Social Selling: Icebreakers in messaging or how to double your Response Rate
How to melt the ice with Social Selling?
Social Selling method involves attracting potential B2B clients and building trust with them on social media. Before starting to sell your product or service through messaging, it's essential to break the ice first. This is where succinct phrases, known as icebreakers, come into play. They are used to draw the potential client's attention, making the conversations easier and more natural.
In this article, Olga Bondareva, the founder of the Social Selling agency ModumUp, shares practices on how to transform standard social media sales into non-trivial and warm interactions using icebreakers.
Icebreakers in private messages: what kind of beasts are these?
Icebreakers are short phrases designed to initiate the connection as well as strengthen trust and partnership on social media.
Examples of icebreakers:
- Humor and self-deprecation
- Any shared background or mutual interest that connects you with the person you’re texting to (e.g., alma mater, hometown, favorite music band, movie)
- Informal short video or audio, which must be natural and not selling. However, there's a drawback: you'll likely need to create personalized messages for each contact
- Personalization based on profile posts (drawback: hard to scale for a large number of contacts)
- Holiday greetings
- Greetings in the local languages
Now, we will explore practical examples
Icebreakers: Common Ground and Humor
Let's compare two messages: One without icebreakers and the second with icebreakers.
First example:
Hello [Name],
I work at ModumUp, an agency specializing in Social Selling - B2B lead generation through personal profiles on social media. Our primary clients include tech companies such as NetApp, Microsoft partners, AWS partners, EXANTE, and others.
Would you be open to a quick discussion about our approach? I'd be happy to share case studies and other insights on Social Selling.
Second example:
Hello [Name],
I also graduated from the University of Texas at Austin—what a small world!
I work at ModumUp, a Social Selling agency. We manage LinkedIn personal profiles, helping to connect with clients, partners, and employees while also building the personal brands of top executives.
Would you be up for a quick call? We can chat and demystify the beast that is Social Selling 😄
The first message sounds more formal and pushy, and it feels robotic. It could be sent to anyone, as it lacks a personal touch and simply isn't engaging target audience.
It's quite obvious that we used icebreakers in the second example by mentioning the same university. Furthermore, we simplified the language of the message, making it more conversational. In conclusion, we added a touch of humor by including the phrase "demystify the beast that is Social Selling."
The messaging results: the first cold message got a Response Rate (the percentage of responses to the number of messages sent) of 15%, while the second one, with icebreakers, achieved 30%. The target audience and business proposal remained unaltered. According to our agency’s benchmarks, a Response Rate ranging from 10% to 25% is considered average, so anything exceeding this range is categorized as high.
Advice from the ModumUp team
People appreciate emotional messages. We all love humor, so don't hesitate to crack a joke and be yourself. Such messages encourage dialogue and help build trustful relationships.
Icebreaker: Simple Conversational Language
There are some recommendations on how to make text more easily understandable: avoid jargon and clichés, simplify complexity, and use a conversational style. This is also one of the icebreakers’ techniques.
Advice from the ModumUp team
Always read the final version of the message aloud. Consider whether you would speak this way in a conversation with a potential client or not. If you come across parts where you stumble or feel it sounds unnatural, that's a signal that those phrases would be better off changed.
Advice from the ModumUp team
Use icebreakers, ensuring they are both clear and culturally appropriate when interacting with individuals from diverse backgrounds.
In a world where communication takes place both online and offline, we compete for the audience's attention. However, many individuals feel uncomfortable and wary when it comes to talking with strangers. That’s understandable; they just don't know what to expect. To establish a connection between you and a potential client, try initiating your communication on social media with icebreakers. These techniques will help destroy the dementors of the unknown and create the feeling that you are on the same wave as your conversation partner. Once the ice is melted, your business proposal for partnership is more likely to be met with less resistance and skepticism.