching down your prospect pool, to get greater returns.

2. Pick a Niche Thoughtfully

Picking a niche is key.

When you try to speak to everyone, you end up speaking to no one.

The goal is to start meaningful conversations and build deep relationships.

So we’ve built a system to do that.

6 Key Factors For Choosing A Niche:

1. Is there a notable persona?

   Is there a persona we can leverage for better outreach?

   • 1 industry

   • 1 job title

   • 1 job function, or

   • 1 local city

2. Who is most likely to care about what you sell?

   How relevant are they?

   Do we want to speak to champions or decision makers?

   Or do we want to speak to end users?

   Use your prospect’s roles as context.

3. Do we have something compelling to say to this niche?

   You have to reach out with value and relevance.

   Not just for the sake of sending a connection.

   Do we have social proof or a common connection?

4. Are you competing in the same weight class?

   You can’t place a welterweight boxer up against the heavyweights.

   He won’t perform.

   He’ll probably get laughed at.

   No, we want to target prospects who you are likely to succeed with.

   Is there a specific pattern of characteristics that helps you determine whether they’re a fit?

   For example, enterprise vs SMBs.

5. Will the targeting list be big and clean enough to have 2nd-degree connections only? If not, will it last at least 1 month?

   If you niche down too far, your list may be too small.

   The ideal target size is 400-1000 prospects.

   The absolute minimum?

   200 qualified prospects.

   This will give you a 2-week run time.

   Don’t niche down too far.

6. How difficult is it to reach this niche on LinkedIn?

   Is the niche saturated?

   Are they active on Linkedin?

   Did they post in the last 30 days?

Use these answers to fill in your mentionable persona and let’s get to work.

3. How to Write a Compelling Connection Request:

If you've been following along so far, you've picked a niche and crafted a memorable persona for your prospect list.

Now, let's cover three of the top-performing connection requests in the history of Cleverly:

1) Betsy B

Mentionables:

1. Role: Hiring manager

2. Niche: Local sales executives

3. Location: East Coast

Note: While "East Coast" is a broad location, it is acceptable as the third mentionable.

2) Matthew B

Mentionable's:

1. Niche: Financial services

2. Location: NY area

3) Danny K

Mentionable’s:

1. Location: LA

2. Role: Founder/CEO

Bonus points for Danny: He used his profile to craft a colloquial joke that would make the reader feel understood.

The key takeaways?

Each connection request:

• Was personalized messaging to the persona

• Focused on 2-3 features for the persona

• Had a clear value proposition

• Was highly relevant

By sticking to these rules, they had great reply rate numbers.

While there’s plenty of personas to choose from…

At Cleverly, we’ve identified these 2 performers.

The Highest Performing Personas

1. Hyper-local

People tend to trust salespeople more if they live close by.

We call this the 'neighborhood effect.'

2. The job title niche

When we target one specific job title, we can get very insider with our copy.

For example, we once had a client named Daniel, who had a brand new data compliance software and wanted to show enterprise companies what he was building.

After first targeting CIOs and CTOs, he got awful results, with under 10% connection and reply rates.

We then convinced him to target one specific job title:

Chief/VP/Director/Manager of "Data Compliance".

This is known as a "Product Champion" angle, which is the strategy of going after potential end-users of software, since they feel the most pain day-to-day, causing them to show solutions to their boss.

After switching to that niche, Daniel jumped to over a 45% connection and response rate.

Can we pitch in the connection request?

As a general rule of thumb…

BUT in rare cases, it makes sense to pitch if there is an obvious benefit for the prospect.

For example, this connection request has over a 50% reply rate:

{firstname}, I see you're a self-published author like me. I was wondering if you're interested in getting global media coverage for your book to put you on the international stage? - Adrian

This connection request also has over a 50% reply rate:

{firstname} – I'm looking for weight-loss leaders who want to be featured in a few media outlets and came across your profile. It would be great to connect with you.

Final thoughts

By reaching out and connecting with individuals on LinkedIn, you open the door to new opportunities, relationships, and growth for both your personal and professional life.

Every connection request is a chance to expand your network, learn from others, and potentially find your next big prospect.

But you HAVE to do it right.

Steal our tactics.

Test what works.

Double down.

You can win big!

In next week's newsletter, we will share the dead-simple hack that helped us get 700+ 5 stars reviews on Trustpilot.

Having so much social proof has been a massive differentiator for Cleverly.

You’ll be able to use our system to get ahead of your competition!

Same time, same place (your inbox).

See you there!

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